Nitty Gritty Dirt Farm CSA

Nitty Gritty News - December 2011

2011-12-09T14:42:00.001-06:00

Happy winter, holiday and solstice season to all of you from Nitty Gritty Dirt Farm.

We have had a pleasant time with the long fall getting pens ready for the animals, lights hung for the poultry, heated buckets set up for winter watering and round hay bales moved for feeding the sheep and putting up wood for the woodstove. The feeders are hung for the wild birds and Robin made a batch of suet, a mix of lard, peanut butter and bird seed for the woodpeckers and flickers and an occational cardinal.

It seems quiet at mealtime with just the two of us but before we know it, our first two interns will arrive in time for lambing and goat kidding. Soon after that, we will be pulling out the equipment for collection maple sap, and setting up the cooker to turn it into syrup. In the meantime, we are still milking one goat, Novel who is giving us a very rich quart of milk a day, just enough for milk on granola, in our coffee and Gigi's favorite - goat milk white russians.

The seed catalogs have begun to arrive with colorful pictures of mouth watering varieties. The fields are not completely covered in snow yet but we are hopeful for a deep snowfall over the next few months to help provide much needed moisture for next spring, (not to mention good cross country skiing).

We wish you joy in this holiday season in what ever way you celebrate. Blessings to you all.

Robin and Gigi

Below is the membership form for the 2012 season.

We are reducing the number of shares so sign up early.

Nitty Gritty News

2011-09-21T19:41:00.000-05:00

From The Farmers:

This is the last week of delivery for the 2011 season. Following the two killing frosts last week, we’ve been scrambling to pick and glean of all of the harvestable produce left in the fields. We were not sure until we began the final harvest if this would be the last share box or if there would be one more. We decided that if everything would fit in one final box, you would rather make one trip to pick up the last of the veggies than two. So you are getting one final generous storage share. The potatoes will keep for several weeks at cool room temperature, both kinds of onions are good winter keepers and will keep up to 6 months at cool, dry temperatures, and the squash should keep for several weeks to several months.

This whole season from start to finish has been a quirky one weather-wise. At the end of May we were still heating the greenhouses and by the first week of June the temperature shot up to 90 degrees. For most of July into August, the temperature remained extremely hot and humid. The first of September, we had a 90 degree Monday dropping to coats and hats by mid week. Just last week, we had two night of extreme cold – dipping down to 28 degrees overnight. We woke up to fields layered with frost and ice on the livestock water buckets. As the sun rose, the crisp frozen leaves sagged into a moist looking dark green, - sure sign that no more growth will be happening this year on any but the most cold hardy. And yet, as we come to the end of another year, we rejoice in the abundance the land has produced: spring salads to summer melons to fall squashes.

Coming to the end of the harvest and delivery season is bittersweet - we are ready for a slower schedule and sad about no more fresh food, no more visits with all of you, no more long days in the fields. Our summer interns are already sitting in college classrooms or increasing their hours at other jobs. The barn is (literally) full of hay to feed the livestock over the winter. The new Saanen buckling who will be our newest dairy goat herdsire will be arriving at our farm very soon and sex camp will begin shortly after. Our two Coopworth rams will begin courting our ewes on October 10. We plan to harvest one more batch of honey from our six bee hives, leaving 70 pounds of honey for each hive to feed them during the winter.

What we don’t look forward to is all the fall clean up: tearing out vines of melons and tomatoes, eggplant and peppers; pulling dirty, muddy plastic mulch and drip irrigation lines from the fields; disking down vegetation; fall plowing some of the fields to aid the break down of crop residue and hay mulch; changing out the canvas Quonset covers on the intern housing to poly tarps so they become winter storage; adding support to the big processing and packing hoop houses so they can withstand the weight of winter snow; putting equipment like buckets and hoses away in the reverse order that it will be needed next spring.

Loading hay is exhausting. (Actually, they were just waiting for the hay to arrive)

See you October 2^nd at the End of the Harvest Farm Festival. We’d like to thank you in person for being part of Nitty Gritty Dirt Farm this year.

Check out the right hand column for upcoming special events including Robin’s FIBER ARTS DAY on Saturday, September 24, Our END OF THE HARVEST FARM FESTIVAL – October 2; STARK WINE OPENING on October 1st, and opportunities for next years CSA shares.

What’s In Your END OF THE SEASON Share

Watermelon: Mickey Lee, Starlight, Sunshine, Picnic, New Orchid

Winter Squash: Delicata (long striped), Sweet Dumpling (heart shaped striped),

Butternut (beige dogbone), Cream of the Crop (cream acorn), Burgess

Butternut (green turban), Mooregold (orange turban), Blue Magic (mini

blue hubbard).

Onions: Red Zeppelin (red winter keeper), Copra (yellow winter keeper)

Potatoes: Red Norland (good keeper)

Turnips: Scarlet Queen Red Stems

Tomatoes: Paragon (red), Pink Beauty (pink), Orange Blossom (orange)

Sage: Common

Nitty Gritty News

2011-09-14T21:09:00.000-05:00

From the Farmers

With the weather forecast predicting widespread frost, we’ve spent the day hustling to bring in as much of the susceptible crops from the field as possible. The morning started in the potato patch where the challenge of finding the rows can be difficult. Then on to the melons which more than filled the trailer. Some of them will be in your boxes this week and some of them, we will try to hold until next week. After harvesting the bouquet of herbs and zinnias, Robin found a whole section of cucumbers, enough to get them into the shareholder boxes as well. The day ended in the tomato rows. A rainbow of colors filled the harvest buckets along the edge of the field. The buckets were loaded into the truck with the topper, so they will be protected from the possible overnight frost too.

The ewes were moved in to the one of the corn fields a couple of weeks ago. It looked then like they were wandering through a corn jungle. We could hardly see them as they pushed their way through the stalks. Now, that field looks cleaned out and they are becoming quite vocal about wanting to move on. Soon, we’ll move them again to another patch on the west side of the barn.

Yesterday, Robin and Gigi butchered the broiler chickens with the help of Robin’s daughter Katy. We have processed our own birds at the farm every year. This year, we decided to find another resource and found two. One was a shop in Little Falls who would do it for $2.50 a bird but we would have had to get them there on what turned out to be the hottest day this week. The second choice was someone who would come here, charge $50 for his travels and $3.50 a bird. Consequently, we decided to continue the tradition of doing it ourselves.

The neighboring farm fields of corn and soybeans are yellowing from the end of the season and from the lack of rain. The leaves on the trees aren’t turning yet but the DNR predicts brilliant colors this year. Hard to believe it was 90 degrees on this past Monday.

This has been a very interesting year for weather patterns.

This would be a good week to cook up a tomato sauce with lots of peppers and onions. Robin is planning some chili for tomorrow for lunch and will be canning some tomatoes this weekend. Tis the season…

Until Next Week…

What’s In Your Share:

Onions: Red Zeppelin

Potatoes: Red Norland

Watermelon: Sunshine (stripe – yellow), Starlight (stripe – red), New Orchid (stripe orange), Mickey Lee (pale green – pink), Picnic (green oblong – red)

Pepper Sweet: Carmen, Gypsy, Merlot, Lipstick and Sweet Chocolate

Pepper Hot: El Jefe Jalapeno, Serrano del Sol, Yellow Banana

Tomatoes: Paragon (red), Pink Beauty (pink), Taxi (yellow), Orange Blossom (orange),
Green Zebra (green), Tough Boy

Okra: Cajun Beauty

Herbs: Bouquet of Dill, Lime Basils, Thai Basil, Zinnea Garden flowers

Cucumbers: Raider, Sweet Slice and Diva

Swiss Chard: Fordhook Giant

Cilantro: Santo

2011-09-07T21:31:00.000-05:00

September 8, 2011

What’s in your share:

Onions: Sierra Blanca (white), Walla Walla (yellow), Red Zeppelin (red)

Potatoes: Yukon Gold

Watermelon: Sunshine (stripe - yellow), Starlight (stripe - red), New Orchid (stripe – orange), Mickey Lee (pale green - pink), Picnic (green oblong – red)

Pepper Sweet: Carmen, Gypsy, Islander

Pepper Hot: El Jefe Jalapeno, Serrano del Sol

Tomatoes: Paragon (red), Pink Beauty (pink), Taxi (yellow), Orange Blossom (orange),

Green Zebra (green), Austin’s Red and Beam’s Yellow Pear

Collards: Georgia

Okra: Cajun Beauty

Herbs: Bouquet of Dill, Sage, variety or Basils, Garden flowers

Surprises: cucumbers, summer squash, eggplant, cantaloupe, honeydew melon

From the Farmers………

What glorious weather! Starting this week, we have shifted our farm day to begin at 9:00am as it is so wet in the fields earlier. The goat still gets milked and other livestock fed at 8:30, but field work doesn’t begin until 9 – time to have another cup of coffee!

Even with the glorious weather and the continuing abundant harvest, it is a bittersweet time of year. Every week, our intern crew gets smaller as interns leave to return to college or go on to other ventures. This week, we bid goodbye and wish the best to Susie and Holly.

We had a couple of wonderful days at the Minnesota State Fair. Our excuses – if we really needed them – were that we took Holly to the airport on Friday morning and we figured as long as we were already in town, we’d go to the fair. We had a really good day eating and wandering through the Creative Activities building (getting ideas for knitting projects for winter), the Horticulture Building – especially the Mn. Winemakers wing, and the Dairy Goat barn. However, we realized that the majority of the Dairy goat show was not until Saturday, so we figured, what the heck, and we went back to the fair on Saturday so we could watch the Saanen Dairy goats being shown.

Our excuse for this is that we have been looking for a new herd sire for our growing Saanen dairy herd. We think we found the perfect herd and will soon be making a trip to just north of St. Cloud to look at a couple of potential buck kids. We will do this soon as we want to have our does give birth and begin producing milk by the first of March. This means we will need to breed them by October 1. Gestation for goats is 145 days. We are pretty excited about the small dairy we will be beginning next spring.

The farm really looks like fall. Just today, we pulled out all the summer squash plants that have completely quit producing, and ripped up the plastic mulch. On Monday and Tuesday, we harvested all the rest of the onions and spread them out on shelves all along the sides of one of the big hoop houses to cure. It’s a LOT of onions! The sweet corn is also done and soon we’ll be fencing the sheep into that part of the field to graze on whatever is left of the corn. They have been grazing on the Ambrosia and Sugar Buns fields and have eaten everything including the weeds!

Our pigs continue to enjoy eating a lot of cracked cantaloupe and honeydews and watermelons. We know why our pork is the sweetest tasting around! And our broiler chicks are huge, ready for the freezer. The year is winding down………….

Nitty Gritty Dirt

2011-09-01T03:37:00.001-05:00

From the Farmers

We are a farm of few words this week. So here’s what’s in your share this week and some pictures to enjoy.

Watermelon: one of the following Starlight (red), New Orchid (orange),

Sunshine (yellow), Picnic (solid green outside, red in), or Mickey Lee (deep pink)

Cucumbers: Raider, Fanfare, Sweet Slice, Diva

Potatoes: Yukon Gold

Onions: Sierra Blanca, Red Zeppelin, Walla Walla

Sweet Corn: Delectable

Swiss Chard: Fordhook Giant

Tomatoes: Taxi (yellow), Orange Blossom (orange), Pink Beauty, Red Pear

Sweet Peppers: Snapper (green bell) or Lipstick (red heart), Sweet Chocolate (brown), Carmen (long green or red)

Hot Peppers: El Jefe Jalapeno (fat green), Bulgarian Carrot, Hot Banana

Eggplant: Dancer (pink), Classic (purple), Galine (purple), Thai Green (long green),

Orient Charm (long pink), Orient Express (long purple), Kermit (round green)

Summer Squash: Sunburst, Cavelle, Slick Pick, Bennings Green Tint, President,

Cash Flow, Horn of Plenty

Herb Bouquet: Genovese Basil, Purple Basil, Dill, Lime Basil, Zinnea

Radishes: Pink Beauty

Carrots: Forto, Bolero

Until Next Week…..

Su Casa, a place for interns to spend their free time

1948 Ford 8N. Great for hauling trailer loads of melons

The Taj Ma Shower Hall with sink, composting toilet and landscaping..

The great Yukon potato dig

The choreographed Yukon potato dig

Our two new Corridale lambs, Orbit and Orion, good wool for spinning and felting

Odetta, the first of two Angora rabbits, more spinning material

The Nitty Gritty Dirt

2011-08-24T18:37:00.003-05:00

August 24, 2011

From the Farmers

It is watermelon season! We grow five different kinds of watermelons at the farm, hoping that all of them will be ready to harvest at about the same time. Three of the varieties, Sunshine, New Orchid, and Starlight are round with dark and light green stripes. They are all superb ice box melons, crisp and sweet, regardless of inside color. My personal favorite is the yellow Sunshine. Picnic and Mickey Lee are two old time varieties that have stood the test of time, sweet and tasty. We hope you enjoy getting your fill of watermelon these next couple of weeks.

The cantaloupes and honeydews are getting fewer and fewer. We’ll keep adding the last of these melons as long as we have them, but there won’t be enough for everyone so we will try to rotate which drop sites get them until there are no more.

Sweet Corn is back this week with Delectable, a wonderful, tender bi-color yellow and white sweet corn. And the tomatoes have begun to produce in earnest, with the Taxi’s and Orange Blossoms leading the harvest. Soon will follow big red Paragon’s, Pink Beauty’s, Green Zebras, and red and yellow pears. We’ve begun eating tomatoes with nearly every meal – including breakfast.

Gigi and Robin returned from the Boundary Waters Canoe Area late on Tuesday following five wonderful days on Seagull Lake with our dogs Bracken and Birch. We relaxed, ate great meals of farm food (bacon, eggs, veggies) drank homemade wine, read some, knit some, played games, paddled, swam, had craft night in the tent during the rain one night and came home renewed. While we were gone, our amazing interns took care of all the farm critters, built new doors for the greenhouses and the horse tack hoop house, put trim and new steps on the Su Casa (the intern kitchen/lounge building) and even kept us on track with our organic pest management by spraying the cabbage, cauliflower, and eggplants to keep away the potato bugs and cabbage loopers.

It was great getting back home at this abundant time of year and not feel any need to play catch up, but simply step back into the rhythm of a working farm. It is amazing however, how much the broiler chicks have grown in just five days!

Until next week………….

What’s In Your Share this Week

Watermelon: one of the following Starlight (red), New Orchid (orange),

Sunshine (yellow), Picnic (solid green outside, red in), or Mickey Lee (deep pink)

Cucumbers: Raider, Fanfare, Sweet Slice, Diva

Potatoes: Norland

Onions: Sierra Blanca

Sweet Corn: Delectable

Swiss Chard: Fordhook Giant

Tomatoes: Taxi (yellow), Orange Blossom (orange)

Sweet Peppers: Gypsy (yellow) or Snapper (green bell) or Lipstick (red heart),

Islander (purple) or Sweet Chocolate (brown)

Hot Peppers: Serrano del Sol (thin green), El Jefe Jalapeno (fat green)

Eggplant: Dancer (pink), Classic (purple), Galine (purple), Thai Green (long green),

Orient Charm (long pink), Orient Express (long purple), Kermit (round green)

Summer Squash: Sunburst, Cavelle, Slick Pick, Bennings Green Tint, President,

Cash Flow, Horn of Plenty

Herbs: Genovese Basil, Purple Basil, Sage, Dill

The Nitty Gritty Dirt

2011-08-17T21:11:00.001-05:00

Two things are really good this August: honey and melons. Honey and melons have a very close connection; it takes bees the makers of honey to fertilize melon vines to produce big and plentiful melons. Our bees seem to have been working like crazy this season so, on Monday, we took off three full shallow supers of honey, each about 60 pounds from our bee hives. We extracted (removing the honey from the frames)it on Tuesday, (see the pictures on this blog) and we have 33 quarts of beautiful golden honey to share at the farm. That’s lots of good eating!

If you come to the fall farm festival, you too will have an opportunity to share in some of the farm’s honey harvest. And because the bees are working so diligently, so too is the melon harvest a good one. It takes a lot of trips back and forth from each cantaloupe, honeydew or watermelon flower to pollinate it so that it will produce an outstanding melon.

This year, the melons are big and plentiful. Now if the weather will just stay warm and dry for a couple of weeks, the melons should be near perfect. The cantaloupes and honeydews are hitting their peak this week and next and the watermelons are just beginning to ripen. We’ve been enjoying a few of the early watermelons for midday refreshment at the farm.

A little painting, a little fencing, quite a bit of pulling up and rolling of reusable plastic mulch, and quite a few more jars of pickles made filled up our week. We are sad to say goodbye to intern Emily who leaves to go back to college. She will be making the delivery route on Thursday (Vincent, Homestead Pickin’ Parlor, and Midwest) and then catching a bus that will take her back to Indiana.

Gigi and Robin will be heading up north after packing up the share boxes and sending everyone off. We’ll be spending four days in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. Intern Holly will be taking care of the farm with help from Liz and several neighbors who will be stopping by to help out. We are really looking forward to paddling and camping and cooking our good farm food far from home.

Until next week………..

What’s in your share this week:

Honeydew (Diplomat) or Cantaloupe (Sarah’s Choice, Burpee Hybrid, Pulsar)

Summer Squash (Lita, Spineless Beauty, Sunburst, President, Cash Flow, Cavelli)

Carrots (Forto)

Beets (Red Ace, Merlin)

Cucumber (Raider, Diva)

Eggplant (Dancer, Galine, Thai Green, Orient Express, Classic)

Radish (Diakon – Summer Cross)

Peppers Sweet (Carmen, Islander, Gypsy)

Peppers Hot (El Jefe Jalapeno, Serrano Del Sol Serrano)

Onions (Sierra Blanca)

Tomato (Taxi yellow, Orange Blossom orange)

Basil (Lime, Thai)

Dill

The Nitty Gitty Dirt

2011-08-10T21:13:00.000-05:00

Smaller beets peeled and ready for canning

From the Farmers – August 11

It’s pickling night at Nitty Gritty Dirt Farm! Dilled Sandwich Stackers, Short Brined Dill Pickles, Bread & Butter Pickles, Pickled Beets, and Dilly Beans! We’re pickling all the beets too small or gopher bitten for shares, the final hurrah of the Green Beans and the Pickling Cukes planted especially for the farm interns and farmers. The smell of vinegar and garlic, and dill and onions permeates the whole house. We’ve set up the propane camp stove on the porch so we can have 4 big kettles cooking and processing all at the same time. This is the first big canning day at the farm, but hopefully there will be more as the tomatoes begin ripening.

We are so thankful for the beautiful weather. It is an absolute joy to work when the weather is perfect – even when the job is not fun – like pulling up cabbages and broccoli and tearing plastic mulch out of the fields. We’ve also been getting some fencing done – as soon as the early sweet corn (look for it in your share) is done, we’ll be moving the sheep into the field to clean up all the small ears and stalks. This is great way to clean up the field, put some weight on the ewes prior to fall breeding, and get a head start on putting up the winter pens for the sheep.

Speaking of sheep, with the fall like weather – these cool nights, we knew it was time to get the rams away from the ewes. Sheep are seasonal breeders (like deer and goats) and it is possible that with the abrupt drop in temperature, some ewes might begin cycling. A couple of years ago, we procrastinated too long to get the rams out and had a group of ewes lambing a full month before we planned. We are not doing that again!!! So today, after lunch, with our whole crew helping, we squeezed up the group, separated the rams, let the ewes back out to pasture, loaded the rams into the stock trailer and moved them up to the pen they will share with Nitro, our buck goat. Whew! That’s done! Now we can relax about that.

This year, we’ve been trying harder to clean up the fields as the crops are harvested and done. This way, all the cleanup does not fall on the interns and farmers who are still here in October. Emily’s last day is next Thursday (if you see her at your drop site, wish her well as she returns to college) and Holly will be leaving the first part of September returning to school at Carleton. Susie is also preparing for what’s next and interviewing out East for a couple chunks of time in August, sooooo .. we are trying to set our smaller fall crew up to enjoy the late summer part of our season instead of being overwhelmed with the cleanup after the crops are done.

Early this week, while Susie and Holly did some hedge trimming in an attempt to open up our weedy (yes they were mulched) onions to the sun, Liz and Emily ripped up the black plastic mulch left behind after the broccoli was pulled up and tossed to the sheep. Both kind of nasty jobs. We also had Sue, our faithful volunteer who comes to help every Wednesday, and Tim a former intern, back to help for a day this week. We so appreciate these volunteers who both help out with the work and make us all more enthusiastic about our work. We do love what we do, but sometimes after days of hot humid weather, dirty, dirty, dirty, and difficult work, we forget. It’s good to be reminded why we do this. And finally, thanks to everyone who attended our SUMMER ABUNDANCE FESTIVAL last Sunday. It was a great time! Please mark the first Sunday in October on your calendar – our END OF THE HARVEST and Final Festival of the Year. Until next week………..

What’s in your share

Onions – Walla Walla

Garlic

Potatoes – Yukon Gold / Norkotah Russet

Beets – Merlin / Red Ace

Sweet Corn – Yellow Sugar Buns / Bicolor Ambrosia

Summer Squash – Lita, Sunburst, Cashflow, President, Horn or Plenty

Cucumbers – Diva, Raider, Fanfare

Melons – Sarah’s Choice cantaloupe / Diplomat Honeydew (may not be in all shares)

Peppers Hot – El Jefe Jalapeno, Serrano Del Sol Serrano

Peppers Sweet – yellow Gypsy / ??

Radish – Summer Cross Diakon

Basil – Lime / Purple

The Nitty Gritty Dirt

2011-08-03T22:54:00.000-05:00

From the Farmer August 3^rd, 2011

It’s tough to work the farm when the power is out. It is hard enough getting soaking wet in the rain on Monday, tying up tomato plants or making a new goat fence with the humidity over 100%, but having no access to water (the well pump is electric) and not being able to cook (can’t open the fridge or freezers or wash veggies) or even get a drink of water is really hard. We called a rain day Monday afternoon and when the power went off and stayed off at 9:30 on Tuesday morning, we finally called the day, giving our interns another day off.. And while they did come back to finish the short section of fence in the evening, it certainly did not accomplish the long list of farm maintenance jobs that really need to be done. We finally got the power back on today – Wednesday – about 10:00 am. Thank goodness. We had begun to think about contingency plans for generators to power our farm freezers full of meat and veggies to hold us and our crew through the year.

The storm left us pretty intact. Lots of plants blown, animal hoop houses damaged and one of the goat igloo’s blown half way across the farm and smashed in the horse pasture. The broiler chicks took the worst of the wind and rain. With the western exposure of their pen, the wind and rain blasted into their pen saturating them to the skin. Of course as chickens do when scared or cold or wet, they piled up. As soon as the storm abated, I checked on them, and pulled the piled up chicks off one another. Only one dead, suffocated on the bottom. The rest, soaking wet, and very unhappy looking are now fine, eating and drinking as if nothing had happened.

Finally, beautiful weather today and we put in a long day of making a new fence for the laying hens, planting strawberries and the last of the flowers, seeding more turnips, radishes and cilantro, mowing the lawn, building a new hoop house for the sheep (their old one was smashed down in the storm), and harvesting the first half of your veggies for the shares this week. By the end of the day – the long day – we are all sweaty and tired.
And tomorrow starts really early – 5:30 am to get the rest of the veggies harvested and to unload the 200 bales of hay that will arrive at 8:00 am. We had expected the hay to arrive on Tuesday, but because of the rain, it was delayed. So now we have to add that to our busy harvest/delivery day. Such is the nature of farming and dealing with the weather.

Until next week …………..

What’s In Your Share

Basil – Thai and Genovese

Beets - Red Ace

Broccoli – Blue Wind, Bay Meadows, Packman

Garlic

Onion – Sierra Blanca, Mars

Potatoes – Norland

Radish – Summer Cross Daikon

Summer Squash – Cash Flow, Lita, President, Spineless Beauty,

Slick Pick, Horn of Plenty, Sunburst, Cavelli

Cucumbers - Raider, Diva, Northern Pickling, Minature White

Swiss Chard – Fordhook Giant

Sweet Peppers - Islander and Gypsy

Hot Peppers - Jalapeno, Yellow Banana

The Nitty Gritty Dirt

2011-07-27T20:54:00.002-05:00

Even if we did not already have our Midsummer Abundance Festival scheduled on the calendar for Sunday, August 6, we would know that we are in the midst of the abundant season. There are so many different veggies ready each day, it is hard to choose which ones to prepare for our midday farm “Thanksgiving Every Day” meal. And with each of our farm interns and Gigi and Robin taking turns cooking amazing meals, we really enjoy the plentitude of the farm at this time of year.

With cooler nights over this last week, we have somewhat recovered from the heat and humidity of the days. And yet, most days, by 10:30 in the morning we are all pared down to essential only clothing and sweating profusely. As we finished prepping our packing hoophouse this evening, the humidity feels like it is nearly 100%. The cool dip in the Sunrise River we took this afternoon has been nearly cancelled out by this humid evening. We need another dip, but with zucchini bread to bake, salad for tomorrow to make, the blog to write, and planning for a very early morning harvest, it isn’t going to happen.

On Monday, we pulled up all the bolted Bok Choi, filled a big pickup load and tossed the whole mess into the pig pen. Piggy Bok Choi heaven – rolling in it, mixing it with mud, eating tasty bites. The early peas stakes were pulled from the field, twines for trellising cut down and all the peas plowed under. Then the field was disked and dragged and sown to a cover crop mixture of rye, oats, field peas, buckwheat and clover – just in time for the heavy rains on Tuesday night.

