Farm Happenings

Weather: Mostly mild over the last two weeks. Although I love winter, it has been a bit of a relief to have it get a little easier. Snow on Monday night provided a welcome cover up to a landscape that had become a little bit dingy.

What We Did: Planning moved ahead. Chris finished up a project about post harvest handling for the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, including visits to the packing sheds at Featherstone Farm and Driftless Organics. Ben put together plans for new benches and an automatic watering system in our transplant production greenhouse. Sarah made way for shifting the rosemary pots out of the transplant greenhouse and into one of the other greenhouses, where we just installed a heater. Decorah Electric came out and repaired the peak vent on the transplant greenhouse and an electrical fault in one of the mobile greenhouses. Bryan cleaned cabbage and packed herbs.

Comings and Goings: Chris traveled to the Iowa Fruit and Vegetable Growers Conference to present workshops on food safety and business planning last weekend. Ben took a well-deserved vacation.

In the Kitchen

When you get this box home, the squash, and onions should be left in a cool, dry place. Bag up the roots and the cabbage, and put them in the crisper drawer of your refrigerator.

The Rock Spring Farm Blog, www.eatbetternews.com, has several years’ worth of recipes and vegetable descriptions. You can visit there any time to search for recipes and tips on how to use your CSA share produce.

Carrots

Cipollini Onions – These flat Italian heirlooms have a wonderfully rich flavor. I prefer to use them where the onion is featured, but they work just fine as a “regular” onion as well. The red variety we grow is only produced in one valley in Italy, and seeds have become scarce in recent years due to repeated poor seasons.

Celeriac

Yukon Gold Potatoes – We have stored these in our cooler, which causes the starch to turn to sugar; stored at room temperature for a couple of days, the sugars will cycle back to starch. Sugars in potatoes can make them taste funny to some people, and can cause undesirable blackening in cooking as they caramelize, especially if you cook them at high temperatures. In the world of potato breeding (a fascinating world, since cultivated potatoes have four sets of chromosomes instead of two), a major emphasis is how quickly those sugars can cycle back to starch out of cold storage, since about 12% of the total crop is used for chipping; when you get a chip that has dark brown coloration, that potato had too much sugar.

Chioggia Beets – With a true-red skin, these beets have a bull’s eye pattern on the inside if you slice them horizontally. Sliced vertically, they sometimes have a nice heart pattern that can make a sweet valentine’s display. The pattern will bleed out if boiled or steamed, but stays in if baked.

Rutabagas

Red Cabbage

Spinach – This spinach is delicious, but it’s been hard to harvest because so many leaves were damaged in the deep freeze over the holidays. As the weather warms, it is slowly revitalizing.

Winter Squash – Heart of Gold or Acorn this week, as we deplete our supply

Black Spanish Winter Radish

Fresh Bay Leaves – Fresh Bay Leaves have a more intense and complex flavor than dried bay. You can use them just as you would the standard dry leaves, but expect much more out of the fresh leaves. These leaves are harvested from our own trees grown in our greenhouse.

Beans and Tomatoes with Fresh Bay

1 Red Onion, chopped
2 Tbsp Olive Oil
1 14 oz. can Chopped Tomatoes
4 fresh bay leaves
1 14 oz can white beans

Saute the red onion in the olive oil until translucent. Add the tomatoes, fresh bay, and beans and simmer for 10 or 15 minutes.

Caramelized Cippolini Onions

3 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 1/2 pounds Cippolini onions, peeled
3 tablespoons sugar
1/2 cup red wine
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1 bay leaf
4 tablespoons stock
salt and pepper to taste

Melt the butter in a large, ovenproof saucepan over a medium flame. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Add the onions to the butter and cook for about 20 minutes, until they are nicely browned. Add the sugar, wine, vinegars, bay leaf, and stock, and bring to a simmer. Place the pan in the oven and cook for about 45 minutes to 1 hour, until the onions are soft. Remove the onions from the pan with a slotted spoon. Reduce the sauce over low heat until it achieves a slightly viscous consistency, about 1 hour. Season with salt and pepper, and reheat the onions in the sauce.

Basic Baked Beets

Some beets
Some olive oil
Some water

Simply rub trimmed (not peeled) beets with olive or vegetable oil and place them in a casserole dish with 1/2 inch of water. Cover and bake in a 400 degree oven for about an hour. The beets are ready when they can easily be penetrated with a paring knife. Cool slightly and slip the peel off. We slip the peel off under running water; it saves on burning the fingers. Eat and enjoy.