produce overload...

as many of you know, we recently switched farm box providers. this week was supposed to be the transition week, where we got no box at all. so of course i went to the farmer's market thursday and stocked up on things to get us through until next week.

and then...

our first farm box with farm fresh arrived yesterday morning. (can i just mention briefly how wonderful it is to have delivery service? so nice.)

here's what was in the box:

2 pounds gala apples

1.5 pounds concord grapes

1.5 pounds pluots

honeydew melon

2 pounds valencia oranges

1 pound sweet peppers

romaine lettuce

2 pounds heirloom tomatoes

and then....

the delivery guy came back. seems he had ANOTHER box for us. some kind of mistake, but he dropped it off anyway. here's what was in that box:

2 pounds gala apples

1.5 pounds red grapes

honeydew melon

1 pound sweet peppers

1 bunch red chard

kabocha squash

1 pound green beans

romaine lettuce

1.5 pounds heirloom tomatoes

red beets

2 pounds yukon potatoes.

anyone hungry?

after a call to customer service to get the mistake figured out (and to learn that we thankfully weren't being charged for that extra box) i set to putting everything away and figuring how we're going to use it all up. i'm unfamiliar with cooking beets, chard and kabocha squash. if anyone has any tips, they'd be appreciated. otherwise i'm planning on roasting the beets, making chard fritters, and treating the squash like a really big zucchini. and as soon as i can get myself out of bed, i'll be slicing and dicing my way to a big fruit salad. word has it we're having waffles this morning, so all that fresh fruit should be a yummy addition!

meet the newbies...

from left to right--pippen, foghorn and peach. 11 week-old pullets that we picked up yesterday. pippen is a blue wyandotte, foghorn is an american white (who is supposed to lay 350+ large eggs per year) and peach (named in honor of our old araucana, plum) is, well, an araucana--they lay the pretty blue-green eggs that look to have appeared straight out of a martha stewart magazine spread.

there's been some upset (marked by loud cackling on the part of cee-cee and foster, our existing birds) and the newbies are quite timid. i chalk this up to them never having been outdoors before--they don't seem to know quite what to make of it all. they should start laying within 7-11 weeks. can't wait for that!

for local readers, we got the girls from trunorth farm in walnut creek, and could not have been more pleased with the experience. with the minor hangup that i really want to move onto the gorgeous, sprawling property. oh well, what can you do?

farm box wednesday... and a bonus.

in today's csa box:

~ heirloom tomatoes (supposedly the last of the year)

~ grapes

~ red potatoes

~ a huge bunch of basil (we really need to get on the pesto-making train)

~ sweet peppers

~ peaches 

~ sharlyn melon

all good stuff. we cooked up some older potatoes to make room for the new ones--we'll have them for breakfast tomorrow along with some guilt-free eggs. that's right, we finally found a source for "eggies" as lucy likes to call them--from a family living about 12 miles from our home. they are raising 12 hens and sell the eggs for $3 per dozen. lucy and i drove out today to pick ours up. well, due to a wonky nap schedule on lucy's part, we were an hour and a half early, and the mama that runs the whole operation wasn't home. so we didn't get to meet the chickens this time around. rather, her school-aged boy handed us the eggs though a barely opened door. it was a little strange! but the eggs are big and beautiful--we even got a green one which reminds us of our old chicken named plum who gave us lovely pastel eggs. 

from what i could see through the partially open fence, it looks as though these chickens are raised in the exact same manner as our own: able to enjoy a fenced-in run with access to an open coop. a couple of the hens were scritching around in a pile of hay. i'm fairly certain that these birds are fed non-organic chicken food (as our chickens are) and vegetable scraps. thus, the eggs that they lay are technically non-organic. but i feel that all of the other benefits of supporting truly cage-free, humanly-treated, locally-raised hens are worth going non-organic in this case.  

i was hoping to pick up 3 dozen eggs, but all that was left was a single dozen which we feel lucky to have gotten. the upside is that our new egg suppliers live very close to lucy's good playmate who we happen to visit weekly. so dropping by frequently to pick up eggs shouldn't be a problem at all. 

lucy was unbelievably enthralled with our carton of eggs--so much so that it was a bit hard to get them away from her for the ride home. somehow the idea of my rear-facing toddler alone with 12 eggs in the back of my semi-clean car just didn't sit well with me, you know? sorry lucy!

a solution?

