CSA For August 28th

Lots of flowers, but no sign of fruit yet on the Butternut
squash.  Is there time to finish any this year?

Last week was a bit wild! Stormy weather Thursday caused us to cancel the pick-up - something we've rarely done in our years of doing CSA!  The wild weather continued through the weekend causing some havoc around Aagaard Farms.  Did you see the picture we shared on Facebook of the corn all blown over?  Branches were broken on tomatoes, apple trees and, of course, the willow drop thousands of bits all over the place.  The rain was welcome - it has been a bit dry but the deluge can cause things to grow too fast.  Time will tell on the weathers' effects on the gardens!  We tried our carrots today - and got a small dig - just enough for the Full Shares, but they are coming along nicely.

Today has been a bit rocky for me (Norah).  I always have a little problem with my hip but this morning I woke up with my neck out-of-joint.  I tried a little heat in the morning, which helped a bit but by early afternoon I felt like I had seized up from my shoulders to my thigh on my left side.  Farmer Man was nice enough to say he'd do the CSA pick up solo while I stretched out again with a hot water bottle.

The cucumbers have gone wild: they loved the hot weather of last week and then 'did, indeed, blow up' with the rains of the weekend.  How about a cold cucumber soup, this one made creamy by stirring in avocado! This tangy cucumber salad would be great as a side dish, as the bed for a grilled piece of salmon or chicken, or on a sandwich or burger.  This cucumber sauce, intended for Greek gyros, would be excellent as a veggie dip, with falafels or on fish or chicken.  Don't forget that if you don't have fresh herbs, use dried but use 1/4 to 1/2 the specified quantity - drying herbs concentrates the flavour.  Start of with about 1/4 of the recommended amount of fresh, then taste to decide if you need to add more.  If you love Japanese food, you've had sunomono salad...it is really quite easy to make.

Here is a nice little guide to food preservation.  We always love it when our CSA members save a little of the harvest for winter eating!  While the summer squash are happening - freeze a bit for winter muffins or cake.  The beans will save nicely, too.

Nice Crookneck squash in everyones' baskets today.  Here's a nice crookneck frittata - great for breakfast, lunch or dinner!  This Southern fried crookneck  and crookneck fries recipe sounds good!  Check Tuesday's blog for a recipe for beer battered crookneck!  Here's a recipe for stuffed crookneck from a Southern cook's grandma!  There some Papaya Pear going around today, too!  Always our favourite for the BBQ!

For the FULL SHARES:  Assorted summer squash of Romanesque, Crookneck and Papaya Pear, an Armenian cucumber, slicing cucumbers, carrots, beets, German Butterball potatoes, Hungarian Hot Wax peppers, onions, herbs, Kentucky Blue pole bean, Romano green beans.

For the PART SHARES:  Summer squash assortment of Romanesque, Crookneck and Papaya Pear, slicing cucumbers, onions, German butterball potatoes, beets, herbs, Kentucky Blue pole beans.

For the SINGLE SHARES:  Summer squash assortment of Romanesque, Crookneck and Papaya Pear, slicing cucumbers, beets, German Butterball potatoes, onions, Kentucky Blue pole beans.

We Are Sooo Doing Oven-Roasted Tomatoes Again!

Last night I used our oven-roasted tomatoes for the first time.  This year was the first time we've roasted tomatoes, then preserved by freezing (with juice) in freezer bags.  Hauled a bag out a couple of days ago, largely 'cause it was firmly stuck to a jar of goats milk!  I guess I hadn't wiped off the bag well enough, or it was still a little warm; it was very well adhered to the glass jar and wasn't letting go. So I defrosted the two together, in an ice cream pail just in case there was any leakage.

Holy Smokes - was that the closest I've come to the taste of fresh, summer tomatoes in the dead of winter!  We are absolutely doing this again this coming year!  Highly recommend it!  We have homemade tomato sauce, and it's pretty good, even if I do say so myself.  But the flavor of the frozen oven-roasted tomatoes was fabulous!  Our tomatoes were a mix of Romas, Margeritas and the heirloom Brandywine.  I made a simple sauce by sauteing some onions and garlic, then added the tomatoes and seasoning.  I am fortunate to have a lovely stash of tarragon shared by our CSA members Tammy and Mike, which added a nice flavor with a touch of sweetness.  Toward the end, I added a bit of homemade chicken stock, because it was getting a little thick.  I did cut up a few piece of tomato skin, which were a little large and stringy.  Total time was the amount of time needed to boil the water and cook the pasta!

