Author Archives: mtrapp

CSA Pick-Up: September 24-28

Wednesday September 26th, Friday September 28th, and Monday October 1st will be the last distribution days for shareholders for the 2018 season. We want to thank all of you for another terrific year!

On the list for pick-up is:

  • Kale
  • Beans
  • Winter squash varieties
  • Acorn Squash Varieties
  • Butternut Squash
  • Potatoes
  • Sweet potatoes
  • Corn Stalks
  • Popcorn

Important: Make sure to bring sturdy bags to pick-up that can handle a lot of weight. We will have a lot of heavier items such as sweet potatoes and winter squash.

Also: keep an eye out for our end of year survey. Your input on this helps us to improve the program every year.

See you at the Farm!

Undone Stuffed Pepper Casserole

If you love stuffed peppers but are short on time, this is a great, tasty, and easy recipe that I have been using for years. Here’s how it’s done..

Ingredients:

– 3 large green peppers, coarsely chopped
– 1 lb ground beef
– 3 cloves garlic, minced
– 2 cups cooked long grain brown or white rice
– 24 oz. pasta sauce
– 1 and 1/2 cups of shredded Italian cheese

Directions:

– Heat oven to 350 degrees
– Brown meat with garlic and peppers in a large skillet; drain.
– Return meat mixture to skillet; stir in rice, pasta sauce, and 3/4 cup cheese. (vegan cheese also works great with this recipe!)
– spoon in to 2 quart casserole sprayed with cooking spray.
– top with remaining 3/4 cup of cheese.
– Bake for 20-25 minutes.

Buy-a-Bucket and Vegetables Coming Soon

Buy-a-Bucket: offered to shareholders on their distribution night and to general visitors, or shareholders, during Farm Stand hours on Saturday/Sunday (11 am-3pm). Please be aware that the orange buckets that are given to harvest with are not meant to be taken home, but are the guide for pricing ($6/harvested bucket for shareholders; $12/harvested bucket for non-shareholders). As always, we suggest that you bring an extra bag to transfer your food in to after picking. If you wish to take the bucket home, it will be an additional $4. For our shareholders – with the variety of pick-your-own and the buy-a-bucket option, you may spend more time in the field, please remember to plan accordingly for arrival at distribution considering the extra time.

Speaking of extra bags – shareholders, we are always in need of a few extra bags for people who forget theirs when they come to distribution. We appreciate everyone who has brought in  bags so far this season!

Upcoming crops:

  • Here now: Melons, Tomatoes
  • Coming soon: Potatoes, Arugula
  • On the horizon: Leeks, Sweet potatoes, winter squash.

Curious about what happens with food that is unpicked in the fields? Since there is so much ground to cover in both the lower and upper field, it is impossible to harvest every last thing. For example, some things like squash and zucchini overgrow when left in the field, but can still be used for things like zucchini bread. Boston Area Gleaners (B.A.G.) is a non-profit organization we will be inviting to our fields to get these left overs. They are dedicated to delivering surplus farm crops to those in need. We are happy to have found an organization that can help us to help others!

Rosemary potatoes

there may be no better way to prepare our delicious potatoes than to pair them with some rosemary (which we conveniently just transplanted in to the down hill field!). They end up making a great side to any meal or even just a great snack!

Ingredients

1 1/2 pounds small red potatoes
1/8 cup good olive oil
3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoons minced garlic (3 cloves)
2 tablespoons minced fresh rosemary leaves

Directions

Cut the potatoes in half or quarters and place in a bowl with the olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic and rosemary; toss until the potatoes are well coated. Dump the potatoes on a baking sheet and spread out into 1 layer; roast in the oven for at least 1 hour, or until browned and crisp. Flip twice with a spatula during cooking to ensure even browning.
Remove the potatoes from the oven, season to taste, and serve.

Some Challenges

As most of you know by now, farming always has its speed bumps. Sometimes crops don’t develop the way we hope because of weather conditions or other factors such as infections. Unfortunately, the norland red potatoes we are growing have developed a fungal infection. To combat this we are detaching the potatoes from the actual plant and storing them so as to not have them prone to the contagion. Not to worry – the potatoes will not lose any of their quality – they are still very tasty! and you will be getting them earlier!

Also, the broccoli in our uphill field was really slow to come on this year. We waited and waited, and got about a week out of broccoli before we came to the realization that it was not producing like we wanted, so we worked hard to get a second planting in the downhill field. We are hoping our hard work pays off and it turns up great! In the meantime, we still have an array of delicious and nutritious veggies on their way so we certainly won’t be lacking in variety!