i'm thinking i might have found a perfect ending to my egg dilemma. all at once it hit me to try craigslist to see if anyone might be selling their own chicken eggs independently. look at this posting i came across: 

"Farm Fresh brown chicken eggs from organically fed and free range chickens. Our chickens roam freely on our ranch from morning until evening. They are only supplemented with natural feed that is not chemically treated or enhanced for egg production. We have about one dozen eggs per day depending on the weather so call ahead if you want several. Eggs are assorted sizes from jumbo to small. Our eggs have much darker and firmer yolks than store bought and taste so much better. Our chickens are truly free range and the hens naturally feed throughout the day. "

$3 a dozen

$3 a dozen? seriously? you know what they say--if it sounds too good to be true, than it probably is. but i'm holding out much hope, and calling for more information tomorrow. it seems these egg-layin' hens are located about half an hour from my house, but not too far out of my general circle of travel.

cross those fingers! 

farm box wednesday...

in this week's box: 

heirloom tomatoes

red peppers

purple grapes

asian pears

2 zucchini

yellow potatoes

2 cucumbers

the nice news is that we had a delicious salad tonight for dinner, using some of the items from our box. the bad news is that the lettuce was from trader joe's because i haven't yet gotten my act together enough to get to the farmer's market this week. trader joe's (though i love them dearly) has become my least favorite place to buy lettuce. something about buying lettuce in a bag just seems so very wrong to me now that i've bought so much farm-fresh lettuce. even whole foods has a bin that customers can scoop their own greens from (along with a big sign that says exactly where the lettuce was grown--whole foods is great for that). 

but our salad (paired with homemade bread right out of the oven) was great and we got very very full. jeremy commented that we should eat only salad for 6 months of the year, and soup for the other 6. now that would be an experiment. 

on a side note, i am considering growing our first fall/winter garden this year--i mean, i won't have my hands full with a baby or a toddler or anything. that way i can pluck my salad greens right from the ground. guides suggest mid-september as the right time to start planting. guess i'd better get on it. 

too many tomatoes...

it's that time of year when the tomatoes kick into high gear. our own garden, plus our farm box, plus tomatoes from the gardens of people we know has left us with more than we can eat. in years past, i would simply eaten what we could, and let the rest go. this year i'm trying to be more proactive--after all, store-bought tomatoes in the middle of winter are pretty much not worth buying. i'm not a canner--and i don't happen to know any canners, either. but i do know that it's possible to freeze tomatoes, provided that you prepare them first. so that's what i set out to do. i started with a small batch of heirloom tomatoes from last week's farm box that didn't get eaten--after all, if i messed up royally, i didn't want a whole lot of tomatoes going down the drain.

a quick google search, and i was ready. this whole freezing tomatoes thing is a lot easier than i thought it would be. you simply boil water, add the tomatoes a few at a time, and wait for the skin to break (about a minute). then transfer them to an ice water bath, peel, core and de-seed. so simple--really, the whole process for my small batch of tomatoes only took about 10 minutes, start to finish. and i have 2 little jars of diced tomatoes now sitting happily in my freezer (i used old sauce jars to freeze them in).

i've often read that tomatoes are the # 1 canned item that you shouldn't buy if you are concerned about the BPA leaching into your food. tomatoes are very acidic, and speed the breakdown of the lining of metal cans. with a little more work on my part, i think it's hopeful that we can store enough tomatoes from this summer's bounty that we won't have to buy canned tomatoes over the winter. we'll see!

farm box wednesday...

in this weeks box: 

~ tomatoes

~ yellow figs

~ carrots

~ black seedless grapes

~ watermelon

seems like a light week, though we did get a ton of tomatoes (probably 3 pounds or so). the figs were delicious--only a couple left. we'll be traveling this weekend, otherwise i would for sure have to hit up the farmer's market to supplement--veggies needed! 

it looks like we'll be switching farms very soon. while we're certainly not unhappy with the farm we're currently with, we did find another farm that does home delivery. their regular box costs twice as much ($30 instead of $15) but they offer a greater quantity of produce in their "regular" box. here's what they sent to their subscribers this week (all organic):

