Winds of Change

Baby melon getting water via drip tape 

“A wind has blown the rain away and blown the sky away and all the leaves away, and the trees stand. I think, I too, have known autumn too long.”
-e.e. cummings

“Wind,” Jack tells me, “is what we’re all in for more of in this world of global warming.”  That’s what the scientists say anyway.  But it’s not just in the distant realms of the lab or the data that wind makes its appearance in the world; it has indeed arrived in full force on the farm.  

At first glance, wind doesn’t seem so bad.  My hair flapping around, a bit of dust, no more.  Jack tells me, “No.  The crops hate it because it takes away all their moisture.  Look at that -”  I glance toward the fields facing west and see a massive 1500 gallon water tank atop a flatbed trailer, the steady hum of a generator in the distance.  “It’s unprecedented to have to provide extra moisture to our melons in May, but here we are.”  

Normally the crew simply places black plastic over the seedlings after a good rain and let the damp soil and sun do their work.  However due to the speedy air passing just over these leaves and leaving an arid climate in its place, the moisture is simply eviscerated, the plants left parched and dry.  Now the water tank leads the clear liquid through drip tape - a means of getting it to the thirsty baby honeydews.

The trouble with wind makes sense after I digest this thief-like process.  For what does one think of after all, when one thinks of a desert?  I imagine a Georgia O’Keefe painting; piercing sky and sun, bleached cow skulls, and of course, the wind: whipping up fine particles that sting the eyes and nestle into any corner, any crevice.  

This is a dramatic picture of course, but it’s what is occurring on a micro level to the baby melon patches.  These plants are straining to establish their roots when young - a proverbial nursing child sucking at anything to get milk.  When the bully wind blows, this chance is gone as it steals away water and thus, life.  Unless of course Mother Farmer comes with the 1500 gallon water tank.  Which Jack has for the time being.  But the question for summer 2012 is, how often he will have to use it?  And if the tank wasn’t accessible, would the melons slowly slowly slowly become more like the desert cow skulls, while soil turned into sand?  It is a sobering thought to ponder as more hypothetical stories such as this become realities in pockets of places that we know and love.   

I hope now to more appreciate the watermelons that arrive in my box this time around, having a fuller understanding of what it takes to bring them to fruition, bring their sweetness to my mouth.  

-Katie

DIY - Dry It Yourself (Herbs)

Here's my dried oregano from Featherstone!

On the farm under the flourescent lights of the office, coffee percolating, a light rain looming outside, I had the chance to talk to Chris Blanchard of Rock Springs Farm.  Chris’ farm out of Iowa provides about thirty different herbs to local wholesalers and CSA members.  Being frank, herbs absolutely delight me.  I gravitate far more toward the Indian or Mexican philosophy of “more is better”, than say, the traditional Minnesotan protocol of “potatoes, meet butter.”  

Chris shrugs and exclaims that he doesn’t understand how people have a tendency to waste any herbs or desire less of them in a box.  “Fresh herbs should be used with abandon,”  he says.  If a recipe calls for two tablespoons of fresh oregano, throw a half cup in there; chop everything up and throw it in whatever you’re cooking.”  

If it’s dry herbs we’re talking, Chris says a person should be a bit more cautious.  Dried herbs have a higher concentration of flavor and a tinge of “sharpness” (we spent a few minutes debating about what this actually meant).  So if a recipe calls for a teaspoon of herbs, then the given instructions should be followed for the most part.  I refrained from mentioning that I dump in ⅛ cup or more of cumin into my stir fry though it may call for a tablespoon, but I digress.

He also shared how he dries his own herbs, which he says, “tastes far better than anything you’d buy at the grocery, because what you’re getting there is really old.”  His description of how to go about doing this was so Hemmingway-esque that I figured I had to try it out myself.  It’s a great summer task because you need your oven for a good chunk of time at a low temp, and who wants to use their oven for other hotter foods?  If you can throw it on a pan and turn on your oven your set.  You meanwhile can go on a run, take your kids to the park, or solve the global warming crisis.  

Here are Chris’ 6 simple steps on drying and preserving your very own herbs (with a few additions I added, finding them to be helpful)

1.  Turn on your oven to about 120 degrees (or really low low heat) - Chris turns on his convection fan, but I didn’t since I don’t have one.  
2.  Wash the herbs in a colander and pat or gently shake dry
3.  Spread the herbs in a single layer on a cookie sheet or similar tray.
4.  Place herbs in the oven and dry for 6-8 hours (though Chris says you really can’t over dry them).  I did this at night, and woke up to find lovely scent of dried oregano wafting through my kitchen!   
5.  Rub the dried leaves off the stems to separate out the woody pieces
6.  Store in a plastic bag or spice container
(fyi - here’s a cool pinterest link to storing your herbs)

As for Chris’ favorite, can’t-do-without-herbs?  Parsley and thyme, hands down.  He says he puts thyme in everything; pizza sauce, chicken, salads, and more!  Which, as it turns out, are exactly the two herbs I have growing in my little window box.  Thanks Chris!    

