CSA Week 11 and Farm Stand Updates

While as farmers we primarily mark seasonal transitions by the changes in our natural environment and the crops that we harvest, we also follow the school calendar. Many of our crew are with us for all or most of the April - November growing season, but we also have teachers and students amongst us who start to head back to school in mid August. It’s tough to say goodbye to the summer crew - not only do they physically help us complete an endless task list, but they also brighten our days with their enthusiasm and laughter. We’re hoping that Luke, George, Lily, Kate, Dave, Anna and Ishan have great school years and that we’ll see them again next summer!

The smaller (but mighty!) crew will still be tackling many important tasks in the coming weeks. One of the main agenda items this week is to start harvesting winter squash. Once harvested they will cure in the barn for several weeks before they are ready to eat. We are also preparing our high tunnels for planting fall crops like kale mix, lettuce mix, scallions and fennel. Our fall cover crop seed order should be arriving this week and we’ll begin spreading it where spring crops like carrots, beets and cabbage used to grow.

Though fall is not officially here yet, it is time to sign up for our fall CSA offerings! Sign-ups for the Back-To-School and Fall Mushrooms CSAs are now up online! The Back-To-School CSA is 10 weeks, running September 18th - November 23rd and the Fat Moon Fall Mushroom CSA is 8 weeks, running September 3rd - October 26th.

To sign-up visit:

https://www.barrettsmillfarm.com/online-store

In the CSA this week:

• Garlic - We have moved on to cured garlic now. These should be stored in a cool dry place rather than the refrigerator.

• Beets - These are from our fall planting and have some nice greens on them, which can be cooked like chard.

• Carrots

• Slicing tomatoes

• Specialty/heirloom tomatoes

• Green and purple peppers

• Colored peppers

• Cucumbers

• Watermelon - We’ve got some more of the Mini Love variety!

• Celery

• Kale - We’re now harvesting from our fall kale planting, so expect it to be a little more tender for the next couple of weeks.

• Arugula

• Mustard greens

• Lettuce

CSA Pick-Your-Own:

• Hot peppers - If you are into spice, there are some nice cayenne and habaneros out there!

• Cherry Tomatoes: varieties include Sungold, Jasper, Cherry Bomb, Yellow Mini, Chocolate Sprinkles, Pink Champagne, Citrine, Black Cherry, Moonbeam, Moonshadow, Nova, Apple Yellow, Clementine, Mountain Magic and more!

• Dragon Tongue Beans, husk cherries or shishito peppers

• Herbs: basil, chives, cilantro, dill, parsley, sage and thyme

In the farm store:

In addition to the items listed in the CSA, we will have:

• Sweet Corn from Verrill Farm in Concord. Not organic.

• Zucchini

• Summer squash

• Flowers

• Honey from Double B (from hives on the property). This summer’s harvest has been bottled and is available starting Tuesday! Not Organic.

• Mushrooms from Fat Moon Farm - Farmer’s Mix and Shiitake. Certified organic.

• Baer’s Best Beans - Black Turtle variety is organic, the other varieties are not.

• Raspberry vinegar from Silferleaf Farm in Concord. Certified Organic.

• Eggs from Codman Farm in Lincoln. Not Organic.

PYO Flower Field

The flower field is in it’s prime! The field is open for picking for both PYO Flower CSA members and the general public. We still have a few PYO Flower CSA memberships available - visit http://www.barrettsmillfarm.com/online-store/pyo-flower-csa if you would like to sign up!

Flowers available for picking this week include: sunflowers, zinnias, snapdragons, gomphrena, ageratum, celosia, ammi, rudbeckia, verbena, amaranth, cosmos, decorative grasses, decorative basil and strawflower.

Sautéed Mustard Greens

from thekitchn.com

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 pounds mustard greens (about 2 bunches)

• 3 cloves garlic

• 2 tablespoons olive oil

• 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes (optional)

• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

• 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

Instructions

1. Trim the thick bottom stems from 1 1/2 pounds mustard greens and discard. Coarsely chop the greens with their thin stems attached (about 12 cups). Rinse in a colander but do not dry. Thinly slice 3 garlic cloves.

2. Heat 2 tablespoons olive oil in a large, wide, high-sided sauté pan over medium heat until shimmering. Add the garlic and 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes if desired. Cook, stirring, until fragrant, about 1 minute (do not let the garlic brown).