~ 3 pounds heirloom tomatoes

~ 1.5 ponds bartlett pears

~ 1 pound yellow peaches

~ a pint of cherry tomatoes

~ a galia melon

~ a globe eggplant

~ 1 pound mixed summer squash

~ a bunch of italian basil

~1 pound mixed peppers

i say that $30 is still a fair price for the bounty amount of produce listed above. especially when delivered to my doorstep, don't you think? or have i been shopping high-priced produce our at the ferry building farmer's market for too long, where organic stone fruit is regularly $3.50/pound and a dozen pasture-raised hen eggs go for $8/dozen? (i can't bring myself to buy those pastured eggs, but that's another blog post coming soon--the difference between cage-free, free-range, pastured and backyard-raised--and the expense behind it all). 

this new farm has a "deny & substitute" option for produce that you've tried and don't like, and also offers a full credit when the subscriber is on vacation (our current farm only offers a partial credit). all in all, it just seems like a better fit. we have some sadness about leaving our current farm, though. they're a small operation while the new farm seems to operate on a much larger scale--offering a multitude of different boxes (some box options even have produce in them from nearby states--making them decidedly less "local" than they might appear at first glance). we'd be sticking with an 100% local box--all produce grown within 1.5 hours of our home. even if it means giving up blueberries at the peak of summer. 

who knows how it will all play out. stay tuned. 

farm box wednesday, the thursday installment...

in this week's box: 

miniature carrots

yellow onions

heirloom cucumbers (i had no idea such a thing existed, and when i opened the box, i initially couldn't figure out what the long, skinny, slightly curved, striated green things were. it took a big sniff and a little nibble to finally figure it out!) 

peaches

plums

3 ears of sweet corn

a bunch of basil

heirloom tomato mix (see photo below, which also shows a hint of the cucumber)

2 sharlyn melons (my melon mystery is finally solved--these are the same as the one in last week's box)

check out the tomatoes! this week's notes from the farm were on monocropping in the tomato industry--in thinking of a typical grocery store, it's clear that there's not a wide variety of tomatoes offered for mass consumption. rather, it's the non-heirloom breeds--which can be produced in greater quantities b/c of higher disease resistance and less fragility overall--that are exceedingly commonplace. monsanto, the nation's dominant agricultural cooperation (also the leading producer of genetically engineered seeds) is responsible for "buying up and then discontinuing crop varieties developed over decades that have allowed diverse, regional producers to flourish. in general, the varieties they  continue to produce are much more expensive than those they eliminate. more often than not, they are developed assuming maximum use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides--many of which are produced by monsanto itself." but of course.

the danger, of course, is of setting up national dependency on a single crop. i can kind of remember learning about the irish potato famine in school--a disease called late blight killed all of the potato plants in ireland, and an estimated 1,000,000 people starved to death. late blight happens to be sweeping through the northeast and mid-atlantic states this year due to excessive wet weather, and is devastating tomato crops. thankfully it's not causing mass exodus & death this time around--states hit by blight are able to bring in tomatoes from other states such as my own, which happens to be experiencing an excellent tomato season. 

"over a hundred years ago, the irish potato famine taught the world not to depend on a single variety or single crop. in just another decade or two, most of the world's entire food supply may be controlled by a single company."

on a lighter note, we had tomato, basil & mozzarella  salad last night for dinner, seasoned with a couple cloves of garlic from an earlier box, salt, pepper and a drizzle of olive oil. it was quite good. and lucy has slowly started taking to tomatoes--she'll eat the cherry ones plucked straight off the vine in our garden. proof that fresh = best. obviously. 

where the $$ goes...

i've decided to keep record of where are food dollars are spent--it's something i did a couple of years back as well. since i'm trying to buy the bulk of our items at the farmer's market, i want to keep tabs to see if it really is more expensive overall. the idea, of course is that i'll be paying more for certain items than i would at the supermarket, but buying altogether less stuff, since junky snack foods aren't as widely available from the farms as they are in the grocery aisles.

$15 per week goes directly to our csa box. this supplies the bulk of our fruits and veggies, but we do need to substitute most weeks for things that haven't been included in a particular week's box--salad mix this time around, for example. box pickup was wednesday and no salad was included. so i made a trip out to a nearby thursday market to pick some up. 

here's how the $$ was spent at the big weekend markets: 

massive herb foccacia loaf: $6

5 organic pears (first of season): $5

bag of assorted no-spray peppers: $3

2 blocks of organic locally made cheese and a small tub of lemon quark: $14

5 dried sausages made from organic, locally-raised, free-range pork: $10

30 zucchini blossoms: $4

handmade apple tart: $7

handmade organic apricot & cherry conserve: $6

1 dozen free-range eggs: $3.75

3 containers of strawberries: $7

2 packages locally made tortillas: $6

grand total = 71.75. add in the $15 for the csa and we're at 76.75. 

