Autumn is upon us and so are the fall and winter veggies that remind me of the warm cozy evenings by the fire. I’d like to tell you a little secret… Even when the nights are cold, we still have a ton of local produce for folks to enjoy! Many farms are working hard […]
Jerusalem artichokes, sunchokes, are a member of the sunflower family and are a native plant to North America. I love growing native foods and reintroducing them to our area’s cusine. The benefits of growing natives verses some of our better known grocery store varieties is that we are stewarding the natural indigenous biodiversity in […]
Our favorite new crop for the season so far is the Napa Cabbage. If you haven’t tried it, let me just say, you simply must! What a delightful vegetable!
This photo was submitted by Chris Mccagh Herring and I just love it!
What I did with the Napa Cabbage is I made
Napa Salad
1 head of Napa Cabbage, large leaves removed ( I use the large leaves as wraps for lunch)
5-7 baby carrots shredded
1 small onion diced
2 T minced pickled ginger
Radish sliced into match stick pieces
1 Package of Ramen noodles slightly crushed (do not use the seasoning packet, I save them and melt ice off of our sidewalk with it in the winter)
Sesame Ginger Dressing of choice, ( I used Newman’s Own)
Slice the cabbage into 1/2″ strips and toss with remaining ingredients and serve chilled.
I baked a ton of bread for this week , look for some of our new recipes like Sundried Tomato and Muesli as well of our old favorites like Sourdough Rye and Whole Wheat.
Some other items we will see this week is lettuce, swiss chard, pak choi, sugar snap peas, baby carrots and baby squash.
Weeding Wednesdays Begin!!!
If you are wondering how you can get some volunteer time in, then you can come and join us for Weeding Wednesdays here at the farm.
Also, We can use help to set up and pack up at the markets in the town nearest you.
I love to get recipes from everyone and email is the best way to submit them… Each recipe is worth 30 minutes of volunteer time!
We really appreciate the support and excitement from our CSA members this year thank you all so much!
We have a huge spring worth of work to show for my long stint of silence….and to the 40 or so people that have been looking at my stagnant blog daily, I am truly very sorry that I haven’t been posting. But this spring was screaming plant, pick and pull weeds, because it has been beautiful here in the gorgeous valley!
I will begin by saying everyone is going to have a lovely salad for the first week of CSA’s because we are in to our elbows with
Lettuce!
Flambe Lettuce
Today I harvested some 3.5 pound heads of
Napa Cabbage
and we have tons of
Bok Choy
We pulled 6 pounds of Asparagus out of the garden. Get to the markets early for the asparagus, or email me to hold some for you! The thing about Asparagus is that it is prolific long before the markets begin, so it is hard for me to have it for CSA, but we should get some to everyone this year:)
Baby Carrots
Swiss Chard
and
Scallions
will be available too.
Now for a cute video of a recipe that uses our Bok Choy…enjoy!
We had such a great day today! We got lots of transplanting done in the greenhouse and coldframe including scallions, broccoli, cabbages of various types, kohlrabi, pak choi, and cauliflower. It really felt like spring today!
Lettuce and Cauliflower
Now for the recipe- These burgers are too easy! First I open the can of salmon and drain the juices into a measuring cup. Then I add enough water to the cup until it reaches 1 1/4 cup. Then I add 1 box of Fantastic Falafel mix and let it absorb the water and salmon juice for 5 minutes.
Then I mix the salmon meat into the falafel mixture.
I form patties from the salmon falafel mix and place in hot oil in a skillet for about 5 minutes or until brown. flip over and brown the other side.
Serve with Goodness Grows Honey Mustard
Top with Goodness Grows Micro Greens
and serve on a Goodness Grows organic bread bun, I like to use rye for this recipe!
I would like to thank ACRE magazine for featuring us in their February pulbication. And I would like to send a very special thank you to Linda Williams for writing such a beautiful article.
