31. August 2011 by David.

Our workdays now sometimes span the ever dwindling daylight hours… picking parsley at sunrise then beans at sunset is a great reminder that the end of summer is upon us.  Needing a blanket again for lunch hour naps is also a hint!

Garden work is switching into fall mode.  Some of the summertime plants whose fruits we harvest are no longer bearing fruit.  That means we don’t have to pick them every day.  It also means it is time to pull the plants out and send them to the compost.  The black plastic (biodegradable, corn based) then gets pulled up, also headed for the compost.  Drip tape gets rolled to use another time, and then the garden is ready for compost and being worked with the tractor.

Even though it is fall, we are still seeding more crops each week, planting seedlings into the garden, and weeding.  Some crops stay the same through the fall, other crops are phased out, and some new ones like spinach are starting to grow.  The lettuces are starting to germinate and the onions will soon be ready.  As the fall slows the growth of our garden, the weeds also grow more slowly - at least that’s the theory.  I look forward to seeing it to believe it!

Heather

What’s in my Box?

Week No.12

• Zucchini: Unless the plants perk up again this will be the last week for Zucchini, the cold is starting to slow them down.  As the very first week was Thursday only, this week is Tuesday only. There’s just enough to make a jar of zucchini relish to go with a barbeque dinner later this week when it warms up.
• Colourful carrots: You’ll notice not all the purple carrots are the same - some have yellow in the middle (dragon variety), others have a more mottled purple skin (purple haze).
• Radish: A bit of spice is nice!
• Potatoes: Roasted, fried, mashed, boiled, baked, pancaked…
• Tomatoes:  Paste tomatoes this week - they have more pulp to less juice and seeds, making them ideal for sauces and salsas.
• Wax Beans: Yellow coloured beans to much raw, throw into salads, or boil ever so briefly.
• Scallions: No meal is complete without a relative of onion or garlic.
• Basil: Spaghetti shouldn’t always require reaching for cans and jars - especially with scallions, tomatoes and basil available!  The black spots that appear on the leaves after a few days are due to the cold. Basil doesn’t like being refrigerated (and it wilts if you don’t put it in the fridge) - so put it in plastic or a crisper in the fridge and use it quickly.

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28. August 2011 by David.

An early morning harvest… with everyone at one end of the garden (Steve on chard, David on parsley, Thuja on supervision, and I was in the basil with the camera

Farm life continues on its merry way towards the end of the summer. This week Carolyn returned from holidays to share her smiles and helping hands with us. The geese and ducks enjoyed playing in puddles on a couple of occasions, and we shared their joy when we saw a nice wet garden. We spent all Wednesday weeding in the southern section of the garden: it’s so nice to see it clean and tidy again!

Both tractors are back in service this week - we had a key break in the ignition of the utility tractor, and the walk-behind two wheeled tractor needed some time in the shop. Now there is a fresh layer of compost in one section of the garden, and the green manure (buckwheat) is being ploughed into the fields. The field where the hoop house will go up has been freshly worked, and will soon be ready to plant in!

As the dancing started up…

The week ended with our barbeque and concert. We really enjoyed it, and so did fourty or so others who came out. Thank you to CSA members, store and market customers, and friends of the farm for supporting us! We have been busy eating lots of leftover food though, and there is more stashed in our freezers. We had less than half the turnout we were expecting from the various different ways we had advertized the event. This week’s hard lesson seems to have been in event planning…

As the days get shorter, and the mornings cooler, this coming week we will be focusing on adjusting for the end of summer. That also means the fall vegetables are coming soon, yay!

Heather

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19. August 2011 by David.

Come on out tonight to support our greenhouse building initiative and two great bands!

Picnic, BBQ & Concert!

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11. August 2011 by David.

It may be August, but we’re still planting things at Riverglen! The southern section of beds is starting to fill up with crops for the fall. All the different vegetables you enjoy take different amounts of time to grow. So a couple of weeks ago another batch of lettuces, carrots, raddishes, rutabagas and beets were seeded into the garden.  Last week more beets, carrots and radishes went into the ground. This week some scallions, celery, cabbages and kale were planted from blocks. There is some chard, collards, scallions, kale and lettuces in soil blocks to be planted soon.

While we are still playing a bit with the spacing between the plants, the general routine is relatively well established.  Spade down the weeds, till the beds, rake the beds.  Then you either direct seed or plant.  David does most of the direct seeding - you load the seeds into the seeder, adjust the seeder to release the right number of seeds, the right distance apart, and then ‘just’ push it down the the bed in a very straight line.  Planting involves raking those same very straight lines, placing the soil blocks along them at the right spacing, then going down the row with a planting trowel and popping them all into the ground.  The common theme is straight  lines, which make the hoeing much easier afterwards.  Straight lines are like perfect circles, they never quite exist in reality but rather they are an ideal to strive for.