the sausages, apple tart and quark were non-necessities that i couldn't (or at least didn't) pass up. what i really needed was olive oil, but couldn't bring myself to fork over the $20-$24 for the locally made, organic offerings (500 mL bottles) at the market. so i frittered it away on treats instead, telling myself that trader joe's just might have a california-grown variety available. if not, i'm sure that they have organic. 

what we'll need during the week:  lowfat & whole milk, olive oil, some sort of meat for a few dinners, very likely more eggs (our old chickens are sadly not pulling their weight) and maybe some pasta, which could have been had at the market (fresh) for $4. 

in a perfect world, i'd like to stay at $100 for the week's groceries. looks like it might not be possible this week, as lucy's milk alone is $4.99/half gallon (with $1.50 refund for the returned glass bottle). oil will be around $8. eggs another $4. still, i do think we're close--and certainly happy with what we've been eating lately. everything tastes fresh and flavorful. i notice the difference most in the farmer's market cheeses vs. supermarket cheeses--i am in heaven with some of the new types that we've tried, particularly a dry jack cheese made with goat's milk that we're using in place of parmesean on salads, pasta, etc. 

i suppose in all honesty, i have to factor in my cost of getting to (and parking at) the farmer's market in san francisco this week, which is the only place where the cheese and sausage are available. $4 bridge toll and $6 parking. there goes another $10. 

good thing i have apple tart to make me feel better. :)

farm box wednesday...

jeremy missed our box last week while lucy & i were out of town. yes, i'm tattling on him--it's all in the name of documenting our csa membership honestly for you loyal readers. you've got to know the ups and downs, right? right. the score now stands at 2 missed boxes. double oops. 

this week's box, however was full of good stuff:

the first big tomatoes--a variety of reds & yellows

zucchini & yellow squash

garlic

peaches

yellow potatoes 

--and--

an unidentified melon. our box comes with a flier that lists out the contents, along with recipes and notes from the farm on production, what to look forward to, etc. well, jeremy totally redeemed himself for last week's slip-up by picking up today's box, but forgot to pick up the flier along with it. so i've got a curious melon sitting on my counter. it's small, more oval than round, and has a light-mid orange tint to the outer rind. it smells like cantaloupe, but looks like no cantaloupe i've ever seen, unless it's some kind of odd variety. it's obviously not honeydew, casaba or watermelon. and those are the only melons i'm familiar with. any guesses? haven't cut into it yet. 

we slow-roasted the farm box potatoes and garlic with rosemary in the oven tonight for an almost 100% local, organic dish (can't count the safflower oil and sea salt). it smelled fantastic, i haven't tasted any yet but am looking forward to them for breakfast tomorrow morning with an egg, if the chickens happened to lay one or two today (crossing fingers, as we've already eaten through our dozen eggs from saturday's farmer's market). 

right now though, i'm saving room for freshly-baked bread, which is due out of the oven in just under 10 minutes. slathered with local honey, of course. i haven't made bread in quite some time--i'd forgotten how totally simple it is, especially with the use of a kitchenaid mixer and dough hook attachment--no kneading necessary. the smell coming from the oven is like nothing else, and organic ingredients are readily available. i was at costco today with lucy and picked up a bag of bakery bagels, ready to thrown them in the cart for easy breakfasts. my eye caught on the surprisingly long list of ingredients--i mean, there's not too much to a bagel, right? well, right there in the middle of the list was high fructose corn syrup. hfcs? in fresh bagels? back on the shelf they went. hopefully lucy likes the homemade bread (sweetened with honey) instead.

we're back...

our vacation was wonderful. i haven't had time to go through pictures, but i hope to have some up soon of little lucy enjoying herself on the river. she did great despite an ever-changing schedule--this girl was born for the great outdoors, travel, adventure and relaxation. well, maybe not the relaxation part just yet, but i see it in her future. 

as for me, the days did hold a bit of relaxation here and there. i managed to start (and finish) an excellent book titled "plenty: one man, one woman, and a raucous year of eating locally." i had started this book well over a year ago, but never had a chance to finish it. it got tucked away in a pile of books, and i unearthed it just before heading out the door on our trip. so glad that i did. it's re-ignited the spark that i have for eating locally. yes, our household does get a local csa box, but there's so much more that we can do to further our attempts in this area of eco-friendliness. 