With August just around the corner, we took a look at our farm calendar and realized that Emily will be heading back to college in just a few short weeks. Susie is planning a week to the east coast for a couple of exciting (farm-related) job interviews, Liz is thinking about working the Mn. State Fair for her other job and Holly will be back from Germany and still with us til the beginning of September. Even though we are really barely into the middle of our share season, August pushes us to think about what is next for each of us.

This week again, we harvested raspberries at Stark Wines as our part in our cooperation with them. Hot, humid, deer flies, but gorgeous, delicious raspberries and the promise of lots of Stark Raspberry Wine.

The tomato plants are setting a lot of fruit, the sweet corn silk is turning brown on the Sugar Buns early corn - the sign of corn that is filling in the ears and the corn plants themselves seems to be growing a couple of inches a day. The cantaloupes and watermelons are peeking out among the patchwork of vines almost completely covering the ground in their patch of the field, all indicators of how much more abundance there is to come.

Just this week we dried off (quit milking) two of the goats – Mezzo and Nimbus. We are making less cheese now but still making some cream for butter and maybe even some ice cream from the gallon a day of milk that we are still getting from Stormy.

The last of the lambs are going to market on Monday. And with August here, it is time to take the rams away from the ewes so that we don’t accidentally have baby lambs being born a month before we want them. Just this morning, Liz, Susie and Emily finished making a huge pig pen – opening the pigs up to a jungle of weeds and volunteer squash vines. They almost don’t know what to do with themselves in such space.

Remember – our MIDSUMMER FARM FESTIVAL – THE SUMMER ABUNDANCE FESTIVAL – is Sunday, August 7th from 3:00 pm to 5:00 pm. We will be cooking an amazing assortment of fresh farm veggies into stir fry to order, tapping our farm home brew (Belgian Tripel, Hefewiesen, and Robin’s Irritated) as well as pouring a few bottles of home vinted wine. We are also pretty sure there will be a performance of our Tuesday Night Jam Band as well as drumming and other music. Plan now to come see the farm – all the animals, the fields of plenty, see the farmers and interns who grow your food and see each other.

Until next week…

What's In Your Share

Basil – Genovese and Ararat

Beans - Derby

Beets - Merlin

Broccoli – Packman

Chinese Cabbage – The Blues

Cilantro – Santo

Garlic

Kohlrabi – Winner, Kolibri

Onion – Sierra Blanca

Potatoes – Norland

Radish – Summer Cross Daikon

Summer Squash – Cash Flow, Lita, President, Spineless Beauty,

Slick Pick, Horn of Plenty, Sunburst, Cavelli

Swiss Chard – Fordhook Giant

The Nitty Gritty Dirt

2011-07-20T21:51:00.009-05:00

Your Share this Week

Beans – Jade

Broccoli – Blue Wind, Packman

Potatoes – Norland

Onions – Sierra Blanca

Snap Peas – Cascadia

Kohlrabi – Winner, Kolibri

Radish – Rover

Beets – Red Ace

Chinese Cabbage – The Blues

Green Cabbage – Primax

Summer Squash – Cash Flow, Cavelli, Slick Pick,

Spineless Beauty, Sunburst, President

Cilantro – Santo

Basil – Genovese

What else is there to say? It is soooooooooooo hot. It is hot everywhere, but at the farm in the heat, the veggies keep growing, the weeds keep growing, the critters still need to be fed and watered and milked and it is sooooooo hot. Once again this week, we’ve been splitting up our day, working in the morning as much as we can, then taking off the afternoon and working again in the evening. Most afternoons, we head down to the Sunrise River for a swim and to sit in the rapids getting a water massage. It is still hot, but a little more bearable.

Last Thursday after most of us returned to the farm from delivering your veggies, we first watched the first half of the Harry Potter movie (from netflix) to prep ourselves and then we all went to the air conditioned comfort of the North Branch movie theater and saw the midnight movie. The movie theater has been one of the top choices for afternoon places for our interns to go to get cool after sweaty mornings and sweaty evenings.

The weather, like any year is a challenge for the growing of veggies. The cabbages that were looking so promising, have nearly all gotten some sun scald. This happens when it rains, the sun shines and the weather is hot. It makes the tops of the cabbages look like they have been poached, and then as the cabbage continues to grow, the inside of the cabbage has layers of dried – or sometimes not so dried – brown leaves. We are sending you cabbages this week knowing that many of them will have these layers of scalded leaves in them. The best way to use them is to cut the cabbage in half, take out the bad parts and use the rest. We’ve been enjoying a variety of slaws all week using all of the cabbage family- Chinese cabbage, green cabbage, kohlrabi, broccoli, turnips and radishes.

All of the rest of the bok choi has begun bolting. This cool season crop thinks it is too hot and has decided to make a jump start on blooming and producing seed. So no more bok choy – I know, I know, some of you are saying YIPPEE!!

Many of the earliest of the peppers are also showing some sun scald. Hopefully the weather is going to modify and the later peppers, eggplants and tomatoes will look good. The cantaloupe and watermelon plants look great with a lot of little melons peeking out of the vines. And the potatoes – well the potatoes look great and are producing like crazy!

One day old chick, the bird, not Liz

On Monday morning, sweating all the while, we made new enlarged pens for the adult sheep, the turkeys, and the teenage male chickens we call the Barracanas because they are a cross between Aracana and Barred Rock parents. Everyone seems quite happy in their new bigger pens and it is easier for us to keep enough water available for them. The Bourbon Red turkeys seem very happy in their forest of huge lambs quarters (a weed) as it gives them shade and food all at the same time.

Good thing we're farmers and not jugglers. But these were the perfect size to
give potato juggling a try.

Liz in front of her Yurt.
Small but homey

Emily and her Quonset

Susie's camper..luxury?

Holly's not home today.

Robin and Emily playing zucchini baseball.....The ball is a potato, the bat is a zucchini.
Don't worry. After the game, we put these two veggies in the pig pen, not in a share.

Nitty Gritty Dirt

2011-07-13T19:13:00.000-05:00

It’s been another great week at Nitty Gritty Dirt Farm. With cooler temperatures this week, it has been a joy to be farmers – even when the work is weeding, weeding, weeding! With last week’s heat, all those heat loving crops like tomatoes, melons and peppers and squash have taken a leap in growth and production. The zucchini that weren’t quite ready for harvest last week have exploded in size. There are a few caveman size clubs among the harvest as well as a few curved ones that could double for phones as Birgit demonstrated from the field. This would be a good week to mix up a few loaves of Zucchini bread.

Our laying hens and pigs have been delighting in the loads of weeds being dumped in their pens for them to scratch and dig through and eat and eventually compost. Those baby pigs we started with just a few weeks ago are getting bigger and bigger – definitely over 100 pounds each. Just a reminder – we do still have a few pork shares available. And the baby broiler chicks that arrived last week are already growing feathers and turning from cute fuzzy chicks into something that looks like they will be dinner someday. It is always amazing how fast everything from cabbage to chicks grows at the farm. Reminder – we also have broiler chicken shares available.

We attempt to keep weed growth in check here at the farm in a variety of ways – using hay mulch between rows, planting in plastic mulch, hoeing, tilling, hand-weeding – and mowing. This week, we’ve been catching up with the explosion in weed growth by mowing and mowing and mowing between veggie rows. It is hard work but extremely gratifying to see the rows of healthy tomatoes, basil and cabbage set off against the neatly mowed rows between them. We have also been doing some roto-tilling between rows of corn and beans. This is our least favorite technique as it pulverizes the soil and causes the organic matter to break down faster, but this year with all the rain and heat, we’ve resorted to tilling just to keep up. It is back-breaking jarring work, but the corn and beans look relieved to have the weed pressure removed.

Harvesting New Potatoes

One for shares, one for lunch, one for shares, one for lunch...

As I write, I’m looking out the front door of our house. The old rows of lettuce and greens are no more, most of their field area tilled. I’m imagining what that section of the field will look like in just a few weeks after we finish tilling, composting and replanting it to a variety of flowers – marigolds, cleome, celosia, asters, Echinacea….. The evolution of the farm is amazing and wonderful………

Until next week……….

What's In Your Share This Week

Snap Peas - Cascadia

Cilantro - Santo

Zucchini - Cash Flow, Slick Pick, Lita,

Cavelli, Sunburst, President

Radish - Rover

Bok Choi - Joi Choi

Onions - Walla Walla

Kohlrabi - Winner, Kolibri

Potatoes - Red Norland

Basil - Thai

Nitty Gritty Dirt

2011-07-06T22:44:00.000-05:00

July 7, 2011

It’s been a really hot week – this Independence Day week. With daily temperatures in the upper 80’s and 90’s and plenty of rain, most of the veggie crops are growing like crazy – and so are the weeds. We’ve been doing a lot of weeding over the last few days. It’s a lot of fussy, picky weeding of crops like carrots, dill, turnips and cilantro as well as weeding around every tomato, pepper and eggplant. This kind of weeding requires a lot of perseverance and good manual dexterity. It is also a pretty good job for really hot days as you get to move a little slower that with some other jobs.

We also took out the Husquavarna roto-tiller and Gigi has been tilling between the corn and bean rows with the tiller. With so much rain, we simply cannot stay ahead of the weeds and while tilling is one of our least favorite options for tillage, it does allow us to get those weeds chewed up and reincorporated into the soil. It is exciting to actually see the rows of corn and beans emerge from the lush forest of lambs quarters and pig weed.

Keeping fresh water in front of all our farm critters is a bit of a challenge in this heat. We have a five time a day routine of checking and filling water tubs for the goats and sheep, pigs and horses, chickens and turkeys. The pigs love turning their water trough over and making a mud slough in which they lounge away these hot afternoons.

50 new baby broiler chicks arrived at the Harris post office on Tuesday. As one person ran into town to pick them up, the rest of us got their new home ready – light, baby chick feeders, shavings on the floor and quart jar waterers filled with water mixed with a nutrient solution. All the interns who were not here yet when we hatched so many Barred Rock x Aracana chicks around Easter time, got to pick up the adorable yellow chicks and one at a time, dip their beaks in water and place them in their new home. It is hard to believe that in 8 weeks time, these tiny chicks will have grown into delicious meat.

This week veggie shares will be delivered in individual boxes. In the interest of saving the wear and tear on the boxes, we ask you to continue bringing your own bags or containers to take your veggies home.

The greens in your share this week will be a little more feisty in flavor that earlier in the season. We encourage you to lightly cook them rather than using them raw. Chop coarsely and braise in a tiny bit of water, then add just a bit of olive oil and some balsamic vinegar and cook them until the liquid disappears. Yum! We also think the Sugar Ann sugar snap peas will taste better this week lightly cooked in a stir fry rather than eating raw.

Until next week………….

What’s In your Share

Radish Red Rover

Lettuce Freckles, Cimarron, Salad Bowl

Greens Arugula, Mizuna, Green Wave mustard, Red Wave mustard

Peas Sugar Ann

Turnip Hakurei

Kohlrabi Winner

Bok Choi Joi Choi

Onions Walla Walla

Nitty Gritty Dirt

2011-06-29T22:45:00.001-05:00

Don't Forget Your Bags

It’s been another great week at Nitty Gritty Dirt Farm! So much field work accomplished, livestock moved, supers added to the bee hives, and still time for a little swimming and printing t-shirts! We really have a great crew that can work through whatever comes along – hot weather, escapee chickens, woodticks, colds….

On Monday, we sent another group of lambs to market, cutting down substantially on the number of baaing mouths to feed. It is always a little sad to see them go and a little relief to cut down on the chores. All the adult sheep are on the back corner of the farm grazing on a mixed legume and grass pasture secure in their new electronet pasture. The goats and lambs stay closer up to the buildings for safety. We enlarged the pig pen for the not-so-little pigs to get them some new ground to dig. It took them about ½ hour to dig up the 16 foot square addition. We will keep adding on and begin gradually moving them farther away from the barn.

All of our interns are getting quite proficient at milking the three Saanen does. Stormy is the biggest challenge as she both gives the most milk and she gets impatient if it takes a new milker too long according to her. Holly and Liz and Emily are all doing very well and we have had no new milk buckets kicked over.

We have been using our new cream separator (that we ordered on E-bay from the Ukraine) to separate the cream from the milk. We made one batch of ice cream that tastes great but lets us know that we probably need a new ice cream freezer. Our biggest success is making butter. We’ve made two batches – and it tastes wonderful! The separator has a special attachment for making butter that works great – you just need to have at least ½ gallon of cream to use it. This takes us two to three days – depending on how much milk we drink – to get enough milk for that much cream. We are all pretty excited.

One of our interns, Liz, who incidentally has an art degree created a design for t-shirts for our farm. Just tonight after we finished prepping the bok choi for tomorrow’s shares, we printed the first run of t-shirts for our crew. Last week everyone went thrift store shopping to purchase shirts to print. When you pick up your share tomorrow, and in the weeks ahead, you will be greeted by a farmer or intern wearing one of these original art print t-shirts. We are hoping that Liz will set up a little business printing them – because we know that many of you will want one for yourself.

What's In Your Share

In your share you will get the last of the Mei Qing Choi, a few more green onions, and a bag of Sugar Ann Snap Peas. You will also get a container of fresh picked strawberries from the TLC Berry Patch in Pine City. TLC is owned and operated by Robin’s son Lucas. The T is grandson Trent and C is Carey, soon to be Lucas’s spouse.

We hope you enjoy the strawberries and if you want more, you can stop by if you are on your way north to Wisconsin via Highway 70. We have plans for strawberry jam and strawberry smoothies.

Until next week.

Nitty Gritty Dirt

2011-06-22T20:22:00.000-05:00

Even though the rain kept us from weeding and hoeing and mulching, our intern crew did get the Sugar Ann peas twines up the stakes put in earlier. Sugar Ann sugar snap peas will grow about 4 feet tall and need twines to hold them up. As the vines grow, we will add more twines. This keeps the pods clean and makes picking the peas much easier when that time comes. The twining happened between rain showers which have been the frustrating story of our lives this week.

The potato plants are doing great. They seem to love the rain. They are well mulched so the weed growth is held to a minimum. In some of the other fields, we watch in frustration bordering on mild horror as the weeds grow and grow and grow with all the rain, taking over and becasue the fields are so wet, we can only watch and wait. We did enjoy our couple of days shelling dry Black Turtle beans from last year, making cheese and wine and and working on a variety of clean-up, fix it assorted projects. And, the weeds keep growing and and growing and we know we'll have a lot of weeding and hoeing once the soil dries out enough. One of the projects accomplished today between rains, was renovating the turkey hoop house - adding a first floor to the small hoop. Liz, our intern carpenter tackled the project making a wonderful house with a roost and a Dutch door! Our Bourbon Red Turkeys - hopefully our new breeding stock, seem very happy with their new raised roof.

Just this last week we also made new hoop houses for the Aurocks and the Barracanas (our Barred Rock X Aracana) chickens we hatched in our incubator. Karla built the new much larger hoop pens for the teenage chickens who had outgrown their smaller house. Robin tried to sex them and only move the hens into the new faciltiy leaving the cockerels in the old house. We're not so sure how good Robin's sexing skills are as we heard a suspicious rooster crowing noise coming from the all-female? house. Karla also began the second hoop house for the Aurocks - the second group of chicks we hatched and Emily and Holly finished the house with nettings tied in many places. All of the chickens seem to be enjoying their roomier accomodations. Robin mowed the grass today putting in many miles and hours while retracing her steps through the wet grass. It looks great around here.

The animals don't seem to mind the rain. They have shelter to get out of the rain, wind to keep the bugs at bay, and a lot of farmers who feed, water and care for them.

Our harvest buckets are all scrubbed out and ready for the harvest that will start tomorrow morning. Robin and Gigi and all of the interns and critters are praying for a little Thursday sunshine. It is so much more fun harvesting, processign and packing your shares when it is not raining! We look at weather predictions but trusting in any prediction beyond 48 hours seems to be less accurate than more. So we keep our raincoats handy, keep our eyes on the clouds searching for sun and continue to farm and harvest through whatever comes.

Until next week. Robin

What's in Your Share This Week

Mei Qing Choi Bok Choi

Green Onions

Salad Mix including:

lettuce

mustard greens

mizuna

kale

arugula

swiss chard

bulls blood beets

pea shoots

garlic scapes

2011-06-15T14:50:00.002-05:00

DROP SITE TIMES ARE LISTED BELOW ON THE DROP SITE LIST. Please email Gigi at nittygrittydirtfarm@gmail.com to confirm your drop site choice. Thanks!!!

It is finally time. YOUR FIRST SHARE WILL BE DELIVERED ON THURSDAY June 16th, THIS WEEK! As most of you realize, it has been an even crazier than usual spring for planting and growing. With colder and wetter than normal early spring and then a huge leap to hotter than normal weather, the early season crops like the lettuces, mustard greens, mizuna, and arugula are not happy. So there will be fewer varieties to offer early this season. However our fields are looking great with the promise of a great variety of veggies to come soon. The snap peas, potatoes, bok choi, broccoli, and more are looking great! We are excited about the bounty we expect this year. And we have a great farm crew able to put out an enormous amount of work. We hope you have an opportunity to meet Karla, Liz, Holly, Emily and Susie who are our full time interns. We have also been delighted to have Sam with us for a month and are very sorry to see him leave. Today is his last day before he goes on to his next stint working with Wiscorp maintaining Wisconsins trail system. Birgit and Sue also enliven our crew, volunteering one or two days each week. When you see one of our crew at the farm or drop site, please introduce yourself to these hard-working crew members.

Planting Basil

Using our new planting tool - three steps in one.

With nearly an inch of rain so far last night and today, we are happy, the plants are very happy and we’re spending the day getting a bit of this and some of that accomplished – all those odd jobs that get ignored in the need to get the bigger jobs accomplished. Some succession seeding, cleaning up flats and packs and organizing the greenhouses, fencing sheep and horses, making mozzarella cheese, transplanting parsley and sage, and all the normal farm animal chores are keeping us busy but feeling a bit more relaxed than most days. And Birgit is in the kitchen today preparing our communal noon meal. Today will be a German specialty – spaetzle and lentils with rhubarb compote for desert.

Pepper Plants

What a wonderful, soaking, much needed rain we’ve been enjoying last night and today! We watch the weather forecast closely and knowing that rain was reported for today, we’ve been planting and seeding and hoeing and weeding and mulching like crazy farmers the last two days. We’ve planted thousands of basil, kohlrabi, tomato, cantaloupe, watermelon and flower plants over the last couple of weeks. Our crew mulched more than two acres of peas and potatoes with several 600 pound bales of hay and we’ve hoes nearly 2 acres of sweet corn.

Until next week..... Robin

Hard working crew moving round hay bales used for mulch.

What's in your share this week.

D'avignon Radishes - long red and white

Rover Radishes - round red

Crunchy Royale Radishes

Mei Qing Choi - baby choi

Don't forget to BRING YOUR BAGS

The Nitty Gritty Dirt May 27th

2011-05-28T16:22:00.000-05:00

Yes Virginia, there are still shares available at Nitty Gritty Dirt Farm. When we first started, there were 17 CSA farms listed with Land Stewardship Project. A few years later there were 33. This year there are 60. It is a wonderful problem to have, so many farmers growing so much good food. What this means is that we could use your help getting the word out. "Like us" on facebook. Tell your friends to check it out and JOIN NOW!!!!!!

We are offering a Great Share and a Good Share, two sizes this year. We also have meat options available.

Our first share will go out on June 16th. Watch the blog for more updates.

Here are some pictures of what has been going on over the last few weeks at the farm....

Although it is impossible to tell, two of our interns are clothed in what they call their Oompa Loompa suits. (Ask someone who has seen the original Willy Wonka movie.) Liz and Elizabeth are checking the hives to make sure the queens have been freed from their little cage and successfully adopted by the colony.

This is some of the build up that was attached to the covers inside the hives. Amazing mathematical perfection. Those bees sure know how to construct.

The first things into the field each year are potatoes and onions. Robin is setting out small chunks of potatoes that were previously cut up and allowed to callus over before being planted. Next, she'll walk along the row pushing dirt over them with the sides of her shoes, and then walk on top of the row once to pack it down.

After a fortune spent on propane to heat the greenhouses, the days are nights are warm enough now to no longer need supplemental heat. The cabbages along with some others are the first to be transplanted into the field. Karla counted over 4000 transplants that were planted on Tuesday. Robin counted over 3000. We'll see who is the better math-a-magician.

This little two-wheeled wonder is a seeder. The seeds go into the red hopper and fall out one at a time as the seeder is rolled forward. We string out twine along the planned rows and keep the seeder on that line to try and keep the rows straight. It makes weeding and harvesting easier later on.

Karla is refilling the seeder with peas (I think)

These round bales of hay mulch were delivered just in time. Our crew of interns put the mulch down between the rows of onions.....25 rows of it. They did a great job, knowing that if it got done before any weeds grew in between the onion rows, we would have to weed them all before we mulched.

Nice job guys!

The Nitty Gritty Dirt

2011-04-23T13:03:00.000-05:00

We still have shares available. Tell your friends. Sign up now for the freshest food at a sustainable prices. The membership form is below.

flats of seedling under lights

Temporary seedling house

One of our sheds doubles as the seed house.

The front door was found by one of our interns

and gives a warm look to the plant lights glowing through the window. It also makes it easier to confirm that
the lights are still on in there.
Even on the coldest nights

the lights keep the room temp over 70.

There are five full racks with four shelves each, full of flats and tiny plants.

moving the flats for watering

Watering on the front step

Watering the flats

takes two people,

one to hand them out

and one set them down and water them.

The flats then get

handed back in

and replaced on

the shelves.

All of this

is done as quickly

as possible if

it is cold

outside

We will start the cole crops in the green house next week. They can handle the cooler nights better than the tomatoes and peppers, but we will still be heating the greenhouses overnight to make sure nothing freezes. There may be a few "sleepovers" in the greenhouse to make sure the temperatures are adequate.

Until next week....

Nitty Gritty Dirt March 23rd

2011-03-23T20:01:00.000-05:00

It's seems like yesterday that we were walking around muddy fields, tapping trees and hanging buckets to catch maple tree sap for this years' syrup. Wait a minute... it WAS yesterday or nearly. Today as most of you know, we are being dumped on by more March Snow. The farm is white again. The livestock are hunkered down in their shelters. The heated buckets for water are all plugged in again. March continues to live up to its reputation. With wind and travel advisories, we're staying put. Karla, our first intern to arrive for this season has been commuting back and forth a few days during the week. She turned back before getting to Forest Lake this morning after crawling no faster than 25 mph and stopping to clean the ice off her windshield wipers.

Robin collected about 8 gallons of sap from the buckets hanging on the maples in the yard, and is using it to brew some batches of Maple Oatmeal Stout and Maple Amber Ale using maple sap instead of water. She did it last year and it was superb. Robin shoveled nearly a foot of snow out the walk way from the house to the barn and shortly after morning chores it was almost as if she had never shoveled - the blowing snow filled in all of our tracks. It looked like we haven't been out there at all. We spent the day catching up on inside activities like brewing, baking bread and researching rather obscure topics like raising tilapia and how to use a cream separator.

There's a hole in the bucket dear Robin dear Robin.......

We use buckets from the Acadia Cafe (NGDF shareholder) to collect the sap in. We drill a 1" hole just under the top rings. This is just right to hang the bucket on the metal spiles drilled and tapped into the trees. We smap on a lid and run a baler twine under the handle and around the tree to keep it from blowing off in the wind.

Karla and Robin ready for some tapping action......

Robin has the twine and the battery powered drill, Karla has the buckets and taps. They'll start on the trees in the yard and eventually tap the trees that border of our farm. Our neighbor lets us tap those trees each year.

Which way does this thing go again?

The 7/16" hole is drilled on the side of the tree that is exposed to the south and east. A good run requires days above freezing and nights below freezing.

Karla records Robin's hole drilling skills......

Two years ago with fewer taps, we collected over 400 gallons of sap. Last year, the run was shorter but we still collected nearly 200 gallons. When the trees begin to bud we will pull the spiles, but with 46 taps in the trees, we should have plenty. It takes 40 gallons of sap to cook down into 1 gallon of syrup.

Tap Tap Tap.... I guess that's why they call them taps.

The spile has a fin-like shape. We place the hole in the bucket over the spile and it holds there. We snap on covers so the bugs and squirrels don't take a swim. Then we tie them on with twine for wind insurance.

The tap (or spile) ready for the next step, hanging the buckets...

In some of the trees, the sap was already running and it started to drip out of the spile right away. That was true of this tree as well but my photo timing was off so I never caught the mid-drip picture.

As the sap run progresses, we check the buckets in the yard first. If there is a lot of sap in those buckets, we know to go and collect next door as well. Soon, we'll be getting the sap cooking stove our of storage, setting it up and begin cooking sap down into syrup. Forty gallons of sap cooks down to one gallon of syrup and we can cook about 60 gallons of sap in a day - more if we put in a really long day. Stay tuned for more pictures

Nitty Gritty Dirt March 11, 2011

2011-03-12T19:09:00.000-06:00

Robin read through last years farm lists. By the first week in March of 2010, we were tapping trees, and had completed the sap cooking by March 28th. As we look out today at more snow still falling on the fields, it's hard to know what this years schedule will be. The farm calendar has a life of its own.
The temperature prediction for next week includes days in the 40s. And while we would love to believe weather predictions and are hopeful that they are accurate, we don't count on it. Yesterday we were slogging through the mud in front of the pole barn. Today, we're skating over frozen sections of the same area.

