News from Waltham Fields Community Farm CSA

Amanda Cather <farmmanager@communityfarms.org>
Mon, Aug 11, 2008 at 3:45 PM
Reply-To: farmmanager@communityfarms.org
To: Shareholders
local food for everyoneWaltham Fields Community Farm
CSA Newsletter #10
August 11, 2008
In This Issue
What's In the Share This Week
Pick-Your-Own Crops
Notes from the Field
Quick Links
Join our Board of Directors!
Waltham Fields Community Farm is a nonprofit run by a volunteer board of directors. We are currently recruiting board members to start serving in January, 2009. We are especially seeking candidates who have one or more of the following qualities:
  • financial expertise
  • fund-raising expertise
  • personnel expertise
  • previous nonprofit experience

Please contact Kathy Diamond by email or by phone (617-926-6025) if you think you might be interested or would like to learn more about the board.

Bring us your compost!

Bring your own household compost if you don't mind the walk to the compost piles. Acceptable compost ingredients include all vegetable and fruit scraps, eggshells, bread crusts and coffee grounds. Please, no other animal products. Thanks to everyone who has helped us build our compost piles!

Summer Squash Bread and Butter Pickles

Here is a good way to use up all that squash!

4 lb small yellow squash and green zucchini, scrubbed and cut into 1/4-inch-thick rounds (12 cups)
2 large onions, cut crosswise into 1/4-inch-thick slices
1/4 cup plus 1 1/2 t canning salt
1 qt crushed ice
2 1/4 cups cider vinegar
1 cup pure maple syrup (preferably dark amber)
3/4 cup water
1 T mustard seeds
1 t whole allspice
1/2 t celery seeds
6 (4- to 5-inch-long) fresh red chiles such as Holland red hot finger peppers
Special equipment: 6 (1-pint) canning jars with lids and screw bands

Toss together yellow squash, zucchini, and onions with 1/4 cup canning salt and crushed ice in a large bowl. Press a plate directly onto vegetables and place a 5-pound weight on top (a bag of sugar in a sealed plastic bag works well). Let stand at room temperature 4 hours.

Sterilize jars and lids.

Bring vinegar, syrup, water, mustard seeds, allspice, celery seeds, and remaining 1 1/2 teaspoons canning salt to a boil in a 3-quart saucepan, then simmer, uncovered, 10 minutes.
Cut a lengthwise slit in each chile (don't cut all the way through), then add chiles to pickling liquid and continue to simmer 1 minute.
Drain jars upside down on a clean kitchen towel 1 minute, then invert.
Drain vegetables in a colander set over a bowl to catch liquid, then pack into jars, tucking a chile pepper into side of each jar. Fill jars with pickling liquid, leaving 1/4 inch of space at top, then run a thin knife between vegetables and jar to eliminate air bubbles.
Seal, process, and store filled jars, boiling pickles in jars 20 minutes.
Let pickles stand in jars at least 1 week for flavors to develop.

Gourmet, July 2001

Many thanks for the recipe suggestions and links you sent in last week -- keep 'em coming!

Need more ideas? Visit our Produce Info and Recipes page.

Welcome to the 2008 Harvest Season!

CSA Pickups at the Farm this Week:sunflower
  • Tuesday, August 12 from 3-7 PM
  • Thursday, August 14 from 3-7 PM
  • Sunday, August 17 from 3-7 PM
CSA Pickup in Davis Square (for pre-registered shareholders only):
  • Tuesday, August 12 from 5-7 PM
What's In the Share This Week
Please note: This list is prepared the week before you receive your share. Some guesswork is involved!
We do our best to predict which crops will be ready to harvest, but sometimes crops are on the list that are not in the share, and sometimes crops will be in the share even though they're not on the list.



Pick-Your-Own Crops This Week
red peppersShareholders are welcome to pick-your-own during daylight hours Mondays through Thursdays and Sundays. Check the white board on the red kiosk for PYO information.
Notes from the Field
But seriously, folks...