-Katie 

Easy Freezy

One of the most common trepidations about getting a CSA share is “wasting food”; that is, having too much in your box to have to make use of before it begins to decompose.  While it’s an understandable worry, there is no need to have anxiety!  We live in an anxious world enough as it is; Featherstone is here to help.  A few ideas that you may have already thought of are: sharing with a friend, co-worker or family member who would gratefully take any excess fresh spinach or tomatoes off your hands, canning and storing your overstock (more on this in a later blog post), or...drum roll please - freezing your goodies!!
 
Before images of long hours in the kitchen scamper through your mind and you head the other direction, consider myself - a woman with two young kids and a semi-frenetic life, confirming that it doesn’t take all that long.  Like any good meal, it just requires a little prep work (washing, chopping and preparing the water) and voila - your frozen produce is better than any you could buy both on a nutritional level and in cost.  This pizza you see is one I conjured up by thawing out some of the spinach I had frozen about a month ago and throwing it on some sauce and onions, topping it with fresh cream cheese.  Yum!  Totally worth the small effort, and very satisfying, knowing that I did it myself.  
 
I’ve used this source as a good one to show how to blanch greens specifically (i.e. chard, kale, spinach, collards, etc), and this source has a helpful chart showing preparation and blanch time for all the other vegetables you may be curious about.   You can go to the original site of the first link, or just read the instructions here below.  Let me know how your freezing adventures turn out!  
 
-Katie
 

Directions for Freezing Greens

Ingredients and Equipment

fresh greens - any quantity.  I figure one handful per serving. Vacuum food sealer or "ziploc" type freezer bags (the freezer bag version is heavier and protects better against freezer burn.

1 Large pot of boiling water 2 large bowls, one filled with cold water and ice. 1 sharp knife

Instructions

Step 1 - Pick or select the greens!

This is the most important step!  You need greens that are FRESH and crisp.  Limp, old greens will make nasty tasting frozen greens.  Select young, tender green leaves.

How many greens and where to get them

You can grow your own, pick your own, or buy them at the grocery store. About 14 pounds of greens makes 7 quart jars; or 9 pounds is needed per 9 pints. A bushel, which produces anywhere from 13 to 20 quarts, weighs 30 pounds. That works out to an average of 2 pounds of greens per finished quart jar.

Start with fresh greens - as fresh as you can get.

Step 2 - Wash the greens!

I'm sure you can figure out how to rinse the leaves in plain cold water.  I use a large bowl of cold water and a colander to let them drain.

Step 3 -Hull the greens

Cut off any woody stems. or damaged pieces

Step 4 - Get the pots  readyGet the pot of boiling water ready (about 2/3 filled) and a LARGE bowl with ice and cold water.

Step 5 - Blanch the greens.  All fruits and vegetables contain enzymes and bacteria that, over time, break down the destroy nutrients and change the color, flavor, and texture of food during frozen storage. greens requires a brief heat treatment, called blanching, in boiling water or steam, to destroy the enzymes before freezing. Blanching times for collards is 3 minutes and all other greens 2 minutes..

Begin counting the blanching time as soon as you place the greens in the boiling water. Cover the kettle and boil at a high temperature for the required length of time. You may use the same blanching water several times (up to 5). Be sure to add more hot water from the tap from time to time to keep the water level at the required height.

Step 6 - Cool the greensCool greens immediately in ice water. Drain the greens thoroughly (this shouldn't take more than a minute).

After vegetables are blanched, cool them quickly to prevent overcooking. Plunge the greens into a large quantity of ice-cold water (I keep adding more ice to it). A good rule of thumb: Cool for the same amount of time as the blanch step. For instance, if you blanch greens for 3 minutes, then cool in ice water for at least 3 minutes.

Drain thoroughly.  

Step 7 - Bag the greensI love the FoodSavers (see this page for more information) with their vacuum sealing!  I am not paid by them, but these things really work.  If you don't have one, ziploc bags work, too, but it is hard to get as much air out of the bags.  remove the air to prevent drying and freezer burn. TIP:  If you don't own a vacuum food sealer to freeze foods, place food in a Ziploc bags, zip the top shut but leave enough space to insert the tip of a soda straw. When straw is in place, remove air by sucking the air out.  To remove straw, press straw closed where inserted and finish pressing the bag closed as you remove straw.

Step 8 - Done!Pop them into the freezer, on the quick freeze shelf, if you have one!

 

Unpretentious Rhubarb - (and torte recipe!)

Here’s a fun trivia fact for you:  prior to 1947 rhubarb had been considered a vegetable, however in that year a New York court decided to categorize it as a fruit.  Why?  Tariffs for vegetables were higher than that of fruits, and since rhubarb was used in desserts and pies generally, they made the change using “regulations and duties” as a rationale.  Thus, imported rhubarb taxes were reduced, despite the fact that it is indeed in the vegetable family.  All pie makers are happy.  

