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Home Cooking: How to cook up the bounty from the first Summit CSA harvest - Summit Daily News

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Summit Daily News

Home Cooking: How to cook up the bounty from the first Summit CSA harvest
Summit Daily News
Last Wednesday I was as giddy as a girl on Christmas morning. It was the first weekly pick-up of locally grown, organic vegetables from the Summit CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), from the High-Country Conservation Center. Way back in February, ...

Week 5 from Valley Flora!

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Week 5 from Valley Flora! Fennel! Snap Peas!
Thanks for eating locally from our family farm!
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What's Cookin' on the Farm...
  • The Annual Plastic Sermon :)
  • How to Love Fennel
  • Amelia's Flower Shares begin next week!
One of my all-time favorite vistas.
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What's In Your Share This Week:*
  • Lacinato Kale
  • Fennel
  • Snap Peas
  • Head Lettuce
  • Broccolini
  • Broccoli
  • Bunch Carrots
On Rotation:
(Some locations will receive it this week; others in a future week)
  • Arugula
  • Spinach
  • Basil
  • Parsley
*Harvest Basket contents may vary between pickup sites in a given week depending on what's ripe and ready on the farm. Don't worry - if something is on the list but not in your tote, you'll get it soon!

The VF Crystal Ball - What Might be in your Share Next Week...
  • Broccoli and/or broccolini
  • Beets?
  • Arugula or Spinach
  • Lettuce
  • Carrots
  • Collard Greens
  • Kohlrabi?
  • Sugar Snap Peas
  • Turnips?
The Annual Plastic Sermon
Hear ye, hear ye! The planet is awash in plastic trash. Most of you probably grasp the enormity of the problem (the June 2018 National Geographic offers a sobering wake-up call), but what to do given that our lives have become so intertwined with the stuff over the past 70+ years since WWII?! So much so that some 9 million tons of it ends up in the ocean each year, beaches are ankle deep in it, and sea animals' bellies are full of it.

We're guilty of using plastic on the farm, no doubt about it. Drip tape, row cover, harvest bins, potting soil bags, pallet wrap, plastic mulch on the strawberry beds. I anguish over it, even though we get many years' use out of most of it before it gets recycled or hauled to the dump. Which is why I was surprised to learn that agriculture and health care combined account for just over 10% of the 450 million tons of plastic garbage generated worldwide each year. I thought it would be a much higher number. The shocker was this: packaging for consumer products makes up almost half of the plastic that gets tossed. Shopping bags, that elaborate box your cell phone came in, the molded plastic around the Tonka truck you bought for your kid's birthday. It's the stuff we buy, unwrap, and immediately put in the garbage. Here's a factoid: a plastic shopping bag has an average "working life" of 15 minutes. Another factoid: it never goes away; it just gets smaller and turns into micro-plastics (i.e. the multi-colored grains of "sand" we encountered on a beach in Hawaii last year).

So for years, even before I realized how bad the plastic problem had gotten, we have done little things in our household like wash and re-use our plastic bags and ziplocs (my sister-in-law who is visiting from San Diego this week looked at me in semi-horror when I showed her our bag-washing system; "I've seen documentaries about people like you," she blurted). :)
And yes, maybe we are "those" people, but the truth is if you wash and re-use your bags you are making a difference! (And scientific studies have proven that you're not going to get E. coli and die, so long as you wash them with soap and water, like a dish). You can get some long life out of a ziploc; we still have some in circulation from 2006 when they got labeled for frozen corn one summer.

Aside from re-using, you've probably notice that I flat-out try to avoid putting plastic bags in your Harvest Basket. Sometimes we get complaints from folks who wish their broccolini was in a tidy little bag, but that would mean 106 extra plastic bags getting used each week. For things that do get bagged, we are making a shift to cellophane bags, which are made from wood fiber and are biodegradable.

It's hard to imagine life without plastic (at this point most of us have never lived without it), but I'm not asking you to. Just less of it, especially the non-essential packaging. Re-use bags, buy in bulk, opt for glass wherever you can, recycle all the plastic that's recyclable (that's gotten harder this year, but don't give up!), consider whether you really need something if it's made of plastic or heavily packaged, and bring us your plastic grocery bags and we'll reuse them at our farmstand. It takes conscious effort and some discipline to push back against the plastic barrage, but it feels good to try.

Sermon concluded!
Good old Maude (age: 19, weight: 2000 lbs, breed: Belgian), still hard at work cultivating the peas earlier this spring in the New Nine field.
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How to Love Fennel
Included in your share this week is one of the more controversial items we grow: fennel. Myself a fennel lover, I am always compelled to encourage people to embrace (and fall in love) with this vegetable. First, behold it's beauty! Second, inhale it's lovely aroma! Third, make one of these 57 recipes (or all of them) and then let me know if you are still a skeptic.
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Amelia's Flower Share Begins Next Week
If you are signed up for a flower share, your first bouquet of seasonal blooms will be delivered to your pickup site next week. Keep on the lookout for an email from Amelia with more details!
The Farmstand is Open for Summer Hours!
Every Wednesday and Saturday from 9 am to 2 pm, rain or shine!

Fresh Produce
U-pick Strawberries
Homemade Jam & Hot Sauce

Please bring your own bags!

Please note our hours are slightly changed from year's past, closing at 2 pm instead of 3 pm

 
For Recipes & Cooking Inspiration:
 
Valley Flora Recipe Wizard
Our own collection of recipes gathered over the years.
 
Epicurious
A vast collection of recipes, searchable by one or multiple ingredients
 
Full Belly Farm
Recipes from one of my favorite farms in California, pioneers of the organic movement since the 80s.

Farm Fresh to You
A storehouse of recipes, searchable by ingredient.
 
Helsing Junction Farm
A Washington farm that has a good collection of seasonal recipes geared toward CSA members.
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Colorful area CSA offers subscribers four months of produce, local connections - Republican Eagle

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Republican Eagle

Colorful area CSA offers subscribers four months of produce, local connections
Republican Eagle
My university studies in ecology and my love of gardening compelled me to pursue organic farming. 2012 will be my third year running a CSA business. My interest in CSA grew out of an internship at Blue Moon Community Farm in Madison, WI, and a long- ...

A Reverse CSA: Turning Unused Land Into Food - Mother Earth News (press release) (blog)

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Mother Earth News (press release) (blog)

A Reverse CSA: Turning Unused Land Into Food
Mother Earth News (press release) (blog)
I love the idea of a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) where a farmer supplies subscribers a basket of produce each week. Throughout the growing season, subscribers get a surprise basket of tomatoes, lettuce, peppers, or whatever else the farmer ...

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Beyond Wellesley — a restaurant visit to Buttercup in Natick - The Swellesley Report

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The Swellesley Report

Beyond Wellesley — a restaurant visit to Buttercup in Natick
The Swellesley Report
It's a good thing I made Friday night reservations, because it was immediately apparent that there was no way I could have just wandered my way into the farm-to-table restaurant, which sources organic and local ingredients. Words have gotten out and ...

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