11/20/24 Meet Your Farmer: Maddie
This week we want to share with you another cornerstone to our farm crew! Maddie has been working with us since January of this year, coming out of working for a season at a low-till farm in Homer, Alaska. Maddie is a lifelong traveler, and has spent seasons working on several other small farms, from Watsonville to Chicago to Vermont. We are so grateful that she has made the move back to her home state of California.
Maddie embodies a field mouse, in the way that she is happiest planting, harvesting, weeding, or sauntering the field and looking at the beauty she helped create. She is super quick and yet modest, making her an incredible addition to the team and even teaching newcomers the ins and outs of the farm. You can find Maddie as she occasionally fills in at farmers’ markets and is often found buzzing around the farm.
As someone who loves soil, Maddie has taken a lead on cover crops this year. Although people’s first thought when it coms to farming is harvesting and eating vegetables, building the soil is the foundation on which we build. Maddie designed different mixes of cover crops, and is excited about comparing and finding how different blends impact our soil. We plant cover crops in our bottom fields that are the most challenging and she is dedicated to reviving some of this soil and has her head wrapped around this area more than anyone else.
Off the farm, Maddie enjoys the simple pleasures of living in California. She is an incredible cook, always incorporating the newest available produce into her meals. She loves to tell a good joke and make her friends laugh, lightening even the rainiest of days like today. Maddie has many creative outlets, including co-facilitating a creative writing group or hosting mending nights to revamp old clothing. One of the brightest things about Maddie is that she is a yes man, from polar plunging into the Pacific Ocean in the depths winter to creating word games to pass the time. Maddie keeps our days young, light, and bright. We’re very excited to have Maddie continue to farm with us into 2025 as a senior crew member.
Special Holiday Boxes next week
Next week is our first week OFF of our weekly CSA. With most schools closed and many people traveling, we have found this to be the ideal date to begin our winter CSA schedule. And yet, with the break and holiday, we’ve often found many of you wishing for produce from your farm for this week, hence the special box.
Next week we will be offering our Special Order November Box for pick-up next week on TUESDAY. This is not covered in your CSA subscription with box credits and will be 100% Add-Ons. We will be sending you an email by tomorrow mid-day (Thursday) with ordering instructions. Some of the goodies we’ll have are Farm Produce including various Lettuce, Spinach, Arugula, Kales, Chard, Chicories, Cabbages, Beets, Carrots, Cauliflowers, Broccoli, Brussels Sprouts, Potatoes, Onions, Garlic, Herbs, and Winter Squash! Plus we’ll have more dried flower bouquets as they make excellent gifts this time of year!
Reminder: LAST weekly CSA Box!
A little reminder that this is your LAST weekly CSA Box, our next regular box for EVERYONE will be 12/4/24.
Here is our Winter CSA Schedule for all CSA members:
November: 20th (last weekly box!),
Tues 26th Optional Holiday Box,
December: 4th, 18th, Mon 23rd Optional Holiday Box
January: 8th, 22nd
February: 5th, 19th
March: 5th, 19th
April: 2nd, 16th and likely weekly (based on winter weather
Produce Notes & Recipes
This Week’s Box
Spinach (Classic - Worker Bee) OR Head Lettuce (Family - Fledgling)
Baby Kale (SR) OR Arugula (WC)
Kale: Toscano (SR) OR Red Russian (WC)
Broccoli (SR) OR Cauliflower (WC)
Napa Cabbage (Worker Bee + SFF)
Elyse Onions (West County Community Farm)
Parsley
Family: Black Futsu Winter Squash
We have a few more items from other farms but after this fresh veg will be solely from us. If you live in West County and get the Sebastopol Living (it comes free in the mail to residents) the lead article for December is “Worker Bee’s Will Scott: Farming Contentment One Crop at a Time”. Check it out. This week he has Napa Cabbage for most (he was a few short and we filled in) and Spinach for Classic Boxes. After harvesting these yesterday he tilled (yes, he uses thoughtful tillage) and planted his cover crop for today’s rain, so he is now done and thankful to have shared the last of his crops with you.
Farmer Alice has Head Lettuce for us today and she may have a few items to add into our Holiday Box next week.
We also are starting our storage crops from other farms this week. We have yellow Elyse Onions from West County Community Farm this week and will have yellow and Red Onions throughout the season from them for our boxes and add ons. Before packing boxes this morning we had 950 lbs of onions for them in storage. They had a really good onion year and we’re appreciative of it!
