I can’t tell you how grateful I am to you as CSA members for sticking with us so graciously. We would have loved a fall full of potatoes, carrots, rutabagas, pumpkins, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage and beets. Instead we all learned to eat loads and loads of greens each week since they were the crops we were able to fill in the shares with. There is something very significant about your choice to eat with the true tides of the land and in the case of our kale-heavy season, perhaps our bodies are that much more grateful for the extra vitamins!

Harvest Notes – Week 23 November 17^th

Bok Choi These small heads are especially delicious after the frost.

Totsoi This is another Asian green like Bok Choi and you can use it the same way. Try stir-frying it or chopping it into this slices and marinating it for raw salads.

Salad Mix Adamah fellow Hana paused from harvesting salad mix this morning and when I looked up from my row she had a half eaten frilly green in one hand and announced, “Woah!” “What?” I asked concerned. “That is ridiculously awesome.” She then proceeded to tell me all the ways that our salad mix has changed her life. “I had no idea there could be so much complexity to salad greens. I want to know what each one is so I can grow them. I used to think that if I grew a garden, I would grow tomatoes or something but now I know that I would grow a gazillion different varieties of salad green.” Hana particularly recommends the golden frills mustard green that is in your mix on a chedder cheese sandwich.

Braising Mix Another gourmet mix of cooking greens. You can braise them, saute them, stir-fry them, steam them, chop them up for soup… the possibilities are endless and the greens are deliciously frost sweetened. In addition to the brassica greens komatsuna, broccoli raab, and turnip greens we’ve added some small beet greens to mix up the flavor.

Cilantro We are amazed at how well this cilantro grew back considering how cold its been! While harvesting, we discussed what we use cilantro for. Garth prefers it in curry but will put it to other uses. Sally will use it in anything including red sauce for pasta. Yael is one of those people who is genetically predisposed against cilantro so she was struggling just to harvest it. Personally, I can’t wait to put it in a huge pot of beans.

Kale or Collards I hope you won’t miss this kale/collard abundance too much after the CSA ends! These plants get the gold star for production and we hope you’ve learned to love it as much as we do. This stuff is particularly gourmet now that it has frosted a few times.

Spinach Delicious raw or cooked, this stuff will make muscly sailors of us all.

Onions The last of our onion crop!

Garlic And the last of our garlic crop!

Apples The Berenstain Bears were the first to teach me that you can’t judge an apple by its outside but we have all learned that lesson in a new way this season. If you haven’t seen the video I’m talking about, check it out below especially from 1:26 seconds to 2:05 seconds.

Adamah fellow Chavi picking apples for the CSA

Adamah fellows writing by the lake here at Isabella Freedman

We will send you an electronic survey of our own in the next week. It will be shorter than the Hazon survey and will help us plan which crops to plant next year. When you receive it electronically, please take the time to fill it out as it will help us dramatically in our planning. Your feedback is the most important information we need to move forward.

This week we are grateful not to have had to shovel snow off our crops. We hope you all have power back and are returning to a more normal routine. The plants are troopers and they keep on giving…

Braising Mix We are really excited about this mix of cooking greens. You can braise them, saute them, stir-fry them, steam them, chop them up for soup… the possibilities are endless and the greens are deliciously frost sweetened. This is a combination of four brassica greens- turnip greens, komatsuna, broccoli raab and bok choi that go well together.

Mint A little something to flavor your hot cocoa, curry, tea or yogurt.

Popcorn Yes, we grew our own popcorn! It has been drying on our drying racks since we harvested it from Beebe in September. Popcorn has to get really dry before it will pop well and I tested it at home the other night– perfect pops! If you aren’t used to popcorn on the cob here are a few tips. First, you’ll need to separate the kernals from the ear into a bowl by applying relatively light pressure. Next, heat up the oil of your choice in a big pot that has a lid. I put just two kernals in at first and once they pop then I know the oil is hot enough and I put the rest of the kernals in. Close the lid tight and swish the kernals around a bit to mix them with the oil.  Don’t open it until there are two to three seconds between audible pops. Remove from heat and enjoy!