This coming season, I think we'll follow the directions for roasting the tomatoes from here at Smitten Kitchen.  She's slow-roasting them at a low temperature, which is not what we did and it was a little warm in the house the day we processed our tomatoes.  Just some olive oil and salt and pepper, then you're free to spice your sauce any way you want.  These tomatoes will be nice for a style of bruschetta, maybe in a quiche, blended for a dip...so many things.  Storage in freezer bags does not take up a ton of freezer space as they stack very nicely.  Just learn from my lesson and make sure the bags are well dried off, or stack them after they freeze!

Book Review: Prairie Fruit Cookbook!

I'm in love, love, love with Getty Stewart's new book 'Prairie Fruit Cookbook'!   First, I love supporting things that are local and, second, gardening/cooking books that are specific to our tough climate are a boon.  It's very hard, for instance, to find info on saskatoons in most commercial books; I've often 'faked' out recipes for blueberries, which I figured was the closest sort of berry!  This book has great info for gardeners, bakers, cooks and canners - something for everybody!

Getty Stewart is the founder of Fruit Share Manitoba, a great project working to harvest unused urban fruit and share it with volunteers and community groups like Food Banks and soup kitchens.  Homeowners donate their fruit, volunteers harvest and then all sorts of good things are made and consumed!  What a brilliant idea!  The fruit share concept is in different towns and cities including Vancouver and Edmonton.  I think every town and city to organize a program like this!  In Manitoba, Winnipeg and Steinbeck currently have Fruit Shares, if you're in Brandon and interested please get in touch!

The book opens with some info on Fruit Share and sharing the harvest.  It then has a great chapter on different ways to preserve the harvest for eating local all winter, with good info on canning, freezing and dehydrating.  Then, there are nine chapters on fruit that grows well on the Canadian Prairies, including apples and crabapples, grapes, pears, plums and apricots, cherries, raspberries, rhubarb, saskatoons and strawberries!  Each chapter starts with gardening info on each fruit, then storing, preserving and then cooking and baking info.  The recipes are awesome!  How about Maple Apple Crisp, Grape Granita, Pear Brie and Ham Panini, Sage Caramelized Onion and Plum Pizza, Cherry Martini, Raspberry Jelly Roll, Rhubarb Fool, Saskatoon Salsa Salad or Chocolate Covered Strawberries?  Over 150 recipes, from beverages to main courses!

If you'd like a copy of the book, you can currently order online directly from Getty, using PayPal or credit cards.  I'm really pleased to say that Aagaard Farms is going to be a Brandon distributor this summer, and we'll have copies with us at the Global Market Brandon!  It's also available in Winnipeg at St Mary's Garden Centre, Sage Garden Herbs and Rand McNally.  Highly recommend this book and we really encourage you to make good use of all the lovely fruit growing in your neighborhood!  

Drying Beans

We planted 'Jacobs Cattle', a soup bean with a long and storied history.  They say this bean came across the Prairies in settlers' wagons as this country (and the United States) was being discovered and settled.  It's a plump red bean with white speckles, it is excellent for soups, stews and, of course, baked beans!  As we're interested in supplying ourselves more fully during the winter months, we figured we needed some dried beans.

'Jacobs Cattle' grew well over the summer, as did most of our beans.  We left them on the bushes until everything was crispy, brown and rattling.  Once picked, they spent a couple of days in crates, drying outside in the garage.  I'd go out and shake the crates every so often, to keep them aerated.  Then, because we're desperate for crates as we continue to harvest our twenty eight varieties of potatoes, and as we continue do to Farmers Markets, I turned the bean pods out onto newspaper in the sun room.  The sun room is dry and warm right now, and I can keep the dogs out with a gate.  They've sat there for a few more days and now it's time for shelling.  A little disappointing: each pod should contain five plump beans and most of ours had three beans and a couple of undeveloped ones.  Working with 'fresh' shelled beans in the winter will be a pleasure:  they don't require the long soaking or parboiling that older beans would need.  We'll shell them and then leave them to dry a few more days out on newspaper, then we'll clean them and store them in, probably, canning jars - 'cause that's what's on hand!  Baked beans with Manitoba Maple Syrup! Oh, yeah!