We had to make a major switch in our CSA offerings this week. With the cold and especially the rain, Cauliflower and Broccoli rot. So we decided to put off the Black Futsu for everyone except Families and get you some of these beautiful Cauliflower and Broccoli. We did not want to waste this crop and didn’t think you’d mind. The Winter Squash is still there, it’ll store for months. We’re not sure that we’ll be able to complete the rotation, we need to see how they fare through this storm.
Of note on Winter Squash, yesterday we did a taste test of all of our Winter Squash varieties: Black Futsu, Butternut, Delicata, Red Kuri and a few Kabocha. Black Futsu came out as the favorite for flavor! It is a Japanese butternut variety, it is hard to peel, so we cut in half and roast and simply eat with a little butter. Yum! Of course they all make fantastic soup and also pumpkin pie! Read this comparison of different squash “pumpkin” pies.
We’re really excited about our Baby Kale! The specific variety is Red Russian. This crop was an idea of Harvest Manager Sean, he wanted to try it out. This is the first cut, we’ll see how it continues through the season. Baby Kale can be eaten like any other kale, but it’s more tender. It can certainly be sautéed but is also great for salads. I would use more like Spinach than Kale (albeit with Kale flavor). Here are some ideas that can be used with Kale or many light greens.
Baby Kale Quinoa Salad (The Gracious Pantry)
2 cups baby kale (washed and prepared)
1 cup cooked quinoa
1 cup chopped apples
¼ cup walnut pieces (chopped if needed for size)
2 Tbs. vinaigrette
Toss all ingredients together.
Drizzle with dressing and serve.
Baby Kale with Garlic & Red Pepper Flakes (The Gracious Pantry)
½ cup chicken broth (or vegetable broth – no sugar added, low sodium is best)
4 cups baby kale (tightly packed for measuring)
1 tsp. olive oil
2 tsp. garlic powder (or 6 medium cloves, minced)
1 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes
1 tsp. low sodium soy sauce
Sauté the garlic in the olive oil in a large pan for about 30 seconds over medium heat.
Pour the chicken broth into the pan and add the kale, garlic powder, red pepper flakes and soy sauce.
Cook until kale is wilted and cooked to your liking.
A note on Greens preparation:
Your greens are almost always harvested fresh Wednesday mornings. We may rinse some, but do NOT wash your greens. We have found that washing often holds more peril than profit for them as they spoil more quickly. We recommend you take some time Wednesday evenings to process some of your greens. This will keep them fresh throughout the week. If you have greens in paper bag (not this week but last week for instance), prioritize these. We use paper bags because they’re compostable when possible but it is not ideal for greens long term. Today it’s too wet!
Submerge your greens in a sink/bowl of cold water and leave them a little bit if they are wilting to revive them. Repeat until all the soil and bugs (if any) have washed away, dry (investing in a salad spinner is especially useful) and store your greens in your crisper, or in the bottom of your refrigerator in a large greens or tupperware-type container (or plastic bag) with towels on the bottom. This will ensure the longest life for your greens plus you will have washed and prepared greens ready at your finger tips all week long. We find this makes it easy to grab a handful of greens to add to whatever you're cooking for dinner or a quick lunch and you end up eating more of them!
A note on Greens substitutions:
We have many members asking for ways to understand and use Greens. The recipes we give are for specific greens, based on what’s in the box. That said, we consider all greens substitutable most of the time but keep the following in mind. We think of greens on a spectrum from delicate to very hardy. We might order them like this: Fava Greens, Arugula, Mustard Greens, most Lettuce Greens, Bok Choi, Frisée, Escarole, Napa Cabbage, Tat Soi, Baby Kale, Spinach, Chard, Kale, Collards, Brussels Greens, Hard Cabbages. Then we just adjust cooking time (delicate greens just need a touch of heat and hardy ones a few minutes). For seasoning, we consider the flavor as well, there are the stronger or spicier Arugula, Escarole, Mustard Greens and the milder Lettuce, Bok Choi, and Cabbages. We find these rules especially useful because you will find very few recipes for some of them like Fava Greens, Tat Soi or Brussels Greens but there are a plentitude for Spinach or Kale, so we look for recipes for greens of similar heft/flavor and substitute away. We hope this helps. Have fun and good luck!