Whatever the weather brings, we are moving forward into a Spring we know will come. We are planning and prepping for the bees arrival in mid April, assembling new supers and frames, painting and repairing the older hive boxes. Lambing and goat kidding have begun inspite of cold temperatures and so far we have 7 goat kids and 16 lambs. Bottle feeding a few of them happens at least once a day when a ewe has trouble keeping up. This year, that has only been necessary with three of them, but we still have five more ewes who haven't lambed yet. One of the goat kids got chilled and couldn't warm back up so we brought her in the house for a while. A warm towel and the woodstove healed her chills and after 4 ounces of goats milk from a bottle (and peeing on the carpet), she was ready to go back out to her mom and her sibling. She is doing great.

Farm life is a regular reminder that everything changes, sometimes from minute to minute. This is a miraculous time of year. Robin has been raising sheep for over 20 years and she says she never gets tired of it, especially lambing.

Our new intern Karla Pankow arrived from Michigan, bringing refreshing energy and enthusiasm to her first day on Friday. She had a good first day. She saw a lamb being born, helped gather up some dry beans stored in the greenhouse, and solved some technical issues on our farm facebook page. She'll be helping out on the farm on a part time basis to begin with and soon be full time. We're thrilled that she's here.

Our first Spring Fever Farm Fest for Nitty Gritty Dirt Farm will be Sunday, March 13th at the Acadia Cafe from 2:00 to 4:00. We'll be having another similar event in the Maple Grove area and possibly one in Cambridge. Watch for details here on the blog, and on our facebook page.

Until next week...

Robin and Gigi

Nitty Gritty News February 3rd

2011-02-03T16:06:00.014-06:00

From the Farmers ….. February 3, 2011

I have been working on the seed order all afternoon today. Except for periodically getting up to put another log on the fire in the woodstove, I’ve spent the whole afternoon pouring over seed catalogues trying to determine exactly what seeds and amounts to purchase for this year. Looking at the luscious pictures in the catalogues, remembering what grew well last year (and the year before and the year before, etc. etc.) and what people liked or didn’t like as much, helps me decide what to grow and how much. Every year, it gets a little easier to know how much seed to buy without buying too much. As I select what varieties we will grow this year, my criteria are: 1) Varieties that taste good, 2) An assortment of colors (like pink eggplant, white squash, black peppers, rainbow carrots), 3) Varieties that grow especially well in our kind of soil and climate 4) Varieties that I think our shareholders – you- will enjoy – or learn to enjoy, 5) Several new varieties to try on a trial basis and 6) I do not order varieties that didn’t perform well for at least two years or we just didn’t like and 7) Varieties that simply appeal to me.

Soon the seeds will begin arriving and we will set up our first early germination rack with fluorescent lights in our home office and begin sowing the first early seeds – like the pyrethrum herb (we grow as a natural insecticide) that grows slowly and must be started very early in order to be big enough to do it’s job in the fields of keeping away those nasty squash bugs

Though the temperature went up to the mid twenties today and the sun shone so bright it turned all the snow blue reflecting the sky, with the wind blowing hard, it was still very cold carrying buckets of water to all the farm critters for their mid-day refill. All the farm animals were outside enjoying the sun, even the cows that seem to stay inside their shelter except when they are eating their daily grain and hay rations. The sheep seem to feel the cold the least as they have very thick wooly coats.

Another bale of hay from the barn.

Is that for me?

It's for all of you.

As the sheep belly up to the snow trench hay feeder every morning, I have been noticing that it takes a lot more length of feeder to accommodate all of their wide bellies. We have some very pregnant looking ewes among the group – though I am fairly sure that all of the ewes are bred. Our wool shearer will be coming to shear all the wool off of them in late February as we begin getting ready for the first lambs to be born in early March. Yes it is cold for them with no wool – and that is one of the reasons why we shear before shearing. If the ewes still have their thick wooly coats, they don’t think twice about birthing their babies in a snow bank; but if their wool is gone, they want to come into the nicely straw-bedded barn to give birth. Without their wool, they also need to eat more, and that is a good thing at the end of their pregnancy. It is also easier for me to see what their condition (how fat or thin) is without the wool hiding it – and when the lambs are born, they don’t have to find their way through a lot of long dirty wool to find mom’s milk.

Fill it up please

Our four dairy goats are hopefully also all bred. They have the same gestation period as the sheep and should also give birth the first week in March. We are quite excited about milking goats again. Well maybe not so much the actual milking the goats – but excited about having fresh goat milk to drink again. We have been purchasing store milk to drink for the last three months and it is just not as good.

Rocky

Our laying hens have been laying well all winter. On the really cold days, even though we try to collect the eggs periodically throughout the day, we’ve had a few eggs freeze before we could collect them. Our newest laying hens, the Aracana’s are all laying now – beautiful greenish-blue eggs which look lovely in the carton with the big brown eggs of our older Black Star chickens. We decided to keep a rooster this year and Rocky the Barred Rock has grown up to be quite majestic, yet very gentle.

We have been enjoying this real Minnesota winter with so much snow. Our neighbor Rick has a snowplow and has kept our driveway and yard scraped of snow. We’ve been doing a lot of shoveling keeping the paths open to all the animal pens and the sauna. We find it quite delightful walking on those nicely shoveled paths through the beautiful deep snow. We hope to continue to make time for skiing and snowshoeing even as the inevitable spring keeps letting us know it is right around the corner.

Until the next time………..
Robin

Nitty Gritty Farm News December 21st 2010

2010-12-21T19:15:00.011-06:00

Happy Holidays from Nitty Gritty Dirt Farm on this shortest day of the year.

We have been enjoying having a “real” winter this year with piles of snow all around the farm. It does make doing farm chores more difficult, but it is so beautiful. This fall we reinforced all of our hoop houses with inside bracing and a good thing we did as the first and second snow falls would have collapsed the houses if not for the bracing.
The last of the summer livestock – the pigs – finally went to the butcher the second week of December, so now we are completely pared down to our winter livestock.

Reba and Mac, the cow and calf have a triangle of neat little paths from their hoop house to the hay feeder to the water bucket.

The goats all poke their heads out of their poly yurt and only venture onto their paths when the grain and hay make an appearance morning and evening.

The sheep seem not to care one way or another about the weather, as long as the corn and hay continue to fill the feeders every morning. The chickens have pretty much holed up in their coops, the older Black Stars laying fewer eggs in their third year and the new Auracanas increasing their numbers of beautiful blue eggs as they all begin to lay.

We added a new critter this fall – a beautiful palomino Quarter horse for Robin. Her name is Tess and we already love her.

With electric water buckets and tank heaters for all the critters, our chores only involve carrying water buckets to fill tanks but no chopping ice. And with all of the livestock winter pens in a row, chores are quite easy – even after another big snowfall.

The seed catalogues have begun to arrive and dreams of lush tomatoes and carrots and broccoli dance through our heads. We have also already hired our first two full time summer interns – so we are excited about the 2011 season.

If you are looking for last minute Christmas gifts – what about the gift of a CSA share? We’d love to help you out with that gift – just let us know.

Take care, enjoy the snow, stay warm, dream of fresh veggies and Happy Holidays.
Robin and Gigi

Nitty Gritty Farm News September 29th

2010-09-29T23:43:00.004-05:00

From the Farmers

Our END OF THE HARVEST FESTIVAL is this Sunday, October 3 from 2:30 to 5:00 pm. This final festival celebrates the end of our CSA season.
We had our first hard frost – 29.7 degrees on Saturday night, and that marks the end of most of the veggies. So this week will be your last share box. You are getting two weeks worth in one box in this final share(and one trip to pick it up). We think these veggies will keep well enough for you to get them all at once instead of spreading them over the next two weeks. Thank you all for being a part of Nitty Gritty Dirt Farm this season. We have loved being your farmers this year in spite of it being a trying season of soooooooooooooo much rain.

At the farm this week, we’ve been working at tearing out the melon and basil plants and then tearing out the plastic mulch through which they’ve been growing all season. The plants go into the pickup to be hauled to a big compost pile on the back of the farm, the plastic gets wrapped in bundles to go to the solid waste and recycling center, and the last few watermelons go to the appreciative pigs. We’ve been trying to do a few rows every week rather than waiting and cleaning it all up at once. It is a hard, dirty job with none of the excitement of hard, dirty jobs in the spring. So far the bok choi, cabbage, tomato and melon rows are all done and those parts of the fields are disked over. We still have all the squash, peppers, eggplant and flower rows to clean up.

We’ve moved the sheep ewes in their electronet fence again, getting them one step closer to their final move in with the rams for breeding. Next week we will be dividing them into two groups – one to be bred to Lazarus and one group to be bred to Jedediah. We’ve begun feeding them shelled corn – called flushing – to get them gaining weight – the eventual goal of this is that gaining weight at breeding time results in a higher percentage of twins and triplets, rather than single lambs being born.

Gigi delivered three goat wether (castrated males) kids to the livestock auction. We’ve kept one that we’ll turn into sausage soon. We also have a new animal visitor at the farm. His name is Diablo and he is a purebred Toggenburg goat buck. He is here for a month long stay with our group of three adult does and three doe kids for what last year's interns called sex camp. Diablo may have an impressive pedigree, but he also has an impressive stink! I remember now why we don’t keep our own buck.

Now that most of the crops are done, we‘ve been letting our Black Star chickens roam. They love it – scratching through the goat and lamb pens and the perennial gardens around the house. All summer they must stay penned up and have their weeds and veggies delivered to them, so they don’t peck up the field crops. It is delightful to see them having such a great time free ranging.

We look forward to seeing you on Sunday at the Festival. We’ll be playing our annual FARM GAMES, serving you a variety of soups featuring farm products along with fresh baked breads, home brew beer and wine. Depending on the weather there will be hayrides and outdoor music.

This is also the time to sign up for next year. We are taking reservations (and $$$) for CSA share memberships. If you sign up and pay now, you can get your 2011 share at 2010 prices. (See the sidebar for more information.)

See you at the festival on Sunday…………Or until next season…………..

What’s In Your Share This Week

Squash – assortment of squash and pumpkins
Carrots – Cosmic purple and Scarlet Nantes
Onions – Mars (red) and Sierra Blanca (white)
Kale
Swiss Chard
Radishes – Crunchy Royale
Arugula
Herbs - Thyme and Sage
Hot Peppers - Newmex Joe E Parker, jalapenos and serranos

Nitty Gritty Farm News September 22nd

2010-09-22T18:20:00.008-05:00

From the Farmers…..

The Nitty Gritty Dirt Farm 2010 Fall Festival is coming up soon - Sunday October 3rd from 2:30 to 5:00. This is the last farm festival for this year. If you haven’t been to the farm yet, or if you have, we encourage you to join us for farm games, music, good food, a variety of home brews and home crafted wine and possibly home brewed root beer. You can meet Reba and her new calf Macintyre as well as meet the goats, sheep, pigs and chickens. We’ll celebrate the season together, come rain or shine. If it rains – surprise, surprise – dress warmly in rain wear. Let us know how many folks are coming so we can plan for the food. And, if you decide to come at the last minute, that’s fine too.

The birch trees outside the front door have started to turn from green to gold. The finches, nuthatches and chickadees are singing outside the windows waiting for us to start filling the feeders again. The barn is full of hay. Those 95 degree days seem like a distant memory (even though the last one was just a few weeks ago). Each morning, the interns begin the day dressed in winter garb, wool hats, warm socks, and long pants, and slowly shed their layers as the work day and temperatures progress. If one of them starts the day in shorts, it usually means that they haven’t done their laundry.

Fall field work is usually muddy and cold. On Monday, Robin and Laura pulled up the black/white plastic mulch we use between all the small row crops like carrots, chard, kale, and radishes. Within an hour both of them were covered with mud and their gloves had holes in the fingers from pulling up the rusted metal staples that hold down the plastic. In the afternoon, Laura began pulling tomato plants away from the black plastic mulch that is used for weed control and to warm the soil. And today the interns finished pulling up all the plastic mulch and drip irrigation lines we never even used. It is dirty work, but it is easier to do it now that when it gets colder. With such a good crew, we have been able to begin some of the fall clean-up work done ahead of schedule.

On Tuesday, we moved the sheep ewes to a new section of pasture, inside their electro-net fencing. It’s a little nerve-racking as we unplug the fencer and move it a section at a time with all of us pulling and replacing the step-in posts, until we have moved the whole fence and the sheep onto fresh pasture. We’ve been moving them around the seeded oats and turnip field for several weeks now. We’ll move them again in a week, and then it is time to split them into two groups for breeding. We’ll put one group in with Jedediah, our 4-year-old ram, and the other group with Lazarus, our 2-year-old ram. All of the lambs from last spring have been shipped except for five lambs to keep that Robin chose based on their lineage, their fleeces and their growth. Those five will join the older ewes soon as well to be bred to lamb next March.

We have decided to keep three goats this year, (at least for now). Stormy and her daughter Nimbus, and Mezzo. We will be breeding all of them in October as well. We like to have the goats giving birth the same time as the sheep so if we have triplet lambs or a ewe has problems the high producing goats are likely to have extra milk to feed to the lambs.

The five (now big) pigs will be with us until mid- November and the turkeys will be here until mid October or when we schedule a butchering date. They are getting pretty big and looking a lot like Thanksgiving. Our livestock chores keep getting easier and easier.

After moving livestock, we began gathering all the rest of the winter squash. This task soon became more of a farm sport than merely farm work. As Gigi slowly pulled the wagon through the field, everyone else took turns either throwing squash from the piles we’d already made in the field or catching them on the wagon. We quickly discovered the best position for each player. Dale is a good thrower and has good follow through. Robin did a good job fielding his throws and her long arms made it easier to retrieve any wild pitches. Laura has a nice lob to her throws and Stephanie played a great hockey goalie using her whole body to stop the flying squashes. Kristin used her t-shirt to pile full of the squashes closest to the wagon and then ducked as she emptied them on to the wagon to avoid the ball game going on overhead. Gigi played it safe and stayed on the tractor.

Rain was predicted for today. (What a surprise) But it never came. The clouds rolled through and the sun shown between the clouds but the rain didn’t fall. So sorting squash, harvesting carrots and cabbage and peppers was much more pleasant in the dry weather.

We are anticipating that our last share of veggies will be on October 7th. If anything changes, we will post it on the blog. We listen regularly to the Nation Weather Service to find out if frost is expected. The temperatures have dipped down to 38 overnight but not lower than that so far. When we do get a heavy frost warning, we spend all night if necessary, harvesting everything that can’t handle such low temperatures. Some years, we cover parts of the field with tarps and quilts to protect the plants. It works but with the scale of our rows it isn’t very practical. This year, I think we will have mostly everything out of the fields before that final hard freeze.

The radishes and greens we seeded a few weeks ago are looking great. We hope you enjoy the spring-like crispy radishes this week.

Until next week……………………..Gigi and Robin

What's In Your Share
Onions - Mars (red) Sierra Blanca (white)
Cabbage - Tendersweet
Winter Squash
- Cream of the crop (white acorn)
- Small Wonder (round gold spaghetti)
- Delicata (long green/beige striped)
Gourds - Small assorted (decorative, non-edible)
Peppers - Sweet: Carmen and/or Lipstick and/or Gypsy
Hot: Conchos (jalapeno)
Carrots - Dragon (purple Kuroda short/wide)
Radish - Rover (red)
Herbs - Sage, Lemon Balm

2010-09-15T14:23:00.017-05:00

From the Farmer (Gigi this week)

I can’t remember a summer with so much rain in my 52 summers. I went outside to get some pictures of the harvest and found Robin and Kristin cleaning the carrots. It was hard to tell who was more soaked, the carrots or the people. The remainder of the crew was still out at the end of the row harvesting the rest carrots in the thunder and the mud. It is disheartening. It’s hard on the produce, it’s hard on the crew and it’s hard on Robin, the farm manager, who understands the most about the effect the rain has on the farm.

The animals are all huddled together in their shelters and seeming quite calm. I suppose they have gotten used to these stormy days. Agate, our youngest cat, usually stays out all day and half the night wandering the farm, but today even she is staying inside. Reba and her calf are laying out in the rain, probably enjoying the absence of flies on their backs.

Each season has its idiosyncrasies. This year the rain seems to be constant. One year we went without rain from the beginning of July until mid August, over six weeks. One year we had a million melons and we had no onions at all. One year when the tomato horn worms had to be picked off of the tomato plants every day, the squash plants were flourishing. The following year the horn worms did not return but the squash bugs destroyed nearly all of the squash plants. It is an ever changing adventure.

Our crew has spent quite a bit of time on the tomatoes this year. We did everything right, starting the plants from seedlings, transplanting into black plastic mulch in the field, carefully staking and running twine between the stakes as the plants grew. It looked like a seed catalog cover photo. But there will always be conditions we cannot control, and much of our good work on the tomato plants this year was lost to blight and sun scald caused by rain. You have gotten some tomatoes in your shares, just not as many as we would have liked. We canned many of the seconds and invited anyone who wanted to, (via the blog), to come up and pick the seconds for their processing. Some folks took us up on it and went home with buckets full. The bad parts of the tomatoes had to be cut away, but after that, there was still enough for some good sauces and salsas.

So, when an invitation like that comes up on the blog and if you’re interested, you should try to take us up on it as soon as possible. We do not charge you anything for the extra produce. It’s just a part of your share of the farm and sometimes we’ll even help you pick. This is one of the ways that we redeem a bad crop, by taking the “bad” produce and putting it up for the winter. That is why we have canned so much tomato sauce, tomato juice and cans and cans of carrots, etc.

Well, the crew is now inside the house, dripping dry and drinking hot tea. We’re hoping for a dryer day tomorrow to finish the harvest and pack up your shares.

Until next week…. Gigi

What’s In Your Share

Pie Pumpkin - Baby Pam or New England Sugar Pie [Winter squash will normally hold for quite a while but
with all of the rain, it will probably develop soft spots. Plan to use your squash soon.]
Carrots – Scarlet Nantes
Winter Squash – Sweet Dumpling (beige with green stripes)
Egg Plant - [The egg plants are mostly small to baby in size this week in anticipation of possible frost this
weekend] Any of the following - Dancer, Galine, Kermit, Orient Express, Orient Charm, or
Thai Green
Onions – Mars (red)
Peppers Sweet– Any of the following – Lipstick (red/green) or Islander (purple bell) or Snapper (green bell)
or Gypsy (yellow).
Peppers Hot – Newmex Joe E. Parker (mild, long green) Serrano del Sol (hot, short thin green), Conchos
(short blunt green jalapeno)
Beans – Eureka yellow [an unexpected resurrection crop. They came back after being mowed down]
Herbs – Basil (green Genovese), Marjoram – Zaatar,
Flowers – Our plan has been to give a big bouquet of flowers this week. With the rain, we’re not sure they’ll
hold up. Hopefully…

2010-09-08T22:43:00.009-05:00

intern blog writers

From the interns:

Oooh, how exciting! We’ve never had hold of these blog-writing reins.

Joyous cool weather is upon us. Our sandals have stayed in our Quonsets and yurts these past few weeks as rubber boots have happily replaced them. Our rabbits are lonely today as they have lost their feathered hoop-mates; however, our frozen corn, broccoli, and peas have found new freezer-mates. We butchered our last 51 broiler chickens today. We always appreciate the circle of life, caring and feeding animals that will eventually nourish us, especially during lunch today! Our mid-day meal was exceptional, which isn’t anything new. Twas the day of Robin’s birth today and ‘twas Gigi’s day of birth on Sunday. Thus, we feasted. We had Nitty Gritty Chardonnay in wine glasses, squash, mashed potatoes, fresh chicken with Dale’s Creole rub, and carrot birthday cake; it feels like Thanksgiving every day on the farm.

It seems like every Monday when we come back to the farm, everything has changed. The broom corn has been bent down, the turkeys are dinosaurs, and the ewes are always in a new Electronet fenced pasture so we can’t ever find them (until we listen). There are also things that happen that we don’t witness. There is new watermelon wine, 86,000 new jars of tomato sauce, and pig tales. Adrienne and her almost 1 year old darling daughter Magnolia Rose farm-sat this weekend so Gigi and Robin could come and go as they pleased. They had a “vacation at the farm”. Adrienne, therefore, had a bit of an adrenaline rush in the morning to find pigs in the barn instead of in their pen just outside the barn.
Who, Us?

We interns were aware of how adventuresome our little pigs were two weeks ago when they got out of their pen and had a night out on the farm, but when we arrived this week we noticed a strange smell in the barn. We found out that they had somehow broken the latch on the Dutch-door and gotten into the barn. Thankfully, we had just organized the barn to fill it with new hay, so they didn’t have much room to play.

Anyway, vegetables, that’s what we’re supposed to tell you about. The squash are intermingling with the Brussels sprouts and the kale and evidently can travel long distances into other vegetables’ rows. The watermelons are now done, as are our backs from carrying your hefty boxes. We hope you thoroughly enjoyed them over Labor Day weekend.

We have also bid farewell to our tomato plants. They are rapidly becoming part of the beautiful healthy soil of Nitty Gritty Farm. Speaking of those 86,000 jars of new tomato sauce, yesterday, we shuffled, shelved, and shifted them all in the crawl-space. Note to future home-builders… MAKE YOUR BASEMENT EIGHT FEET, NOT FOUR FEET TALL. The food preserved in the basement helps us to feel confident that Gigi and Robin will not starve throughout the winter, nor will their interns starve next spring. We’re not sure how long this blog-thing is supposed to be, so enjoy your beautiful, organic, home-loved vegetables (and chicken!). Until next week…

Laura and Stephanie

What’s in your Share?
Winter Squash – Small Wonder Spaghetti Squash (orange round)
Peppers – Sweet: Gypsy (yellow), Sweet Chocolate (brown), Lipstick or Carmen (long red or green)
Hot: Aji Cristal (HOT yellow transparent), Conchos (green jalapeno), Bulgarian Carrot (orange small)
Onion – Sierra Blanca (white)
Kale – Red Russian
Carrots – Cosmic Purple
Eggplant – Dancer (pink) or Galine (purple), or Thai Green (long green) or Orient Express (long purple) or Orient Charm (long pink) or Kermit (round green striped)
Tomato – Pink Beauty or Green Zebra
Celeriac – Brilliant
Basil – Lime
Thyme - Orange

Nitty Gritty Farm News September 1st

2010-09-01T20:00:00.000-05:00

From the Farmers…………..

Cream of the crop
It certainly is fall – all of the squash vines are dying back and if I didn’t look at the calendar, I would think it was the end of September. But the drying vines sure make it easier to find all the squash. This week you’ll find Cream of the Crop early acorn squash in your box. This squash is ready to eat right away but will be even better if you let it sit at room temperature and cure for about a week before you eat it.

Hot days cool nights
On Tuesday, almost the hottest day of the week, Gigi and the interns did a volunteer job of moving a big pile of dirt at Pilgrims UCC church. Our crew made short work of a seemingly overwhelming task. Then back to the farm where our neighbor John delivered a load of third crop hay to be unloaded into the barn. I don’t know exactly why hay always arrives on the hottest days – and it is even hotter up in the eaves of the barn where the warm hay is being stacked. And then, this morning at 7:00 when we began our work day, everyone had sweatshirts and hats on in the cool weather. What a relief it was to work today with lower temperatures and humidity. It certainly raised everyone’s spirits.

Mac's Birth Story

In case you didn’t read the email update, Reba our Dexter cow, finally gave birth to a beautiful black bull calf on Sunday afternoon. She waited until everyone was gone. Gigi and I pulled into the driveway at 6:00 PM. Reba was laying down and already pushing. We changed clothes quickly and got back out there in time to see two hoofs and a nose protruding. A few pushes later, he was out, just to his hips. I reached over to help clean him up, and Reba decided to stand. His hips were still stuck so he was dangling a bit. I reached forward and gently grabbed a leg, Reba gave one more push and he was out. Even though he is small as cows go, he is big for a Dexter calf. We have named him Macintyre or Mac for short. He weighs about 70 pounds and Reba is a really good mother. We have not begun milking her yet as we are letting Mac have all of her colostrum (first milk). This weekend, we’ll be making a stanchion to restrain Reba so that we can milk her. We are guessing that she is not going to be overly calm about being milked by humans. She has a huge udder and we are hoping that means that she will give us a lot of milk (and cream!).

Winery
We are now taking orders for wines from Stark Wines. Stark Wines plans to specialize in fruit wines. We have sampled quite a few of their wines and have been pleased. Currently they have Raspberry, Blueberry, Strawberry, Rhubarb and Apple available. There will be a few more varieties coming later. The price is $12 per bottle. Check the sidebar of the blog for more information – send your check written out to Stark Wines– and we will deliver your wine to your drop site. We’re excited to be coordinating with Stark Wines to offer these wines to you.

Watermelons
In your share this week, you’ll be receiving at least two watermelons. All the watermelons are ripe and ready and so we picked them all. I was worried that if we didn’t harvest them, they would not hold in the field. If you can’t eat all your melon right away, and you don’t have room in your fridge, you can hold the melon for several days to a couple of weeks at cool room temperature. We have been being creative with watermelons at the farm. Last night Kristen made watermelon jelly and tonight she’s juicing a bunch of melons for me to mix up a batch of watermelon wine.

Shareholder recipes
We love hearing from you as you share how you prepared your veggies from our farm. We are including Bruce and Karen’s eggplant recipe. They found it at http://kalynskitchen.blogspot.com/2007/08/spicy-grilled-eggplant-recipe-with-red.html
They said it was delicious, easy to prepare and used up all their eggplant. What more could you ask for?