CSA for September 6, 2011

CSA pick up; Full Shares on one side of the
tree, Part Shares on the other.

The last few years have seen a real boom in the interest in local food, fresh food, chemical-free food, and growing one's own food in North America and in Europe.  We've seen it in the increased interest in Farmers Markets (although finding the farmers is a problem...), an increase in garden rentals and community garden spaces and yes, an increase in CSAs.  CSA is a concept that began in Europe about fifty years ago, and has slowly spread in North America.  The increase in and diversity in CSA is quite incredible across North America!  Some CSA's require the members to do some work, some are pasture or organic meat CSAs, there's even a raw milk/cow CSA to get around the ban on raw milk in most states and provinces!  CSA has gotten so prevalent that CTV did a piece on it late in August!  Here's a link to the piece here.

We had a little communication error with one of our staff members this morning; about double the amount of beets got harvested than we intended.  But, you have a lovely mix of all the beets we grow:  common red round and cylinder, the white beet which is quite exactly like red beets without the color, the bright red and white Chioggia which is mild and sweet and really pretty on the plate, and the golden beet which is also mild and sweet and pretty.  To help you with your big bundle, here's a recipe for a simple beet salad, or how about a warm beet salad with orange vinaigrette?  Roasted beets are a classic side-dish: here's a great recipe for roasted beets with a balsamic vinegar glaze.  If possible, to keep fresh longer, treat the beets like a bouquet, stand in a pail with a little water around the roots and it doesn't need to be refrigerated, just cool and dark.  If that's not possible, put a little moist paper towel or dish towel around the beets and refrigerate.

Now is the time to freeze some of Summer's bounty!  Here's a great DIY post from simplebites on freezing packages of mixed vegetables for use all winter!  It's really quite simple and full instructions are in the blog post!  You can also freeze beets, here's some simple instructions!

Linda Boys kicked in some more celery for everyone today.  Amanda and Ed only had a small pick on cauliflower, not enough to really split, so it will be available for trade or purchase on the Farmers Market table; those of you that read this before you come to pick up will have a bit of an advantage there!  We also dug, for everybody, the unusal 'Russian Blue' potato, whose skin and flesh is dark blue.  It's kind of a cross between a fingerling and a baking potato, with a fluffy texture and good flavor.  It mashes up lovely and yes, your mashed potatoes will be blue!  We love making scalloped potatoes with it, layering common potatoes with the blue!  It also makes a ver good and funky blue french fry.

It's a taste-test kind of a day:  we've got a variety of tomatoes for everyone including a bag of regular slicing tomatoes, a bag of 'Black Plum' and a bag of mixed cherry/grape tomatoes.  There's also a wee bag of tomatilloes, in the jacket, for everyone to try.  This is the green tomato-relative most famous as the basis of the Mexican Salsa Verde, quite nice in salads or fried!  Everyone is also getting some yellow tomatoes; these are known as low-acid: tasty and sweet!  Everyone is also getting a neat little round, yellow cucumber called 'Lemon Ball'.  Although it seems a little prickly, a quick scrub with veggie brush gets rid of those and then the cucumber itself is lovely, sweet and light!

The first of the Winter Squash today, everyone got one, either a spaghetti squash or a butterncup.  Winter squash are different from the summer squash in that you do not eat the skin.  They are best baked or roasted at around 350-375 degrees, either in the oven or on the barbecue.  We cut them in half, scoop out the seeds (which can be roasted, like pumpkin seeds) and place them face down on a baking sheet.  They are done when easily pierced with a fork - the sizes you all have today will take about half an hour.  Winter squash can also be done in the microwave, which will cut down the time to less than half, but we don't think the texture and flavor is as nice.  Spaghetti squash is famous because the flesh then can be scraped out of the skin and is similar to spaghetti, the spaghetti is a variety called 'Small Wonder' and is a peach/yellow skin netted with green.  It can be served with spaghetti sauce or salsa, but I also like it with lots of butter and brown sugar or maple syrup.  The buttercups, the dark green ones with a pale green cup on the bottom, are similar to acorn squash: a slightly grainy texture and nice veggie/nutty flavor.  Any questions just leave them in the comment section of this blog and we'll answer quite promptly!

