The Adamah Blog

West Hartford Pickup Week 21

The Adamah farm endured Sandy relatively unscathed. Everyone is safe, the fields did not flood, the soil did not sustain much erosion and the veggies stood tall and strong through the storm.

The main building of the Isabella Freedman campus did take a hit, however, when a one-hundred year old tree fell across the roof. No one was hurt and removing the tree from its clean slice through the building proved more straightforward than any of us imagined. Check it out here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGmCvkWzoSo.

We are thinking of all of you and hoping that you fared well. The might of this week’s weather reminds us, yet again, how interconnected we are and how relevant the climate is to our lives. We are grateful that you recognize this and choose to throw your lot in with a local farm, tying your meals to the weather in a truly meaningful way.

“Unusually” severe weather events have become increasingly “usual” over the past few years. No individual event can be traced to the role humans play in climate change but the trend is indeed connected. Reducing your carbon footprint with a diet based around local, organic vegetables is one of those small steps toward a more reslient society that we should each be proud of, especially when it tastes so good and is so nutritious.

CSA Fair

November 15^th is the last CSA delivery of the season and Adamah will be at the JCC to celebrate! Join us when you pick up your share and feel free to invite any friends or family who want to learn more about the CSA.

4-7pm
Adamah Market and Sampling
Apple Cider Pressing
Meet the Farmers
Registration for 2013 CSA Shares

5:30 – 6pm
Q&A and Goat Gurt Smoothies with Adamah – Folks can learn more about the farm, Adamah, Isabella Freedman, vegetables, how the CSA works and the broader food system from an Adamah panel

Harvest Notes

Broccoli Raab (large shares only) is also called rapini and it is a delicious, mustardy vegetable whose stalks, leaves and buds are all good for cooking. This website gives a good introduction http://whatscookingamerica.net/BroccoliRaab.htm

Sunshine Squash (large shares only) is in the kubocha family. The flesh is very thick and it is incredibly rich and creamy when roasted.

Butternut Squash did very well on our farm this season so you will receive a number of them. It is a very versatile squash that stores for months.

Sorrel If you have a hankering for sour, sorrel is a much more delicious alternative to sour patch kids or lemonheads. Yonah (9) and Ibby (4), who spend a lot of time in the Adamah fields, eat raw sorrel by the fistful right off the plant. If raw sorrel isn’t quite your bag, try adding it as an herb to meat or making a soup like this one http://nymag.com/listings/recipe/sorrel-soup/.

Leeks are delicious slow cooked and added to jsut about any dish that calls for an allium.

Kale is a versatile super food whose health benefits argue that the old addage be changed to “a serving of kale a day keeps the doctor away”.

Purple Top Storage Turnips are a hearty fall crop for soups and roasts. Check out a few ideas here http://waywardseed.com/products/recipes/p-69.html

Sorrel is a relatively uncommon, tart herb. Try it raw, chopped up onto a salad or in soup.

Onions These onions will store for months.

Lettuce doesn’t fare too well in below freezing temperatures so we went ahead and harvested the whole patch before this weekend’s cold weather. Everyone will get at least one large head of lettuce and large shares will also get a few small heads.

West Hartford CSA Pickup 20

Wow, twenty CSA shares delivered and only three left of the season! Together we have made our way through the delicate greens of spring, the colorful fruits of summer and have arrived at the hardy roots of fall. All in all it has been a fantastic crop with the average weekly large share valued at $36.38. This marks a 39% discount over our farmer’s market prices, an incredible value and we hope the weather cooperates well enough so that we can provide such a value to members every year.

This fall a few of our more common veggies didn’t do as well as we would have liked – our last succession of carrots succumbed to deer pressure and the broccoli found its roots too wet after these heavy rains. However, the overall outlook for these last few deliveries is good. You will get a chance to delve into some of the less common roots our region has to offer like rutabega, turnips and radishes while squash, onions and greens should also make their way to that final, pre-Thanksgiving delivery.

Harvest Notes

Daikon Radishes are a main ingredient in our kimchi. They are a popular East Asian vegetable for sushi or stir-fry. I once had a Japanese Daikon Radish cake that was out of this world. For the ambitious cooks among us, check it out: Daikon Mochi. You can find a few more ideas here: Daikon Ideas. This may be a good sushi week with all of the Asian veggies you’ll be receiving

Komatsuna is an Asian cooking green with a mustard flavor. It is great in stir-fry or braised.