Collards Our friend Mark, who often volunteers here on the farm, told me that he usually doesn’t like collard greens- an inconvenient truth since I gave him a couple of collard plants for his garden at the beginning of the season. Now that the summer crops from his garden are finished he is confronting the collard greens full on. He created a recipe in which he steamed the greens whole, spread peanut butter on the inside of the leaves and then stuffed them with sushi rice seasoned with tamari and rolled them up like nori. While some of you may feel overwhelmed by the amount of cooking greens a CSA involves, we promise that they are really really good for you and extremely versatile once you get used to tossing a little bit into everything.

Salad Mix We’d love to hear what different salad dressing recipes folks have been using.

Onions These guys keep on storing well for us!

Garlic We planted our garlic this week! Once the snow melted off the beds we had designated for garlic we were able to put this extremely satisfying, fall-planted crop in the field. They will have a bit of time to establish roots before winter hits and then lay dormant until early spring at which point they’ll send up the first green sprouts of our 2012 fields.

Apples You’ve had a chance to try a number of different tasty local varieties. We’ve been making lots of apple jam with these apples which you can find next week at our West Hartford market. We hope you’ve been experimenting yourselves with jams or crisps or other tasty autumn apple treats. Remember, the funny markings on the skin of the apples is totally harmless and good proof that they have not been sprayed with pesticides.

Adamah Fellows fill the box truck that delivers your veggies each week with recycled vegetable oil- a more ecological alternative to fossil fuel.  Next week’s pick-up in West Hartford will afford you all an opportunity to learn how the system works and fill up with grease.

This picture was taken a few weeks ago when Adamah fellow Emma chopped scallions for our 2011 kimchi.  All the ingredients sat together in a pickling barrel until today, Yom Kimchi, when we uncorked our barrels and packed the delicious Korean style pickle. Try some at next Thursday’s CSA pick-up/market/celebration.  You will also get to try your hand at lacto-fermentation next week during our kraut demos.

Last weekend, Adamah made a journey to Boston. We left the beauty and peace of a rural farming life, and plunged into the city. We met hard-working, compassionate people addressing social injustice through agriculture. I was humbled, excited and honored to witness how so many have actualized such thoughtful visions of a new way to live in this world.

I have recently been thinking about my relationship to cities, as I’ve lived most of my life in cities namely Vancouver, BC and Berkeley, CA. Despite my many qualms with cities: individualism, isolation, commercialism, this trip reminded me of a very important truth. It is always possible to carry values of kindness, compassion in your heart wherever you go. I was so happily surprised to find that the sweetness and love I’ve been internally cultivating at Adamah is portable. I feel empowered, relieved and excited that I can carry these intentions with me in my pursuit to actualize similar social justice projects in cities.

We stayed at the houses of Adamah alumni, and I was once again floored by the unconditional generosity and kindness extended to us.

When we returned back to Isabella Freedman, a storm was already underway, and we arrived to find that many trees had fallen, breaking power lines. For the past week, we have lived all together in IF’s main building. Sleeping close to stay warm, sitting up late, singing, appreciating each other and the generosity of all the IF staff.

I’ve been very touched by how well people have adapted. Pickles, cheeses, and yogurts found new temporary homes, and we successfully harvested a bountiful crop for our West Hartford CSA. I am so impressed and grateful for this community. Despite countless hassles and mini-disasters, we all pulled through, culminating in a Shabbat completely in the dark.

As unsettling and unstable the week was, we found comfort and grounding in each others and ourselves. It comes to show that when things become out of our control, we shouldn’t resist, but renew our energy towards appreciating the constant forces that nurture us.