Who ordered all this rain? It's another rainy Monday morning after another thunderous Sunday evening distribution, and it's safe to say that we will spend most of the day in the greenhouse (again) or, if we can get our truck into the field without getting stuck in the mud, trying to harvest onions (again). Our afternoons have been consistently cut short or made ominous by thunder and lightning, the fields are so muddy we can't work them, weeds are growing like... well... you know, and melons, tomatoes, squash and cucumbers are just sitting there waiting for some sunny weather. This weekend we had a couple of good drying days, making for a good tomato harvest on Sunday, but early this week looks like more wet weather. Even our light, well-drained soils are feeling the weight of the rain, and farmers with wetter soils are taking a serious hit.

Since June 1, we've had about 6 1/2 more inches of rain than is normal for this time of year in Eastern Massachusetts. Some of our neighbors to the west have had much more, along with more intense versions of the violent thunderstorms and hail that we have seen here. Coming back from the Northeast Organic Farmers' Association Conference in Amherst this weekend, Erinn and Jonathan told us that at least one farm in the Pioneer Valley is simply turning their tomatoes in for the season. Jonathan Kirschner, a former WFCF board member and farmer who now farms in western Connecticut, stopped by this week and told us about early blight, a soil-borne disease that is worse in wet seasons, devastating his tomato crop. Farmers have seen hail and funnel clouds threaten crops, along with the disease and rot that prolonged wet weather brings (see this article in the Springfield Republican for more). Jenny Wooster, half of the exceptional team of farmers who grow our potatoes and winter squash, told us that the weird combination of dry and wet weather is taking a toll on her family's farm as well. Normally optimistic, Jenny's husband Bruce asked her the other day if it was December yet.

There's not much we can do, so at this point the never ending wet weather feels a little like a bad joke. We laugh, put on our rain pants, and pick tomatoes on the green side so that they have less of a chance of splitting or rotting on the vine in the next rain storm. We keep planting and keep bringing the harvest in, and make sure that Jonathan and Erinn get a chance to cultivate every day that it's dry. We're grateful for the growth of the broccoli, cabbage, kale and cauliflower out in the fields, and hope that they will not be hit too hard by their own version of early blight when the nights get cooler. We are grateful to you all for helping us keep up with the weeds, and to our tremendous farm crew and harvest helpers, both work sharers and volunteers, for helping us get crops out of those soggy fields.

But there IS something you can do this season. Go to the farmers' market. Buy fruit. Buy cheese. Buy more tomatoes if you're ready to can them, even if they are split. Talk to folks, hear their stories, and support those farmers, just as you offered your support to us this season. It helps, particularly for those farmers who don't have the financial security of community supported agriculture, and for whom an educated customer will make all the difference in a challenging year.

Dan Kaplan, one of the great CSA farmers in Massachusetts, told a group of folks on a tour of his fields this past weekend that customers join CSAs because they want to be closer to death, to be part of the cycle of grief and loss. "If they didn't want loss, they could go to the supermarket," he pointed out. "Every year, we give them a little loss -- hopefully not too much!" He was joking, but he has a point, some years more than others. This connection to natural cycles is something we value tremendously as farmers, even when it hurts, and we wish that the ground would freeze already and get it over with. Being confronted with the failure of your best efforts because of a hail storm or another rainy day is a powerful, humbling experience, and not a pleasant kind of humbling. By joining a community supported farm, you've chosen to connect yourself and your daily meals to those cycles and failures as well, something most people in our culture never do. Thanks for being willing to be a little bit humbled with us.


Enjoy the harvest.

Amanda



The Staff of Waltham Fields Community Farm
Amanda Cather, Farm Manager
Debra Guttormsen, Administrative and Finance Coordinator
Amanda Jellen, Farm Crew
Paula Jordan, Children's Learning Garden Assistant
Claire Kozower, Executive Director
Jonathan Martinez, Assistant Grower
Dan Roberts, Farm Crew
Erinn Roberts, Assistant Grower
Andy Scherer, Assistant Farm Manager
Mark Walter, Children's Learning Garden Coordinator
Waltham Fields Community Farm | 240 Beaver Street | Waltham | MA | 02452