There’s also a very different kind of planting that takes place.  Steve has been out broadcasting buckwheat on all the beds we are finished with for the season.  Once a crop has been harvested, the greens get turned into the soil and we plant a cover crop for the rest of

Spazz and Moe Sharing a Meal

the season.  This helps to keep weeds from establishing and also makes some nutrients more easily available to the v

egetables we will plant next year.

Hurrah for the rain!

Heather

Catching Up on a rain day    Hi all,   Well, it’s not really raining… Actualy it’s rather sunny out again. But we’ve been working 7 days a week, often 7am to 9pm for a while now and we need a break! So if the sky still refuses to rain, we’ll just have to pretend it is. We are dusty, hot, and reaching our mental and physical limits. So here’s to rain days and spending some time indoors!   Newsletters   Since Heather has been doing such a great job writing these newsletters, I haven’t taken much time to write messages myself. I hope you have been enjoying the newsletters as much as I have. Heather’ upbeat, optimistic nature comes through nicely.   I guess that’s really been a theme this season. Amidst all the obstacles and hard work, I can always count on a strong, positive crew to stick it out until the job is done. I can tell you that makes a big difference on the garden. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it so tidy, organized and weed free. And of course, that means more produce for all! That isn’t to say we’ve been without our dramas this summer, but somehow the challenges seem more… surmountable.   Little Italy Farmer’s Market     Halfway Mark for the CSA   So here we are, only a week away from our half way mark. Hard to believe, it’s already been 8 weeks of CSA. I’m proud to note that even with the cold and wet spring we experienced, we still managed to start moving food one week earlier than last year, two weeks earlier than many other CSAs in the area, and more than 3 weeks earlier some CSAs who just couldn’t rebound fast enough after the foul weather. Of course, our spring selection was fairly limited, since many crops rotted, flooded, or never even got planted. Spinach is one such casualty, as well as arugula, early scallions, radish, turnips, peas… When farming you only have a certain window of opportunity. ”Catching up” isn’t an option in this game. You only get a few swings and if things don’t work out, well, it’ll just have to be next year.   So let’s be thankful for what we did get. Lots of mesclun, 5 varieties of head lettuce, spring kale… More recently we’ve been enjoying a steady stream of carrots and beets. I’m particularly proud of the broccoli heads and early water melons.   And what’s coming up? You can count on more carrots, more scallions, lots more cucumbers, more zucchini… Wax beans are getting ready, tomatoes are coming off the vine and the peppers are starting too. It’s been hot and sunny, and the garden is lush! Actually, we’re remarkably lucky about that. I’m very happy I spent all that money on irrigation equipment, because floods have now turned to drought. This much brown grass at this time of year is a novel sight for my eyes. Our water is on every single day and we can barely keep up. We don’t have the capacity to irrigate all our different crops, but winter squash, corn, potatoes and beans are tough crops and I’m sure they’ll pull through ok.   Planning and Preparing for the future   Despite causing sinus clogging amounts of dust to billow into the air, tilling the garden in this kind of weather is generally works out alright. We’ve got spring crops tilled under and replaced with buckwheat cover crop and we are now working on fall crops. Although some fall crops, such as leeks, have been in the ground for several weeks already, some fall crops are still being seeded. With all the room left over in the garden from springtime, we’re pushing for as much fall roots and greens as we can!   This is the sort of structure we’ll be putting up   We’re also pushing for an extended season in general. And how can we best overcome poor weather and a short, Canadian growing season? You guessed it, greenhouses!!! Well, we’ll start with one greenhouse. And to be fair, it’s not really a greenhouse since it isn’t heated. A hoophouse!! A tall tunnel!! A coolhouse!! Call it what you will, but we’re building it next week. A series of 15 foot tall arches will create a 50′X100′ protected growing area. With roll-up sides and lots of compost, this basic structure will add 2 months of outdoor growing time on each end of the current season. No kidding. We’re talking sowing spinach in February and harvesting carrots in December.   But I suppose I can’t hide from you the fact that this thing is a little pricey. It’s a major capital investment for a young enterprise like this one, especially after $4000 in lost spring sales, $1500 storm damage on the barn, $1500 to replace a busted mower. And I’m still waiting for $1200 in HST refunds that were lost in the mail strike… Like I mentioned, it really wasn’t a good spring. It looks like we’re going to need a little help to cover this hoophouse invoice.   Raise the Roof!   Instead of simply passing the hat and hoping for the best, we’ve decided to throw a party. A fund-raising party! Please consider attending this very special event on Friday, August 19th. We’re putting together a couple folk-roots-rock bands, decking out the barn with a P.A. and preparing lots of good food for the BBQ. It’ll be a great chance for first-timers to see the farm, for regulars to catch-up and for nature lovers to enjoy an afternoon outdoors. Not to mention a chance to catch some awesome tunes and support your favorite cause. It’s a win-win situation!   So come give us dirty, overworked, Salvation Army wearing, discount rack shopping, social life avoiding, ultra-dedicated and law-abiding (mostly) farmers a thumbs up. Buy a burger, have a drink, enjoy the scenery and bob your head to the music. It’ll be fun, I promise! If you plan on attending, let us know if you plan on buying burgers or sausages, so we have an idea how much to prepare. It’s meat from close to home!   -David    Raise the Roof Riverglen - Friday August 19th - 6pm to 11pm