- Submitted by Jordan Kahn Tietz, Fall 2011

We are all safe here and we hope that each of you has weathered the storm in safety if not comfort. We still don’t have power and aren’t expecting it back for a few days.  We know that many of you also don’t have power and, if your stove is electric, you might not be able to cook this week’s share. Not to worry, everything you are receiving can be eaten raw! Perhaps this is actually an opportunity to experiment with a raw diet. If your refrigerator is down, experiment with storing your veggies outside, at least overnight when temperatures should be perfect for storage. With so much drama this season we have had to search deeply to find the blessings in the chaos. This fall storm has provided the opportunity to take a break from electronics and experiment with living off-the-grid.

We are thinking of all of you- hoping you are warm and able to find the nuggets of blessing during this strange week.

Braising Mix This is a combination of three brassica greens- komatsuna, broccoli raab and bok choi. The good news from all this frigid weather is that these greens sweeten after enduring a frost. Bite into a leaf and you will know what I am talking about. Some of them got a little too cold and sustained some frost damage. We tried to leave all damaged leaves in the field but if you see some discoloration on the leaves- that is the issue. They are still delicious but might not last as long.

Turnips We cut the tops off of the turnips because so many of them broke underneath the snow.  They are yummy raw, roasted or sauteed.

Radishes Today we harvested some of the biggest radishes that Adamah fellow Garth has ever seen. We tasted a number of the roots and they were perfect so we don’t think they sustained any frost damage.

Kale There is a discussion going on right now among the Adamah fellows about which they would prefer- kale and white bean soup or kale and barley soup. They are thawing their fingers and toes in the main building of Isabella Freedman where we have power from a generator. The one thing they can agree on is that you should all make soup this week (if you have the amenities to do so!) to warm you up.

Spinach This crop isn’t phazed at all by cold weather like this. We dug it out from under the snow to find it looking happy as a clam in the sea.

Onions Perfect for a base to a warming stew.

Garlic Something sharp to warm your taste buds!

Apples Snow and ice can’t stop these fellows from bringing in the apple harvest! They picked them on Monday morning after the storm- ladders carefully balanced in the snow. Remember, the funny markings on the skin of the apples is totally harmless and good proof of their lack of pesticides.

Digging the crops out from under the snow

Mira pulls a turnip out of the snow and deems is delicious

Sunday before the storm the Adamah fellows were in Boston on an Urban Agriculture Educational Trip.  Here they are helping dig out some invasive species at the Victory Gardens community education plot.

Fellows also visited the Food Project, a very successful model of urban agriculture and education.

Radishes At the last Adamah staff meeting we all sat around a big bowl of sparklingly pink radishes, munching away while we discussed the upcoming schedule. We hope you have been enjoying these as much as we are! Don’t forget, they are delicious roasted or raw.

Turnips Salad turnips are back and more beautiful than ever!! These are really juicy and sweet. They are amazing raw with salad greens or on their own. They also roast really really well. Try slicing them, tossing olive oil and salt over them and throwing them in the oven. So simple, so delicious and very nutritious. The greens are also very good to eat- saute them or add them to soup.

Cilantro This is kind of a love-hate herb. If you love it, it is quite versatile and especially good in bean dishes. If you hate it, well, you might as well pass it off to a neighbor or friend who feels differently.

Salad Mix Another bumper week for salad mix! It is about to get very cold here and we’re not sure how long we can keep these plants producing so enjoy the big salads while they last! This mix is made up of a variety of baby mustard greens and baby lettuce leaves. Each baby mustard variety has a different flavor and we choose them with the intention of combining the sharper tastes with milder ones. Mizuna, the green leaf with angular leaves is very mild compared to the small, dark green leaves of cress.

GarlicNext week we will be planting the 2012 garlic and we are grateful to have nice quality heads for eating as well.

Onions The onions we have opened up have been in good shape and stored well. We hope your experience has been the same!

Apples The apples will soon freeze on the trees so this may be the last week we distribute them. These should store well in your fridge so don’t worry if you haven’t made it through all the apples we’ve brought yet! Remember, any discoloration or speckles you see are totally and completely edible. The particular blemishes on these apples are kind of banner diseases of organic New England apples. The funguses of the apple skin called fly speck and sooty blotch and are hard to avoid without spraying in our humid summers. They are perfectly healthy to eat and have no flavor so the deliciousness of the apples is not compromised.