Abby sent this recipe that is a hit with her infant daughter.
Baby food
1 summer squash (today's was green, but any will do).
Peel, cut into large cubes, and cook on high 3 minutes in microwave with a little water. Add 1/4 or 1/2 cube tofu and blend in food processor.
Serve or freeze.
10 month old Teraysa ate it like it was ice cream. I had to give her 2 servings immediately cuz she was clamoring for more.

Rebuilding the Earth Bread Oven

At the end of the hottest day of the week (Tuesday), we started rebuilding our earthen outdoor bread oven. We built a mud oven from Kiko Denzler’s plan five years ago. It never quite worked up to our expectations and we had planned to rebuild it long before now – but just never found time to do so. Dale has been wanting to get started all summer – so we decided now is the time. A toe in the hole

The pictures show part of the process. We tore down the old bread oven, moved the cement blocks, rocks, and dirt to the new site, and are beginning the rebuilding process. We’ll work at it a bit at a time and hopefully within a couple of weeks, we’ll be baking breads and pizza’s outdoors.
laying out the bricks

BEWARE of HOT!!! Peppers
One final note. In your box this week are two VERY HOT pepper varieties. The yellow transparent ones about 3 to 4 inches long are Aji Cristal and are extremely hot. The small ones that look like tiny carrots are Bulgarian Carrot and while the skin is not terribly hot, the seeds and membranes are mouth and tongue searing. Dale brought one in for me to sample and I took a cautious bite – nothing – another bigger bite – nothing – a bite with seeds – and my whole mouth was numb. So be careful. Keep them away from your young children. Wear gloves when you cut them if you are worried about burning on your hands. And enjoy some really hot, hot sauce.

Until next week……………………Robin

What’s in Your Box this week

Carrots – Cosmic Purple
Watermelon – could be any of the following: Mickey Lee (Pale green/red), Picnic (large green oval/red), Blacktail Mountain (dark green round/red), Sunshine (striped/yellow), New Orchid (striped/ orange), Starlight (striped/red)
Cantaloupe – Eclipse – some shares will include a cantaloupe
Eggplant – an assortment of the following: Dancer (pink), Galine (purple), Thai green (long pale green), Kermit (round green), Orient Express (long purple), Orient Charm (long pink)
Peppers – an assortment of the following sweet peppers: Carmen (long red or green), Lipstick (stubby red or green), Gypsy (yellow), Wizard (green bell), Islander (purple bell).
HOT: Aji Cristal (yellow), Bulgarian Carrot (orange), Conchos (jalapeno)
Summer Squash – an assortment of the following: Bennings Green Tint pattypan, Lita, President, Zephyr, Horn of Plenty
Potatoes - Fingerlings: La Ratte (tan), Rose Finn (red)
Tomatoes - Red Sun and Paragon (red slicing)
Bok Choi - Joi Choi
Winter Squash – Cream of the Crop (white acorn)
Onion – Sierra Blanca white
Swiss Chard – Northern Lights
Basil – Holy Red and Green

Nitty Gritty Farm News August 25th

2010-08-25T18:40:00.010-05:00

From the Farmers….
Yellow, Orange, Pink and Red – the watermelons are here! Sunshine (yellow), New Orchid (orange), Mickey Lee (pink), Starlight (red) and Blacktail Mountain (red) – whichever color you get in your box, we think you’ll be delighted with the juicy sweetness of every variety of watermelon we are growing this year. We’ve been eating melons every day and no matter which color we bring in the house, we think they are the delicious! We hope you do too. And even though I said last week that it was the end of the cantaloupes – there are a few more this week – so enjoy.

However, I think this week will be the last of the tomatoes. As I said, last week, the tomatoes are just awful – the constant rain made for the worst tomato harvest ever. So, while we have been canning like crazy – over 100 quarts of juice, pasta sauce and barbeque sauce – the tomatoes that are good enough for fresh slicing and to put in your boxes are almost non-existent. As we pick, it is usually about 40-50 bad tomatoes for every one that is pretty good. If any of you are interested in picking some tomatoes to make into sauce, please contact us to set up a time to pick – but do it soon as they won’t last long.

We started out our week renovating animal pens. We doubled the size of the turkey pen since the turkeys they are growing fast and needed more room. We also nearly quadrupled the broiler pen in size with a big area of grass for them. We moved the last group of lambs into a new area – first deworming and guestimating weights as we loaded and moved them. And then we moved the big self feeder that holds over 500 pounds of feed at a time into the pigs pen so they have feed available all the time which they like. We separated the goats – taking the kids away from the moms now for good – and put the kids into the big pen with the ‘Rainbow’ playground and the does in a newly enlarged pen. We have also have been moving the electro-net fence around the oats pasture for the ewes moving it twice a week. We didn’t move Reba, but did add a strand of electric fence wire around an extra pen we’ll make available for her once she gives birth –which hasn’t happened yet – though she is looking closer. Wow – a lot of animal activity. But everyone seems quite happy – except for the goat kids.

Finally, with no rain for at least a couple of days, I plowed, disked and dragged up three sections of the fields in which the earlier crops have been harvested. We’ll seed fall rye into the old potato and pea areas and just today we replanted the section between the melons and carrots. Kristen and Laura seeded radishes, arugula and beets. Depending on what the weather does, hopefully these crops will be ready to harvest near the end of September.

This year, we’ve been trying to keep up with maintenance tasks throughout the harvest season rather than waiting until fall to get everything accomplished. This is working out really well. So today, the interns dug out the area in the rabbit hoop house where the earlier broilers had been living – and spread that composted manure out on the field. Then they hauled a huge load of sand from what will be the new root cellar and filled the excavation with clean sand. Thus the Nitty Gritty Dirt Farm team photo on this week’s blog cover.

Until next week……………Robin

What’s in your Share this week:
Tomato: Any or all of the following: Taxi (yellow), Pink Beauty (pink), Paragon (red), Red Sun (red), Green Zebra (green striped), Red Pear, Yellow Pear, Sungold (gold cherry)
Peppers: Hot: Numex Joe E. Parker (long green mildly hot), Serrano del Sol (small
green hot)
Sweet: Lipstick (mostly red thick walled heart shaped) or Gypsy (yellow)
Eggplant: Dancer (pink), or Galine (large purple),or Kermit (round green), or Thai green (long green), or Orient Express (long purple), or Orient Charm (long pink)
Carrots : Scarlet Nantes
Beets : Merlin
Bok Choi: Joi Choi
Celeriac: Brilliant (Use the tops for celery flavoring. Peel and shred or dice the
root and use as celery)
Basil: Ararat
Kohlrabi: Kossack
Watermelon: Sunshine (green stripe yellow),or Starlight (green stripe red),or New Orchid (green stripe orange), or Blacktail Mountain (black red),or Mickey Lee (pale green deep pink).
Cantaloupe: Pulsar or Superstar or Eclipse or Classic
Summer Squash: Any mix of the following: Zephyr or President or Lita or Horn of Plenty or Elite or Raven or Bennings Green Tint or Perfect Pick
Spaghetti Squash: Small Wonder (gold oval)

Nitty Gritty Farm News August 18th

2010-08-18T20:47:00.006-05:00

From the farmers…….

Gigi reminds me to give kudos to all of you who are remembering to bring your own re-usable bags every week to your drop site into which to transfer your veggies from their box so that you can take them home. Leaving the boxes at the drop sites REALLY saves on wear and tear on the boxes. THANK YOU, thank you so much for helping us out with this.

This week we harvested the last of the cantaloupe and honeydews –we hope you enjoy the ones you get this week – they’ll be the last until next year. If you don’t get to your melon right away or it is a little bit overripe – we suggest you try a melon smoothie. Cut up the melon in cubes, freeze it in a cake pan. You can put it in a freezer container or bag now to save for later or use it right now. Put the cubes in a blender with a glug of honey, a drop or two of vanilla and enough yogurt or milk to make it thin enough to blend. Blend and enjoy!

On Monday, we set up the electro-net fence for the ewes (female sheep) and moved them – minus the rams – into a new pasture. This is the oats, field peas and turnips we seeded early this spring. The rams are away from the ewes now since sheep are seasonal breeders (estrus cycle determined by photoperiod) and we don’t want to have baby lambs born until March – which means we’ll put the rams back with the ewes the first of October. The ewes are busy grazing on new exciting pasture and the rams are still in the old fold area and not very happy about it. We will move them to fresh pasture soon and we’ll be moving the ewes every week until the whole oats pasture is grazed. We also fenced in a new pen in the area next to the goats where the garlic and barley were growing earlier. We’ll get the last of the lambs moved into that area by the end of the week.

We butchered another batch of broilers on Tuesday morning. It is amazing that though they were only eight weeks old they are already very big. We only had 16 of them in this group so the butchering went very quickly with a rented plucker and a fast crew. Late afternoon, while the butchered chickens cooled prior to pick up by chicken share folks – we loaded the Alumacraft and Old Town Camper onto the little Toyota pickup and we all headed for the St. Croix River for a NGDF Crew Canoe Adventure. We left a car at the Sunrise landing and drove upriver (circumventing all the road construction that is ALL around us) a few miles by road to give ourselves a three to four hour paddle down river. It was a perfect day – very little wind, the river was very high from all the rain, and it was sunny with lots of clouds and not too hot, not too cold. We saw several deer, a couple of eagles, and almost no other people as we paddled and floated to Sunrise in just a little over two hours. We got back to the farm in time for evening chores and finishing up the chickens.

Today, Wednesday, with a smaller crew because Dale is gone to a wedding in Maine, we harvested tomatoes (way more damaged ones for us to process than good ones for all of you) and this afternoon in the rain, we washed and cooked and ran through the food mill over 6 bushels of damaged tomatoes.

Right now at 9:30 pm, we’re watching – mostly listening to the Music Man – and we have six big canning kettles of sauce that just needs to cook down until thick – and we are off to bed since we’ll begin harvest and packing tomorrow at 7 tomorrow morning. We’re hoping that the rain will hold off until we are finished harvesting and packing your boxes. It’s not much fun harvesting and packing in the rain!

It has been a wonderful week with the lower temperatures. Getting up and needing to put on long pants, socks and a sweatshirt is wonderful. It sure feels like fall.

Until next week……………..Robin

What’s in your share this week.

Cantaloupe, Honeydew, Asian Melon (same varieties as last week)
Summer Squash (same varieties as last week)
Tomatoes (Taxi, Orange Blossom, Paragon, Pink Beauty, Green Zebra, Red Sun, Red Pear, Yellow Pear, Sungold cherry
Eggplant (same varieties as last week)
Peppers: Hot – Conchos Jalapeno
Sweet – Carmen, Gypsy, Islander, Wizard, Sweet Chocolate
Onion – Sierra Blanca
Bok Choi – Joi Choi
Fennel – Orion
Basil – Lime
Carrots – Cosmic Purple

Nitty Gritty Farm News August 12th

2010-08-11T22:00:00.000-05:00

From the Farmers…………
As I write, three big kettles of Italian tomato sauce are simmering on the stove – in spite of the almost unbearable heat and humidity of the day. To get all our work accomplished, we’ve been starting early, working until a late mid-day meal, then taking several hours away from the fields in the afternoon. Today, following the tomato harvest this morning, we ended up with five, five gallon pails of imperfect tomatoes and a couple of pails of sunscalded peppers – all of which needed to be processed immediately. While the interns went to the Sunrise River this afternoon to cool down, Gigi and I cut up all the veggies, added some marjoram, thyme, basil and celeriac and put it on the stove to cook until soft. This evening we’ll run it through the Squeezo strainer and continue to cook it down to a thick sauce. Next winter when it’s twenty below zero, we’ll surely enjoy this capturing of summer’s heat and bounty in a jar over a plate of pasta.

It is hard to believe that fall is coming – but our fields certainly tell us so – and two of our interns saying goodbye also remind us of the calendar. Kathryn who finished last Thursday is taking a week of family vacation before she returns to college at Grinnell and Gretchen’s last day is tomorrow. It is always hard to say goodbye to our intern/apprentices who become like family to us – as well as help create the community that makes this farm work and play as well as we do.

Our fields are telling us clearly that it is fall – in fact looking at the produce, it feels more like mid-September than mid-August. Our melons are in full production – and it is an amazing melon year! It is true that with all the rain there is a good bit of cracking but the production is so high that you’d never know how many melons we are feeding to the pigs and chickens and making into a variety of foods for us. [For our noon meal today, Kristen made a delicious Melon Sorbet from cantaloupe and honeydew melon. I’d highly recommend this wonderful thing to do with excess melons. She said she just Googled ‘Melon Sorbet’ and found this recipe on Alton Brown’s site. She served it with some sugared ginger and homemade meringues.] We hope that you will be creative and find uses for the over abundance of melons in your box this week. This is also some of the risk of being part of the farm – sharing in the overwhelming abundance and figuring out what to do with so much food all at once! Let us know what you discover about using so much melon. By the way – the watermelons look great and will be ripening very soon. So look for watermelon recipes too.

The melons keep us very busy – they must be harvested every day – and kept cool. We have created a make-shift walk in cooler by adding an air conditioner to our sauna. We all joke about wanting to sit in the reverse sauna with the melons on these awfully hot days.

The tomatoes that I had such high hopes for – they looked so beautiful earlier – are just awful – the worst tomato crop we’ve had since beginning this CSA six years ago. The plants are blighted, the tomatoes sunscalded or split from the rain and heat and sun, and if not all of those, they are covered with little black spots from the blight brought on by the rain. It is so disappointing – especially when we did such a good job with the planting, mulching, staking and caring for them this year. Hopefully, though, because of the sheer numbers of tomatoes plants we have, you will get enough tomatoes to satisfy you.

We had two more huge rain storms since your last share – one on Saturday night and one on Tuesday during the day. So much rain and wind! We are so tired of rain and heat and sun and humidity – a real Minnesota winter is sounding better and better.

It is true – Gigi and I did manage to get away to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness for four whole days! The interns delivered all the shares and we did a scramble pack and were on the road by 5:30 on Thursday evening – though we still had to pick up a few supplies and wanted to have a meal at Fitgers in Duluth. We’re getting pretty good at putting up a tent by the headlights of our car. We found a campsite just after midnight and slept for a few hours at Finland, picked up our permit and maps in Tofte, and were on the water of Seagull Lake (the only permit available at short notice) by noon. And it was absolutely wonderful. Perfect weather – not too hot – not too cold. Sunshine all day. Light breeze – no big winds or big waves. Perfect campsite for swimming and everything else. And our dogs, Birch and Bracken were in heaven – they are wonderful campers. We came back late Monday night rejuvenated and ready to head back up as soon as possible.

During the rain storm on Tuesday, we decided to put up sweet corn for everyone here at the farm. We picked two big wheelbarrow loads of corn – some smaller second ears – and shucked (in the living room while the rain beat against the porch) and blanched and cut off the cob – 90 meal bags of delicious corn to be divided among us and four interns. More good eating this winter.

No calf yet. Reba is biding her time. I think that she is holding out for cooler weather. I think she is a wise cow. She seems contented here at NGDF but not overly friendly. She seems to like anyone with a bucket or an armload of hay but when those are gone, she loses interest.

All the other livestock seems to be handling the weather pretty well. The biggest broilers seem to suffer the most – panting from their beaks in the heat of the days. The pigs dig down into the mud so that it’s hard to tell that they really are pink pigs. The sheep and lambs lay low – moving about only during the morning and evening hours if at all possible. And the goats sleep under their playground and shade roof most of the day. They too are hoping for cooler weather soon.

Until next week………………….Robin

What’s in your Box?

Cantaloupe – Superstar, Pulsar, Classic, Eclipse
Honeydew – Passport, Diplomat
Asian melon – Sun Jewel
Bok Choi – Joi Choi
Carrots – Scarlet Nantes
Summer Squash – Zephyr, Lita, Raven, Elite, Bennings Green Tint, Horn of Plenty, Slick Pick
Onion – Mars
Peppers – Hot: Serrano Del Sol
Sweet: Carmen, Lipstick, Gypsy, Jimmy Nardello
Eggplant – Dancer (pink), Galine (big purple), Classic (smaller purple), Kermit (small green)
Herbs – Orange Thyme
Potatoes – Yukon Gold
Tomatoes – Taxi (yellow), Orange Blossom (orange), Red Sun (red), Paragon (red), Beam’s Yellow Pear,
Austin’s Red Pear, Sungold Cherry

Nitty Gritty Farm News August 5th

2010-08-04T20:53:00.010-05:00

From the farmers………
It has been a HOT week here at Nitty Gritty Dirt Farm. And in spite of rain on Sunday, we had a wonderful Mid-Summer Abundance Festival. Thank you to everyone who braved the weather to eat, drink, converse with us, wander around the farm and take hayrides in the rain. Your presence reminds us all over again why we do this and why we love doing it – even with the HOT weather.

Usually by August the constant need for weeding is over - but not this year with all the rain. And I think that the weeds are even worse than usual – certainly some weed seeds that have lain dormant for several drought years seem to have sprouted and grown – some amazing grasses towering over the (mulched) dry beans. So even though it is now August, we’ve been pulling and pruning weeds where none should be by now and in this HOT weather it is certainly a sticky job.

The Auracana chicks have finally been moved to their new living quarters. The same age as the 16 big, fat broilers they have been living with, they are small, agile and have gotten exrtremely good at flying out of their pen and wandering farther and farther from where they should be. On Sunday morning as Kristen was doing last minute preparation for the festival, she had Birch, our husky cross dog out with her and the temptation was too great - Birch nabbed an escaped Auracana chick. Luckily he has a very soft mouth and didn’t hurt it, but it did increase my desire to have those little pullets moved to a more secure pen. Their new quarters created by our interns are spacious with tall outdoor fence walls and a renovated door thanks to Dale, and so far the ten future laying hens seem content and disinterested in trying to escape.

Reba has not had her calf yet though she is getting closer. I’m guessing a couple more weeks. We’ll keep you posted.

The veggie fields are amazingly abundant this year – and early. We began picking melons this week – the Honeydews are first – but the cantaloupes and watermelons will be very soon. I don’t think we have ever had melons ripe the first of August here in Harris, it is usually closer to the end of the month. The melon crop is tremendous – but with all the rain – there are a lot of cracked and damaged melons. We’ve begun feeding wheelbarrow loads of them to the pigs and chickens. And just today, we mixed up a 5 gallon batch of Honeydew Melon wine.

I am disappointed by the tomatoes which started out with such promise. Though they are loaded with green tomatoes – there is a lot of blight from the rain and hot weather. But I do think we will still have a lot of good tomatoes – so not to worry yet. We’ve just begun picking the first few yellow Taxi’s, the cherry Sungold’s, and Orange Blossoms. You’ll probably begin seeing them in your boxes in the next couple of weeks.

While the interns and I were harvesting melons today, we were talking about how to keep some of the various vegetables for a few days since it is so much to use immediately. They suggested that I also share my advice about how to keep (for a short time) some of the veggies you get in your share – if you can’t use them right away. You should also know that as much as possible, we do not wash most of the mid-summer veggies. Tomatoes, peppers, squash and melons have a natural protection on them that helps them keep longer. And of course there are no poisons that you need to wash off.

Zucchini and other Summer Squash – use the small ones right away. Bigger ones can just sit on the counter at room temperature and will keep for a week or so. Never refrigerate them.
Peppers – keep at room temperature. Will keep for several days.
Potatoes – keep at room temperature in the dark. Use small potatoes quickly. Larger ones will keep longer and once cured will keep for months.
Tomatoes – sit upside down on the stem end (stem removed) Never refrigerate tomatoes. They will usually keep for several days. Taxi’s don’t hold well so use up first.
Cabbage – store in crisper of fridge. Uncut cabbage can sit at room temp several days. Just peel outer leaves when using.
Bok Choi – store in crisper in fridge- will wilt but is still good to use.
Brocolli – use soon. Can hold for a short time in a small amount of COLD water. Change the water often.
Herbs – can hold by placing bottoms in cold water for a short time. Dry or chop and freeze in ice cube trays with water if you can’t use them up.
Onions – store at room temp – will keep up to a week or more.
Carrots – rinse and store in plastic bag with holes for breathing. Store in crisper or bottom of fridge.
Beets – tops won’t keep well. Cut off tops and store tops for short time in water. Longer in fridge but they will get very limp. Store roots like carrots.
Melons – store in fridge – but beware that with cantaloupes or honeydews your whole fridge will smell like melon. We cut up the melon and store in covered bowl.

We store most of the veggies we pick to use at the farm at room temperature for short periods of time – one to two days. We monitor the veggies we are holding and use up first the ones that seem not to be keeping as well.

This is the abundant season. We hope that you are enjoying creating memorable meals with your farm-fresh veggies.
Until next week …………Robin

What’s In Your Share this Week

Carrots Scarlet Nantes
Summer Squash Zephyr, Slick Pic, Raven, Elite, Bennings Green Tint, Lita,
Horn of Plenty
Sweet Corn Sugar Buns
Eggplant Dancer (pink), Galine and Dusky (purple),
Orient Express (skinny purple)
Beets Merlin
Peppers Hot: Jalapeno/ Serranno / Numex Joe Parker
Sweet: Gypsy (yellow), Islander (purple), Wizard (bell)
Onion Sierra Blanca
Honeydew Melon Diplomat and Passport
Asian Melon Sun Jewel
Bok Choi Joi Choi
Cucumbers Sweet Slice, Raider, Homemade Pickles
Herbs Ararat purple Basil, Genovese green Basil

Nitty Gritty Farm News July 29th

2010-07-28T20:49:00.008-05:00

From the Farmers…………
Wow! A Nitty Gritty Dirt Farm first – an up-north cabin weekend retreat for all farm interns and farm owners - hosted by intern Laura at her family’s cabin in Wisconsin. The cabin kitchen was filled with basil and cilantro, cukes and zukes, peppers and the broccoli we all brought along with a few liquid beverages and we enjoyed boating, tubing, swimming, the hot tub, Bananagrams and Quelf. It is great to have a crew that enjoys playing together as much as working hard together.
We came back from the weekend with Robin sick with some kind of sinus infection – better now, and Steph a little under the weather. But the farm work goes on and so do we.
Drying Tower of Buckets

We retied the staked tomatoes, mowed down the green beans (and now the yellow beans), built an addition on the turkey pen giving them a greatly enlarged outdoor area onto which we later added a top as the young turkeys quickly learned to roost on the high top of the fence panels at night and then hop to the outside world come daylight. Since no one likes chasing down little turkeys, a top was in order.
On Tuesday with a greatly expanded crew – thanks Sean, Matt and Emilie for helping out – we moved the five (not-so) little pigs from their baby quarters to their new pen (built on Monday) under the lean-to of the barn where the lambs used to be. We had taken six more lambs to Braham to our butcher on Monday so the smaller lambs were moved in with the remaining few older lambs in a farther out pen, thus making their old pen available for the pigs. We learned about the idea of using pigs as cultivators - ‘piggerators’ Joel Salatin of Polyface farm and “Omnivore’s Dilemma” fame calls them.
Our hope is that our five pigs will root up all of the old manure and packed bedding left by several years of sheep living under the barn lean-to so that we can just load it up and transfer this rich compost to the fields. In just two days, they have already made a pretty good start. They are also very interested in the lambs that are in the pen just to the south of them and Reba the cow just to the west of them. Reba and the lambs are not quite so sure about the pigs.
It is exciting harvesting as we move toward August. All of the midsummer veggies are ripening. The buckets of purple, golden and deep green peppers, wheelbarrows of red onions, and a table full of bright white garlic makes us as thrilled as we hope you will be.
All of us here have been canning and freezing like crazy – Dilly beans, pressure-canned yellow beans, Brown Sugar Dill Pickles, Kimchee, Short Brine Dill Pickles, frozen broccoli and ice cubed herbs. We encourage you to cut up, blanch and freeze any of your share veggies that are more than you can use up right away. They are wonderful to add to a soup or stew come winter.
onions
We look forward to meeting or re-connecting with you at our MIDSUMMER ABUNDANCE FESTIVAL this Sunday – 3:00 – 5:30 pm. We’ll be cooking up a bunch of fresh veggies in stir fry, serving beer, wine and ice tea, drum circle drumming (bring your own drum or use one of ours), hayrides around the farm, cut your own flower bouquets from our rows of field flowers, and enjoy lots of good conversation around good food, good community, and good farming.
Until then …………… Robin

What’s in your Share this Week?
Mars Red Onion
Eureka Yellow Beans
Garlic
Raider, Sweet Slice and Homemade Pickles Cucumbers
Zephyr, Slick Pic, Raven, Elite, Horn of Plenty, Lita Summer Squash
Yukon Gold Potatoes
Red Russian Kale
Joi Choi Bok Choy
Conchos Jalapeno Peppers (dark green )
Gypsy Pepper (yellow elongated)
Islander Pepper (purple bell)
Scarlet Nantes Carrots
Orange Thyme

Nitty Gritty Farm News July 22, 2010

2010-07-21T21:08:00.011-05:00

From the Farmers………….
“These are the beans that never end……..they just go on and on my friend …….somebody started picking them not knowing what they was……….and they’ll continue picking them forever just because …..THESE ARE THE BEAN THAT NEVER END!!!!!!!!........they just go on and on………..”
This is Stephanie’s new NGDF theme song – sung to raise spirits, as sweaty and dirty and mosquito bitten our whole crew picked and picked green beans last week and now this week the yellow Eureka beans. We do hope you are enjoying every savory moment of these amazing beans that never seem to end. Here at the farm, we’ve all been canning dilly beans, freezing beans and pressure canning mixed green and yellow beans in this abundant season. If any of you are interested in a few more beans to put in your jars or freezer – we didn’t finish picking the yellow beans – there is almost a whole row left – at least 8 five gallon buckets worth - so give us a call if you want to come to the farm Thursday afternoon or evening, Friday all day or Sunday evening to pick for yourself what is still in the field.