3. Add the mustard greens a few handfuls at a time, stirring after each addition so that they start to wilt, until all of the greens are added. Stir in 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt and 1/4 teaspoon black pepper. Cover and cook, stirring occasionally, until the mustard greens are tender, 10 to 15 minutes. Remove from the heat, stir in 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar, and serve.

Simmered Beet Greens With Roasted Beets, Lemon and Yogurt

by Martha Rose Shulman, from NY Times Cooking

Ingredients

• 2 bunches of beets with greens

• 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

• Salt and freshly ground pepper

• Juice of 1 lemon (more or less to taste)

• 1 to 2 garlic cloves (optional)

• 1 cup drained yogurt

• 3 tablespoons chopped walnuts (optional)

Preparation

1. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Cut the greens away from the beets, leaving about ¼ inch of stems. Scrub the beets and place in a baking dish or lidded ovenproof casserole. Add ¼ inch water to the dish. Cover tightly. Place in the oven and roast small beets (3 ounces or less) for 30 to 40 minutes, medium beets (4 to 6 ounces) 40 to 45 minutes, and large beets (8 ounces) 50 to 60 minutes, until easily penetrated with the tip of a knife. Remove from the oven and allow to cool in the covered baking dish. Cut away the ends and slip off the skins. Slice or cut in wedges and set aside.

2. While the beets are in the oven, stem the greens and wash in at least 2 changes of water. Place in a bowl.

3. Heat a large, wide skillet over high heat and add the greens by the handful, stirring each handful until the greens wilt in the water left on the leaves after washing. Once one batch has wilted, add another until all of the greens are wilted. Add 1 tablespoon of the olive oil, turn the heat down to low, season with salt and pepper, cover and simmer for 5 minutes. The greens should be tender but still bright. Add 1 tablespoon lemon juice, toss the greens in the pan, taste and adjust seasoning. (Note: if you are not serving this right away, don’t add the lemon juice, as it will change the bright color of the greens; instead, add shortly before serving).

4. At this point you have the option of transferring the greens to a platter or serving the dish right from the pan. Whether in the pan or on a platter, arrange the beets on top of the greens. Drizzle on the remaining olive oil and squeeze on more lemon juice to taste. Mash the garlic to a purée with a pinch of salt in a mortar and pestle and stir into the yogurt. Place spoonfuls of yogurt over the top of the beets and beet greens, sprinkle on the walnuts and serve, with grains if desired.

Advance preparation: The roasted beets will keep for 4 to 5 days in the refrigerator, as will the wilted greens.

Back-to-School and Fall Mushroom CSA memberships available!

This year we are offering a Back-to School CSA membership for those who have been away this summer but would like to join our CSA this fall! Back-to-School CSA members will join our current CSA members for 10 weeks from September 18th - November 23rd. The cost is $490 and includes a reusable Barrett’s Mill Farm bag. See below for more details!

We are also offering a 8-week Fall Mushroom CSA from Fat Moon September 3rd - October 26th. Each week you'll receive one pound of Fat Moon's fresh, organic mushrooms - over the course of the season, expect to get a taste of varieties like Shiitake, Chestnut, Lion's Mane, Pioppino, various Oyster mushrooms, and more.

To sign-up visit:

https://www.barrettsmillfarm.com/online-store

Back-to-School CSA Details:

Pick up times are together with our current CSA on Wednesdays 11am - 6:30pm and Saturdays 9am-3pm. Members will come to the farm once a week (it does not need to be the same pick-up day each week). Each week you will choose from a wide variety of vegetables in the CSA distribution area to fill your CSA bag. In addition to the vegetables that will be harvested for members, there will be a set amount of Pick-Your-Own crops available in the first few weeks of the CSA.

Crops that may be available over the course of this CSA include lettuce, salad mix, tomatoes, peppers, kale, carrots, beets, potatoes, sweet potatoes, winter squash, leeks, garlic, herbs and more! For more detailed lists of what is typically available in our CSA in the fall click on the month in the list on the righthand side of our blog page and look at the list of vegetables available weekly.

CSA Week 10, Farm Stand Updates and New Fall CSA Offerings!

This past week we got to use a brand new planting tool for the first time. For most of our field transplanting we use a water wheel transplanter that is pulled on the back of a tractor (it has 160 gallon capacity, so it requires a strong tractor to pull it!). The water wheel is great for most of what we do, as it evenly drops water into planting holes to give the seedlings a strong start to life outside the greenhouse. The crew then follows behind dropping seedlings into the ground and planting by hand. It’s a system that works really well for us, but for crops that get transplanted really closely together this isn’t ideal, as it is quite labor intensive to plant anything spaced closer than 12 inches.