Also today I was on Central PA live again to demonstrate our farmer’s market feature here is the just in case you missed it-
Here is the recipe that we’ll be using on Central PA live and Taste of the Alleghenies
Sausage Apple Chutney Crostini
1 Baguette from Goodness Grows
1/4 cup of Clover Creek Shredded Cheddar Cheese
1/2 pound of Sausage from Greener Acres Farm
2 cups of Apple Chutney (see recipe below)
Brown sausage and combine with chutney and heat to 150 degrees. Slice bread into 1″ discs and toast in the toaster. Top the toast with 1 heaping tablespoon of chutney and sausage mix and sprinkle shredded cheddar cheese on top of the warm chutney mix. Enjoy!
Apple Chutney
2 cups apple cider vinegar
2 cups sugar
1 1/2 pounds tart green apples (such as Granny Smith from Christmas Valley Tree Farm), peeled, cored, chopped into 1/2-inch pieces
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
10 large garlic cloves
1 2-ounce piece fresh ginger, peeled, coarsely chopped
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon dried crushed red pepper (from Goodness Grows)
1 1/2 cups (packed) golden raisins
2 tablespoons yellow mustard seeds
DIRECTIONS:
Bring vinegar and sugar to boil in heavy large nonaluminum saucepan, stirring until sugar dissolves. Reduce heat and simmer 10 minutes. Remove from heat.
Toss apples and lemon juice in large bowl. Combine garlic, ginger, salt and red pepper in processor; blend until finely chopped. Add apple and garlic mixtures, raisins and mustard seeds to vinegar. Simmer until apples are tender and chutney thickens, stirring occasionally, about 45 minutes. Place in bowl. Cool. Cover; chill. (Can be made 1 week ahead. Keep chilled.)
As temperature plummeted across our region, and winter markets are picking up, I’m more in the mood for soup. Saturdays are the perfect day for us because I only need to cook once for 2-3 meals over the weekend. This week I made chicken and white bean chili using a slightly modified Food Network recipe, salad from the veggies that we didn’t sell at Wholesome Living Market Place today and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on our own spelt bread.
I used the following recipe for the White Chicken Chili with some modifications-
I use real chicken, not ground chicken, I didn’t add corn and I did add cilantro.
The salad came back from a small indoor market that Rob went to today. It has romaine, green leaf, red leaf and arugula from our gardens. Also I chopped 2 carrots and 5 radishes on top. The cheese is from a trade I made with High Country Creamery today at the Mountain City Traditional Arts Market.
The sandwich is made with our very own Spelt bread, fresh ground honey roasted peanut butter from Fisher’s Country Store. Also the boysenberry jelly was made by my boys’ old babysitter Rachel Bender. She owns Summer Kitchen Jams and you can purchase her wonderful creations there.
I hope all of you will consider continuing your commitment to buy locally this winter! There are so many wonderful foods available from local producers this time of year too. I will do my best to help you all find out what’s available.
Place salmon on a baking sheet, skin side down. Combine tomatillos, seasalt, lime juice and cilantro and spoon on top of salmon. Bake at 400 for 20 minutes or until salmon meat flakes with a fork.
Planting is the theme right now as we get the last of our summer crops in the ground. It certainly has been a challenge to get working in the ground with all of the rains we have had. Our melons and winter squash were planted last week, and we are currently trellising tomatoes and interplanting cucumbers with the tomatoes.
Sad news that I will not be baking anymore until we harvest our grains again in August. For those of you who love our bread, it will return later this summer. It is kind of a nice transition to harvesting and weeding all of our gardens anyway. I will have more time to give the growing more attention now that I am not baking. Our grains are almost out, and the whole reason I bake is because I can use our very own homegrown, certified organic, non GMO grains. We have a lovely field for harvest this summer, and I will start baking when it’s ready.
We do have lots of growing going on now too!
Bright Lights Swiss Chard
This Week
Snow peas!!!- Sugar snaps will be ready next week.
Beautiful red onions
Kale
Swiss Chard
Green and red romaine lettuce
Butterhead lettuce
Cauliflower and broccoli- light on both- end of the broccoli, beginning of the cauliflower!