Tuesday was chicken butchering day – 47 broilers moved from Godzilla birds into the refrigerator – and soon to be in the kitchens of some of you. (Two more groups of broilers are still growing.) We hope you enjoy eating them as much as we do. Dale made an amazing lunch today of barbequed (homemade 2009 BBQ sauce) on one chicken, and a dry rub on the other chicken (both fresh) for our noon meal, along with a huge fresh salad of romaine, snap peas, carrots, onions, turnips, peppers, broccoli and more – all fresh moments before from the fields. It is absolutely what sustains us here – both body and mind – good food well prepared and presented and totally celebrated. We hope that all of you are also fully enjoying preparing new and old favorite recipes with your NGDF veggies.

Gigi suggested that I talk a little about resources for recipes. Here at the farm we tend to bring in a huge pile of everything that is ready to be harvested – look at it and then decide what to prepare from it. We are lucky in that every day we are fixing a noon meal for at least eight very hungry farmers – and so we can make a wide variety of dishes – and know that there will seldom be left-overs. However, we are also challenged in that two of our crew are gluten free, two are vegetarians and four are big meat eaters. We try to have every noon meal accommodate every diet – no small task even with all of our fresh food. We also try to have our meal use at least 85% farm produced food (like meat, veggies, eggs and dairy products), and another 10% farm processed (like bread we make but don’t produce the flour or beer and wine we make ourselves from all or part outside resources) with only 5% of every meal food produced off the farm (like quinoa/corn pasta or lentils, spices, or butter).

We love hearing from shareholders about how you use the food we grow for you – from some of the recipes you’ve tried from ‘Eating Local’ to your Gin and Tonics muddled with lime basil. By the way – intern Kristen created a cucumber and lime basil juice with gin drink tonight – pretty good over ice. One of the sites recommended by a shareholder is foodieview.com. The upper right corner has a quick search area where you just type in the ingredients you have. I also know that if you just type in a list of the veggies you got in your share and then select a category of food and google it you get an amazing variety of recipes. For example type: Napa Cabbage, cucumber, dill, turnip recipes Asian. Search.

There are so many good cookbooks out there it’s hard to choose. Though I don’t often cook directly from cookbooks – I do get ides and inspiration from them. Gigi says I cook to the picture (instead of the ingredient list) – and that is true since so often I need to substitute for ingredients I don’t’ have to those I do – like using kohlrabi instead of Jicama. But - I do have a few favorites. Even though we are one of the featured farms I think Eating Local is a wonderful cookbook. I also love Deborah Madison’s Local Flavors. And the Smith and Hawken Gardener’s Community Cookbook is one I refer to often. It is where I got the wonderful Chocolate Zucchini cake that is our farm birthday cake of choice. We also use the Joy of Pickling, The Ball Blue book canning and freezing guide, Putting Food By for processing foods. The Moosewood Cookbook and the Enchanted Broccoli Forest, From Asparagus to Zucchini, The Tassajara Cookbook and the Tassajara Bread Book are also some of my favorites. I love cookbooks and have a six foot book shelf of them. Our newest sections are recipe books on cheesemaking, winemaking and beer brewing – as well as all the artisan bread cookbooks. You can also find a great resource of recipes at your local library. But I think for sheer convenience – on line recipes are it.

It has been a long, hard week at the farm – early starts all week and very late finishes – and long hot, hard days in between. . As I write, I know we are all exhausted – we finished butchering the chickens at 10:30 last night, then celebrated until 11:30 and started again this morning at 7:00 with animal chores – and then packing the chickens for delivery – and then on to those beans that never end……. And we’ll begin tomorrow morning at 6:00 am with harvesting, prepping, packing – and then getting those fresh veggies to you!!!

Don’t forget – August 1 – at 3:00 pm (please not before 3:00!!! – since Gigi and I will just be getting back from a church retreat and need some time to get ready for you) we invite you to come to our SUMMER ABUNDANCE FESTIVAL. We’ll be set for hay rides, music (we invite you to bring your ashiko or djembe drum to play in our drum circle), lots of great stir fried veggies, some homebrew beer on tap and a few bottles of our newest homemade wine, – and fun, interesting, like-minded folks to become your new best friends. Please let us know if you plan to come – but also just come if it works out that you can and you didn’t let us know. We love having you visit the farm – so we can meet face to face – and you can see your food growing, meet your meat, and get to know your farmers and farm crew.

Until next week………….. Robin

What’s in your share this week – (at least as best we know at 10:00 pm on Wednesday evening)

‘Eureka’ yellow beans
‘Scarlet Queen Red Stems’ and ‘Hakurei’ turnips and greens
‘The Blues’ Napa Cabbage
‘Raider’, ‘Sweet Slice’, and ‘Homemade Pickles’ cucumbers
‘Zephyr’, ‘Lita’, ‘Raven’, ‘Elite’, ‘Slick Pic’, ‘Horn of Plenty’ summer Squash
‘Cimarron’ red Romaine, ‘Freckles’ speckled romaine
‘Northern Lights’ Swiss Chard
‘Bulls Blood’ Beets and greens
‘Genovese’ Basil, ‘Lime’ basil, ‘Dukat’ dill, ‘Zatar’ marjoram

Nitty Gritty Farm News

2010-07-14T18:30:00.007-05:00

From the Farmers …………….
I wish I could have been writing this column yesterday instead of today – because yesterday I was feeling so good about everything at the farm.
We’ve had another great week – so much accomplished. From Monday, with our crew we tilled, composted and planted a new planting of spinach, radicchio, holy basil and bok choy and mulched it all with hay mulch. We tied up the next layer of our tomatoes, dug, mowed and disked rows of potatoes, picked a million (actually 14 buckets) of shelling peas, shelled them and put them into our freezer, and weeded monster weeds from the black turtle beans. On Monday morning we loaded and delivered the six biggest lambs to the butcher. And then, of course there is the harvest.
We started early this morning – right after animal chores – picking beans. Beans cannot be picked if they are wet as they get nasty brownish spots on them called ‘rust’. Anticipating the bad weather, we started early, picking seventeen, five gallon buckets of green beans before the storm hit. Watching the sky get darker and darker, as the first raindrops fell, then more and more, we grabbed our full bucket and ran to the packing hoop house. We then grabbed rain coats and headed back out to the cucumber patch where we picked three, five gallon pails of pickling cukes for our crew and five buckets of slicers for your share boxes, along with a big bunch of dill and a few heads of garlic. Dale was the only one who got completely soaked in the downpour as he brought in the garlic. Kathryn got just a little wet and the rest of us made it to the house with our pickling necessities just in time.
As the rain poured down and the wind blew, we made pickles. Today we decided on Sandwich Stackers and Short Brine Dills. I think the final count is twenty seven quarts. Dale is still tending the last two canning kettles as I write.
As the sun came back out, we went back out and harvested cabbage and garlic and I walked around the fields surveying the damage caused by three inches of hard driving rain in less than an hour.

It could be worse. The sweet corn, popcorn and buckwheat are almost completely knocked over. Many of the pepper plants are laying flat on their sides, some completely broken off. A lot of the flowers that I’d been hoping to include in your shares tomorrow are broken or laying in the mud – as is the head lettuce.
But – on the bright side – the staked tomatoes look great as do the melons, beans and squash, and anything mulched with hay. Many of the veggie rows are covered with mud but most of the crops look as though it will recover. Many of the cabbage heads ready to harvest split with the sudden influx of rain.
Once again, it is a summer of challenges to farming. Sometimes I think it is amazing that anything grows at all with all the idiosyncrasies of the weather.

On Friday morning, Gigi and I are planning another whirlwind road trip to Iowa to pick up our new cow Reba. We just heard yesterday that all the necessary veterinarian paperwork to go across the state line is ready and we can get her when we are ready. So we’ll trade vans with Gigi’s parents, hook up the stock trailer and head back to Cedar Rapids. Everyone here is pretty excited about getting a cow.
All the other livestock is doing well. The biggest broilers are definitely turning into Godzilla birds and we are planning to butcher them next Tuesday. The medium broilers are getting to their most ugly stage, when their feathers don’t cover their skin, and the tiny broilers are still cute. The turkeys are really cute but in their desire to roost, they keep getting out of their hoop house. The five little pigs are really growing. They really enjoy getting the whey from our cheese making as well as piles of veggie seconds. Soon we will be moving them to a new pen.
The sheep – ewes and rams – decided to move themselves this morning. During a lull in the rain, I brought a bucket of cucumber ends out to the pigs, and found 18 sheep grazing the lawn and sampling the Brussels sprouts and cabbage. With the help of an empty bucket, they all happily followed me into a new pasture.
Until next week……………..Robin

What’s in your share this week:

Green Cabbage – Primax
Cucumbers – Raider and Sweet Slice
Summer Squash – Elite, Raven, Slick Pick, Lita, Zephyr
Green Beans – Derby
Broccoli - Packman
Garlic
Herbs – Basil, Marjoram, Cilantro, Dill

Nitty Gritty Farm News

2010-07-07T18:46:00.010-05:00

From the Farmer……

We have a cow! Well we will be having a cow. Following quite a bit of research into the ‘perfect’ breed of cow for our farm – [small, docile, and easy to handle; produces good meat; and produces a useable quantity of good tasting milk] – we took a whirlwind road trip to the Cedar Rapids, Iowa area to look at a couple herds of Dexter Cattle. Why cows, you might ask, aren’t you happy with the goats? Yes and no. We love the goats – especially, I, Robin love the goats – but the goats produce milk that is essentially naturally homogenized – the fat globules are very small and mixed with the milk so the cream does not rise to the top of the milk. Thus we cannot skim cream for our coffee or for making ice cream – two BIG priorities for our farm. And – goat milk gets goaty after only a few days making it unappealing for drinking. We thought that adding a small cow producing a small (2-3 gallons per day) quantity of milk would be a good choice. So…….. we chose a small, calm, dun colored Dexter cow named Reba to add to our farm.

Reba the newest member of Nitty Gritty Dirt Farm

Reba is ten years old and is bred to have a calf this August. We plan to let her feed her calf and we will get half of her milk and the calf will get half – just like we do with the goats. We are quite excited – about all the possibilities of having a cow. Gigi will be making another trip to Iowa to pick up Reba next week.

The Gate for the new Cow Pen.

Pulling posts to redo the pen.

It has been a stinker for weather to work in this week – with the high heat and humidity it has been pretty miserable. We’ve tried to begin work very early in the morning and then take off a few hours in the afternoon to go swimming at the Fish Lake beach, and then put in a few more hours in the cooler evening. But even with that it is sweaty, dirty, energy-sapping weather. I keep saying that I don’t like July – because of this weather – but then we get to the food. Broccoli, zucchini, turnips and kohlrabi, Chinese and green cabbage, baby carrots and basil, cilantro, thyme and marjoram to prepare for meals!

Weeding melon rows

The harvest is really coming in – and we are so excited about cooking it that even though it is 90 degrees we still prep huge pans of stir fry and grilled chicken and giant gorgeous salads for our noon farm dinners. We are entering the abundant season – get ready!

Building the Cow Pen

This week at the farm, we did a lot of animal work – a bigger pen and automatic waterer for the rapidly growing little pigs, a new hoop house for the teenage turkeys, a redo for the beginner hoop house for the 50 new broiler chicks that arrived Tuesday morning, an enlarged pen for the big broilers - adding a big outdoor grassy section, enlarged the mid-aged broiler and Auracana chick pen, moved the ewes and rams to a new pasture, made a new cow pen for Reba - and weighed and sorted the lambs into the ready to butcher size and the need to grow a little more size. Wow – I’m tired just going back through that list. Most of the time the animals chores just tuck into the beginning and end of our work day in the fields – but every once in a while we need a whole day just to catch up on the changing needs of our critters. Oh yes, we also prepped and constructed new frames and put an extra deep super (box of frames for honey) on each of the six bee hives.

We also did more weeding and mulching and planting. We tore out the old Mei Qing Choi plants and plastic mulch, tilled and tilled, hauled many wheelbarrow loads of last year’s compost, tilled some more and then planted a succession planting of Joi Choi Bok Choi and Fennel – and then immediately mulched it all with the old hay left after the lambs ate the leafy stuff out of the stemmy stuff. It looks beautiful and ready to withstand either too much rain or not enough. We also weeded between the rows of tomatoes and mulched with old sheep hay and just this morning tilled and weeded between the cantaloupe and watermelon rows and seeded in rye which as it grows will inhibit the weeds and make a nice bed for the melons to grow on.

………until next week ………Robin

What’s In Your Share

Sugar Daddy Sugar Snap Peas
Kohlibri (purple) kohlrabi, Winner (white) kohlrabi
The Blues Chinese Cabbage
Summer Squash: Raven (dark green), Elite (med green), Slick Pick (yellow), Zephyr (yellow/green), Lita (gray)
Packman Broccoli
Herbs: Lime Basil, Genovese Basil, Ararat Basil
Cilantro
Lettuce: Green Bib and/or Freckles Romaine

This week, because both the Broccoli and Summer Squash are just starting, it is possible that there won't be enough for all drop sites to get both. So, if you only get one this week, you will get the other next week.

Nitty Gritty Farm News

2010-06-30T21:00:00.000-05:00

From the Farm Manager….

It has been an amazing, wonderful week at Nitty Gritty Dirt Farm. Gorgeous weather –not too hot, not too cold, so much work accomplished, so much laughter in the fields and around the table, and beautiful fields and the beginning of the ‘real’ harvest. As I reflect on this week, it is so obvious how the fickleness of the weather affects the mood of the farm and the farmers. As we were picking sugar snap peas this evening for tomorrow’s shares, I was reminded of the hail storm three years ago that damaged and destroyed nearly all the crops of our CSA – absolutely heartbreaking. More than in any other job, it seems that everything we do is completely dependent on the weather, and we are grateful for a whole week of sunshine, no rain, light breezes and cool nights.

We spent Monday and Tuesday catching up on weeding. Because of the rain keeping us out of the fields, the weeds had grown alarmingly. Thank goodness for the rain softened ground that made them fairly easy to pull. Wheelbarrow loads later (very happy laying hens), the onions, flowers, carrots, beets, cabbage, broccoli, kohlrabi and potatoes are weeded. And our neighbor Scott from whom we buy old hay for mulch brought six bales on Tuesday which we promptly spread on the rest of the beans, between the zucchini rows and most of the potatoes. The fields look absolutely beautiful!

We also spent this afternoon (Wednesday) weeding at the Stark Vineyard. We have just been a mob weeding crew!

With all the strawberries we picked last week, the interns and we mixed up a few batches of strawberry jam, strawberry rhubarb jam and strawberry wine. We hope you enjoyed your berries as much as we did ours.

Prepping the Kohlrabi

Our first load of hay arrived this afternoon, so as soon as we finished harvesting the peas, bok choi and kohlrabi this evening, we unloaded and stacked the 140 bales into the barn. It is always a heavy, hot, sweaty job, but with eight of us working, it was accomplished quickly. It is a good feeling to know that at least a part of our winter food supply for the livestock is safely stored away.

Until next week…
Robin

A wheelbarrow load of Bok Choy

What’s in your share?

Sugar Daddy sugar snap peas
Kohlibri purple kohlrabi
Mei Qing Choi bok choi
Salad mix (lettuces: red romaine, summer bibb, freckles, simpson) (greens: mizuna, tatsoi, red and green mustards, Red Russian kale, arugula) Bulls blood beet greens, pea shoots,
Herbs: Genovese basil

A beautiful salad for lunch at the farm

2010-06-23T20:32:00.008-05:00

From the Farm Manager ….
Farm time is different from other time – a week either feels like a month or a day. When we are waiting for the first of any vegetable to be ready for harvest it feels as though it will never happen, and yet when weeding the carrots and dill and chard needs to be done, a day can stretch into a month.

It has been a frustrating spring. We are glad for all the rain and yet it does make growing a challenge. Just this morning, following the downpour last night, one whole section of the lettuce row was underwater and the new row into which we were to plant the Brussels sprout seedlings was completely submerged. And the hot weather is really making the tomatoes grow, but the cool season crops we count on at this time of the season are struggling with temps in the upper 80’s.
The sugar snap peas which our interns have been keeping neatly trellised are nearly five feet high and I picked the first few pea pods for our lunch today. The green and yellow beans have just begun to bloom and I saw little tiny broccoli heads on those plants.

We’ve been doing a lot of weeding this week – trying to get the weeds out between the rains which make them grow like crazy. No one really likes weeding – and it’s hard to keep everyone motivated by the 8th 250 foot row of carrots. But all those rows are finished – before the rain – and they look great.
The five new baby pigs – the surprise baby pigs we got last week – are doing very well – already they look a lot bigger. We made them an outside pen – so they can begin their side job as piggerators - digging up old packed and dried animal pens with their snouts. Even as little as they are, those tough snouts of theirs have rooted up a substantial area.
The broiler chicks are getting bigger and bigger – the new Broad Breasted bronze turkeys which arrived in the middle of our harvest and packing last week are also doing well. On Monday, we received another call from the Harris post office that more chicks had arrived. We picked up our 10 baby Auracana chicks. They are all pullets (girls) and are the breed that will lay blue and green eggs. They arrived with an additional 15 broiler chicks since the hatchery will not ship less than 25 birds at a time. We didn’t want more than ten layers so we opted to get a few more broilers. We will be offering a few of these broilers for sale to interested shareholders. We will also have turkeys available if all continues to go well. And we have many lamb shares available. Watch the blog for the order forms which will be posted soon.
This week in your share, we hope you enjoy the strawberries. We do have a row of berries at the farm but by the time we feed our farm crew we don’t have enough for all of you. My son, Lucas, has started a new organic strawberry patch east of Pine City called TLC Berry Patch. We will be taking our whole crew up tomorrow morning to pick berries for all of you as a special treat and to support Lucas, Carey and Trent’s new endeavor.
And since we are a little short on early veggies this week – we decided to use this rainy day to bake bread for you too. Some of you may know that early on in our CSA we offered artisan bread shares.
After baking bread all day and into the night, I know one reason why we no longer offer bread to shareholders. But it was fun turning our kitchen into a bakery again to make bread for you. We hope you enjoy this Tassajara, whole grains light yeast bread.
Until next week …………Robin

What’s in Your Share
1 bunch of Pink Beauty Radishes
2 Bok Choy – Mei Quing Choi
1 Container of Strawberries - Sparkle
1 Loaf of Tassahara Light Grain Yeast Bread

FROM THE MARKETING DIRECTOR
Don’t forget to bring your bags. The interns or hosts at your drop site will be there to help you. Stephanie will be at the Acadia. Kristin will be helping folks at the farm. Gretchen will be greeting those of you at the Homestead Picking Parlor. Robin will be at Pilgrims UCC in Maple Grove. Laura will be seeing those of you at Midwest Brewing Supplies in St. Louis Park, under the awning or by the store door depending on the weather. Kathryn will be at the St. Paul drop again, and Dale will be your host at United Theological Seminary this week. Our shareholder Deb handles Vincent each week.

Nitty Gritty Farm News June 17th

2010-06-17T00:56:00.006-05:00

Posts and twine holding the vines of snap peas -

WHAT'S IN YOUR SHARE THIS WEEK

One Bag of Salad Mix: Mizuna, Mustard Greens, Tatsoi, Red Russian Kale, Red Amaranth, Baby Lettuces, Bulls Blood Beets, and Pea Shoots.

One Bunch of Radishes: Pink Beauty and Red Rover.

One Bok Choi: Mei Qing Choi

One Bundle of Herbs: including Ararat (Thai) Basil, Marjoram and a Garlic Scape

The Drop Site descriptions and times are listed at the bottom of the blog. Please remember to bring a reusable bag with you this week. Look for the drop site signs, the description of what you should take this week, and the list of names to check off once you've picked up your share. Gigi carries her cell phone if there are any problems and that number is 651-226-1186.

Robin stretching cheese into a goat milk mozzarella -

After a number of trials, this batch of mozzarella cheese turned out perfect. We immediately used all of it on the pizzas for that day. I guess we'll have to make more.

Over the pizza lunch on Wednesday, a discussion arose among the interns as to why we were not raising any pigs this year. After some cajoling and multiple promises to be the primary caregivers for the swine, we agreed to get THREE. We called our neighbor about the availability of feeder pigs (35 - 40 pounds) but all he had available was some newly weaned piglets weighing in at approximately 6 pounds and if we wanted them, he'd sell us FOUR for a good price. We (interns and all) piled into the truck with a dog kennel to bring the pigs home in, and headed over to the neighboring farm. By the time we left, we had FIVE! They are small and cute and though we don't plan on naming the animals we don't keep, I have a feeling these pigs are going to end up with names before long.

The broiler chickens are getting bigger and the turkeys are going to arrive, possibly tomorrow.

Enjoy your first share.

Until next week..... Gigi

Nitty Gritty Farm News June 9th

2010-06-09T10:57:00.016-05:00

From the Farm Manager...

Yes, the rain is wonderful – long, deep soaking, gently falling rains – replenishing the soil moisture – and making the crops – and the WEEDS grow. And the rain is frustrating as we try hard to accomplish all the farm tasks that need to be done at this time of year – sowing seeds, weeding, cultivating, mulching, building, etc. We usually try not to work in the fields in the rain and try to find other lower priority, and often more fun activities to do on rainy days like … baking bread, making cheese, working with wool, brewing beer, racking wine….
However, with so much to do, our crew persevered despite the rain on Tuesday, working all day long in the steady drizzle which often became a downpour. After planting the greenhouse-started beet plugs in the morning, the muddy crew posed for a photo op on the front porch – just moments before stripping off the wet, muddy stuff to be washed in one massive load, then changing into dry clothes - just to get even more wet and dirty in the afternoon.

Gigi and the crew headed over to Stark Winery to finish weeding their vineyard since by this time it was just too wet to be in our fields anymore. This was the third week of our crew working a part of a day at the winery in our new cooperation with them. Returning home wet, and cold and muddy, some of the interns still had enough energy to play guitar, banjo and dulcimer in the Tuesday evening jam session.

Today is still overcast with the sky threatening rain but it is holding off and we’ve all been working like crazy to get hay mulch between the onion rows. (It’s done now) Last week we hoed every row and without mulch, we’d be hoeing again – so the rush to get the mulch on before it rains again. As I write, I can hear the clanging of the fencepost pounder as Dale, Kristen and Stephanie work to put the posts into the sugar snap pea rows before winding twine to hold up the vines which will climb to nearly 5 feet. The plants are looking really good and we are hoping for a great snap pea harvest.

Gretchen and Kathryn are working at direct seeding another succession of crops in flats to go into the greenhouse – Joi Choi, Radicchio, Spinach and some late herbs – which will go into the fields as early crops like lettuce and radishes come out. And Sue has begun the laborious task of hand picking the tiny blades of grass from the thickly sown broadcast rows of lettuce and Asian greens. Gigi is doing the afternoon livestock check and I’m writing this column. All the crew is present and accounted for.

We are a little disappointed that a share will not be going out this week – we had hoped it would be ready. It’s been a really erratic spring so far – first too hot, then too cold – then too rainy – and in spite of planning our planting carefully - the only thing that is ready right now are the first radishes. So, the first share will wait until next week. Gigi will tell you more about that in the Marketing Coordinator’s column.

Intern/Apprentices: Stephanie joined our crew last week and so we are now at a five person four-day-a-week crew. Laura will join us next week and that will complete the crew. Add two more with Gigi and me and wow, can we move through a patch of weeds in a hurry. We also have a couple of one day at a time intern/volunteers – Sue and Kiely – as well as neighbors, friends and shareholders who come by to help out occasionally. With all of us at the table for our midday community meal – it is a table-full! Wonderful!

Didja, our oldest goat – the retired Grand Champion show goat and production winner, has moved to a new home. It was a bit sad to see her go, but she had become quite a bully, and so we decided to give her to a young couple to improve their herd. About two weeks ago, Didja smashed her yearling daughter Mantra into the fence and hurt her leg badly enough that we were worried for her life. Mantra is doing better, walking almost normally now, just favoring the leg a little. The interns are learning to milk the goats – some with more success than others. We are still only milking once a day, letting the goat kids nurse the rest of the time. With about two gallons of milk a day, we’ve been making quite a lot of soft Fromage Blanc cheese, and are looking forward to a little more time (and even more milk as we wean the kids) to make some hard cheeses.

Finally – thank you to everyone who braved the rainy weather and attended our first Farm Festival on Sunday. It was wonderful standing in a circle in the drizzle, blessing the fields and the flocks with all of you who came. We encourage all of you to put the date of the first Sunday in August on your calendar – the midsummer Abundance Festival.

Until next week …. it’s back to the fields … Robin

FROM THE MARKETING COORDINATOR

As Robin mentioned, our first share will be delivered on Thursday, June 17th. During the first few weeks, the produce will be boxed in categories, and you will be invited to take one item from each box, for example a bunch of radishes from one box, and a bundle of Bok Choy from another... We recommend that you bring a reusable bag to put your items into. As the produce becomes larger, each share will receive their own box. Even so, we recommend that you bring your bag to pack it into and leave the box, unfolded and flattened, at the drop site. That way, you don't have to keep track of it until the following week, and the boxes will last longer. Watch for more drop site details in upcoming blogs.