Because spinach is a crop that would ideally be planted much more closely together, we typically seed directly in the ground rather than starting in the greenhouse. However, spinach really benefits from a jump start in the greenhouse. Enter the paperpot transplanter that we bought over the winter! We seed the spinach into paperpot chains, and once the seedlings are big enough, we drag the planter through the soil and it unfurls the chain of seedling starts into a line. We were really excited at how well the first trial went, and we’re planning to utilize it more in our high tunnels this fall for early winter spinach harvests.

The spinach that we are now transplanting outdoors with our new tool will be included not only in our farm stand and regular CSA options, but also in our new Back-To-School CSA! The Back-To-School CSA is 10 weeks, running September 18th - November 23rd. It’s also time for Fat Moon’s Fall Mushroom CSA to start up again! This will be an 8-week offering running September 3rd - October 26th. Look for another email this week with more details about both, as well as links to sign up!

In the CSA this week:

• Carrots - They’re back! We are nearing the end of our spring carrot plantings, but in a few weeks we will hopefully harvest our first fall carrots!

• Colored peppers

• Uncured garlic - Because it hasn’t dried out yet from the curing process, the flavor is less concentrated and a little milder.

• Watermelon - We’ll have a new variety this week called Mini Love. They are a manageable size for fitting inside your fridge, but they have thin rinds, so you actually get more watermelon out of one small fruit than you might expect! We also may still have some Blacktail Mountain.

• Slicing tomatoes

• Specialty/heirloom tomatoes

• Green and purple peppers

• Cucumbers - Mostly slicing cukes, but we’ll also have some picklers mixed in.

• Zucchini or Summer Squash - We’ve hit a point in the season when organically managed zucchini and summer squash yields naturally start to decline from pest and disease pressure, but this year the decline is being fueled in part by deer trampling! This is the same corner where deer decimated our lettuce last year, so next year we may just need to cede this section to buckwheat or something else deer love to eat so that they hang out there and don’t bother the rest of the farm!

• Celery

• Kale

• Lettuce

• Mustard greens

CSA Pick-Your-Own:

There are not huge quantities of Dragon Tongue beans, husk cherries and tomatillos at this point, so you’ll likely be able to pick just one of those!

• Hot peppers

• Cherry Tomatoes: varieties include Sungold, Jasper, Cherry Bomb, Yellow Mini, Chocolate Sprinkles, Pink Champagne, Citrine, Black Cherry, Moonbeam, Moonshadow, Nova, Apple Yellow, Clementine, Mountain Magic and more!

• Dragon Tongue Beans - These fresh beans have flat pods speckled with purple and can be prepared just as you would regular green beans.

• Husk cherries - These small fruit in papery husks are related to tomatoes and tomatillos and have a somewhat tropical flavor.

• Tomatillos - Most well-known as the main ingredient in salsa verde. It’s early days, so will require some patience to find ones that are ready. But the ready ones are huge - we tried a new variety this year!

• Herbs: basil, chives, cilantro, dill, mint, oregano, sage and thyme

In the farm store:

In addition to the items listed in the CSA, we will have:

• Sweet Corn from Verrill Farm. Not organic.

• Arugula

• Beets

• Flowers

• Mushrooms from Fat Moon Farm - Farmer’s Mix and Shiitake. Certified organic.

• Baer’s Best Beans - Black Turtle variety is organic, the other varieties are not.

PYO Flower Field

The flower field is in it’s prime! The field is open for picking for both PYO Flower CSA members and the general public. We still have a few PYO Flower CSA memberships available - visit http://www.barrettsmillfarm.com/online-store/pyo-flower-csa if you would like to sign up!

Flowers available for picking this week include: sunflowers, zinnias, snapdragons, gomphrena, ageratum, celosia, ammi, rudbeckia, verbena, amaranth, cosmos, decorative grasses, decorative basil and strawflower.