A few recipes

Green Bean Casserole Bundle

Ingredients:

1 c. cream of mushroom soup

1/2 c. milk

1/2 tsp. soy sauce

1/4 tsp. Freshly ground black pepper

2/3 c. French fried onions

3 1/2 c. cooked cut green beans

1 package bacon or Prosciutto

Directions:

– Preheat oven to 350° and grease a 9″-x-13″ baking dish.
– In a large mixing bowl, stir together soup, milk, soy sauce, pepper, and French fried onions. Add green beans and toss to combine.
– Grab small bundles of green beans and wrap with a strip of bacon, placing each in the baking dish snugly. (The edges of the bacon should be pressed against the pan, so they don’t unravel while baking.)
– Cover with foil and bake until the bacon is fully cooked, 37 to 40 minutes.

Arugula Pesto

Ingredients:
4 cups packed fresh arugula
1 tablespoon minced garlic
Salt and freshly ground pepper
1 cup pure olive oil
2 tablespoon pine nuts, toasted, plus 1 tablespoon
1/8 teaspoon vitamin C (optional)
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan

Directions:

Prepare an ice water bath in a large bowl, and bring a large pot of water to a boil. Put the
arugula in a large sieve and plunge it into the boiling water. Immediately immerse all the arugula and stir so that it blanches evenly. Blanch for about 15 seconds. Remove, shake off the excess water, then plunge the arugula into the ice water bath and stir again so it cools as fast as possible. Drain well.

Squeeze the water out of the arugula with your hands until very dry. Roughly chop the arugula and put in a blender. Add the garlic, salt and pepper to taste, olive oil, 2 tablespoons of the pine nuts, and the vitamin C, if using. Blend for at least 30 seconds. In this way the green of the arugula will thoroughly color the oil. Add the cheese and pulse to combine. The pesto will keep several days in a tightly sealed container in the refrigerator.

Pull out before dinner to get to room temperature. Before serving, add the remaining 1 tablespoon toasted pinenuts.

 

Garlic scapes: what they are and the best storage for them!

We are happy to announce that we are now giving out delicious garlic scapes at distribution!

A common question I keep getting is: what the heck are garlic scapes?? Garlic scapes, sometimes called garlic stems, are the flower bud of the garlic plants. They are removed this time of you to encourage the bulb of the garlic to thicken up! They taste great and can be used the same way as garlic in many recipes!

A popular method of preserving the scapes is to chop them in to 1 inch pieces and freeze them in zipper freezer bags. This makes it easy to grab a handful of garlic scapes and add them to soups, stews, stir fry, omelets, or anything else you may use garlic as an ingredient in. The garlic scapes hold up really well when you freeze them and remain firm.

A few things

We would like to introduce to you our farm manager, Matthew Noiseux (on the right). This is Matthews fifth year as the farm manager here at Moose Hill. He has been working hard to maintain the farm – not just during the summer but year round! Matthew, a local resident of Norfolk, is excited for the farm season which is now upon us – a season which we are hoping to make our best yet!

On the vegetable news side, we will be a bit behind on zucchini this year. We got a second planting last week and hope to have it at distribution as soon as possible! Ah, the joys of farming…

Slow Grow

Ever wonder how the weather affects our crops? As we have all been aware, the weather the last few months has done a lot of roller-coasting. Really hot, then cold, lots of rain, and then not so much.

With a less full sun days, and not much rain over the last few weeks, our crops have been slower to grow than we anticipated. It can make the start of our season feel a little slow – we have variety in what is coming in, just not always the bigger sizes we all love seeing in our early season greens!

However, the radishes have been a mix of larger and smaller sizes – but they are a root vegetable and thankfully we have great soil for these root veggies!

But, you might be wondering how we deal with little rain, or quick rainstorms, which often run off the vegetable mounds rather than soaking in to properly water our crops. In the fields by the Barn, we do some drip irrigation. Not all of the vegetable are irrigated, just some that will truly need it. In our upper field, we have no irrigation – we must rely on good soil health to best maintain those fields.

If there is something you have been wondering about, be sure to mention it to us – the Farm Apprentices. We are happy to share more information through the blog on the successes and challenges of farming organic!

And, as always, thank you to the shareholders who have helped us down at the farm thus far – we have enjoyed getting to know you and it has been a very fun start to the season!