What’s in my Box?

Week No.9

• Watermelon: Early watermelons so we can enjoy them while it’s hot outside. They could use a day or two on the counter to ripen.
• Cucumbers: Fresh slicing cucumbers for sandwiches, salads and making interesting shapes on a fancy meal.
• Pickling cucumbers: What’s the difference? These are smaller. Really, that’s it? Yup, that’s it. Make sure you read the bin label and take the appropriate number. Eat them like regular cukes or pickle them. Yum! I’ll post a sour pickle(no vinegar) recipe on the website and if you want to purchase a larger amount, just visit our store or market stand.
  

  Harvesting irrigated cucumbers in a dry garden

• Zucchini: We’re rotating different varieties between pickups, so they may look different this week.  Five different varieties of summer squash are growing in the garden. You should be able to taste them all over the next couple of weeks.
• Radish: We’ve been having terrible luck with anything Brassica this year: Radish, turnip, arugula, kale, broccoli… For some reason the Swede Midges and Flea Beatles are on them like a bunch of school kids at a Chinese buffet. We take several precautions to mitigate the damage, but sometimes these dedicated little insects get the upper hand. Obviously, the tops on these radishes have been destroyed to the point of not being edible but the roots can be cooked as usual.
• Carrots: More carrots. This year our orange carrots look (and taste) great!
• Garlic: Just a little taste of garlic as it is fresh from the garden.
• Sweet pepper: Choose one from an assortment of white, green or red sweet peppers. There are lots more on the plants, so you can look forward to more.
• Tomato: Tomatoes are also making their debut this week. These are mostly ‘Stupice’, but some of the others are ripening as well.
• Basil: A fresh summer herb, perfect for seasoning pasta sauce, vegetable sautes, etc.
• Cilantro: A classic herb to go with some warm chili during a cool damp week. Also awesome with eggs!

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3. August 2011 by David.

Hello Intentional Eaters Community,

It is I, Steve, the long silent intern counter part to Heather. I am breaking my long silence to bring you all some sad news: summer will be with us for only a scant month and a half more. Yes, it is true. I know, you don’t want to hear this now with the sun high in the sky and the waterways filled with swimmers and boaters. We are at the high point of summer; it is true, but here at Riverglen we are always looking into the future and planning for what will come. What is coming? The cold.

As our wobbly little planet shies us away from the sun our temperatures start to drop. Frost will be here soon enough and our late season crops are already making their way into the soil. We need to do something to save our veggies from standing around in the cold. We need to bring them inside and give them some heat!

And so it is that on Friday August 19th Riverglen will be borrowing some of the summer heat and passing in on to those fall veggies through song and metal framed plastic. Riverglen is putting on a summer folk rock concert! It is time for Raise the Roof Riverglen: Bring Those Veggies in From the Cold! The concert is our summer fundraising drive for our long dreamed of greenhouse. This greenhouse will mean a major extension to our farm season.

The Marni Levitt Collective, a roots/folk/African rhythm inspired ensemble from Toronto, and local folk rockers Ashley Newall and Friends will perform a couple hours of music for us beginning at 20h00 on the 19th. The show is family friendly so kids are more than welcome. The cost of entry is an $8 suggested donation at the door with proceeds going towards the greenhouse and the evenings entertainers.

There will also be a lovely picnic and barbecue before the show, starting around 18h30, featuring Riverglen Veggies and local beef burgers for sale. So come, bring a couple of lawn chairs, an appetite, some beverages (please put them in plastic or metal containers), and enjoy the evening’s entertainment with your farmers. It’s already down on my calendar

Steve

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3. August 2011 by David.

