1/3/24 Newsletter: Musings on Farm Infrastructure
Happy New Year! We hope you’ve had some good time with family or friends over the deep of winter.
Every winter we get excited for the slower time of year to focus on “Winter Projects”. Often these projects focus on maintaining farm infrastructure. In Spring, Summer and Autumn, as is typical for farmers, we are so busy with the work of producing food that we use the slower time to do this upkeep.
Late last autumn we reskinned the Hanger (one of our older hoop houses) and then mid-December we reskinned the Enterprise (the newest and largest by double of our 5 hoop houses). Each of these require a lot of labor updating and strengthening the physical structure. On the latter, storms from the north had really torn at our prior north end and so we build a new wall. Our hoop houses (a plastic hoop like a greenhouse but for in-ground growing) are tremendous infrastructure. They serve as season extension for us in our cool valley bottom. These allow us to get summer squashes to you by the first week of May, Cucumbers into October and Eggplant into November. Additionally, they house our over wintered carrots (which you’ll start to receive shortly). And they house beautiful light greens from lettuces to mustards, spinach, and arugula.
On the ecological side of things (our farm landscape which truly is also our natural infrastructure) we’ve not done as much as we would like. We did some major tree pruning and chipping late autumn. And more recently we did some major pruning on at least one biodiversity promoting hedgerow with hopefully more to come. And we’ve removed a fair amount of invasive blackberry.
For the farm operations, those of you who pick up at the farm noticed that the inside of the barn had a major remodel in terms of a clean out. Major. After 14 years of use we had all sorts of “useful maybe someday again” parts stored until it was fully unworkable. A big thank you to this year’s crew who had the insight as well as elbow grease to get this project done.
Our barn is the command central of our farm day. We start each day in front of the planning boards with a meeting, we pack CSA boxes, have our walk in refrigerator where we store produce between harvest and farmers’ markets, house storage crops like today’s potatoes and onions, store farming supplies like tools, boxes, frost blankets, irrigation supplies, seeds, packaging and emergency supplies and more. This is only for the produce side of our business. Many of the tools are jointly used for managing the landscape. Then upstairs we have lunch space, we have more storage crop space, we have our flower workshop, we have our former business (a woodworking business that still has significant tools and salvaged wood) plus the ability to be cleaned out for educational workshops and conferences.
But now it’s January… we call these Winter Projects but for us Winter in this way almost ends at Winter Solstice. By January 1st we have to leap into action for the New Year of farming. The last week of 2023 we had a very small crew due to holiday vacations and much of their time was seeding! Again this week we’ve spent significant time seeding thus far, the nursery is starting to fill up. We’ll be planting even this week but by late January/early February we’ll be planting up a storm. Even today we welcomed a new full time crew member for 2024 (Maddie who worked on a market garden in Alaska last season).
CSA logistics for the New Year
Later this month we will be reaching out to those on the waitlist to get them spots in the CSA for spring start.
We are currently accepting new EBT members.
As a reminder for all, we will unfortunately be raising the CSA price in March. More information forthcoming.
Produce Notes & Recipes
This Week’s Box
Red Butter Lettuce
Rainbow Chard
Brussels Sprouts and Collards
Queen Jessica Potatoes (Stemple Creek)
Patterson Yellow Onion (Longer Table)
Music Garlic (SWSF)
Persimmons
Family Boxes: Tokyo Bekana
Produce Notes & Recipes
The products that really take us through this time of year are Brussels Sprouts and stored Potatoes, Squash and Onions and you can see that in today’s box with a few tenderly cared for light greens like Red Butter Lettuce and Rainbow Chard. Plus Family Boxes have a bunch of Tokyo Bekana, think of it as a light non-heading Napa cabbage meets Panisse oak leaf lettuce! You can use it in salad, or a light sauté.
The Brussels Sprouts and Greens are beyond delicious! Our family has eaten them at least twice a week and we’ll have more in next CSA box. But the may need a little love first. This crop was seeded in late June and planted in July and August! So they have a lot of time out in the vibrant world. I have not found any aphids on them but some others have. I recommend keeping them on the stalk in a plastic bag until you’re ready to use them, then popping them off when you’re ready to cook into a bowl of cool water and rinse a couple times before cutting the base and in half if desired (I usually desire). We just love them pan fried with plenty of garlic and a little salt. That’s all. But we’ve had a few recipes in the 12/13 CSA (check out that newsletter).
Honestly we do the same with the Brussels Greens, just a quick sauté/braise with garlic but you can also use them like other collards or even kale.
Today we have the first full round of Queen Jessica Potatoes. They are an heritage white fleshed variety that is dry and floury packed with taste when boiled. Excellent for boiling, roasting and baking. Good for mashing and frying.
We got these from Rancher Loren at Stemple Creek Ranch is trialing out growing these potatoes, Queen Jessica from a line of British Queen Potatoes that his late sister Jessica breed. They were dry farmed and they're hoping to grow potatoes as a way to do some minimal disruption in their otherwise undisturbed fields.
We also have a large quantity of Patterson Yellow Onions from Longer Table. We realized today we haven’t been giving them out enough and so you have a large quantity. We have culled some of them but we recognize that occasionally you cut into one and there is a bad spot. This is part of the reason for the large quantity. We assume there will be a little waste in your kitchen. This is the nature of harvesting them in September and storing until late winter. Still, it’s a good amount and if we had this week’s CSA box we would absolutely do a good batch of caramelized onions . It takes about 30 minutes and often I’m too much in a rush but it the flavor is amazing. We might possibly use them with Pan Fried or in Scalloped potatoes.
Caramelized Onions (Bon Appetit) Makes 1/2 cup.
2 large yellow onions, peeled (~1 pound)
2 Tbs unsalted butter
Kosher salt
Low-sodium chicken broth or water (for pan; optional)
Peal and then thinly slice onions from root to tip in little slivers (¼"–⅛" thick)
Heat 2 Tbs butter in a large saucepan over medium until melted and sizzling. Using a pan that also has a wide base gives water room to evaporate, allowing the onions to caramelize rather than steam.
Instead of dumping in all of the onions at once, which would fill the pot and make it hard to stir (causing the ones on the bottom to cook faster), start by adding a couple of large handfuls to the pot. Cook, stirring, until onions are soft and starting to turn translucent, 1–2 minutes. Stir in a few more handfuls of onion and repeat cooking and stirring process until you’ve added all the onions. Season with a pinch of salt.
Reduce heat to medium-low and continue to cook onions, stirring every few minutes to prevent them from sticking and coloring too much in any one place, until blonde-colored, 15–20 minutes. This is the point of doneness for French onion soup! If you feel like onions are getting too brown around the edges or they’re sticking, reduce your heat a bit.
If you’re going for onions that are both softer and more caramelized (say for a patty melt or onion dip), keep cooking, stirring on the regular, until onions are unmistakably golden brown, another 15–20 minutes. Because most of the water has cooked off at this point, there might be some bare spots where the pot could start to burn. If this happens, stir in a splash of broth or water. The liquid will dissolve the cooked-on bits, which the onions will re-absorb.
For extra-dark onions, the kind that make a great burger topping, cook until they start to almost blacken around the edges and go slightly crisp, another 10–15 minutes. This needs constant attention to avoid burn.
Let onions cool in the saucepan, then use or transfer to an airtight container and chill. They will keep up to 1 week.
And we have Fuyu Persimmons again from our neighbors up the lane. Thank you Gary and Sue! Last CSA these were quite unripe, mine sat on my counter a week before they were good to eat. These are in much better shape. Some are ready to eat right away, some can sit on the counter a couple days. They should have a dark orange color and a slight give when touched.