Green Gazpacho

Adapted from “Plenty,” by Yotam Ottolenghi

INGREDIENTS

• 2 celery sticks, roughly chopped

• 2 green peppers, seeded and roughly chopped

• 3 medium cucumbers, peeled, seeded and roughly chopped

• 1 mildly spicy chili (such as jalapeño), roughly chopped

• 4 cloves garlic, peeled and roughly chopped

• 1 teaspoon sugar

• 1 1/2 cups walnuts, lightly toasted

• 1/4 pound tender greens

• 1/2 cup basil leaves

• 1/4 cup parsley

• 1 cup olive oil, plus more for drizzling

• 1/4 cup sherry vinegar

• 2 teaspoons salt

• Freshly ground white pepper

• 1/4 cup Greek yogurt

• 2 cups water

• Ice cubes

DIRECTIONS

Combine the celery, green peppers, cucumbers, chili, garlic, sugar, walnuts, greens, basil, parsley, olive oil, sherry vinegar, salt, pepper and 1 cup water in blender and puree until smooth. Check seasonings, and add more water if you feel it needs it. Let chill in refrigerator. To serve, divide into six bowls, and garnish each with a dollop of Greek yogurt, two ice cubes and a drizzle of olive oil.

CSA Week 9 and Farm Stand Updates

This past week the crew kept the farm afloat, bringing in the harvest, packing orders, and running the farm store and CSA! With Lise out for her vacation and Melissa out sick the crew knocked it out of the park and not only kept up with the heavy late-July harvest load and wholesale orders, but kept up with the field planting schedule. If you look closely in this picture you can see that the crew is still all smiles planting broccoli in over 90 degree weather at the end of a long week! This week we will be back to full strength (briefly before our college crew members start to head back to school!), so we will make a big push to weed the fall crops while the weeds are relatively small and our crew is relatively big! We will also be trellising tomatoes, mulching the pathways for next year’s strawberries, and keeping up on high tunnel maintenance during the end of the week rain storms.

In the CSA this week:

• Colored peppers - These are from our high tunnel. Limited quantities. We put up netting on the sides of the tunnel this year to protect from bug damage, but it may have been too late. We discarded many more peppers than we kept, but hopefully the strategy will pay off longer term and we’ll be enjoying higher marketable yields soon!

• Uncured garlic - Because it hasn’t dried out yet from the curing process, the flavor is less concentrated and a little milder.

• Watermelon - Blacktail Mountain, an award winning seeded watermelon and a large seedless variety called Cracker Jack.

• Slicing tomatoes

• Specialty/heirloom tomatoes - Varieties include, Pruden’s Purple, Cherokee Green, Cherokee Purple, Cherokee Carbon, Lemon Boy, Harvest Moon, Ginfiz and Hot Streak. (Tomatoes and watermelon seem to get the best variety names!)

• Green and purple peppers

• Slicing Cucumbers

• Pickling Cucumbers

• Zucchini

• Summer squash or Celery

• Lettuce

• Arugula

CSA Pick-Your-Own:

There are a lot of crops in the PYO this week! Thankfully the hot weather seems to be behind us for a little bit, but we’ll see how hard that late week rain is!

• Hot peppers

• Cherry Tomatoes: varieties include Sungold, Jasper, Cherry Bomb, Yellow Mini, Chocolate Sprinkles, Pink Champagne, Citrine, Black Cherry, Moonbeam, Moonshadow, Nova, Apple Yellow, Clementine, Mountain Magic and more!

• Dragon Tongue Beans - These fresh beans have flat pods speckled with purple and can be prepared just as you would regular green beans.

• Shishito peppers or Tomatillos - Shishito are mini green peppers that is great for searing and then sprinkling with a little salt - a very tasty snack or appetizer! Please note that while they’re mostly mild, you will come across the occasional spicy one. Tomatillos are most well-known as the main ingredient in salsa verde. It’s early days, so will require some patience to find ones that are ready. But the ready ones are huge - we tried a new variety this year!

• Herbs: basil, chives, dill, parsley, mint, oregano, and sage

In the farm store:

In addition to the items listed in the CSA, we will have:

• Sweet Corn from Verrill Farm. Not organic.

• Beets

• Carrots

• Flowers

• Mushrooms from Fat Moon Farm - Farmer’s Mix and Shiitake. Certified organic.

• Baer’s Best Beans - Black Turtle variety is organic, the other varieties are not.

PYO Flower Field

The flower field is in it’s prime! The field is open for picking for both PYO Flower CSA members and the general public. We still have a few PYO Flower CSA memberships available - visit http://www.barrettsmillfarm.com/online-store/pyo-flower-csa if you would like to sign up!