Albert’s Carrot Coconut Salad

• 5c Grated Carrots
• 5c Shreaded Coconut
• 1c Rasins or Cranberries

Sweet and Sour Dressing to go on it:

• 1c Apple Cider Vinegar
• 125 mL honey
• 2 Tbsp ginger

Yolanda’s Kale Chips

Toss Kale with olive oil and seasonings, then dehydrate!

Yolanda’s Carrot Ginger Coconut Milk soup

Ingredients (all amounts rough, like most of my soups its as the mood inspires me)

From my CSA box and the Farm store:

• 2 wonderfully big green onions with the beautiful white bulbs all roughly chopped up
• 2 bunches of carrots peeled and chopped up (about 2 lbs)
• 2 garlic scapes chopped
• 1 loose cup of turnip greens, washed and stems removed  (or whatever greens arrive that week) and the turnip that came with one *smile*

And:

• Large egg sized chunk fresh ginger root, peeled, grated
• 4 rounded teaspoons curry powder (or to taste, maybe start with less!)
• 2 900 ml boxes of lower salt/fat chicken broth or vegetable broth or mix
• 1 400 ml can unsweetened coconut milk (regular or light)
• 2 tablespoon fresh lime juice or some concentrate
• Between ½ and  1 cup PC (President’s Choice) Thai Green Curry Cooking Sauce

Instructions

Place green onions, carrots, greens, grated ginger root, curry powder and broth in a large saucepan.  Bring to a boil and simmer for about 20 minutes or until the carrots are very soft.  Let cool a bit then then use a hand blender to make a smooth soup. Or, in batches, use a food processor to do so. Add coconut milk, Green Curry Cooking Sauce and lime and stir until mixed thoroughly.  Taste and adjust if necessary (we like it very spicy). Refrigerate until well chilled if you want it cold or heat it up again if you want it warm.

Refrigerates and reheats well. Good at any temperature. I have frozen it and brought to my daughter away in University and it warms up fine.

Heather’s Lemon-Thyme and Spelt Bread

Developed from Jim Lahey’s No-Knead Bread Methods (found in ‘My Bread’ 2009)

In medium sized bowl or pot (with lid):

• 2c white bread flour
• 1c light spelt flour
• 1 ¼ t salt
• ½ t yeast
• one bunch lemon thyme

Stir to mix, then add:

• 1 ¼ c water

Stir briefly with spoon until the dough holds together in one clump, and is slightly tacky to the touch.

Add a few more tablespoons of water as necessary.

Cover and let it sit. For a long time. Ideally 12-18h, I have pushed it from 6 to 24h. Longer than that I put it in the fridge until I am ready for the next step, take it out of the fridge an hour before proceeding to let it warm up. If it is wintertime or chilly in the kitchen, leave it in the stove with the light on to keep it warm. It should expand to form a bubbly liquid.

Two hours before baking:

Prepare a plate, with a dish towel centred on it, covered with sunflower seeds.

Preapre a floured surface, with extra flour handy.

Pour dough onto a floured surface. Use a spatula to scrape strings away from the edges of the bowl as you pour - keep the dough in one piece. Turn the dough over a couple of times to cover the outside with flour so that it is no longer sticky. This is not kneading, just coating with flour. If your dough is too wet, this will take extra flour. The dough should form a very soft ball that moulds to your hands when you pick it up, but stays intact as one glob.

Place soft floured glob of dough onto the dishtowel, sprinkle the top and sides with sunflour seeds, and fold the towel over the dough loosely. Let sit for two hours.

Preheat oven to 475F, with an oven-safe pot in it. Ideally, a small cast-iron dutch oven is best, but porcelin or metal caseroles work too. With a larger pot, the recipe can be doubled. If the bread hits the top of the pot while baking, it was too small

Remove the pot once oven has pre-heated. Lift top flaps of the tea towel, and using the tea towel to hold the dough, tip it into the pot. It may look messy, and flop into the pot, but it will rise nicely enough. A bit of practice and they will look perfect.

Bake for 30min with the lid on the pot, then an extra 10 min with the lid off. Enjoy!

Charissa’s Beet Cake

Recipe from Nigel Slater (found in ‘A Cook and His Vegetable Patch’ and ‘Tender’)

• 250g beetroot
• 200g fine dark chocolate (70 per cent cocoa solids)
• 4 tbsp hot espresso
• 200g butter
• 135g plain flour
• a heaped tsp baking powder
• 3 tbsp good-quality cocoa powder
• 5 eggs
• 190g golden caster sugar
• crème fraîche and poppy seeds, to serve

Lightly butter a 20cm loose-bottomed cake tin and line the base with a disc of baking parchment. Set the oven to 180C/gas mark 4.