the authors of plenty dedicated an entire year to eating items only found within a 100-mile radius of their home (or wherever they happened to find themselves). yes, there were some very slight exceptions to their rules, but for the vast, vast majority, they ate only what could be obtained within their self-set boundaries. doing so opens a can of worms as far as technicalities are concerned--are 25-mile chickens that eat 1,000-mile feed still laying eggs that one can consider local?

i won't give away more of the book--i'll just recommend it as a super-interesting read that attacks the way americans eating has evolved throughout the centuries with great insight and factual  information. our first day back from vacation found us at the ferry building farmer's market in san francisco, buying not only locally grown produce to supplement our farm box, but some cheese and meats as well. realizing that if we were able to swing it financially, we could also procure items like butter, bread, pancake mix, cornmeal, beans, honey, yogurt and milk there as well. i'm hoping that together, jeremy and i can make a greater shift in the kinds of food that we're eating, even if it means paying a bit more for higher-quality local goods, while sacrificing some of our junkier supermarket selections to make up the difference in cost. 

on the cheap side of things, our garden is finally ready for its first harvest: we've finally got zucchini & cherry tomatoes, with larger tomatoes green on the vine but there nonetheless. the eggplant and peppers are proving themselves to be quite slow. that's okay--we'll be patient. and lucy does enjoy her daily strawberry hunts, though finds are usually limited to one or two miniature berries. next year: a massive strawberry patch for my girl!

farm box wednesday...

hey, we actually made it to pick up today's csa box. good thing--it was filled with lots of good stuff. check it out: 

yukon potatoes

heirloom tomatoes 

a grapefruit 

donut peaches (super cute)

green beans

sweet corn

a mini watermelon

all this yumminess is coming with us camping this weekend--grilled corn on the cob, green beans dipped in hummus, watermelon chilled in the river. the tomatoes will be used in a caprese salad (mozzarella cheese, tomato & basil). i hope to fry up the potatoes for breakfast one morning. the peaches are, um, already gone and the grapefruit will be eaten as is. 

delicious!

and on the topic of local eating, it seems i've got a picky eater on my hands. as in, she'll only eat strawberries that are picked from our yard--totally rejecting store bought. funny, because she devoured the ones that came in our farm boxes awhile back. 

well, we've only got a few strawberry plants and they don't sport a lot of berries--maybe 2 or 3 every few days. i tried hiding store-bought organic strawberries in the foliage, to see if she would eat them. 

and what do you think happened with that? "no way, mom. i'm too smart for this stuff," said the look on lucy's face as she spit out those berries.  

can't say i blame her. the homegrown ones really are 1,000 times tastier-- perfectly ripe, juicy, sweet and sun-warmed. next year, we're totally planting a massive strawberry patch. just wait and see. 

eat local (it's hip)...

every tuesday my mailbox gets jammed with mailers from local grocery stores. we have four of them, not including the trader joe's, so it's a lot of mail. mail which normally just gets tossed into the recycle bin, as we do 99% of our shopping at tj's and the farmers markets. 

well, i happened to have a bit of time last tuesday (yes, this topic has been on my mind for awhile), and decided to read lucy the ads (she totally dug it--brand new picture books, in her opinion). i was surprised to see that 3 out of the 4 supermarket ads featured "locally grown" icons on their produce pages--making it clear which items were grown close-to-home as opposed to, you know, new zealand and the like. 

i'm interested if this kind of mainstream awareness (a.k.a "hopping on the locally grown bandwagon") is happening in other parts of the country. i know that here in california, we're home to a lot of farms that grow a LOT of food--much of what the supermarkets carry is local by the very nature of things. but i've never seen it called out before. and i kind of like it. 

then i stopped into trader joes and saw a sign that said "locally grown in brentwood" on an apricot display. i was doubly surprised, because i've suggested to the tj's management on several occasions to label locally grown stuff and was told that they cannot do it since they don't have knowledge of where the product comes from--everything is shipped from a remote warehouse. all they see are the same labels we see: product of u.s.a., product of mexico, etc. i wonder then, how did they know those apricots were brentwood apricots? and is it safe to assume that my apricots (i bought them) went from brentwood (40 minutes away) to the warehouse (who knows where) back to the store for stocking? is that still considered local?

the apricots rotted quickly. just sayin'. 