Thank you to all of you who confirmed your drop site choices with us. We are near our limit of shares but still have some left if any of you know someone who might be interested. This year, there are 60 farms that deliver to the Minneapolis/St.Paul area. It makes the competition for shareholders a little tougher but we think that is a WONDERFUL problem to have.

Gigi

Nitty Gritty Farm News Friday June 4th

2010-06-02T23:19:00.012-05:00

From the Farm Manager (Robin)…

As I sit at the computer looking out the front window, the ground is dark with wet from last night’s wonderful soaking rain and the perfectly weeded double rows of carrots stand in start contrast to the soil around them. The last three sheep moms still feeding babies are loudly baaing impatiently awaiting their breakfast corn and hay, and the goats have quieted as Gigi and two of our farm intern/apprentices begin the daily milking chores. It’s another morning on the farm in this oh-so-busy season of planting and weeding and building and weeding and hoeing and mulching and planting and ………

Last night we participated in our second book signing of the new cookbook “Eating Local” published by Sur La Table. Judith Kissner of Scout and Morgan books in Cambridge, Mn. hosted this event which also included wine tasting from our neighbors and new colleagues Stark Wines. It was a lot of fun and we made several new local connections – and Judith sold quite a few cookbooks.

It’s been another busy week at the farm. On Memorial Day, we finished planting the last of the cantaloupes and some more flowers. That means we met my goal of having all the main season planting done before June 1. We will still be planting succession planting of early season veggies as well as late season crops such as Brussels sprouts, dinosaur kale, fennel and more kohlrabi. All of these flats of seedlings are just coming up in the greenhouses and will be ready for planting in a few weeks.

We’ve also begun extensive hoeing and weeding, tilling and cultivating. With the full crew of 5 intern/apprentices plus me, we hoed 8? 9? 10? very weedy rows of onions and more than fifteen rows of beans – and these are all 250 feet rows (or longer)! And then, we meticulously hand picked the weeds from two double rows of tiny carrot seedlings and one of beets. We have a great crew this year. Some years, by the time the crops are hoed, it’s time to start back at the beginning. This year, we’ve gotten the jobs done with time to begin our Tuesday evening musical jam sessions (we often don’t start these until July) and to send our whole intern crew to Stark winery to weed their vineyard, and to cut up and stack nearly two cords of slabwood firewood. And in the midst of all of this, we jacked up the ‘Su Casa’ intern cooking building readying it for sheet-rocking, constructed two more intern Quonset buildings as rustic living quarters, fenced a two acre pasture of for the sheep, kegged two 5 gallon batches of beer, racked batches of Chilean Malbec wine, blueberry melomel and apricot melomel, moved the broiler chicks into a bigger pen, and weeded perennial flower beds. Wow! I sometimes get tired just thinking back through the week.

We are looking forward to our first FARM FESTIVAL this Sunday. With this mornings milk, I’ll set a of Fromage Blanc cheese to make a variety of soft goat cheese spreads and tomorrow, (Saturday), I’ll bake several kinds of Levain and yeast breads which we’ll serve at the festival. We’ll also be creating a couple of other spread options (black bean hummus?) for the breads too. And we’ll be tapping two new kegs of homebrew beer as well as making iced tea for the festival.

We really encourage you to attend the Festival. It is a day for you to see the farm, see exactly where your food will be coming from, meet us and most of our farm crew, meet other folks with a shared interest in growing and using good food, and share a bit of that good food and beverage. The festival begins at 2:30 pm and we’ll begin the Blessing ritual at about 3:00 and then we just encourage you to wander around, chat and eat. You might want to bring a chair with you so you can stay a while. We’ll wrap up around 5:00 pm.

Until next week………………

Nitty Gritty Dirt Farm News May 20th

2010-05-20T21:18:00.008-05:00

From the Farmers,

Radishes, beets, carrots, broccoli, cabbage, bok choi, kohlrabi, lettuce, greens, turnips, herbs … are all in the fields. The greenhouses are emptying out as we move those flats and flats of seedlings we started back in March out to the fields. We’ve been putting in some long, hard days planting and seeding as well as caring for the livestock.

Our third apprentice/intern, Kathryn arrived on Sunday. Just in the nick of time, we finished building her hybrid wood and canvas Quonset cabin. In fact we were screwing the last boards on the front step when she arrived. Kristen, Dale and Kathryn make up an amazing farm crew – enthusiastic, hardworking, interested and interesting.

We finally transferred the last flat of germinated plants from the ‘Seed House” to the greenhouse. So today, as a break from planting, we removed all the fluorescent lights – wrapped them in cardboard and/or feed bags and stacked them up in the top of the barn. We removed the plant racks, swept the dirt from the floors and began making the transition of the building back into Robin’s farm office. By next week, the remaining boxes of seeds (that currently take up nearly half of the house office) and field maps and other farm planning stuff will be lining the shelves and desk.

On Tuesday morning, we weaned all but the smallest three lambs – the last born. We de-wormed all the ewes, trimmed a few feet, loaded them into the stock trailer – in two groups – and transferred them to the large NE pasture. The ewes seemed happy to be out on pasture and only a few lambs (still penned close to the barn) are calling plaintively to their moms.

The baby broiler chicks arrived on Monday. The phone rang at 6:45 – the post office calling to say they had arrived. We moved them into a large stock tank with lights. It’s amazing to realize that these cute fluffy yellow babies will be big, white birds ready to butcher in just eight to ten weeks!

The eight baby bunnies of Leia, our English Spot rabbit, are also growing like crazy – well really they are growing like rabbits. I just separated the five boys, taking them away from Leia and moving them into their own cage. The three girls will stay with mom for another week and then they too will move into their own cage.

Our goat kids are growing and taking nearly all the milk from our five milking does. We’ve begun separating some of the does from the kids at night so that in the morning we get all the milk. Stormy, the two year old Saanen is giving three quarts every morning as well as feeding her twin kids. Mezzo, a yearling Saanen is milking about a quart and a half every morning – along with feeding her one buck kid. We’ve been letting the Toggenburgs each feed their twins and not milking them, but tonight I separated all the moms, so tomorrow morning I’ll get at least a couple of gallons of milk – enough to add to the two gallons in the fridge to make a nice batch of cheese.

This is the busy time of year at the farm. So much going on all the time, it is hard to keep track and every day, so much changes. It is exciting and exhausting all at the same time.

We look forward to seeing many of you at our first Farm Festival – the Blessing of the Fields and Flocks. This is a great chance to visit the farm – see in person all you read about and see in snapshots on the blog – meet us and our farm intern/apprentices – and share in some good food and beverages.

Until next week ……………….. Robin and Gigi

2010-05-03T18:36:00.010-05:00

The potatoes are in. 600+ pounds of Yukon Golds, Norlands reds, Russett Burbanks, and two fingerling varieties. Every seed potato is carefully cut into pieces – each with at least one eye, set on racks in a protected hoop building until the cut side is callused over, then carefully placed one foot apart in 275 foot rows. Because we now have a furrower attachment for the three point hitch on the little Ford 8N tractor, this job is so much easier than previous years when every long row was marked and dug by hand. This year all the potatoes were planted in two ½ day stints.
The onion plants also arrived by delivery truck and in one day all 6500 plants plus a few hundred more cippolinis we started from seed were standing in formation in the field.
The sugar snap peas and shell peas have also been seeded in the field.
And while our fields are all plowed, disked and ready for final prep and planting, we have been holding off a bit because of all these at or below freezing nights – just last night another HARD frost – 28.0 on our thermometer – way too cold for anything but onions and peas. Hopefully this is the last winter hurrah because our greenhouses are full to bursting with transplants all all kinds.
On Thursday, we built another greenhouse. Constructed of locally sawed second grade lumber and our stock panel design, it is the best looking house yet – and nearly filled already with basil, kohlrabi and flower seedlings.
Two of our intern yurts are also up – and Kristin and Dale – have begun working their summer schedules of three and four days per week at the farm.
Because of holding off on field planting, we’ve been able to get a lot of ongoing farm chores accomplished – like mucking out the laying chicken pen, re-configuring and fencing the goats and soon we’ll begin re-assembling the children’s playground donated by our church – as a playground for our goat kids. It will be great fun watching them race up and down on the different levels.
Speaking of goats, we are now milking five – Didja, Mamba, Mantra, Mezzo and Stormy. They are all also feeding their kids – twins for all except Didja and Mezzo with singles. We bring in about a gallon or a bit more of milk into the house every morning – to drink and make a variety of soft cheeses like chevre, feta, cheddared curds, and fromage blanc. Someday, we hope to build a small dairy and offer goat products?????? Dreams, dreams, dreams.
We are looking forward to a really busy week – lots of planting in the field – all the early radishes, turnips, greens, lettuces etc, as well as more seeding in the germination house of watermelons and cantaloupe. And we need to build two more housing structures for the next farm apprentice/interns who will arrive mid May.
So….. back to work………………….
Robin and Gigi

Nitty Gritty News Wednesday, April 13th

2010-04-14T01:28:00.009-05:00

Wow, a lot has happened in the last month! We finished the maple syrup after a very short sap run. With some March days that reached 55 to 60 degrees and the nights staying above freezing, the sap run was short. Then when the night temperatures dropped, the trees were already budding and it was time to pull the taps - before the run really even started. But we ended up with a few gallons of syrup which will keep our farm crew in maple syrup cinnamon rolls for a while this summer.

Just as we finished cooking syrup, the second group of sheep moms began giving birth. With warm temperatures, it has been perfect for lambing (warm but still no flies.) We have 26 lambs so far - the biggest are already nearly 50 pounds - they grow sooooo fast. Four of the goats - Didja, Mamba, Mantra and Mezzo - have also given birth with six kids, three of which are doelings. We're still waiting on Stormy.

We've also been busy seeding. We've transformed our farm office cabin into a germination house with four - just build two new ones last week - plant stands full of flats of germinating seeds. With thirty six fluorescent lights going day and night it keeps the cabin plenty warm to aid in quick germination of peppers, tomatoes, eggplant and a variety of flower seeds. The cold nights are a constant worry. We are not automated and have small greenhouses, so keeping them warm enough at night when the temperature dips below freezing is difficult. Last week, we had spotty freezing on several flats of flower seedlings. A further concern is that after a night of close to or below freezing temperatures, the morning is too cold to open the greenhouse door. Then very, very quickly, as the sun rises high enough the temperature zooms to over 100 degrees. It takes almost constant monitoring on warm, sunny days, a choreography of propping doors, spray watering, closing doors, setting up small heaters....

Hopefully, by Earth Day - April 22 - we'll get the seed potatoes in the ground. We usually aim for Mother's day - so this is early. We'll also be receiving the thousands of onion plants which will go in about the same time. As soon as all those are in, we'll begin seeding Sugar Snap peas, Radishes, lettuce and greens. The bok choi and brocolli are growing in the greenhouse and will go in right after. Of course all this means plowing and disking and harrowing the fields - not to mention hauling and spreading loads of compost - before anything get planted!!!

Our apprentice/intern crew - some of whom will be starting full time soon have been volunteering on Fridays since tapping Maple trees in March. This gives us all a chance to get to know each other and gradually work into the farm season. They are an invaluable help at this time of year when we don't really need full time help. This year our interns will be staying in yurts as their temporary housing. Last year, we constructed two small yurts and this year we'll add to that number, creating a yurt village in our back yard.

Didja, one of our older goat does had triplets last year, and was equally huge in her pregnancy this spring - she looked like she was carrying two basketballs on either side - so we were guessing she'd do that again this year, but no - just one huge buck (boy) kid.

Thanks again to all of you who have joined the farm this year. We have a great intern/apprentice crew and are looking forward to a wonderful year. We still have shares available so tell your friends. We will be raising some meat animals again this year so watch the blog for the updates about available meat shares as we know the numbers we'll have available.
Until next week....

JOIN THE FARM NOW

2010-02-11T14:03:00.009-06:00

THE SEEDS ARE HERE…. THE SEEDS ARE HERE...
The first seed orders have arrived. Visions of green and red bell peppers, orange blossom tomatoes and purple basil are dancing in our heads. The first group of lambs were born, 11 so far, and within a week or so there will be goat kids and then more lambs in late March. The soft maple trees have been tapped and the driveway ice has melted into mud. Spring is definitely here at Nitty Gritty Dirt Farm.

It’s time NOW to sign up for the 2010 season.
Outside the house, the snow covering the fields has started to melt and the ground beneath is waiting. Inside the house, the wood stove is warming as we spread the seed catalogs out across the table. The first seed orders are here and our list of intern/apprentices is growing, including two who will be returning from last season. It’s exciting to think of the potential for the new season just ahead and we are looking forward to your partnership in the farm again this season and seeing you visit the farm.

The 2010 membership form is available below, to copy, print and mail to us, or copy and email to us. EVEN IF YOU’VE BEEN WITH US BEFORE, you MUST fill out a new form completely. It is the only way we can keep our records and emails accurate. We are not planning to expand the number of vegetable shares offered this year – 100 is a good number for our land to support and our farmers to work. We have already received several new shareholder/members – so if you are planning to join us again – don’t wait too long! You will be added to the list and receive a confirmation email when we receive both your membership form and your $$$. Your canceled check will be your receipt.

This winter at the farm has been wonderful. We have loved all the snow - providing protection and moisture for the fields, good snow to cross-country ski on, and beautiful to look at. We’ve managed to get away a couple of times for skiing and hiking this late fall and winter, but now we are staying put as the ewes started lambing and the goat does start kidding in mid March (or earlier by the looks of a few of them). We sheared sheep at the end of February and from now on – it is all farm/all the time. We had help tapping maple trees from new intern Kristin and returning intern Dale, and will begin cooking sap down in early to mid April. Seeds will be sown from late February through spring. It is a wonderful time for a spring visit with baby animals and the farm waking up all over (even with the mud!) You can see baby critter pictures up on the blog, but seeing, holding, hearing and smelling the actual newborns in person is amazing. Just give us a little notice and come for a visit.

The Cookbook, in which we are one of the featured CSA farms – (that we spend so much time writing about last year) is nearing publication. We will be signing books at Sur La Table in Edina sometime in May – the date is yet to be announced. There will also be an opportunity for each of you – our shareholder/members – to purchase the cookbook at a reduced rate. Oh by the way – OUR BOX OF VEGGIES (same as the ones you received last summer) – is the cover of the cookbook! We’ll keep you posted as we get more information. Also the Saveur magazine article featuring our farm will come out in April. So look for that too. We just found a picture of the cookbook cover
on line. We haven't seen the inside yet but we think the cover LOOKS GREAT!

Robin and Gigi
Nitty Gritty Dirt Farm

Nitty Gritty News January 2nd, 2010

2010-01-02T17:52:00.007-06:00

The skis are on the front porch ready to go, but the temperature this morning was 27 below so our planned jaunt around the farm will have to wait. The dogs want to play outside too but within minutes of being out there, they're lifting their icy cold paws and wanting to come back in. The sheep in their wooly coats look the most comfortable under the lean-to and the goats are grouped together in their houses keeping each other warm. Tank heaters keep their water thawed and we haul buckets twice a day to refill, (the luxury of refilling with hoses, a distant memory.)

Every year, it seems that the seed catalogs come earlier and earlier. (Robin says they come at the same time but Gigi is not so sure). Before we've had a chance to practice writing 2010, Robin is already pondering what new varieties we might try. The pictures of vegetables and fruit from the Johnny's Seeds Catalog are vividly colorful and she reads the descriptions out loud until we are both salivating.

Before we can ponder the fields of next season though, there will be lambing and goat-kidding. The birthing dates begin in late March with 18 ewes and 6 goats all due (we hope). If anyone was thinking of a late winter/early spring visit to the farm, that's a great time to come up.

As we begin this new year, the wood stove warming the house and the snow decorating the fields and roads, we think of you, our farm family of last year and the farm family for the season to come. We wish for you a year of hope and peace, and the simple pleasures of good food and friends and family to share it with. Happy New Year to all of you.

Robin and Gigi

Nitty Gritty News October 8th

2009-10-08T01:17:00.007-05:00

From The Farmers

It's gray again this morning. We had sunshine for a while yesterday but with cool temps and breezes, everyone dressed in layers to be able to compensate from one moment to the next. Thanks to all of you who came to the farm festival. We had a great time. The Farm Games included building a tower with a variety of items topped with a small pumpkin, and tossing tomatoes from one side of the row into a bucket (held by a team member) a few feet away. We found out the hard way that some of the green tomatoes were so hard, they bounced right back out of the bucket.
The rain held off for the most part.

Yesterday, the goat kids decided to take a walk on their own, and opened their gate. This is a new skill, and one which may prove to be quite inconvenient, even though it's slightly endearing. We tried wrapping the gate chain in the other direction and tucking it in on itself. Hopefully that will hold them in.

We have loved being your farmers this year and watching shareholders open the boxes at the drop sites, like unwrapping birthday presents. We will look forward to next vegetable season, which for us will begin when the seed catalogs arrive in February. In the meantime, there will be compost to haul and sprinkle on the fields, winter housing for the animals to prep, breeding, lambing, kidding, (goats), and the list goes on. We will continue to update the blog throughout the winter.

When you pick up your share today, you are welcome to take the box with you. We will be purchasing new boxes for next season. For those of you who still have meat coming, we will be contacting you about delivery which will be a separate day from the veggie delivery. The turkeys have not been processed yet. That will begin next week and we'll contact those of you who ordered them at that time.

The blog next week will incude some 2010 membership information. We will be staying with 100 shares again next year. It's a good fit for the farm.

Thanks again for a wonderful year. Until next week...

What’s in your SHARE this week:

Squash – Assortment which will include some of the following: Butternut (cream colored on giant peach shape), Sweet Dumpling (green and beige striped on a heart shape) Cream of the Crop, Potimarron (small orange), Blue Magic, Delicata (green and orange stripes on beige long), and Buttercup (dark green)
Onions – Walla Walla or Candy (sweet yellow), Candy Apple Red
Turnips – Just Right
Tomatoes – Paragon (large red)
Carrots - Chantenay and Cosmic Purple
Potatoes - Norland
Kohlrabi - Winner
Bok Choy - Mei Quin Choi

Nitty Gritty News October 1st

2009-09-30T23:40:00.004-05:00

END OF THE HARVEST FESTIVAL.
This Sunday, October 4th, from 2:30 PM until 5:00 PM. Join in the Nitty Gritty Dirt Farm Annual Farm Games – Good Food, Friendly Farmers and Cheerful Interns, Homemade Soups and Fresh Baked Breads – RSVP to nittygrittyfarm@aol.com and let us know that you are coming so we can plan for you.

From the Farmers….

I’m gonna say it – the F word …………….FROST! That word that veggie farmers either dread if there is a lot of great looking produce still in the fields, or look forward to if it has been a hard year. We would have like to have at least one more week before frost so that all those beautiful unripe tomatoes could have had time to ripen. As did many of you, we had a hard killing frost – the temperature registered at 28 degrees on the indoor/outdoor thermometer so we are guessing that it was at least a couple of degrees colder in the low spots of the fields. On Wednesday morning everything was covered with frost – the trees, the lawn, the windshields of our vehicles. Even the water buckets for all the livestock had a thin layer of ice over them and all the hoses were frozen until midday. But we were prepared – or at least as prepared as we could be.

On Monday after we squeezed up and loaded the second group of lambs to go the butcher and Gigi left with them, Cara, Gretchen and Robin harvested every single squash, pumpkin and gourd still in the field. It was a blustery, cold day of work. We carried two haywagon loads of tubs from the field into the hoop house for protection. Then on Tuesday morning, we harvested all the peppers and eggplant right down to the tiny ones. We will chop and freeze and use many of the peppers in tomato sauce. And then, Tuesday afternoon, we picked tomatoes – once again filling every bucket we own – 80 in all. With that done – and so many beautiful tomatoes left in the field – we pulled out the huge tarps and covered an area about 60 feet by 40 feet – about 1/3 the length of the field and over 4 rows. We covered the Paragons and Pink Beauty’s because they have the most green tomatoes left. We also covered a small area of Orange Blossoms just because we couldn’t bear to lose all of them. And then we put tarps and rugs and blankets over all the produce in the hoop houses and over the wheelbarrows of tomatoes (that Robin picked because she just couldn’t bear to leave them to the frost, and basil (that Cara said we must harvest for pesto).

Wednesday morning was slow – hard to get started in the cold. And Gretchen and Cara are still sleeping in unheated quarters (and while the house is unheated too it is a lot warmer) so soon they showed up to work in multiple layers of long underwear, gloves and hats. [We are a bit short-handed this week as Dale is not here. We were very sad to hear that Dale’s mom who had been ill with cancer died last Thursday and Dale traveled to the Chicago area to be with his family this week.] As we surveyed the extent of the frost damage, we decided to try to glean some of the frozen tomatoes to make tomato sauce – so we picked about 4 bushels and began chopping them and peppers and onions for sauce – as well as prepping the last of the spotty basil we saved from the frost for freezer pesto.

We are sad to see the season ending. It had been a great year in so many ways. This Sunday will be our END OF THE HARVEST FESTIVAL. Plan now to come to the farm – play in our Annual Farm Games – and enjoy a variety of homemade soups and fresh baked breads – and see the farm at the close of the season. RSVP to NGDF and let us know that you are coming so we can plan for you.

Oh by the way – what to do with all those tomatoes and peppers????? You can chop the peppers and freeze them in ziplock freezer bags if there are too many to use fresh. While they won’t maintain their texture after being frozen they are great to use in cooking or on pizza. I think that one could use up a good amount of tomatoes making tomato juice, hot sauce and Cara’s Bloody Mary’s. And make more fresh salsa!

Until next week …. WE HOPE WE’LL SEE YOU AT THE FARM FESTIVAL ON SUNDAY ……………

What’s in your SHARE this week:

Pumpkin – New England Sugar Pie, Baby Pam, Snackjack (all small orange edible and look about the same – Snackjack has naked seeds)
Pumpkin – Jack Be Little (tiny orange pumpkin edible), Baby Boo (tiny white pumpkin edible) Sweet Lightning (orange and green stripes on beige pumpkin shape edible)
Squash – Delicata (green and orange stripes on beige long), Buttercup (dark green )
Gourds – Small assorted mix, Koshare, Small spoon mix, Medium mix, Autumn Wings mix (not edible!)
Onions – Walla Walla or Candy (sweet yellow), Candy Apple Red
Sweet Peppers – Carmen (long green or red bull horn, Jimmy Nardello (approximately 1/2 x 6” green curled sweet), Lipstick or Apple (3” x 3” green or red thick wall with a pointed end), Islander (purple), Gypsy (yellow)
Hot Peppers – Conchos (approximately 1” x 3” jalapeno mildly hot), Serrano del Sol (approximately 1” x 3”very hot), Numex Joe Parker (approximately 1 ½ “ x 6” horn shaped – smaller than Carmen but very similar – mild), Chervena Chuska (2” x 5” mildly hot also looks like Numex and Carmen), Tiburon (very dark green almost black contorted looking Poblano)
Eggplant – Thai Green, Orient Express, Orient Charm, Galine, Dancer
Turnips – Just Right
Tomatoes – Paragon (large red), Pink Beauty (large pink), Orange Blossom (med orange), Taxi (yellow), Green Zebra (green striped), New Girl (small red)

Next week will be your last share for this season. You can expect: lots of potatoes, more squash, onions, kohlrabi, turnips, carrots, bok choi, maybe a few tomatoes

This week’s recipes:

Cara’s Bloody Mary’s
Serves 2

2 shots vodka
1 ½ cups homemade tomato juice (from NGDF tomatoes of course! – recipe follows)
Juice of 1/4 lemon
6 shakes of worchestershire sauce
6 shakes of homemade hot sauce (from NGDF peppers and tomatoes – recipe follows)
fresh ground black pepper

Shake all ingredients with ice in a shaker or 1 quart canning jar.
Serve with a homemade dill pickle (NGDF Wild Child dill pickles) or celery or olive

NGDF Tomato Juice

Cut up any assortment of tomatoes (cut up stem end, peels and all)
For every 4 cups of chopped tomatoes add one onion and one pepper (any kind)
You can add a bit of basil or parsley if you want.
Cook – start heating slowly to avoid burning) until all vegetables are soft.
Process through a food mill or Sauce Master Squeezo strainer.
Pour into jars and cool to use immediately or pour into jars and hot water bath can for 40 minutes.

Cara’s Red Hot Sauce (that isn’t so very hot)
2 quarts tomatoes chopped, peeled, cored
1 12 cups chopped hot red (or green) pepper
1 quart vinegar, divided
1 cup sugar
1 tablespoon salt
2 tablespoons mixed pickling spices

Combine tomatoes, peppers, and 2 cups vinegar in a large saucepot. Cook until tomatoes are soft. Press through a sieve or food mill. Add sugar and salt. Tie spices in a spice bag and add to tomato mixture. Cook about 30 minutes or until thick. Stir frequently to prevent burning on bottom of pan. Add remaining 2 cups of vinegar. Cook until as thick as desired – about 30 minutes more. Ladle into jars and hot water bath process for 15 minutes for ½ pints or pints. Yield – about 4 half pints.

Nitty Gritty News September 24th

2009-09-23T23:13:00.002-05:00

From the Farmers….

If ever you were to store away tomatoes for the long… cold… no fresh food … winter ---- this would be the year! We have an absolute bumper crop of tomatoes this year. After waiting weeks and weeks thinking that possibly it might freeze before the tomatoes turned ripe, we are swimming in tomatoes. And you get to share in that abundance! We are including a recipe for a quick tomato sauce – a good way to use a lot of tomatoes – and a sauce that you can freeze or use in a variety of ways. We also suggest making a beautiful colorful confetti salsa using all the colors of tomatoes, peppers and onions.