So: for EVERYBODY today:  A week bag of tomatilloes, large bag of round slicing tomatoes, small bag 'Black Plum', small bag mixed cherry and grape tomatoes, a couple of golden tomatoes (the round is 'Husky Gold', the plum shape is 'Banana Legs'), a slicing cuke, a 'Lemon Ball' cuke, carrots, a couple of onions, celery (some may have two small heads), a 3 lb. bag of 'Russian Blue' potatoes, couple heads of garlic, four kinds of beets, Swiss chard and a winter squash.

Next week's box will see the value of your share go a little beyond what you've paid!  It has been a pretty good year for CSA, and we're getting it done quite promptly!  We always live in fear that some bad years we'll still be delivering potatoes, pumpkins and onions in late October to get CSA finished - but that is not this year!  Two weeks from now, September 20th, will be 'Bonus Week'; the last pick up on that day is our 'Thank You' for allowing us to feed your family, for trusting us with your hard-earned money before you get any food and for giving us such tremendous support and encouragement!  We'll be bring larger bags of potatoes and onions, cured for storage, some winter squash and pumpkins which should keep well past Christmas and anything else that is around that's fresh and ready to go!  So, don't forget - two more weeks of CSA pick up, after today.  Any requests - let us know!  And enjoy this week's goodies!   

CSA for August 23, 2011

It's time for all things fresh and vegetable!  Some of our favorite meals in the heat of summer involves the BBQ, of course.  We use our BBQ all year round, but the hot days of summer is when we most appreciate not having the stove or oven on in the house.  We love our veggies in tin foil packages and then onto the BBQ.  Last night, we did Blue Mac potatoes, patty pan squash, Hungarian hot peppers, onions and garlic.  We wanted to do the potatoes whole, so we did appropriate, large sizes of the summer squash, to match.  Farmer Man just dabbed quite a lot of butter on, added generous herbs, wrapped in foil and onto the grill at 375 degrees for about forty five minutes.  We had a large portion, because we wanted potatoes left over for hash browns in the morning.  If you do smaller personal packages, the time could probably be reduced, and if your pieces are smaller the time would also be less.  Since it's veggie season, here's a great link to everything you need to know, I mean step-by-step instructions, for marinated veggie kebabs!  From soaking bamboo skewers to a few different marinade recipes, this link has it all!  Sounds yummy!  More summer squash than you can use fresh?  Want to take advantage of our 'help yourself' bin?  Here's a piece from one of my favorite food/farm blogs called FarmGirlFare for freezing summer squash for use all winter!  Yes, you could be grilling Papaya Pear in the dead of winter.

Our growing partners have contributed hugely this week!  Linda Boys has brought some gorgeous celery for everybody!  Let me assure you, this is a hard crop to grow!  Her celery is beautiful and awesomely tasty: she was kind enough to send a little extra and we had snacks for lunch with fresh celery sticks with cheese smashed into the groove!  Divine!  And Amanda and Ed Wiebe are responsible for the lovely Super Sweet corn this week, as well as the herb packs and some of the cucumbers.  One of the herb packs is Summer Savory, one of my favs!  Our seeding, most unfortunately, keeled over in the greenhouse - damping off disease, I guess, but Amanda's crop is looking awesome.  Summer Savory is just perfect for vegetables - try it in your tin foil packs or chopped on cooked potatoes.  Absolutely perfect for a soup or stew, also.  The other pack is flat leaf parsley - a great taste!

Everyone is getting Blue Mac potatoes, a blue skinned, white fleshed potato which is somewhere between the smooth flesh of a red and the fluffy meat of a white.  Nice little potato.  You're also getting French Fingerling - one of my personal favs.  The fingerlings are all kind of waxy smooth - perfect for the tin foil packs, as well as roasting, soups and stews.  Won't get mushy like a red and will be smooth, unlike a white.  Enjoy!  Also, in everybody's box is an assortment of tomatoes.  If you have one big monster, that's a Brandywine, a rather famous heirloom that is meaty and juicy and tasty!  If you've got a smaller round tomato collection, that's largely First Lady or Celebrity, great slicers!  There's a few long ovals in the bunch - that's a Roma type, meaty and not as juicy.  There's also a few small grape-type: an heirloom called Black Plum which should have that dark shade.  If any one is interested or has a problem with the acid in tomatoes, we've got a couple of bags of yellow, low-acid tomatoes on the Farmers Market table.  Any questions, just ask us!