farm box wednesday: failure alert.

we took a day trip yesterday and didn't make it back in time to pick up our csa box. major bummer. with advance planning, we could have likely found someone to pick it up for us (bribing with organic produce, of course), but we were footloose and fancy free and didn't think about our fruits and veggies until it was too late. 

sigh. 

well, at least we know it got donated to someone in need. still, not being able to enjoy our pre-paid produce isn't easy. especially because we'll miss this weekends farmer's market as well. 

and of course i find myself plagued with curiosity as to what was in the box... what are we missing? i know this week was supposed to bring the first slicing tomatoes--which would have been greatly welcomed, as our tomato plants are still not sporting much fruit, and what there is of it is still very small and green. what else did we miss out on?

thank you...

for all of the carrot recipes! we've been on the go for the last few days and actually haven't cooked dinner at home (besides leftovers) so i haven't gotten a chance to try any of them. but knowing our csa, we'll have carrots again this week--and i'm ready to get cooking!

farm box wednesday...

in our box this week: 

a head of cabbage

2 types of zucchini squash 

a container of yellow cherry tomatoes

a bag of apricots

a bag of plums!

more carrots... any ideas on what to do with carrots other than eating them raw? i'm not sure i'm much of a fan of cooked carrots--wonder if they can be sliced lengthwise& grilled? this is our 3rd week of carrots and they're starting to get a little... ho-hum. 

farm box wednesday...

it's time for another round of fruits & veggies. here's what was in our csa box this week: 

a big basket of yellow cherry tomatoes (especially nice because the plants in our garden are proving slow-to-grow and don't yet have many flowers on them). 

a bunch of stem-topped carrots

2 yellow onions

a massive bunch of basil. i just bought a log of fresh mozzerella at trader joes this week, too. hmmm--tomatoes, cheese and basil? caprese salads are in our immediate future!

a bag of green beans

a bag of apricots

a basket of strawberries

lots of yummy stuff this week--we've now got a refrigerator stuffed full of fruit! jeremy and i bought 18 pounds of cherries at our local farmer's market last weekend. the season is drawing to a close and i was finding it hard to say goodbye to my favorite fruit. at $2/pound, these were even cheaper than when we went and harvested them ourselves. cherries do keep awhile in the fridge, but i'm still thinking we might have overestimated our ability to eat quite so many cherries--we'll see! 

farm box wednesday... the thursday edition.

the most important thing about subscribing to a farm box is remembering to pick it up. ours is open from 2-7 pm, a pretty substantial amount of time, right? boxes that aren't picked up get donated to a local food pantry. 

well, while sitting at the dinner table (6:15 pm) last night, and wondering what i was going to blog about, the thought came into my head that it was wednesday, and wednesdays on the blog are now farm box wednesdays. what did we get in the box? i couldn't remember. then it hit me that we didn't get anything in the box, because i neglected to actually pick up the box. oops. 

well, jeremy took the rest of his dinner for the road and managed to get to the pickup location in time. it seems we are true partners in this whole farm box thing--that's a good feeling. 

anyway, in the box this week: a bag of peaches, a bag of apricots, a small bag of cherries, carrots with the tops still on (super cute), some very small zucchini, a huge bag of arugula and a couple heads of garlic. 

this week's recipe is for a summer fruit crisp, using all of the fruits in our box, plus strawberries (which were in this week's larger boxes). i think it sounds delicious--but i haven't made it yet. maybe i should get off my bottom and go do that. 

farm box wednesday...

this week's box included a big bunch of long-stemmed spinach, a bag of delicious and perfectly ripe bing cherries, a pound of red potatoes, super-fragrant cilantro, a container of beautiful strawberries (which i am eating right now with freshly-whipped cream... yum!), and a half-pound of walnuts. 

our notes from the farmer this week were of major interest to me. he wrote about the difficulties that come with running a farm during the unpredictable season of spring--and the battle that arises in growing fragile crops such as strawberries, cherries, peas and salad greens. apparently crops such as these cannot be harvested in temperatures over 95 degrees without spoiling quite quickly. it seems other members of our CSA were also a bit disappointed with the quality of their box last week--our cherries last week were certainly a bit worse for the wear, and a few were inedible. 