Cook the beetroot, whole and unpeeled, in boiling unsalted water. Depending on their size, they will be knifepoint tender within 30 to 40 minutes. Young ones may take slightly less. Drain them, let them cool under running water, then peel them, slice out their stem and root, and blitz to a rough purée.

Melt the chocolate, snapped into small pieces, in a small bowl resting over a pot of simmering water. Don’t stir. When the chocolate looks almost melted, pour the hot coffee over it and stir once. Cut the butter into small pieces - the smaller the better -and add to the melted chocolate. Dip the butter down under the surface of the chocolate with a spoon (as best you can) and leave to soften.

Sift together the flour, baking powder and cocoa. Separate the eggs; put the whites in a mixing bowl. Stir the yolks together.

Now, working quickly but gently, remove the bowl of chocolate from the heat and stir until the butter has melted into the chocolate. Leave for a few minutes, then stir in the egg yolks. Do this quickly, mixing firmly so the eggs blend into the mixture. Fold in the beetroot. Whisk the egg whites until stiff, then fold in the sugar. Firmly but tenderly fold the beaten egg whites and sugar into the chocolate mixture. A large metal spoon is what you want; work in a deep, figure-of-eight movement but take care not to over-mix. Fold in the flour and cocoa.

Transfer quickly to the prepared cake tin and put in the oven, turning the heat down immediately to 160C/gas mark 3. Bake for 40 minutes. The rim of the cake will feel spongy, the inner part should still wobble a little when gently shaken.

Leave to cool (it will sink a tad in the centre), loosening it around the edges with a palette knife after half an hour or so. It is not a good idea to remove the cake from its tin until it is completely cold. Serve in thick slices, with crème fraîche and poppy seeds.

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3. August 2011 by David.

Garlic is a wonderful long process, with a delicious end. The garlic bulbs go into the ground in the fall, ideally in October - carefully placed in rows. They then spend the winter, spring, and part of the summer in the garden. They need to be weeded a few times, whether with the tractor, hoes or by hand. Then they need their scapes cut off, which you have had the joy of tasting. This keeps the plant’s energy focused on developing the bulb rather than flowering. A bit more weeding and then the special day to harvest them arrives. That happened last Wednesday! First you go down the row with a spade, loosening the bulbs in the ground. Then a quick walk back down the row to pile the garlic together. Repeat for a total of 12 rows, then hook the trailer onto the tractor and drive through the bed, loading up the garlic piles! We filled the trailer with all the lovely bulbs, then spent a good while trimming off all the root hairs. The next step is to hang it all up to dry on the wooden beams around the shop. So look up, and it should appear one day soon!

Another busy week with lots happening… We had an inspector from Demeter Canada come to the farm last week as well. He was able to provide some feedback on the biodynamics and farm in general, and we were proud to hear he was generally impressed by Riverglen! The porch of the house has been converted into seedling space again, where hopefully the flea beetles won’t find the poor little seedlings. A millimeter hole on a leaf five millimeters wide is much harder for the plant than on a full size leaf. Some of you were lucky to get chickens last week too - that involved a couple of very early mornings for David driving the chickens around. Sometimes his energy store seems endless! The newest crop is cucumbers, which Steve is busy harvesting every day - there will be some for you all this week. A decent bit of tidying got done around about as well… and with so much happening, there’s lots more work for us this week.

-Heather

What’s in my Box?

Week No.8

• Mesclun: Your staple green for quick side dishes and sandwich fillers.
• Scallions: Scallions are the flavour of the week for your eggs, stir fries, or sautés.
• Carrots: This week they are colourful!
• Beets: These can be the star ingredient of cake, the recipes from the pot luck are below.
• Zucchini: My favourite is sautéed, with a bit of salt, pepper and Parmesan sprinkled on when they are cooked, and then broiled till the cheese is golden.  A bit of white balsamic on them also makes for a nice side-dish.
• Beans: Some are purple, some are green, they go nicely mixed into some rice or couscous.
• Cucumbers: Every day Steve or David head out to pick these, and always come back with a full crate!  Munch them whole, cut them up into a salad, slice them into sandwiches…
• Broccoli (for Thursday): Don’t forget the stems are nice too - when chopped up to matchstick size they make a nice salad with olive oil, Parmesan, salt and pepper. I’ve always known them as ”fiammifero”, which is Italian for match-sticks.

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