So, far the FULL SHARES:  3 lbs. Blue Mac potatoes, 3 lbs, French Fingerling potatoes, head of celery, 1 zucchini, 1 papaya pear summer squash, 4 heads garlic, 5 cobs corn, pack herb Summer Savory, pack herb flat leaf parsley, bag of purple beans, bag of yellow beans, bag of Dragon's Tongue beans, a cucumber, 2 lbs. assorted tomatoes, Swiss chard, bundle of carrots.

For the PART SHARES:  2 lbs. Blue Mac potatoes, 2 lbs. Danish fingerling potatoes, a head of celery, a zucchini, 1 Papaya pear summer squash, 2 heads garlic, 3 cobs corn, pack of herb Summer savory, pack of herb flat leaf parsley, bag of Dragons Tongue beans, cucumber, 1 lb. tomatoes, Swiss chard, carrots.

Pickle Mania!

Things are always changing at Aagaard Farms - and not just the seasons!  We progress through different things throughout the growing season.  Recently it was raspberry mania; people looking to come U-pick, people looking to have us pick for them, picking for the Farmers Markets, picking for jam.  Lots of people phoning, people coming and going....but that's done now.  Currently, it is pickle mania.  Everyone who wants to make some pickles for the winter is in search of cucumbers and dill.  We custom pick for people, with orders of anywhere from a couple of pounds to seventy five pounds!  The poor cucumbers just can't produce fast enough - and almost everybody would love to get it done before school goes back in!  We were finding this weekend that there seems to be a shortage of dill around; for many people it self-seeds from year to year, but in this odd flood year many people don't have any.  I must have had twelve or fifteen people ask at the Friday Night Farmers Market and another eight or ten at Saturday's Farmers Market at Riverbank Discovery Centre!  Cucumbers are late this year, too.  Like everything, for almost everybody, they got planted late as we waited for the soil to dry up and warm up.

Most of our customers are looking for little cucumbers, no bigger than about four inches long, with a number smaller for stuffing the top of the jar.  Very few people around Brandon seem to be making the big sliced dills anymore, perhaps it seems like more work to cut up the bigger cucumbers.  After picking Thursday and getting small sizes for two customers, I was left with about ten pounds of, well, the perfect size for bread-and-butter pickles, one of my favorites!  So, a quick check of the pantry, had the ingredients and so a batch was made.  It wasn't until I was filling the jars that I realized I was using jelly/jam jars, as it is all that I have around!  Most people would put pickles in a slightly bigger jar but this will be the perfect size for a household that doesn't eat a whole lot of pickles!  Are you making any pickles this year? 

CSA for August 16, 2011

Patty Pan Squash

Ground Cherries, aka Cape Gooseberry

It's hard to believe we're half way through August.  Perhaps because we got such a late, slow start to the season that it doesn't feel like we've really been at it for very long.  Yet, the first Friday Night Farmers Market at Shoppers Mall was a full two months ago!  We're hoping the rain forecast for this morning holds off so we can get a good harvest, but we could really use a good rain on the gardens.  What was forecast for last night never happened (again), 90% chance of rain - sure, sure.....

Summer squash is on big time!  Everyone is getting a couple of zucchini in their boxes.  We will have a whole crate of extras for you all to take as much as you'd like.  Here's a recipe for a zucchini pancake we're excited to try!  We've done something similar with spaghetti squash and it was very yummy.  This pancake can be done sweet with syrup, savory with salsa or as a side dish with just some sour cream or Greek yogurt.  Very simple.  Everyone is also getting a couple of Patty Pan or Scallopini, one of our favorite summer squashes.  The Patty Pan's are firmer and denser than zucchini.  When larger, they are awesome for stuffing, then you can serve out a 'slice'.  Here's a southern recipe for a stuffed Patty Pan with rice and spinach.  Or how about a bacon and cheese stuff Patty Pan?  You simply slice the bottom a bit so that the flying saucer-shaped squash sits nice.  Cut out the top, scoop out the inside seed cavity and some meat but leave a good wall.  Farmer Man's favorite stuffing is a can of crab meat and a small block of cream cheese, with a little minced garlic and dill!  Just bake or BBQ until the skin is soft enough to pierce with a fork.  Here's also a great link to sauteed Patty Pan's - some great flavor combinations!  Grated summer squash also can be frozen for the winter.  Many people grate it, squeeze out extra moisture (not really necessary with the Moroccan types, Patty Pans or Papaya Pears) and freeze it in the measured quantity for a recipe like zucchini muffins or zucchini chocolate cake.  If you are canning, how about Sweet and Spicy Zucchini Relish?  Even if you don't can, you could make this recipe in a small batch and keep it refrigerated for at least a few days to 'marry' the flavors before using.