Kale We hope that this CSA has got you hooked on kale such that it is as indispensable to your diets as it is to ours. If you haven’t found your love of kale yet, keep trying new things– kale chips, massaged kale salad, cream of kale soup, chopped small in stew, baked into enchiladas etc.

We’ve done a lot of celebrating in the last month.  We…

helped build an incredible Sukkah for Sukkahfest here at Isabella Freedman

made apple cider during an amazingly successful Farm Day

and squeezed in time to fill our harvest bins with veggies throughout all the holidays!

Adamah Fellows, Staff and Alumni Planting Wheat at Isabella Freedman’s Educational Garden

Radishes The radish bounty continues! I just ate about eight radishes raw on an empty stomach. In hindsight it might not have been the best idea but they were so juicy and deliciously sharp! We have two varieties this week, pink beauty (the pink ones) and cherriette (the cherry colored ones). Both are excellent raw on salads, as a snack in front of the computer, roasted or sauteed.

Collards We have been so impressed with the way these plants continue to produce.  I hope you’ve been feeling strong from all of the vitamin k, vitamin a, vitamin c, omega-3 fatty acids, calcium, protein and other great stuff. One of the great gifts of a CSA is that your share sometimes forces you to each healthy things that, no matter how delicious when cooked well, you might not otherwise choose to eat so much of.

Garlic More garlic!  These heads are nice and dry so they should store fine on your kitchen counter. Davida, one of our Adamah alumni and a native of West Hartford, eats a clove of garlic every day and swears that its’ immune boosting properties can be credited for her lack of colds or illness.

Onions Believe it or not, onions are a great source of calcium. Who needs Tropicana when you keep getting local onions in your CSA share?

Bok Choi These would make an awesome stir-fry together with this week’s radishes, onions, and garlic. It also works well raw and chopped thin for salads. Its nutritious and delicious and one more excellent gift from our Beebe Hill field.

Apples Again, we’ve been driving out to the property of some generous friends to pick apples. If you are tired of chomping down on them raw, try making pie, apple butter, jelly, crisp, juice, cider, hard cider, vinegar, or compote. You can even add them to savory dishes. Any discoloration or speckles you see are totally and completely edible. The particular blemishes on these apples are kind of banner diseases of unsprayed New England apples. The fungi of the apple skin called fly speck and sooty blotch and are hard to avoid without spraying in our humid summers. They are perfectly healthy to eat and have no flavor so the deliciousness of the apples is not compromised.

Mira hoeing this week’s bountiful salad harvest back when it was itty bitty

-Submitted by Garth Silberstein Fall Adamah 2011

Radishes We have a lot of radishes so this might be a good time to get creative with them. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/12/dining/12appe.html

Bok Choi These heads are a little small but otherwise absolutely gorgeous. Bok Choi is an awesome stir-fry ingredient. It is pretty versatile and can also be eaten raw. Sarah makes an amazing raw salad by chopping bok choi up small and then blending the following raw ingredients for a sauce: garlic, cranberries, tahini, soy sauce and sesame oil.

Kale The gift that keeps on giving!

Red Cabbage Our cabbage patch did not survive the flood so these beautiful heads come from Red Fire Farm, a bigger certified organic farm in Massachusetts that fared pretty well with all the water this season. Last Thursday, after delivering veggies to West Hartford, my partner Arthur and I drove the box truck up to Red Fire to pick up a full load of vegetables, most of which will be used in the cultural center. We both worked at Red Fire in 2009 and it was so wonderful to reconnect with our old friends in a way that will also help us fill your refrigerators and make kraut and kimchi this fall!