On Tuesday at the farm we canned a couple bushels of the Orange Blossom tomatoes and then made a batch of salsa to eat fresh with hot off the griddle homemade tortillas and the rest to put in jars and process. Using the many colors of produce makes food that is as much art as delicious.

On Tuesday, we also pulled the first frames of honey from the bee hives. We just purchased a simple three frame honey extractor and were excited to begin removing honey from our bees. We extracted a little over three gallons of honey from the first super (10 frames).

Sara Remington, the photographer for the cookbook we will be in, has been here this week to take a million photos for the cookbook. It has been fun having her here – reminding us in many ways why we are farmers – why we grow food that goes directly to families like you - why we believe that creating community is so important – why we think CSA farming is one of the best ways to farm – why we believe in SLOW food – why we have such a diversified farm – why we do all the peripheral things like raising bees, making cheese, making beer, canning and freezing and drying food… that go along with that farming.

Until next week …..

WHAT’S IN YOUR SHARE

Cantaloupe - Superstar, Pulsar, Eclipse or Classic,
Watermelons - Sunshine(round striped – yellow) or New Orchid (round striped – orange) or Starlight (round striped – red) or Blacktail Mountain (round dark green – red) or Sweet Siberian (oval striped – orange) or Mickey Lee (round pale green – red)
Onions - Walla Walla or Candy, Red Candy Apple
Squash - Pasta Hybrid Spaghetti, Small Wonder Spaghetti
Eggplant - Dancer (pink oval) Galine (purple oval) Thai Green (green long) Orient Charm (pink long) Orient Express (purple long)
Sweet Peppers - Islander (purple bell) Carmen (green bull horn) Gypsy (yellow)
Snapper (green bell), Lipstick or Apple (2” by 4”green to red)
Hot Peppers - Serrano del Sol (1/2” x 3” green), Conchos (green jalapeno 2” x 2”)
Tomatoes - Taxi (yellow) Orange Blossom (orange) New Girl (small red) Paragon (large red) Pink Beauty (dark pink) Green Zebra
Bok Choi - Mei Quing Choi
Zucchini - Zephyr, Cavelle, Sunburst, Raven, Elite or Bennings Green Tint
Carrots – Cosmic Purple
Cabbage – Red Express
Kale – Red Russian
Swiss Chard – Northern Lights
Turnips – Just Right (not sure it these will be in the box this week)
Basil
Sage

Basic Quick-Cooked Tomato Sauce
From the Gardners Community Cookbook by Victoria Wise

5 pounds tomatoes, peeled, seeded and chopped, juices reserved
1 large onion finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, minced or pressed
1 small green bell pepper, seeded and finely chopped
2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil leaves or 1 tablespoon dried basil
1 ½ tablespoons chopped fresh oregano leaves or 2 teaspoons dried oregano
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley leaves
¼ teaspoon ground ginger
¼ teaspoon ground allspice
1 ½ tablespoons brown sugar
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon black pepper
1 ½ tablespoons red wine vinegar
½ cup tomato paste

Place all ingredients in a large nonreactive pot and stir to mix. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer gently, stirring once or twice, for 45 minutes, or until the vegetables are soft. Use the right away or cool and refrigerate for up to one week. Note: For longer storage, the sauce may also be packed into sterilized jars and processed in a boiling water bath for 15 minutes, or after cooling can be frozen. Makes 7 cups

Tomato Sauce as an Ingredient
When a recipe calls for tomato sauce to mix into the dish rather than star as a topping, you can easily turn either of the basics tomato sauces into that ingredient. To do so, puree the sauce as fine as possible in a food processor for a chunky version. Put through a food mill for a smooth sauce.

Nitty Gritty News September 17th

2009-09-16T10:45:00.013-05:00

From the Farmers….
We are getting ready for winter here at Nitty Gritty Dirt Farm. On Friday, Gigi and I stacked 140 bales of hay into the barn and today we added another 140 with all our interns. This is enough hay to feed all our sheep and goats for the winter. On Saturday we picked up a load of firewood and slab wood which we then stacked on the front porch to be ready for the first fire in our wood stove. And we have been canning and putting up food for the winter. So with a barn full or hay, a porch full of firewood and a basement full of canned goods we are ready for the big snow.

And at the same time – with all the hot weather – the warm season crops have been ripening like crazy. We are on tomato overload. We picked over 30 bushels of tomatoes for your shares this week. And then we picked several more for interns to take home and for us to can over the weekend. Tonight – right now – as I am writing this column, the last two canner kettles of tomatoes are processing. 28 quarts of tomatoes are a good start.

The first group of five pigs went to the butcher on Sunday. It was the annual adventure getting the pigs into the trailer. We were so thankful for the help of intern Gretchen and her friend Stephanie who was visiting over the weekend. Now the smaller five pigs have taken over the larger pen previously inhabited by their larger relatives.

The intern shower house is finally almost done. Now that we are close to frost and the end of the season, we have the composting toilet ready to be used. The shower with an on demand water heater has been usable for a couple of week already. And the middle section with a sink for washing dishes and brushing teeth, etc, is all ready for the water to be hooked up. We plan to get it all ready this weekend so that our interns can get some use of it before we need to shut it down before it freezes.

And one of our ducks laid an egg. Cara found a small duck egg on the ground in the duck pen this morning. We plan to build a duck nest soon so that as the other young hens begin to lay, they will all lay in the same place. We are also checking regularly for eggs in our Black Star coop. We are expecting them to begin laying any day now. They are almost five months old and that is about the time they begin to lay. We plan to retire the last of the Red Stars when the young hens start to lay.

Until next week….

WHAT’S IN YOUR SHARE

Cantaloupe: Superstar, Pulsar, Eclipse or Classic,
Watermelons: Sunshine(round striped – yellow) or New Orchid (round striped – orange) or Starlight (round striped – red) or Blacktail Mountain (round dark green – red) or Sweet Siberian (oval striped – orange) or Mickey Lee (round pale green – red)
Onions: Candy, Red Candy Apple
Potatoes: Norland
Squash: Cream of the Crop (white Acorn), Sunshine (orange Kabocha)
Eggplant: Dancer (pink oval) Galine (purple oval) Thai Green (green long) Orient Charm (pink long) Orient Express (purple long)
Sweet Peppers: Islander (purple bell) Carmen (green bull horn) Gypsy (yellow)
Snapper (green bell), Jimmy Nardello (3/4 inch by 6 inch green)
Hot Pepper: Serrano del Sol
Tomatoes: Taxi (yellow) Orange Blossom (orange) New Girl (small red) Paragon (large red) Pink Beauty (dark pink) Green Zebra
Turnips: Just Right
Bok Choi: Mei Quin Choi
Zucchini: Zephyr, Cavelle, Sunburst, Raven, Elite or Bennings Green Tint
Basil

Nitty Gritty News September 10th

2009-09-10T02:19:00.004-05:00

From the Farmers….
It is definitely fall here at Nitty Gritty Dirt Farm. With the days getting shorter and shorter and the mornings and evenings cooler and cooler, we are listening to the weather band radio regularly for frost warnings. So far nothing – but…. And tonight we finished harvesting and picking up melons and zukes in the dark with only the truck headlights to find our way through the fields – and it was only 8:30!

Gigi and I had a wonderful trip to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. It was our first BWCA canoe trip since we started the CSA the five years ago. The weather was perfect. The water was like glass and our dogs behaved very well. It was Birch’s first time in a canoe and he was quickly a pro – stepping very gently and carefully in and out at every portage – and laying down while we paddled. We cooked our own potatoes, carrots, zukes, onions and cabbage – and thoroughly enjoyed our farm food away from home!
When we arrived home on Tuesday, it was to a farm crew busy at work. Cara all weekend along with Dale and Gretchen on Tuesday, were hard at work keeping the farm going while we were away. Once again, we reaffirmed what we already know – we have a great farm crew this season!

Every season brings its own challenges – and we have certainly had our share of weather challenges this year. With the early spring cold and drought, followed by mid-season drought and then getting way too much rain all at once dumped on us at the wrong time and now again too dry – it is easy to understand why farmers always complain about the weather. We remind ourselves that this is partly why we are a CSA – because we can be so diversified. Then no matter what the season brings – at least some of the crops are sure to do well even if all of them don’t. This year, the warm season crops like tomatoes, peppers, melons and squash are far less than what we would like to see in production, earliness and quality. But the cool season veggies like broccoli, cabbage, bok choi, collard, and Chinese cabbage have been phenomenal. And while the pastures on which we like to rotationally graze our livestock have been almost non-existent in this dry, dry season, our livestock had thrived anyway even if a bit more confined than we would ordinarily like. And - we have an amazing farm crew this season which makes all the difference in the world. WE welcomed Tim to our crew this week. He’ll be with us for a few days working at the farm in between times for him. We are delighted to have a fresh surge of energy.
We also want to take time in the middle of our season to thank all of you shareholders for being a part of our farm this season. Without you we would not be able to farm. We hope that you have enjoyed your boxes each week and found the challenge of using your veggies – whatever they are - enjoyable and have learned new ways to prepare them – even when there is too much or not quite enough – or it is something you think you don’t like. Thank you for your intentionality about connecting your food with the land and the farmers who grow it. We know it isn’t easy being this intentional and committed. It is and would be easier to just buy what you want, when you want it, at the grocery or the farmer’s market, instead of taking what we are growing and harvesting on any given week. We applaud you for taking this step toward a more sane and sustainable food system.

Though it is several weeks away, please mark the first Sunday of October on your calendar as our END OF THE SEASON FARM FESTIVAL. The festival begins at 2:30 p.m rain or shine. If you haven’t yet made it out to visit the farm, we encourage you to take this opportunity to do so. Come and see the place where your food is grown and meet the crew who makes it all happen.
Until next week….

WHAT’S IN YOUR SHARE

Watermelons: Sunshine(round striped – yellow) or New Orchid (round striped – orange) or Starlight (round striped – red) or Blacktail Mountain (round dark green – red) or Sweet Siberian (oval striped – orange) or Mickey Lee (round pale green – red)
Cantaloupe: Superstar, Pulsar, Eclipse
Honeydew: Diplomat, Passport
Onions: Walla Walla, Red Candy Apple
Eggplant: Dancer (pink oval) Galine (purple oval) Thai Green (green long) Orient Charm (pink long) Orient Express (purple long)
Sweet Peppers: Islander (purple bell) Jimmy Nardello (green Italian frying) Carmen (green bull horn)
Hot Pepper: Conchos (large jalapeno)
Tomatoes: Taxi (yellow) Orange Blossom (orange) New Girl (small red) Paragon (large red) Pink Beauty (dark pink)
Shelling Beans: Landmark (see recipe for using shelling beans)
Radish: Shunkyo semi-long (long red cooking radish)
Bok Choi: Mei Quin Choi
Zucchini
Basil: Ararat (purple/green Thai)

SHELLLING BEANS
“Shelly, shell, or shelling beans are the tender stage of what will become dried beans. At this point their pods are tough, twisted and dry, far past the stage for eating. But the beans within are still moist. Any bean (including green beans) can be a shelling bean if grown to the right stage. Shelling beans cook more quickly than dry beans but they do not cook quickly. “ from Deborah Madison in ‘Local Flavors’.

Here’s our recipe suggestions for using your shelling beans.
Shell the beans. Put in saucepan and cover with water. Add spices (try garlic, thyme, marjoram) and olive oil. Add salt and pepper to taste. Simmer 30-45 until tender.
Use the beans either in: a crock pot or casserole dish with potato chunks, carrots, onions and tomatoes. You can also add meat if you like. You might also add a big spoonful of pesto at the end of the cooking time.
Or add the cooked beans to a pilaf made of rice, beans, or lentils. Just use any pilaf recipe and add the beans. You might want to add dried cranberries and pecans and use the pilaf to stuff in a scraped cooking pumpkin. Bake until the pumpkin is tender.

Simple Salsa
5 -6 Tomatoes
1-2 hot peppers (depending on how hot you like)
2 sweet peppers
1-2 onions
1 tsp salt
1 Tbsp lemon or lime juice or apple cider vinegar
1 Tbsp chopped cilantro

Coarsely chop tomatoes, peppers and onions – or chop in food processor. Add salt and lemon or lime juice and cilantro. Chill for an hour or longer to allow flavors to mingle.

Nitty Gritty News September 3rd

2009-09-02T21:47:00.008-05:00

From The Farmers

This week the cool days have felt wonderful for the farmers to work in but the plants could use warmer sun. Our lowest overnight temperature was 41 and the days have hovered around 68 to 73. In comparison to 20 degrees in northern Minnesota, we're still doing well. We processed another group of broilers (chickens) on Tuesday and Wednesday. It was great to have many hands to do the work, including our new intern, Gretchen, who is quite enthusiastic.

As you may recall, we had a cookbook author and her publisher visit us last July. Janet Fletcher who is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, has been hired to right a cookbook centered around different CSA farms across the country and Nitty Gritty Dirt Farm is one of them. In addition, she has now been hired by a magazine called Saveur to write an article about Nitty Gritty Dirt Farm. Her photographer will be with us for the rest of the harvest and delivery tomorrow morning, and then come up again at a later date. It should be interesting to have her working around us while we work around her. The article will come out next spring.

The ducks who were relocated into the lamb pen last week have decided to settle in now. The older sheep were moved today to a back pasture that has been seeded and grown well, and they're quite happy to be there. Two of the bigger pigs managed to push through a lower part of the fence separating them from the smaller ones. During chores, we noticed more of a crowd on one side of their area, and a few missing on the other side. Luckily, while the fence panel was being held open, the two bigger ones rejoined their own side. The two groups would probably get along fine, but when it is time to ship them, they are going in two separate groups at two different times, and trying to re-sort them into their own sizes would make an already difficult task, even more so.

Now that everyone has been shuffled around, Robin and Gigi are going to head to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area and leave Cara in charge of the farm for the holiday weekend. It may be cold, but we won't care, and the farm will be in good hands. Have a relaxing and wonderful Labor Day Weekend everyone.
Until next week.....

In Your Share This Week

Onions - Walla Walla
Zucchini - Cavelli, Slick Pick, Zephyr, Sunburst Pattypan, Bennings Green Tint Pattypan, Lita, Raven, Elite and Horn of Plenty
Melons (possibly) Honeydew-Diplomat, Passport, Cantaloupe-Goddess or Asian Sun Jewel
Egg Plants (possibly) Dancer (pink), Dusky (purple) Orient Express (skinny purple) Orient Charm (skinny pink), Thai Green and Galine
Carrots - Chantenay
Basil - Ararat, Purple or Lime
Sweet Peppers - Islander (purple), Snapper (green bell), Gypsy (yellow)
Hot Peppers - Conchos (jalapeno), Serreno del Sol
Tomatoes - Taxi (yellow), Orange Blossom (orange), and New Girl (red)
Turnip Greens - Just Right
Potatoes - Yukon Gold

Nitty Gritty News August 27th

2009-08-26T20:32:00.005-05:00

From the Farmers

The pictures above were too good to resist even though it was last weeks rainy harvest. The interns kept their spirits up by singing camp songs and discussing the differences in lyrics from one region to the next, (Nebraska, Indiana or Minnesota) and from one organization to the next (Girl Scouts, Campfire Kids, Y camp and 4H).
The shareholders too, didn't seem to mind the rain as they sorted through their boxes.

This week the rain fell early and by Wednesday, had stopped so that we were finally able to harvest the rest of the green beans. Because we were unable to pick them in last weeks rain, and while we have sorted as carefully as time would allow, you may need to sort out some that may be overly mature or have some rust damage on them. We thought that you would rather have the beans with a little extra work, than no beans at all.

The first seven lambs were shipped to the meat processor in Braham Minnesota. With some help from a neighbor, they were delivered last Sunday night. The rest of the lambs have a little more room and a little less competition for their food. They ended up with some feathered friends to help make up the difference.

Robin, Cara and Gigi were catching the ducks to move them into the pen with the lambs. Four of the ducks were already wandering in the field, having escaped earlier that morning. The next four were carried to their new home. The lambs seemed intrigued and walked slowly toward the newcomers, but the ducks clearly did not appreciate the greeting. By the time we got back with the next group, the first four ducks had escaped through the fence and were wandering up and down the tomato rows. We put the four we were carrying in with the lambs, and then retraced our path to get behind the rest of them. We walked slowly toward them so they would head toward their new home, jogging occasionally to the left or right when they tried a new direction. Gigi's daughter Katy Anne joined the parade and we managed to get the whole group back together in with the lambs. They are safer closer to the barn and other livestock but we might not be able to convince them of that.

Gigi and Robin enjoyed a church retreat outside of Alexandria Minnesota over the weekend and Dale watched the farm. He stayed busy with all the chores, and put up some sauerkraut with purple cabbage. It probably will change color slightly when he processes it in the canner but he's looking forward to serving the pink food to his friends. Cara will care for the farm over Labor Day weekend so we can get away for a few days of paddling in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. We haven't done a canoe trip since we started the CSA and are looking forward to it.

We have some new help arriving to help us out this fall. One of Gigi's former music students is joining us after her camp job is done, and a very nice young man who found us online wants to volunteer some help while he is between jobs. It will be wonderful to have incoming help at a time when we have to lose some of our farm family who are returning to school or to other opportunities.

Until next week...

In Your Share This Week

Onions - Red Candy Apple, Walla Walla
Zucchini - Cavelli, Slick Pick, Zephyr, Sunburst Pattypan, Bennings Green Tint Pattypan, Lita, Raven, Elite and Horn of Plenty
Melons (possibly) Honeydew-Diplomat, Passport, Cantaloupe-Goddess or Asian Sun Jewel
Egg Plants (possibly) Dancer (pink), Dusky (purple) Orient Express (skinny purple) or Orient Charm (skinny pink)
Carrots - Forto
Basil - Ararat, Lime
Green Beans - Landmark
Sweet Peppers - Islander (purple bell), Snapper (green bell), Gypsy (yellow) Jimmy Nardello (1" X 6" green)
Hot Peppers - Conchos (jalapeno),
Tomatoes - Taxi (yellow), Orange Blossom (orange), and New Girl (red)
Collards - Vates
Acorn Squash - Cream of the Crop

Nitty Gritty News August 20th

2009-08-19T18:22:00.008-05:00

From the farmers….
Extreme farming! Bagging potatoes, sorting cukes and zukes and harvesting cabbage as winds blew, rain fell in torrents and finally, ran for the house as tornado sirens went off in North Branch. Everyone got dried off – a huge pile of soaking wet clothes piled in the shower – and almost everyone dressed in our
t-shirts and jeans and sweats. We all warmed up with hot chocolate and tea and zucchini bread provided by Sue. This evening as we celebrated Jacq’s last week here at Nitty Gritty down at our local Sunrise Bar, we heard stories of how serious the storm we had harvested through really was - tornado? damage in North Branch with the roof collapsed? on one of the schools.
In spite of the downpour all day, we got most of the harvest accomplished. Soaked to the skin even through raincoats, muddy and feeling just a bit invincible, we harvested and prepared most of the vegetables for your weekly share. Pulling carrots through mud with rain water filling the holes as fast as we removed carrots was a challenge. We were not able to harvest the green beans in the rain and will try to get them picked tomorrow –hopefully it will be dry long enough for that – or we’ll have to figure out how to get beans to you because the plants are loaded.
We picked our first ripe tomatoes last week – and peppers – and eggplant – and melons. Some of you will find a melon in your box this week. And depending on the weather, we may pick some tomatoes if it doesn’t rain tomorrow. Otherwise, you can count on fresh tomatoes for sure next week.
On the livestock front: our baby bunnies are getting ready to hop out of their next box soon. After the rain, all of the critters have new swimming holes in their pens. The only ones who seem to really enjoy it are the pigs who seem to be having a pool party. We’ll be taking our first group of seven lambs to the meat locker on Monday morning with the other two groups going later. Some critter got at our ducks a couple of nights ago. All we found was one less duck and a lot of feathers outside their pen. From the paw print, it looks as though it was probably a coyote. There are a lot of coyotes that live in the state part just east of our farm. We hear them often in early evening through the night. And so far, we haven’t had much predation from them. But perhaps because the steers are gone from the far back part of the farm, the coyotes are feeling braver about getting at the ducks. So we’ve moved the ducks closer to the other livestock and we’ll move them even closer in later this week.
As I said, earlier, this week is Jacq’s last week. On Monday, she begins classes as she continues her education. Sara finished two weeks ago. It is sad to see interns who have become part of our farm family go – and yet – the farm goes on.
Until next week………

In your share this week
Potatoes – Norland Red
Onions – Red Candy Apple, Walla Walla, Candy
Cucumber – Raider, Sweet Slice, Lucky Strike
Zucchini – Cavelli, Slick Pick, Zephyr, Sunburst Pattypan, Bennings Green Tint Pattypan, Lita, Raven, Elite, Horn of Plenty
Honeydew melons (maybe) Diplomat, Passport
Cantaloupe (maybe) Goddess
Carrots – Chantenay (short stumpy) and/or Nantes (longer)
Kohlrabi – Winner
Swiss Chard – Northern Lights
Basil – Lime, Amethyst Improved, Genovese
Dill – Dukat, Bouquet
Green Beans – Landmark

REFRIGERATOR PICKLES
From Cyndie Leary at Community UCC in St. Paul Park

6 cups sliced cucumbers
1 cup sliced onions
1 cup green pepper (optional)
1 cup apple cider vinegar
1 to 2 cups sugar depending on taste
1 tablespoon salt
1 teaspoon celery seed

Combine all ingredients; mix well. Place in jar. Refrigerate. The pickles will be ready in 24 hours and will keep up to 1 year.

Nitty Gritty News August 13th

2009-08-05T20:04:00.000-05:00

From the farmers….
It has been a HOT week here at Nitty Gritty Dirt Farm! Today with temperatures soaring into the 90’s as we picked green and yellow beans, we are hoping your beans won’t taste salty – what with all of our sweating under the searing sun. Yesterday we loaded and spread two fairly large compost piles onto the re-worked areas of our fields as well as side-dressing for the summer squash and cuke rows. Our neighbor, Chick stopped by on his way to baling straw on our back field to ask if we wanted to use his manure spreader. We replied that with the skinny strips to be fertilized, his large spreader – though a lot easier than the shovels and wheelbarrows we were using – would not work, but thanks anyway. Earlier this week, Chick combined (harvested) the oats he had planted for us on our back 5? acres. This morning, Dale picked up the gravity box with the approximately 2000 pounds of harvested oats and drove it to the mill where it was cleaned and banked for us to use in mixing some of our livestock feeds this winter.
On Tuesday evening, our kitchen was full of interns, helpers and harvested veggies as we spent the evening (after the big compost move) making jars and jars of pickles. We made over a dozen quarts of sandwich stacker dill pickles, another dozen or so of short-brine brown sugar dills, and mixed Jardinière pickles with carrots, onions, beans, broccoli, basil, garlic and hot peppers. We also canned a dozen quarts of sauerkraut we made three weeks ago and another dozen or so pints of bread and butter pickles. Our kitchen (which is pretty small) was a choreography of canning kettles, huge bowls of prepped veggies and a little music from Gigi, Emilie and Ellie to keep us all going. We have a great assortment to divide and send home with everyone. And if that were not enough, as Dale continued to load the canning kettles with jars, Cara and Jacq bottled the first batch and mixed up another batch of kombucha (fermented tea). We now have three jars going with new kombucha mothers in each. We are grateful to Cara for introducing this new treat to our household and hope to offer a farm workshop on getting you started with your own kombucha for shareholders and friends this fall. It is so easy – and so refreshing, especially on a hot day. We have plans to try some different flavors soon – how about lime basil and honey? Or maple syrup and chokecherry?

This morning, we moved the pigs – big and smaller – into new bigger – much bigger pens. Both groups seem very happy with a lot more room to run and whirl about, as well as dig and root up. Just before the big pigs got their waterer moved to its new location, a couple of them decided to lay alongside of it – without the stock panel fence helping to hold it in position. They were a bit surprised when the waterer with nearly 50 gallons of water tipped over and made a wonderful slough for them to slide in.
Tonight – after it cools down a bit – we will be hauling the two beef steers to the meat locker. It is always a bit sad to say goodbye and thank you to animals we’ve been taking care of since babyhood – but we try to take good care of them, so they can take good care of us. It is part of that great cycle of life.
Until next week……….

What’s in your share this week…

Sweet Corn - Ambrosia
Beans – Derby, Provider, Eureka
Collards - Vates
Zucchini – Raven, Elite, Lila, Sephyr, Click Pick, Horn of Plenty and Caveli
Cucumbers – Raider, Sweet Slice
Onions – Walla Walla
Dill Bouquet
Basil - Genovese

From Je Mange la Ville

Jacq found this recipe online and treated us with it at lunch yesterday. She substituted maple syrup for the orange juice and cilantro for the parsley. The site is jemangelaville.com and the specific reference page is http://www.jemangelaville.com/2007/07/01/its-hot-out-time-for-zucchini-gazpacho-and-a-dinner-out/

Zucchini Gazpacho
1 big zucchini
2 yellow tomatoes
1/2 green bell pepper
1 small sweet onion, chopped into quarters
2 cloves garlic
2 slices white bread, crusts removed
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
Tabasco
salt
pepper
3 tbsp parsley, chopped
juice of 1/2 an orange
extra olive oil for drizzling
Blend the zucchini, tomatoes, onion quarters, bell pepper, olive oil and garlic in a food processor. Get it a bit combined and then add the bread, a bit of Tabasco, parsley and orange juice. Taste and add salt and pepper as needed.
Serve into individual bowls and drizzle with the olive oil. You’re done. Go eat.