Everyone is getting a bag of beans: a variety of Dragon's Tongue, purple or green.  There wasn't enough of any one kind to give everyone, but if you got green and would rather purple, you can probably trade out at the Farmers Market table.  There was a tiny pick of peas, but if you want to trade for those you had better get there early!

Everyone is getting 'All Red' potatoes today.  This is a rarer variety where the flesh is pink; yes, the inside is pink like the skin.  This is a great dense, meaty potato - excellent mashed potatoes (they're pink, don't forget), excellent for baking or doing in foil packages on the BBQ.  Farmer Man loves doing scalloped potatoes with a layer of the 'All Red', just for fun!  There will be some white and some fingerling on the Farmers Market table, but you really should experience the 'All Red' potato.

First little pick on the ground cherries or Cape gooseberry.  This is an interesting little fruit related to tomatoes, but more closely related to tomatillos.  Inside the papery little husk is a little berry:  pineapple-like when golden, more of a lime kick when the berry is greener.  Just enough for a taste for the Full Shares today, but they are coming along nicely!

So, for the FULL SHARES:  'All Red' potatoes in a 3 lb. bag, two zucchini, two large Patty Pan summer squash, cucumber, tomatoes, bag of beans, garlic, small bag of ground cherries, large bundle of chard, bundle of carrots.

For the PART SHARES:  'All Red' potatoes in a 2 lb bag, two zucchini, two Patty Pan summer squash, cucumber, tomatoes, garlic, beans, small bundle of chard, carrots.

The Problem With Gooseberries

It was probably our second year on the farm, maybe our third, that we discovered we had a small patch of gooseberries.  They were back against the south shelter belt in a naturalized area, mixed with native dogwood, self-seeded maples and assorted weeds and native flowers.  Gooseberry is not a berry I know much about, although I read in cookbooks and on blogs about 'divine' gooseberry jam or chutney.  The next few years the deer got to them before we did, last year I just completely forgot about them until it was too late!  This year they were absolutely in my sights.  In my reading, I learned that younger, green berries will make a nice tart jam but it's well worth the wait to have some ripen to pink.  The jam will be prettier and a little sweeter.  So, I've been watching and waiting and decided today was the day!

As a newbie gooseberry picker, I soon discovered the problem with gooseberries.  They are low, sprawling, brambles covered in big thorns.  Big nasty thorns!  Really tricky to get to those berries!  I have been poked, prodded, my jeans have been caught and my hands scratched!  To make things even more interesting, I discovered a bit of stinging nettle has grown up among the branches.  Good thing it has been a cool morning and I had long sleeves on.  It is not a berry for commercial picking: they do not ripen all at once, like raspberries.  There were little hard green ones, big plump green berries and some big plump pink ones, all mixed all over the branches.  It wasn't a great harvest, only about a quarter of an ice cream pail.  I'm going to use this recipe here from the blog 'thekitchen' because it is proportional, so I don't have to worry about dividing a recipe, weighing etc.  Fingers crossed I'll get at least two pints of jam! 

Nanking Cherry Jelly Time!

It's good to have extra hands.  So much is ready, all at once, in this odd growing year.  We're still picking and trying to jam raspberries, and the nanking cherries were soooo ready for picking.  So, put the Sisters to work on a lovely summer evening!  Niece Meg was interested in seeing the process of making jam or jelly so the sisters picked and Meg and I dripped the juice and discussed the process.  Too busy with tonights' Friday Night Farmers Market to actually make jelly, so the lovely red juice got frozen for now!  Next, the Evans sour cherries are just about ready for picking and yes, the raspberries are still going!