Cilantro and Basil!!!!!
We have a nice cooler selection for those of you who have been enjoying it and here is my recipe for the week!
Kale and Strawberry Smoothie
1 cup Kale
1 cup Strawberries
1 cup of plain greek yogurt
1 cup of ice
1 tablespoon chia seeds (these can be purchased at Everything Natural in Altoona, Wholesome Living Marketplace in Bedford or Fisher’s Country store in Cessna)
1 tablespoon honey
Combine ingredients in a blender and run on high until the kale appears to be well incorporated.
The CSA’s will be all market choice this week. Half shares will have a credit of $11.00, Regular shares will have a credit of $21.00 and large shares will have a credit of $32.00. This way you will be able to really customize what you get this week.
I love the enthusiasm for everyone to get their volunteer hours in, so here’s the scoop on the schedule for volunteering-
Community Farm Day 2013
If you want to come to the farm to help Saturday June 7th will be our first farm day of the season. We will be planting, weeding, mulching, milking and making meals for our help, and you are invited. Our days start at 7:30 am with the morning milking and go all day long until evening milking at 7:30 pm. Come for as little or as long as you like.
We can definitely use some help at the markets to distribute CSA’s. You may schedule this type of help at the market closest to you. Please let me know by Tuesday before the market day so we can make sure we are not overbooked with help. We only need one person per market per week to help. Our markets usually go from 9-1 Cumberland is 9:30 – 2:00. We could use help setting up and making sure all of our members get their share.
For those of you who have time during the week, we are picking washing bunching and prepping Tuesdays through Fridays at the farm too, please schedule in advance for this type of help by email.
Of course we love to see those recipes so keep them coming!
We have lots of romaine lettuce to give out this week, along with a farm favorite- Lamb’s Quarter! I will be making Paneer and yogurt to go with the lamb’s quarter in one of my favorite recipes for this time of year- Lambs Quarter Palak Paneer. You may use lamb’s quarter in any recipe that calls for spinach, and this winter I made some spanokopita that was out of this world using lamb’s quarter instead of spinach.
Lamb’s quarter is closely related to Quinoa. It looks very similar to quinoa and I have a hard time telling them apart when weeding. We eat the young greens. They taste remarkably like spinach, and have the same nutrients, only way more nutrient dense than spinach. Good and good for you! So when thinking of some of your favorite spinach recipes, try substituting lamb’s quarter and let me know how it goes.
Strawberries are starting, and you should be seeing some during the next few weeks.
Broccoli will be abundant this week!
My Favorite Breakfast
1-2 handfuls of oatmeal-I haven’t had my coffee yet and getting a measuring cup is too much of a bother.
cover the oatmeal with just enough water to cover the oatmeal
microwave for 1 minute
add 2-3 spoonfuls of yogurt, 1 spoonful of raw sugar,2-3 sliced strawberries.
My Second Favorite Breakfast
2 slices of bacon cut into 1/2 inch pieces
1/2 bunch of kale
2 eggs lightly beaten
put ingredients in hot skillet in the order listed first frying the bacon until cooked, then add kale until wilted then add eggs and cook until they are opaque and no longer runny.
Heat 3 tablespoons olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Saute onion, green onions and garlic, until soft and lightly browned. Stir in spinach and parsley, and continue to saute until spinach is limp, about 2 minutes. Remove from heat and set aside to cool.
In a medium bowl, mix together eggs, ricotta, and feta. Stir in spinach mixture.
Lay 1 sheet of phyllo dough in prepared baking pan, and brush lightly with olive oil.Lay another sheet of phyllo dough on top, brush with olive oil, and repeat process with two more sheets of phyllo. The sheets will overlap the pan. Spread spinach and cheese mixture into pan and fold overhanging dough over filling. Brush with oil, then layer remaining 4 sheets of phyllo dough, brushing each with oil. Tuck overhanging dough into pan to seal filling.
Bake in preheated oven for 30 to 40 minutes, until golden brown.