Herbs This week you can choose either Sage or Lavendar

Sage is so flavorful fresh and it goes well in all kinds of savory dishes

Lavendar smells amazing, as we all know. It turns out that it is delicious too! Adam, our value added products manager, puts it in jam. Its also very yummy baked into chocolate dishes.

Apples One of the best parts of fall are the myriad things you can do with apples! If you are tired of chomping down on them raw, try making pie, apple butter, jelly, crisp, juice, cider, hard cider, vinegar, or compote. You can even add them to savory dishes. I was once very surprised when the most delicious dish at a fall farm potluck was a simple roast of onions and apples. Who would have thought? Any discoloration or speckles you see on the apples are totally and completely edible. The particular blemishes on these apples are signature diseases of unsprayed New England apples. They are fungi of the apple skin called fly speck and sooty blotch and are hard to avoid without spraying in our humid summers. They are not indicators of any pests, are perfectly healthy to eat, and have no flavor so the deliciousness of the apples is not compromised.

Garlic More garlic! These heads are nice and dry so they should store fine on your kitchen counter.

Onions We are ever grateful for having rescued our onions from the field before Hurricane Irene. Enjoy!

 Adamah Fellows David and Jordan Weeding our Beloved Beebe Crops

Adamah Fellows Steve and Rachel Raising a Roof

     This radish and salad harvest, however, was nothing like that. We greeted those crops with horns and fanfare this morning, giddy in the crisp morning sunshine with our knives and rubber bands. After so many weeks of life without abundance in the vegetable fields, not a single leaf was taken for granted but rather seen for the miracles they are. We hope you enjoy this unique Adamah harvest as much as we are in this strange and challenging season.

Salad Mix The long awaited harvest of our Beebe field has arrived! This is a mix of baby lettuce and baby mustard leaves. The lettuce brings some familiar salad flavor, the mustards lend some zing and both are succulent and incredibly fresh.

Radishes The juicy, spicy harvest is another much anticipated treat. Add these raw to your salad or, as some friends of mine from Mexico do, slice them up and put them on tacos. I also love to roast or saute radishes with olive oil and salt.

Kale Keep on eating those greens! Recently the Isabella Freedman dining hall made an amazing massaged kale dish with almonds, raisins and balsamic vinegar that I recommend trying out.

Mint Use in refreshing teas, hot chocolate, baked goods, ice cream, mint julips, yogurt, curries, and beyond. It can be soothing to the tummy.

Apples We picked these from a nearby orchard under Wednesday’s soft autumn sunshine. They have not been sprayed and they where the evidence on their skin. Any discoloration or speckle you see are totally and completely edible. Blemish-free organic apples are really hard to grow in our humid climate so we accept these imperfections with gratitude for poison-free local fruit.

Napa Cabbage We bought this cabbage from a nearby, certified organic farm in Hillsdale New York called Markristo. A few years ago I attended a workshop at Markristo on tractor safety so not only do we owe this week’s napa to them but also our injury free season of safe tractor driving. Slice up this Asian cabbage thin for salads or cut it up into chunks for stir-fries. You could also try your hand at your own lacto-fermented kim-chi!

Tomatoes We have a few tomato plants in our unheated hoophouse and this week they fruited just enough to give one to each of you!  Unfortunately, some of them are quite small but the good new is that such scarcity can inspire an experience of truly savoring what there is.

Garlic More garlic! These heads are nice and dry so they should store fine on your kitchen counter.

Onions Here in the Adamah office I just wondered aloud, what else can I say about onions after so many weeks? Sarah suggested this ingenious statement:

Important Reminder

Because of the sukkot holiday, next week’s pick-up will be on Tuesday, October 11th.  Shares will be in their usual location and you can pick them up whenever you can but of course they will be freshest on Tuesday at 3 pm.
Also, due to the holiday of simhat torah, the following delivery will also be on the Tuesday of that week, October 18th.  Here is a list of the rest of this season’s pick-ups:

Tuesday October 11th
Tuesday October 18th
Thursday October 27th
Thursday November3rd
Thursday November 10th
Thursday November 17th