Flowers available for picking this week include: sunflowers, zinnias, snapdragons, gomphrena, ageratum, celosia, ammi, rudbeckia, verbena, amaranth, cosmos, decorative grasses, decorative basil and strawflower.

Roasted Dragon Tongue Beans and Tomatoes

from Share-Life Farm

Ingredients

• 12 ounces fresh dragon tongue or green beans

• 6 ounces cherry tomatoes (about 1 cup)

• 1/3 cup olive oil

• 6 cloves garlic, peeled

• 1 teaspoon salt

Instructions

Preheat oven to 425ºF. “String” the beans if necessary: Break off the stem end and take with it any string that wants to tear off. Cut large beans into 1-2″ pieces.

Toss all ingredients together in a medium baking dish (8×11 or so). Roast for 15 minutes. Stir, then roast 15-20 minutes longer, until the beans start to brown in spots and the tomatoes are broken down.

Serve hot or room temperature.

Blistered Shishito Peppers

from Cookie + Kate

Instructions

1. Rinse and pat the peppers dry on a clean tea towel. Transfer the peppers to a medium bowl, drizzle in olive oil or avocado oil, and toss until the peppers are evenly coated. Set aside.

2. Preheat a medium skillet over medium heat until it’s hot enough that a drop of water sizzles and evaporates quickly on contact. Add the peppers and let them cook, stirring every minute or so (not too often), until they are tender with charred spots, about 8 to 12 minutes.

3. Transfer the peppers to a serving plate. Spritz with a lemon wedge, if desired. Sprinkle with salt, to taste (don’t skimp). Serve with a little bowl on the side for the pepper stems.

CSA Week 8 and Farm Stand Updates

Watermelons and tomatoes were the stars of the show last week, and we’ve got more to harvest and enjoy this week! Every year we set up a fence around our watermelon to keep out the coyotes, who love to play fetch with them before devouring them. We also usually hang up old CDs above the watermelons to scare off the crows, who like to peck holes in them (that is still on our to-do list for us this week). It’s not only humans who love this sweet fruit! The fence in particular adds a slight degree of difficulty to the watermelon harvest, but it’s still definitely one of the more fun harvests (along with winter squash). We pick the melons off the plants and line them up in windrows. Then we drive a tractor alongside the windrow with a bulk crate perched on the forks. One or two people pass the melons over the fence to someone outside the fence to gently set the melons inside our crate, which we then drive to the barn and transfer into the cooler. Protecting the watermelons is a bit extra work and it leads to a heavy harvest, but it’s all worth it for some sweet refreshment on hot July and August days!

In the CSA this week:

• Uncured garlic - We’re hanging a lot of garlic to cure for distribution later, but we’ll have some uncured garlic available this week. Because it hasn’t dried out yet from the curing process, the flavor is less concentrated and a little milder.

• Watermelon - This week we’ll have more of the Blacktail Mountain variety, and we’ll possibly have some seedless as well if enough ripen in time!

• Slicing tomatoes - red and orange tomatoes from the high tunnels and field

• Specialty/heirloom tomatoes - These are the funky looking tomatoes with extra rich, sweet flavor!

• Green peppers

• Carrots

• Beets

• Cucumbers

• Zucchini

• Summer Squash

• Kale

• Lettuce

• Arugula

CSA Pick-Your-Own:

• Hot peppers: jalepenos and some cayenne are ready this week.

• Cherry Tomatoes: varieties include Sungold, Jasper, Cherry Bomb, Yellow Mini, Chocolate Sprinkles, Pink Champagne, Citrine, Black Cherry and more!

• Herbs: basil, dill, parsley, mint, oregano, chives and sage

In the farm store:

In addition to the items listed in the CSA, we will have:

• Sweet Corn from Verrill Farm. Not organic.

• Celery

• Fresh onions

• Potatoes

• Flowers

• Mushrooms from Fat Moon Farm - Farmer’s Mix and Shiitake. Certified organic.

• Baer’s Best Beans - Black Turtle variety is organic, the other varieties are not.

PYO Flower Field

The flower field is open to both PYO Flower CSA members and the general public. We still have a few PYO Flower CSA memberships available - visit http://www.barrettsmillfarm.com/online-store/pyo-flower-csa if you would like to sign up!

Flowers available for picking this week include: sunflowers, zinnias, snapdragons, gomphrena, ageratum, celosia, ammi, rudbeckia, verbena, amaranth, cosmos, decorative grasses, decorative basil and strawflower.