our bay area weather has recently been all over the place, with the mercury swinging from the low 100's to the low 50's, all within a matter of weeks, and sometimes days.  we have had freezing wind rolling off of the bay, only to find ourselves sleeping with the bedroom windows open a couple of nights later. we watched as it poured for 3 days straight during the first few days of may--lucy's birthday party would have been quite soggy had she not gotten sick and forced us to postpone. what we don't think about, while we zag up and down the aisles of the grocery store, is how directly this weather affects our food. 

here's an excerpt from our farm letter that i found particularly interesting: 

"five days of 105 degree heat will render lettuce inedible, cook strawberry plants along with their fruit, and shrivel pea plants and pods both. that's why, when last week's weather forecast called for a major heatwave, we assumed the worst and tried to harvest some lettuce before it burned up. in order to do so, we picked it 2 days before your boxes were packed. instead, we simply should have let the weather play itself out. the salad mix we picked for the wednesday CSA ended up breaking down quickly after we shipped it to you. meanwhile, the hot weather only lasted 2 dyas or so, and only some of the lettuce in the field turned bitter. most of the salad greens pulled through and we were able to harvest them in much cooler conditions for the thursday and friday CSA boxes. 

in the strawberry field, the heat cooked thousands of berries which we had to pick and throw on the ground. but there were also plenty of berries that seemed to have survived the heat and tasted great. unfortunately, these berries had an extremely short shelf life and several subscribers informed us that they were mostly or totally unusable. we should have maybe guessed that this might happen, and simply not sent any berries to you last week. 

heat damage to cherries, however is a new one for us. we are accustomed to losing cherries to the rain--as we did a few weeks back at the start of the season. however, it is now clear that 105 degree temperatures are almost as bad. the cherries we harvested monday and tuesday for your boxes looked good and tasted fine when we packed them. but after just a few days, the apparently got quite soft and some became moldy. 

harvesting the multiple crops that we grow requires dozens of decisions every day; what day and what time to harvest; how often and how much; what size, shape, color and ripeness. time is always an issue, and when it's hot we are running not just against the clock but against the thermometer. we start the day at 6 a.m. this time of year, but during a heatwave it will be 90 degrees by 10 a.m.--basically too late to harvest salad greens or strawberries. on these days we wish we had 100 people working for us instead of 30, and that we could send them all home once the mercury hits 95 degrees. there are few crops that should really be harvested when it is 100 degrees, but sometimes we don't have a choice. we triage the situation as best we can."

as a subscriber, i wasn't too ticked by a few moldy cherries. our berries and greens were fine--jeremy commented the other night the the spinach, which was a much thicker variety than we are used to, was quite tasty. but the above excerpt notes certainly gave me some insight into the challenges faced by my local farm operators. even at the farmer's market, i rarely give too much thought into what goes on behind the scenes--i just sniff and squeeze and sample and toss stuff into my bag--pretty much indifferent to the whole thing.  i'm happy to say that my CSA membership may be changing my mindset!

life with chickies...

here's a post inspired by a request by one of you lovely readers... we've got chickens, here's how we do it! 

our flock is pretty mini. we started out with 3 hens, 3 years ago--mikey was the blonde, cee-cee was the black and white (like cookies and cream, hence the name), and plum was an arucauna that laid the prettiest blue-green eggs (totally martha stewart-esque). jeremy built them a small coop using plywood, chicken wire and a metal sheeting roof--it's really nothing fancy but it does get the job done, keeping them out of the rain and giving them a safe place to rest. the coop has 2 nesting boxes, which go mostly unused, and a wide branch at the very top of the coop where the girls like to roost. 

first lesson learned about chickens: they poop. a LOT. i was aghast when jeremy brought them home (already fully grown) and the girls popped out of their box, strutting around their fenced-in area. depositing massive piles of "fertilizer" behind them. it's big. it can be stinky. there's lots and lots and lots of it. after 2 years of letting them roam freely around our yard (after their initial fencing in to get us all acclimated--including our dog) the girls now have a chicken run (an area about 30' x 8' ) and are only rarely let out into our finished yard. lots of this had to do with the birth lucy--best to keep crawlers out of the poopies, don't you think?

second lesson learned about chickens: poop attracts flies. hay, grass trimmings and sprays of water help keep them at bay, but now that the girls are fenced in, so are their droppings. i didn't notice flies nearly as much as i do now, but i've heard planting geraniums can be a deterrent to flies. no idea if the chickens would feast upon the geraniums, though. oh wait, they probably would. 