Nitty Gritty News August 6th

2009-08-05T19:10:00.009-05:00

From the Farmers……

It has been a week full of people at Nitty Gritty Dirt Farm. Our Summer Abundance Festival on Sunday was delightful. Thank you to everyone who attended, ate stirfried just-picked veggies, slaw, fresh breads, pesto, home brew and sun tea - with us. And even though we got a few sprinkles of rain, our new big hoop house for packing boxes – though a bit dark – provided plenty of room for eating and listening to music and drumming. We are always so delighted when shareholders come to visit the farm because we think it gives you a sense of exactly where and how your food is produced. We also believe that you gain a sense of – and put faces to - what we do to grow, weed, harvest and pack your food each week. If you haven’t been to the farm yet, we encourage you to do so.
On Monday, we welcomed back Olivia, intern two years ago who caught us up on her life since interning at NGDF, while seeding and pulling weeds. Tuesday brought Robin’s niece Emilie along with four friends who brought enormous energy for pulling wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow load of huge weeds from between the plastic mulch rows of tomatoes and then seeding and raking rye between the rows – as well as Gigi’s parents who came for some grandkid time as well as a farm lunch. And – Gigi’s kids Katy and Seth (only until Tuesday) are at the farm all week.
Our animals are thriving. After we filled the big pig feeder on Monday with 600 more pounds of feed, we managed to slip a weigh tape around the pigs as they were eating. The smallest of the big group is (according to the tape) 165 pounds and the biggest about 225 pounds. And the turkeys seem to take leaps in growth every week. Everyone is eating like crazy – it seems we are always getting a load of one kind of feed or another. The lambs are eating over 80 pounds of feed at day right now – in addition to pasture. Very soon the first group of them will be off to the butcher.
Today, we moved the older ewes to another pasture. Now that we have been getting some regular rain, the pastures are finally beginning to grow a little new grass. The small area the sheep are in now will keep them happy for a few days and then we will move them to what is left of the harvested cabbage and Chinese cabbage field where they’ll be fenced in the electro-net fencing set up by the interns this morning.

In your share this week, you will find some rather large zucchini. We know….. but since we don’t have a good walk-in cooler (yet????) we don’t have a good way to harvest them several times a week and hold them for you at the perfect size. We hope you will see our abundance of these big zukes as an opportunity to make zucchini cake and bread. We made a chocolate zucchini cake this week – one in a 9 x 13 pan and the other divided into three loaf pans. Delicious. It also freezes well. We are also including a recipe for Dilly Beans. We make a lot of these bean pickles every year and can them to enjoy all winter. You can just make a jar and put them in your fridge for a few days to a few weeks and enjoy them from the fridge instead of hot water bath canning if you prefer. There will be a lot more beans coming – so if you still haven’t had enough fresh beans – just save the recipe for later. You can also dry the dill to use later as dill weed and dill seed heads.

Until next week…..

What's in your Share:

Potatoes - Yukon Gold
Beans - Derby, Provider (green) Eureka (yellow)
Onions - Candy
Carrots - Scarlet Nantes
Kohlrabi - Winner
Collards - Vates
Swiss Chard - Northern Lights
Summer Squash - Raven, Elite (green) Slick Pick, Zephyr, Horn of Plenty (yellow)
Lita (roundish grayish green) Cavelle (grey)
Basil - Genovese
Cilantro - Santo
Dill - Bouquet

Recipes

From the Gardeners’ Community Cookbook
Chocolate Zucchini Cake

Butter for the pan
8 tablespoons (1 stick) butter
½ cup vegetable oil
1 3/4 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
½ cup buttermilk or sour cream or yogurt
2 ½ cups all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
¼ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground cloves
2 cups finely chopped zucchini
¼ cup chocolate chips
1 cup sour cream whisked with
2 tablespoons confectioner’s sugar
(optional)

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.
Cream the butter, oil and sugar in a
large bowl. Add the eggs, vanilla and
milk and beat well.
Combine the flour, baking powder,
baking soda, salt, cocoa, cinnamon and
Cloves. Stir into the batter, then add the
Zucchini, mixing well each time. Pour
Into the baking pan and sprinkle the
chocolate chips over the top. Bake for
40 to 45 minutes or until a knife inserted
in the center comes out clean.
Remove from the oven, cool slightly, then
slice and serve. If using the sour cream, place
a dollop on each plate. Will keep, covered, for
up to 5 days in the refrigerator.

Robin included chopped nuts in the chocolate
chip layer on the top. It was a delicious addition.

From Putting Food By
Dilly Beans

For each quart jar
One dill seed head and a couple of sprigs of the ferny leaves.
1/4 tsp red pepper or one hot pepper cut in half
1 - 2 cloves garlic cut in half
green and/or yellow beans

Mix 2 1/2 cups water and 2 1/2 cups apple cider vinegar with 1/4 cup salt (enough for one or two quart jars)

Wash beans thoroughly, remove stems and tips. Wash jars. Have lids in scalding water. In each jar, place the dill, the red pepper and the cloves of garlic. Pack beans upright in jars leaving one inch of head room. Heat together the water, vinegar and salt; when mixture boils, pour it over the beans, filling each jar to 1/2inch from the top. Wipe the tops of the jars with a clean cloth, adjust the hot lids on the jars and firmly tighten the screw caps. Process in a boiling water bath
for 20 minutes for quarts, 15 minutes for pints. Set the timer once the water is boiling. Remove jars and place on towel. Lids will "pop" when they seal. If they do not "pop", process them again or just put them in the fridge and eat within a few weeks.

Contributed by our 2008 intern, Erina
Roasted Zucchini with Thyme

1. Preheat oven to 450. Quarter and cut zucchini (about 1 and 1/2 pounds) into 1-2 inch chunks. Thinly slice 1 onion.
2. On a rimmed baking sheet, toss the zucchini and onion with 2 tablespoons olive oil, 1 teaspoon dried thyme, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1/8 teaspoon pepper.
3. Roast 30 minutes, tossing halfway through. Note: this also works well on the grill.
Lemony Zucchini and Bean Salad
Ingredients: 1 cup blanched green or yellow bean, cut into bite-sized pieces1 medium or several small zucchini, quartered lengthwise and cut crosswise into 1/4 inch thick slices
1/2 small onion, thinly sliced
1 oz. Parmesan cheese (about 1/4 cup) grated or broken into small chunks (optional; feta cheese would also work)
1 tablespoon chopped fresh basil1 tablespoon plus
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
3 tablespoons olive oil
1/8 teaspoon red pepper flakes
Salt and black pepper to taste
1. Combine beans, zucchini, onion, cheese, and basil in serving bowl.
2. Whisk remaining ingredients together in small bowl.
3. Add dressing to vegetables and cheese; mix well and garnish with additional basil if desired.
Note: To make this salad into a heartier vegetarian meal, you can substitute 1/2 to 1 cup chickpeas for some of the green beans and/or zucchini.

Nitty Gritty News July 30th

2009-07-29T19:13:00.006-05:00

From the Farmers….
I can’t believe that it is almost August! It seems like just last week was the first of July and it is time for another FARM FESTIVAL! This Sunday, August 2, starting at 2:30 pm come to the farm for our SUMMER ABUNDANCE FESTIVAL. While we don’t actually have the bulk of the summer abundance veggies like tomatoes and peppers yet (because of the cold spring) we will have plenty of farm abundance to share with you. Good food prepared by our amazing farm staff, hayrides around the farm, lots of animals and plants, Nitty Gritty Dirt FARM music, and we’ll be tapping another keg of our homebrew for you. This is a great time to come to the farm to see exactly how and where your food is being grown, harvested and packed for you. Let us know if you plan to attend so we can plan how much food to prepare.

From one extreme to another – I guess that’s farming. Rain on Monday, and again today. Twice, we watched the sky turn darker and darker, a few drops, then more and we grabbed our bean picking buckets and ran for shelter. The problem with beans and rain is that you can’t pick wet beans. There is some kind of reaction that makes the beans get little rusty looking spots when they are picked wet. It’s odd because it is fine to get the already picked beans wet – but you can’t pick in the rain. However, you can harvest cabbage in the rain – and so we shifted gears until the sun came back out and dried the plants so we could go back to beans – until the next shower – and the next. And you can also write while it rains, so that is what I’m doing now, while some of the interns bag the potatoes dug this morning and the others start the evening animal chores.

Looking around the farm, it seems that we’ve made quite a few changes this week. The sheep are in a new electro-net fenced pasture with lots of grass to eat. The lambs have moved next door to another fenced area off the barn. We moved the clothesline to the west yard instead of the back yard. And our new intern shower/composting toilet/washing sink building is nearly finished. We had started construction of this 6’ x 16’ building ourselves and simply have not had enough time to get it completed. When Jim, a construction guy who has done great work for us before, called and asked if we had any jobs he could fit in between his big jobs – we decided to hand the project over to him. Our simple shower house has become something of a ‘Taj Ma’ Shower ‘Hall’ - a lot more substantial than we had planned. It will be great though having a place for a lot of interns to shower, wash up cooking dishes and have their own toilet.

We also did a marathon weeding day on Tuesday. With the blessing of rain also comes the curse of weeds. And so, we decided to pull by hand the weeds between the tomato rows. Te tomato plants are already planted in black plastic mulch, but the four foot between row space in which I had planned to seed a cover crop – but didn’t because it was too dry - had now in just a few days grown up thickly in weeds. We’ll till, spread summer rye, and rake in the seed between the rows. With the amount of soil moisture we now have, we’re hoping the rye will germinate quickly, and with it’s allelopathic affect (inhibits weed growth) that it will suppress the weeds, make a nice pathway for pickers and bushy tomato plants – and as we work it in – provide fertility for the soil. We are hoping to seed the buckwheat seed waiting in the barn between the melon and cucumber rows also while this rainy spell lasts. Oh – and the rapeseed I seeded with high hopes is growing well and hopefully will provide good fall grazing for the sheep.

On my weekend wandering around the fields, I noticed that the pickling cucumbers had a bunch of cukes just ready for pickles – so on Saturday, we made 18 pints of bread and butter pickles and 4 quarts of Wild Child Dill pickles (dill, hot pepper, garlic, allspice and mustard seed). For those of you who like to make pickles, you will be getting some pickling cukes in your share in the weeks to come along with your slicers. We mostly grow picking cukes for the farm, but are usually overwhelmed in a couple of weeks and will then share them with you. We’ll be making Dilly beans this weekend or early next week and we are still making Kim Chee.

In your share this week, you are getting the last of the green and Chinese cabbage. We are planning to fence in the cabbage field with electro-net fencing and let the sheep graze all the leafy remains of the post-harvest cabbage.

On Monday, the big pigs had a blast mud wrestling in their rain drenched pen. They raced around and around and threw themselves into the mud over and over, completely covering themselves with mud – while we just watched and laughed.

Until next week…. (or Sunday)…

What’s in your share…

Potatoes - Norland red
Onions - Walla Walla yellow sweet
Zucchini ?? – mix or match from: Slick Pick (yellow long), Elite (green long), Cavell (pale green long), Zephyr (yellow and green bowling pin), Raven (dark green long)
Cucumber – Raider, Sweet Slice
Chinese Cabbage - Blues and/or Green Cabbage – Primax
Kohlrabi – Winner and/or Turnip – Hakkurei
Green Beans – Derby and/or Provider
Yellow Beans – Eureka
Herbs: Basil – Genovese (green large leaf), Ararat (purple multi. Thai), Lime
Dill – Dukat (leafy) and/or Cilantro - Santo

Nitty Gritty News July 23rd

2009-07-22T19:45:00.010-05:00

From the Farmers….

We finished the yurt!!! It’s been a project in the works since early spring – and finally tonight we finished the last grommet- and tie - and inside carpet. As we all sat inside reveling in how neat it is, it began to rain. We rushed out to put on the crown cover – the ‘jester hat’ we call it – to protect the center top hole. Dale will be moving into this structure next week when we move it onto a wooden deck. Then we’ll get the second nine foot yurt finished.

We did get a little rain this week – less than ½ inch. Not nearly enough to make much difference to some of the crops like the sweet corn, but certainly better than nothing. While we didn’t get the 2 – 3 inches like some places in the twin cities, at least we did not get the hail that some got.

Over the weekend, we (Robin and Gigi) went camping up north. It was wonderful to get away – our first summer camping trip since we began the CSA five years ago. We are so thankful to have had Adrienne (intern from last year) who provided some weekend coverage so we could get away.

Back at the farm, we’ve been mowing between tomato and squash rows to make grass pathways. Now that we’ve had a bit of rain, we’ll be seeding some buckwheat and rye between the melon rows. The rapeseed that I seeded last week and wondered if it would germinate is all coming up – halleluiah!

On Monday, Jane, Sara and Cara mulched the late green beans and red cabbage. These three amazing interns spread three big bales of mulch over ten 220 foot rows in less than a day! We are using a lot of hay mulch again this year to help conserve moisture in the soil, control weeds and build the soil as it decomposes. We can see a huge difference in the crops that are mulched with hay, mulched with plastic and not mulched at all.

Tuesday, with rain imminent, we again worked on a variety of odd jobs – sewing on the yurt cover, making cheese, and seeding Mei Qing Choi and Kohlrabi in flats for fall harvest. We also seeded a couple of new rows of turnips and cooking radishes in the field.

This morning our interns made the big duck move – moving the fifteen Khaki Campbell ducks to new territory – with more grass. We’ve been moving them weekly to new space – but today the move was much farther. The technique of just moving the fence with the ducks moving along inside did not work for this distance, so each duck had to be caught –which they didn’t much like – and carried to the new pen. They should be happier with new foraging.

Until next week….

WHAT'S IN YOUR SHARE THIS WEEK

Chinese Cabbage
Primax Green Cabbage
Candy Onions
Provider and Jade Green Beans
Eureka Yellow Beans
Yukon Gold and some Norkotah Russett Potatoes
Packman Broccoli
Vates Collard Greens
Lime Basil
Ararat Basil

Nitty Gritty News July 16TH

2009-07-15T10:39:00.004-05:00

REMINDER ABOUT THE BOXES

From now on you will have a box of your very own. We still highly recommend that you bring a bag, transfer your treasures into it, and leave your empty box at the drop site. CAREFULLY unfold the tabs on the top and bottom and gently flatten the box. If you try to force them, they could tear and they don’t hold the heavier produce well if the tabs have tears. Thanks in advance for your help.

From the Farmers….

Anticipating rain all day on Tuesday, we found all kinds of odd jobs that were not in the fields that needed doing – moving the sheep to yet another pasture, organizing and bagging seeds, assembling three new wheelbarrows, sewing the cover and walls for a yurt – and no real rain – only a few sprinkles. After dark, the lightning and wind came and finally – the rain. So badly needed, we only got about ½ inch which is not enough but certainly better than nothing. Our well got a day of respite from irrigating yet another field, and we took a day off from weeding.

The rain caused quite a few of the ready-for-harvest cabbages to split – and so we took advantage of the opportunity and after harvesting all day today, we dug out the antique kraut cutter and shredded and packed three five gallon pails of sauerkraut. With the abundance of various cabbages , we have also been experimenting with kimchee – a fermented bok choy or Chinese cabbage mixed with other veggies. Gigi thought the first attempt was a bit too heavy on red pepper and ginger so another is in the works. We are not sure that we will follow the tradition of Koreans who eat kimchee with everything – even breakfast, but it seems a good addition to a meal for those who like to add a bit of zing.

We are finally making progress on our yurts. Cara seems to have made it her mission to get the yurt covers sewed so Dale and Sara can move into them soon. With a few grommets and only a little more fitting of the cordura nylon fabric over the doorway, the first structure is nearly ready. On the potentially rainy Tuesday, we moved the whole yurt into our processing hoop house so we could work on it even if it rained. We also moved the sewing machine right outside to the hoop house too to make fitting and sewing more convenient.

Our baby broiler chicks are growing fast – already turning from cute yellow puff balls into less cute beginning-to-feather babies. And the baby rabbits have turned into teenagers – and Minerva is pregnant again – due to kindle in the beginning of August. All of the babies grow so quickly into big animals. The turkeys are growing fast, as are the pigs – even the second group of five are growing fast – especially with the addition of milk and whey to their diet.

Over the weekend, we figured out the average rates of gain for the pigs, the lambs and the steers – and then based on our figures and data from the last two years, we made appointments at the two local butchers where we get our meat processed. It is a little hard to know exactly when the livestock will be the correct market weight – and in order to get an appointment, we have to book it months ahead – especially as the dates go into September and October.
Even though we have almost no pasture and are feeding hay to the sheep and steers and goats – everyone seems to be doing pretty well. On Monday, with potential rain, I disked one pasture field, seeded it with 25 pounds of rapeseed and dragged it – and waited for rain – which did finally come by evening. Hopefully we will get some more so the crop grows to provide grazing for the sheep this fall.

Janet Fletcher, the cookbook author was back last Thursday to talk to us again and see us get everything harvested, cleaned, sorted, and packed into your boxes. She sent us a couple of pictures that she took – which are on the blog site.

Intern Jacq is gone this week – camping in Alaska. We miss her but hope she is having fun and getting reenergized. Tomorrow is Avery’s last day at the farm. He will be leaving to drive to Earlham College in Illinois where he will meet up with a group who will then turn around and drive back up north – far north – for a long canoe trip for a college class. We wish Avery well and hope he will come back for a visit.

Cara and Sarah have become our farm cheese queens – making batches of cheese nearly every day they are at the farm. Cara made Panir – an Indian cheese – and used it for part of an Indian curry meal she made for us. Both Sarah and Cara have learned to make several soft yogurt cultured spreadable cheeses and today made a feta like cheese which will be ready to eat next Monday. I (Robin) made some squeaky cheese curds to eat as a snack. It is a bit tricky making cheese when we have to work around the farm schedule and can’t simply stay by the cheese kettle and watch the process carefully. It has meant we need to stick to fool-proof types of cheese that don’t require such careful and timely steps.

Tomorrow morning we’ll begin the harvest at 6:30 and so…

Until next week……………. Robin and Gigi

What’s in your box?

Yukon Gold potatoes
Knight shelling peas
Provider and Jade Green Beans, Eureka yellow beans
Baby Collard greens
Red Russian kale
Primax green cabbage
Blues Chinese cabbage
Packman broccoli
Walla Walla onions
Joi Choi bok choy

Nitty Gritty News July 9th

2009-07-07T18:37:00.005-05:00

INDIVIDUAL BOXES THIS WEEK!!!

So far, your share has been in various bags and bunches. This week, you will have a box of your very own. We still highly recommend that you bring a bag, transfer your treasures into it, and leave your empty box at the drop site. CAREFULLY unfold the tabs on the top and bottom and gently flatten the box. If you try to force them, they could tear and they don’t hold the heavier produce well if the tabs have tears. Thanks in advance for your help.

From the Farmers….

Wow! It’s been a busy week at Nitty Gritty Dirt Farm! While others were shooting off fireworks on the 4th, we (Gigi and Robin) spent all of Saturday first picking shell peas and then shelling them and freezing them. We listened to four MPR programs while we picked and several more while we shelled, including the Prairie Home Companion anniversary show in Avon, which we had hoped to attend. It was a long job, but we have over 40 bags of peas in our freezer which will taste wonderful next winter.
On Friday, as we were returning the chicken plucker which we borrowed for butchering our first batch of broilers to Robin’s son Lucas, we received a phone call from our neighbor Chick (from whom we get our pigs). He said he had a deal for us – and we thought “oh no!” We didn’t want to try to save any more teeny tiny baby pigs – but this time he had five 50-60 pound pigs that were an in-between size for him – they were too big for the small group and too small for the older pigs at his farm – and he wondered if we or someone we knew might be interested. We conferred and decided, “We’ll take them.” So home again and building another pig pen and pig shelter and then over to the neighbor’s to pick up the five cute new pigs. They make us realize just how big our first group of five already is – probably well over 150#.
We made a new home for the turkeys – a secure and large pen with a big shade section. They seem to be very happy in their new quarters – which should suffice for them for at least a couple of weeks.
On Sunday afternoon, intern Cara arrived. Though it is only Wednesday as I write, it seems as though she has been with us from the beginning. We worked on our yurts (round living quarters) on Tuesday, and it was exciting to take advantage of Cara’s sewing ability to help with cutting out the cordura nylon and begin sewing pieces together. Hopefully by the next farm festival, we will have our colorful festival yurts up and interns living in them.
On Monday, our friends, Kevin and Connie, dairy farmers from down by Rochester, visited. They gamely put up with our work day, following us around as we weeded and weeded and weeded – red cabbage. We had expected our next shipment of 50 broilers to arrive on Monday morning at our post office but no phone call at the usual 6:30 AM, so we assumed that they would not arrive until Tuesday. We didn’t remember that the holiday might change the delivery time – and the phone call announcing their arrival came on Gigi’s phone at about 3:00 pm while she was on her way to teach at the Homestead Pickin’ Parlor. I (Robin) didn’t answer my phone, so she called Jacq to pass on this less than desired news since we only had Jacq’s car at the farm. But Kevin and Connie saved the day. They drove into North Branch to the feed mill to pick up a bag of Chick starter and another of shavings for bedding (the other was in Gigi’s trunk in Richfield) and then back to Harris to the post office to pick up the box of chicks. All except one were fine – healthy and cute and ready to eat and drink. Thanks Kevin and Connie for all of your help and the great pictures.
And on Wednesday, cookbook author, Janet Fletcher came to visit to talk to us about our farm for the cookbook she is writing and in which we will be one of the featured farms. It was a lot of fun sharing our meal and our day – though it was a bit disconcerting to have our meal inspected so carefully. Janet and her publisher Doralece will be back tomorrow to follow us around as we harvest more food and pack your weekly share.
And in the middle of all of this, many feet of new irrigation hose was laid and plants watered, bushels of peas were picked and hundreds of feet of rows were weeded – and we still had energy for a spirited group lesson and added a drum circle time.
Until next week. Robin and Gigi

What’s in your share this week:

Norland red Potatoes
Knight shelling peas
Cascadia edible podded peas
Primax green cabbage
Blues Chinese cabbage
Joi Choi Bok Choi
Bull’s Blood Beets and Greens
Vates Collard Greens (baby)
Easter Egg and Pink Beauty Radishes
MAYBE Packman Broccoli
Candy Onion

Ideas for using your veggies this week – make slaw. Today, I used a mix of Chinese cabbage, green cabbage both sliced very fine, chopped broccoli, shredded radishes and chopped onion. I sprinkled the mix with a little salt and let it sit for about ½ hour then squeezed out the water. I made a vinaigrette of olive oil, apple cider vinegar, honey, ground ginger, salt and pepper. It was pretty and very tasty. You could use just about any mix of cabbage type greens including the collards and bok choy. Just thinly slice. Add some crunchy veggies like radishes or peas. And either use a creamy dressing or any kind of vinaigrette. We have also been enjoying a variety of stir fries this week, using a lot of bok choy and Chinese cabbage with a variety of seasonings.

Nitty Gritty News July 2nd

2009-07-01T22:15:00.004-05:00

From the Farmers….
What crazy weather! From 90 + degrees on Saturday to 51 on Monday – our poor plants don’t know exactly what to do. After sweating profusely as we worked on building the shower/composting toilet/sink house for our interns on Saturday, we have been enjoying the cooler weather – even wearing sweat shirts all day to work in the fields. We did a bunch more weeding on Monday and butchered fifty broilers on Tuesday. We do have a great crew of interns – all willing and enthusiastic to learn whatever we throw at them.
Just this evening after livestock chores, we made a new area of pasture for the sheep. Being so dry, the pastures just are not coming back after being grazed. We are planning to disk up one big area for the sheep and plant with rapeseed (a kind of grazing plant in the cabbage family), but are waiting for a forecast of rain so we know when to seed.
We have added another new intern. Sarah joins us from out east and will be with us for about six weeks. She is a great addition and brings new skills and enthusiasm. One of the perks of being an intern at Nitty Gritty Dirt Farm is that Gigi will teach music lessons for banjo, guitar, mandolin, drums, ???? This year, everyone is participating - so the lesson has become a group one. Today we had Dale and Sarah on banjos, Avery, Jacq and Robin on guitar, Sue on the djembe drum and Gigi on mandolin – kind of crazy but a LOT of fun. Then back to the field to pick snap peas.
Until next week…. Robin and Gigi

Whats in your share this week

1 bag of salad greens – includes a variety of romaine, bibb, oakleaf lettuces, mizuna, red Russian kale, mustard greens, tatsoi, arugula, collards, chard.
1 bundle of Joi Choi bok choi
Walla Walla green Onion
Cascadia Sugar Snap Peas

Robin's Early Summer Soup

Just today we made a wonderful hearty soup with one head of bok choy - chopped, one green Walla Walla onion – chopped , a handful of peas, a big handful of greens chopped, , 4 cups of cooked Jacobs Cattle beans, canned tomatoes and tomato juice. I sautéed the onion and bok choi in about one Tablespoon of olive oil, then added two quarts of canned tomatoes and 1 quart of tomato juice (this all canned from last summer – or you could get by with purchased) Add the beans (you could substitute kidney beans) and 2 bay leaves, 1 teaspoon spike seasoning, 1 teaspoon Italian seasoning, 1 teaspoon salt and a little pepper. Cook for an hour or so on very low heat. It was delicious.