Rhubarb has always remained a sort of mystery for me.  We’re not quite sure how to categorize it, the leaves are poisonous but you can eat the stalks, it shows no sign of pretentiousness except in spring, when your mother-in-law and next-door neighbor bring you armfuls of the stuff.  It seems to sing out there in the garden all by itself, “Yohoo!  I’m the first one here!”  Then there’s the sweetness factor: the only way it becomes accessible is through two cups of sugar.  What’s the deal with that?  One would think that nature might make herself more accommodating.  But perhaps it’s just rhubarb playing hard to get.

I, like many in my generation, did not grow up with fresh food from the garden by any means.  That said, my grandmother had a rhubarb patch just outside her two-story rambler, and this was my first exposure to the quirky crop.  Cooked with sugar and water until the sauce became thick and gooey, she would put it in pies and as a side to cottage cheese.  I recently just used it as a topping to a rice pudding dish I made for my own kids.  In some ways the pinkish plant is easy to forget about until spring rolls around and you realize how much you missed it the rest of the year.  

Musing on rhubarb, I can’t help but appreciate and tout the small organic farm my husband and kids and I worked on last summer.  In Finland, Minnesota, Round River Farm has a goal of finding and maintaining all 162 (yes, 162 - incredible, no?!) varieties of the plant so that it is accessible to future generations.  Rhubarb is a hearty crop, making it ideal for their far northern farm to thrive in and pass on its genetic information in an unadulterated environment.  Check out the whole program here.  And really, that’s what we all want in the end, right?  Unadulterated food, flavorful and whole.  Even if it has two cups of sugar.  So here’s to the lovely vegetable.  Um, I mean fruit.  
-Katie

And here is a scrumptious dessert recipe (of course) for a rhubarb torte, but you can righteously claim that you are increasing your vitamin C and dietary fiber intake, as rhubarb has both in abundance.  

Rhubarb Torte
1 C butter
2 C four
5 T powdered sugar
Mix and bake in a 9x13 pan at 325 degrees until light brown, about 15 min.

6 C rhubarb - chopped fine
6 egg yolks
1 C whipping cream
4 T flour
2.5 C sugar
dash of salt
Mix and pour over baked crust.  Bake at 325 for 1 hour

6 egg whites
1.5 C sugar
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
Whip egg whites until frothy.  Slowly add sugar and cream of tartar.  Beat until stiff peaks appear.  Pour over all.  Bake at 325 until eggs are set and golden in color.



      

A Happy Ending

No, it’s not Cinderella’s foot fitting in the slipper.  It’s not Sleeping Beauty waking from her Prince’s kiss.  It is however something akin to the tortoise finishing the race.  And Friday’s event was a beautiful finish line to a long, sluggish run.  

After the nearly catastrophic flood of 2007-2008, Jack Hedin began putting the pieces together:  large dramatic weather patterns equal climate change taking full force on our state, our nation, our world.  What it meant personally for Jack and Jenni was their farm nearly destroyed by this kind of weather.  As John Muir has wisely said, “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe”.  

As any person might rightly conclude, Jack assessed how he and his farm (his livelihood) could move toward a better solution, knowing that things needed to change.  Doing the math backwards as it were, climate change is intricately linked to energy use: burning fossil fuels, natural gas use, carbon - you know all this.  The operations on the farm required loads of these materials to be burned in order to run mechanisms from the massive cooler spaces to keep vegetables at the right temperature, run the tractors, keep the lights on in the office, and even yes, down to the ever critical coffee maker to keep people’s eyes open (farm work is endless).
Turning off half the cooler was not an option, nor was running only one of the ten tractors.

What was an option however was an ancient energy source that was older than fossil fuels, far cleaner, and to some extent: free.  It was accessing the sun that was the issue at hand.  Enter Sharann Watson - a long time shareholder and advocate of Featherstone.   By the force of her own energy to rally shareholders, community members and others, after long hours of grant writing, phone calls and the like, Featherstone farm was able to install a massive solar structure on the roof of one of its buildings.  These panels provide over sixty percent of the energy needed for the farm’s operations.  Goodbye coal, goodbye gas.  Hello new era.  

With the blood, sweat and tears behind us, we decided it was time to celebrate.  Friday, May 4th served that purpose with a gathering both to talk policy and have a party.  Congressman Tim Walz and his staff first joined us in the morning to tour the farm and meet us - those he represents - to discuss ways to expand the efforts of Sharann, Jack and the rest of the Featherstone team by creating our own energy in Minnesota and not using imported oil.  Alternative energy, accompanied by imagination and action can have incredible results in our state, as well as build our communities and employment rates.  Walz is behind all this, and inspired us with this vision.  

The party side of things was to thank our investors; the people who believed in big change and big vision.  They supported the farm and the solar installation from the beginning, and this was our opportunity to humbly give our appreciation in the form of spinach salad with caramelized pecans, deviled eggs, steamed asparagus, and freshly baked bread.   Good food goes a long way in saying thanks.  

So the tortoise has broken the tape across the finish line and, sweating and tired, come out a champion.  Now the question remains, what’s the next race?  

-Katie 

Featherstone again wishes to thank all of those who believed in a better future for us and contributed to this substantial project to make the farm a more sustainable place.  To see another article about the solar panels, visit a recent publication in The Mix by Jenni McHugh.