third lesson learned about chickens: they are easy prey. after nearly a year of incident-free hen ownership (and lots of omelets) we woke in the early morning to hear horrible sounds coming from the backyard. our lovable mikey had fallen prey to a raccoon. the worst part? it was completely our fault. we had neglected for months to close the coop at night, and finally our luck ran out. in our defense, we sincerely had never thought that something so horrible could happen (call us 100% naive). now we (jeremy) closes the coop shortly after dusk (the chickens go in on their own when the sun begins to set). which means jeremy also must rise with the sun to let the chickens out--they are quite loud with their cackling and we have neighbors on both sides of our house. rural farm this isn't. the good news it that jeremy now has an excitable cohort to join him in his task--that little lucy is as reliable as any chicken when it comes to waking early. when we go on vacations, we must now find someone to come let the chickens in and out of their coop. footloose & fancy free is not the life of a farmer. 

fourth lesson learned about chickens: they come when called, and are extremely motivated by food. a simple "deet-deet-deet-deet-deeeeeeet!" will send them into a running frenzy, wings flapping the whole way. 

fifth lesson learned about chickens: they lay eggs where they want. when they want. if they want. chickens are like all females, they eventually go through menopause (henopause, ha). since the average life span of a chicken is 7 years, they can stop laying around 3-4 years--halfway through their life. we named our chickens, so we're stuck with them, even if they don't lay. right now we have 2 layers and one who seems to have given up. we get 1 egg per day, usually, and sometimes 2. the hens opt not to lay in their coop, they prefer to hide them from us, under bushes and most currently, in a small woodpile. now that they are fenced in, this isn't much of an issue. when they had full run of the yard, it was quite the adventure. jeremy once found a clutch of 23 eggs tucked away under my sewing studio. 

after mikey died, we adopted 2 more fully grown chickens--foster, another blond (who had been robbed of most of her feathers by mean pecks from the chickens she had been living with), and dark brown porter, who had also been pecked over, though not as badly. the pair has since regained their feathers--our girls are nice enough to get along and not engage in the whole "pecking order" thing. a few months later, plum was found dead on the floor of the coop, and our flock was again numbered at 3. i think plum had a sickness of some sort--for nearly a year she couldn't cluck, didn't lay eggs, and kind of separated herself from the rest of the flock in general. we were very sad to see her go. 

we feed the girls hen food from the semi-local feed store. it seems to meet all of their needs--occasionally they'll begin eating their own eggs, which supposedly means they need calcium. crushed oyster shells can be bought for 25 cents a pound (best deal ever, right? a pound of something for a quarter?) and is supposed to help. they love treats of birdseed, old bread, some fruits, cracker crumbs, granola, and try their best to get at lucy's toes and fingers when she's standing near their fence. of course, they're mistaking these for worms--there is nothing that makes turning soil more fun that having a few chickens delighting in the path behind you. they eat bugs with such gusto--it really is amazing. and gross. 

this spring i happened to be picking up a sack of feed and a few bags of hay at the feed store, when the ups guy came in and dropped off a few boxes of baby chicks! lucy squealed, i cooed, and i was *thisclose* to calling jeremy and talking him into a few new friends. but i didn't. i'm not sure if we will get more chickens--at least, not until the ones we have are buried alongside mikey and plum. like any animal, there is a high level of commitment involved, and life with lucy has proven itself chock-full of commitments of every kind. we'll see, as i also can't imagine having just one chicken, either. how sad for the last one standing, to be all alone at night in the roost. 

last lesson learned about having chickens (at least for now!): when placed in a bowl full of water, a rotten egg will float, while a good egg will sink. eggs are designed to stay good for long periods of time without refrigeration when freshly laid--this is because a mother hen waits until she has a clutch of 5-10 eggs before she decides to sit on them. shells are airtight--keeping the egg from spoiling even in hot weather. over time, the shell will begin to break down. air gets into the egg and causes spoilage. 

this lesson is important to us mainly b/c in the past, when we came across a grouping of eggs, we had no idea how old they were--2 days, 2 months--there's really no telling without the water trick. in over 3 years of chicken raising, we've only come across 2 bad eggs, and i have never had the experience of cracking one in the bowl and finding it rotten. however, in my last box of trader joe's eggs, 6 out of the 12 had double yolks! what's that all about?

want more on life with chickies? check out this blog--i was seriously addicted to it when we first got our girls. these are chicken farmers who do it right--don't forget to check out the "hen cam!"