Bok Choi (large share only) is another Asian green that would go well combined with komatsuna, or left on its own. You can stir-fry it, braise it, or marinate it for a raw salad.

Broccoli (large share only) hasn’t done well on our farm this fall. We had hoped to give you loads of this popular vegetable but the area we planted it in ended up very wet. The heads did not grow very well and some of them weren’t of high quality. Alas, we are happy to be ablt to give out a little bit of broccoli and we will have to wait for next spring to harvest a healthier crop of it.

Salad Mix is comprised of baby mustards and lettuce.

Delicata and Jester Winter Squash are similar in texture and cooking quality. The both have relatively thin, edible skins and cook more quickly than other squash. Each share gets to choose one of these. The seeds of all these squash you have been receiving are quite useful as well. Ben, one of this year’s Adamah fellows, has not only been roasting them to eat but in his infinite creativity has been blending and pressing them (using a soymilk maker) into a milky drink! Here is some more information about roasting seeds for snacking Roasted Squash Seed

Pie Pumpkins (large shares only) can decorate your home all the way through holloween and then make their way into pie by Thanksgiving. They will store well and have a deliciously silky flesh for pies, soups, ravioli filling, roasted veggies or any other winter squash dish.

Sage goes great with the fall root and winter squash flavor profile. I like to chop it finely and saute it for a squash soup topping or roasted veggie medley.

Onions These onions will store for months.

Garlic came in relatively short supply this year. We just planted half of next year’s crop with a group of one hundred and fifty 7^th graders who spent their class trip away from New York City here on the farm. They had a lot of fun learning about this robust fall-planted crop and getting their hands dirty. We are planting a lot this year in hopes of having many more deliveries of garlic next season.

Purple Top Storage Turnip is a hardy root. It isn’t so good raw, like the small white turnips you have received in your shares thus far. Rather, it makes incredible soups and cooked veggie dishes. My favorite thing to do with these is to slice them very thin, coat them in olive oil, salt, pepper and perhaps a bit of sage or other fall herb, and then roast them at 375 in the oven. They take longer to boil or roast than potatoes or other root veggies, so be sure to put them in first if you are cooking them togeher.

West Hartford CSA Pickup Week 19

Fall brings greens, squash and root vegetables. The greens and herbs (unless dried) obviously have quite a limited shelf life. They will usually last a week or so in the fridge. Over these last few CSA weeks you will get an assortment of hardy veggies like onions, squash, leeks, turnips, radishes and rutabegas that, long into the cold and snowy days of winter, can remind you of the harvest.

Harvest Notes

Storage Radishes These are heirlooms called China Rose Winter Radish. They were popular at time when families commonly grew root vegetables for fall harvest and stored them all winter long. We bought the seeds from a Connecticut company that has been in business since 1811. The description of this radish that appeared in their 1856 catalog said this, “Recently introduced from China. Its form is rather conical and very smooth; of a lively rose color; flesh is firm.” You can use it like a daikon or salad radish- grated finely for fresh use, cooked into a stir-fry or even lactofermented into a spicy pickle! You can use just a little bit at a time if you aren’t ready to dive all the way in because the roots should store very well in the crisper of your refrigerator, ideally in a bag.

Spinach I love the color of spinach! These are big leaves best suited to cooking because they are less tender than baby leaves althought they are also tasty fresh.

Broccoli Raab This cooking green has a sharp, mustard flavor. This weekend I plan on cooking it lightly in a blended soup with onions and potatoes.

Mint As the weather turns cold, we’ve been putting mint in our hot water with honey.

Butternut Squash This classic squash is excellent for soup. It actually sweetens the longer it is stored so don’t worry if you don’t get to it this week.

Onions These onions will store for months so don’t feel rushed to eat them up.

Green Peppers We harvested the very last of our peppers before the big freeze last weekend, making these the very last of the summer produce you will get in your shares this season.

Cabbage These cabbages should store for at least a month and possibly longer if kept carefully in the crisper of your fridge.