CSA Pick Up

Harvesting through the rain drops today and tomorrow, your pick up order will be ready for you. Because of all the warm weather and rain things are really growing. The veggies listed in red in the card on the left are what will be in your share this week. Not sure if the beets will be beets or just beet greens. I have been talking with UConn extension about the beets because a lot of the beets are long and slim and not round balls. There seems to be some concern that it is either the wet damp erratic cool weather or else a possible seed mix up with the supplier. The supplier would never admit to a seed mix up and because part of the beets are round the problem is probably the weather conditions. Any way I won't know till tomorrow morning if the beets will be just greens or actually have little round beets attached to them. You will find the second recipe Garlic Scape Carbonara is under the 2011 CSA recipe folder. Looking forward to seeing you tomorrow.

Recipes are here!!!

The recipes are here!! I have added all of last year's 20 recipes that we passed out at each week pickup. To locate the recipe page place the mouse arrow up at the Home tab under the heading and slowly move to the right. A new tab should pop up saying " 2010 Fire Ring Farm Recipes". This will give you some more ideas for how to use, and prepare the weekly vegetables that you pick up from the farm.

These are all delicious and some of them address special diets like Vegetarian, Vegan, Lactose intolerant, and Gluten free. As the season progresses I will be adding a new recipe each week for you to enjoy.

As I told a lot of you I also recommend the book "From Asparagus to Zucchini" http://www.amazon.com/Asparagus-Zucchini-Cooking-Farm-Fresh-Seasonal/dp/0972121781/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1307995218&sr=1-1 .

I am looking forward to a wonderful 2011 season.

Rocks

Rocks!! In Connecticut we have rocks and rocks and more rocks. This is one of the rocks Bruce uncovered (yes they hide down deep in the soil undercover) when he was clearing the South garden area so we could plant. First we decided to dig a deep hole and bury it. You know the saying "Out of site, Out of mind." Well it worked for about 3 hours and then Bruce uncovered a second rock in the field. Both of these rocks were to big for out Kubota Tractor so we went to our neighbor Art! One needs a neighbor like Art if you are going to run a farm. (We had a neighbor in Ohio - Dave that we needed when I was running my landscape business) Back on point, Art has access to a BIG machine and was able to uncover Rock #1 and remove both Rock 1 and 2 from the garden. There are still lots of baby rocks in the garden but now we have the beds formed, amended and almost all planted. I will show pictures on the next blog writing. I am still learning how to add more than one picture to my blog entry.

So the question for the day is which is better Ohio Clay Soil or Connecticut Big Rocks with Sandy Loam Soil. Both need amending and both can drive a person crazy!!

Shallots and more

Shallots are in the ground!! All 624 of them! These shallots are Yellow Moon. I think shallots are one of my favorite vegetables to plant and watch grow. They are these round fat bulbs that are placed in the ground so that their little heads stick up out of the ground a little bit and then they start to grow. As they grow each fat bulb divides in to 3 or 4 individual bulbs with the wonderful array of green hairy tops that stand up straight and tall. When they are ready to harvest their green hairy tops start to turn brown and that is the signal to dig them up. They are then split into their own individual set and cured for a couple of weeks and then ready to be added to some wonderful recipes.

We have been busy planting all the Peas too. They are not up yet but I expect them to pop through the ground any day now that we have had some wonderful rain and today it has been sunny and warm. I have planted Sugar Snap Peas, Mammoth Melting Snow Peas and Oregon Sugar Pod Snow Peas. I am trying a variety of peas hoping to have a longer harvest. The Oregon Sugar Pod Snow Peas are suppose to be a good shelling pea that can be frozen. The way Zephyrus, my grandson, likes peas I need to grow a lot of them.

The greenhouse is full of starts of peppers, tomatoes, celery, spinach, summer squash, beets, basil, cilantro, dill, nasturtiums, Calendula and more. Spring is a busy and exciting time of year. We are also working on finishing up the irrigation to the lower garden, preparing new beds and mulching paths.

I will try to write more frequently so you can be aware of all that is growing here on the farm.

Maple Syrup

The Maple Syrup is complete!! The trees were tapped in the snow. We only got 5 taps in because we could not reach the other trees because of the snow accumulation. It was a good season for maple syrup sap and we collected over 100 gallons of sap ( 43 gallons of sap makes approximately 1 gallon of maple syrup. This was our first year having all the equipment i.e. evaporator and sugar shack ready so we could start processing as the sap flow came. We learned a lot from our first batch - about how long to keep it in the evaporator before drawing it off, how to finish it off on the stove - getting it up to a temperature 7 degrees above boiling which in CT became 212.4 degrees F. , what heat setting on the stove kept the sap boiling but not cooking to fast, and how many times it needed to be filtered. If it is not filtered enough or correctly the sugar sand particles called 'niter' settle out upon jaring it up so there is a residue in the bottom. All said and done we were able to jar up 2.15 gallons of maple syrup. I put them in my 4oz, 8 oz and 12 oz jelly jars and sealed them with the lids and bands. I am very happy with the results

A great big thank you goes to one of my high school friends, Cindy, who is a friend of mine on Facebook. She read about what we were doing on the farm and wrote me about her Maple Syrup operation back in Ohio. She answered a lot of questions that I had about the total process. I am very greatfull for all her help.

The snow has melted and so the chickens are a lot happier because they can now roam around and enjoy the sunshine and take their dirt baths. It has been a long winter for them and with the longer days they are also laying eggs more consistently.
The greenhouse is starting to have little green plants all over it. The Leeks and onions are up, along with celery and celeriac root and parsley. The carrots have been started and on Wednesday spinach will go into soil blocks.
On Saturday was the NOFA (Northeast Organic Farmers Association) Bulk order pick up. Because we are a member of NOFA we can order minerals like HiCal Limestone, BioChar, SulpoMag, stakes, row covers and other supplies for the season. I then went to my second Nutrient Density Crop growing workshop on Sunday so now I need the soil to warm up so I can shape up my beds, add my minerals, Broad fork the minerals and cover crops in and then put down the irrigation lines and black plastic and have the beds all ready for planting. It is getting to be that time of year. The equinox being next Sunday - Spring will be here.

Maple Syrup time

The sap from the Sugar Maple trees has started to flow. I think it really started about a week ago but we could not get to the trees because of all the ice and snow. The sun did come out and melt the snow so now we are in full production of collecting the sap from the trees and then cooking it off in our evaporator. We got the evaporator last year. It was a big job building the fire box with fire brick to make it burn hot. It was also not a good year for collecting sap so between the two endeavors we didn't succeed in getting any Maple Syrup. THIS YEAR will be different. We were ready with the buckets and taps. We got a new tarp for the 'Sugar Shack' (the winter was hard on tarps this year). And yesterday we had 25 gallons of sap collected so Bruce filled the upper chamber with the sap and started the fire and we are now cooking the sap down to Maple Syrup. The evaporator cooks it down to almost finished and then it needs to be filtered and cooked on the stove to finish it off. So hopefully we will get some Maple Syrup. The ratio of sap collected to amount of finished syrup is approximately 43 gallons of sap for 1 gallon of syrup. So at this point we have hopes of 1/2 gallon of syrup. We will see. In the picture Bruce is showing Z about building a fire in the lower fire box and how it heats up the stainless steel box which holds the syrup. Have to wait a few years before Z can run the evaporator.