Five Farms: Stories from American Farm Families

I heard a little of this on NPR and look forward to listening to the whole thing online. Visit:

http://www.fivefarms.org

to listen to the stories and look at the photos.

CSA Info for July 8th

Garden Update

Summer is finally on its way to the gardens! We've spotted a few baby cucumbers, lots of green tomatoes, and...

Zucchini season is coming! This is a baby Tondo Scuro zucchini (a small round squash similar to an 8-ball zucchini). We had just a few that were big enough to pick, so we'll distribute what we can in the shares - but know that there are many many more to come!

Veggies to Enjoy this Week

Lettuce

Varieties harvested: Dark Lollo Rossa, Rocky Top, Amish Deer Tongue, Little Gem

Salad Greens Mix with:

Bloomsdale Long Standing Spinach, Arugula, and Rocket

Carrots

Varieties harvested: Kuroda, Lunar White, Cosmic Purple

Turnips & Turnip Greens

Purple Top White Globe

Nasturtiums (edible flowers)

Mint

Herbs

Varieties harvested: Tarragon, Savory, Italian Flat-Leaf Parsley, Oregano, Sage, Thyme

We're wrapping things up with the spring veggies, but we want to be sure to get everything we can out of the beds before we're done. We have just a few peas this week, so shareholders will get a choice of:

Peas

Laxton's Progress, Blue Podded

or

Beets & Beet Greens

Varieties harvested: Chioggia, Bull's Blood, Albino, Golden

(first-come, first-served on the choice)

Recipe Ideas

What to do with that weekly supply of herbs? Everything that comes in your bag - savory, tarragon, parsley,

oregano, sage, and thyme - can be used individually or together. Just strip the herbs off their main stems and chop for marinades, with chicken or fish, on potatoes, in pasta, stir fry, or on pizzas. You can saute the fresh herbs in olive oil or butter, strain, then refrigerate your flavored oil/butter for quick and easy use throughout the week.

One of my favorite ways to use the herbs is to make a vinaigrette. Just combine:

Oil (olive oil is best)

Vinegar (balsamic, rice, tarragon, sherry, etc)

a little water

Herbs

Salt

a little sugar

a little powdered cayenne

if you'd like, add just a dash of Bragg's or soy sauce to give depth to the flavor

And blend in a blender or food processor. The fun part is tasting as you go, and adjusting the ingredients until you get the dressing where you want it.

What are your favorite ways to use the fresh herbs? Send me your ideas/recipes, and I'll share them with the group!

Meet Your Farmers

"Meet Your Farmers" will be a weekly feature to introduce you to the people that grow your food!

Tom lives in east Lakewood, near Sloan's Lake. He works as a plant biologist and spends most of his day in a lab with a microscope, but he loves getting a chance to spend time outside

in the gardens. Tom loves growing peppers and herbs, and his favorite veggies to eat (much to the dismay of his girlfriend Alison) are onions and garlic. Tom recently completed the Fort Collins marathon, and he also enjoys homebrewing, indoor & outdoor gardening experiments, and visiting new restaurants and pubs.

Asking for Change at Denver's Farmers' Markets

Some of you may have already seen the Westword article about the local vs. non-local produce issue at Denver's markets, or read my blog posting on the subject. If you haven't, you might want to read this:

http://heirloomgardens.blogspot.com/2009/07/in-news-westword-blog-who-grows-food-at.html

Next week I'll be initiating a friendly email campaign to request the labeling of all out-of-state produce at Denver's major Farmers' Markets. I'll be asking all of you for your help - stay tuned!

Pretty Enough to Eat

This year I've planted many things for the first time, including nasturtiums. Nasturtiums are beautiful edible flowers that are great in salads and can also be used as a garnish. Since this was my first go-'round I decided to keep it small, limiting the nasturtium planting to the border of my front herb garden. The plants have been doing wonderfully well, and we get a new crop of blossoms pretty much every day. I've found that I really like this combination of herbs surrounded by flowers, as it makes a great decorative front border for our garden.

Our front yard garden in early July.

Kids and Chickens

This weekend was full of family fun. My sister Katie drove up for a visit from Albuquerque, with her husband Aaron and kids Denae (8), Nathan (6), Jayden (4) and Lincoln (2). On Sunday night we all had dinner at my house. The kids had fun harvesting herbs for the pizza and vinaigrette, and they also picked nasturtiums for the salad.

After dinner we indulged in a little barnyard fun. All of the kids took turns petting the chickens and goats, and Denae and Nathan also did some chicken-holding. The personalities of the chickens were readily apparent, with Cardamom patiently allowing herself to be held endlessly and Thyme kicking and scratching at anyone who tried to hold her.

I foolishly forgot to use my camera until these last snapshots at the end, but my mom and sister both took lots of pictures that they'll send to me (right, guys?) so we'll have a "part 2" of the barnyard fun soon. For now, we have these...

Nathan proudly holding Cardamom, who he caught all by himself.

Jayden with a found feather (which fell off of Sage), Nathan and Cardamom.

In the News - Westword Blog (Who grows the food at your local farmers' market?)

A few weeks ago I called Westword writer Joel Warner to make a wager. "I'll bet you $20," I said, "That if you stop 10 people at a farmers' market and ask them who grew the produce at the nearest stand, all 10 of them would look at you like you were an idiot. They'd say, 'Duh, the farmer standing there grew that food.'"

You know... those eggplants and melons and corn that they're selling --- in June.

Granted, there are tons of savvy locavore market-goers who know what it means to eat in season, and understand that those offerings have decidedly distant origins. But I suspect that most people who come to farmers' markets to shop do so because they want to support their community's farmers and "eat local," and believe that they are achieving this by purchasing from the folks that sell at farmstands under a local farm's banner.

I know that this is what I believed for a long time. It never occured to me that the produce at farmers' markets came off trucks from California --- dropping off boxes at the market before making a stop at Safeway to unload the rest. I'll never forget the day I was shopping at the Cherry Creek "Fresh" Market (it's not actually called a Farmers' Market, which is what its organizer explained to me as a way to justify all of the out-of-state product) and stopped at the stand for an organic farm. I picked up a tomato, which had a produce sticker on it. From Mexico.

I told the young woman selling the food that I appreciated their honesty - at least they were not removing the stickers and trying to pass the tomatoes off as their own. She looked horrified. I wouldn't be surprised if they had been instructed to remove the stickers, but the task had gotten lost in the shuffle.

Anyway, fast-forward a few years and I find myself manning my own little produce stand at a couple of local farmers' markets. We have a wonderful base of customers, with many new people stopping by each week. We always go out of our way to explain what our food is and how it's grown: "All of our produce is grown organically right here in the neighborhood. It travelled just a couple of miles to get here!" We bill ourselves as "ultra-local" to distinguish ourselves from the hybrid local/California/Mexico/God-knows-where farmstand down the way from us.

We typically sell pretty much everything we bring with us to the market, so we have no complaints. My only wish was for transparency. I couldn't stand the thought of my neighbors making the trip to their farmers' market with the best of intentions to buy local produce, and instead unwittingly leaving with a bag of stuff they might as well have purchased from Safeway. I support the right of shoppers to buy melons from California if they choose to -- I just want them to know that the melons travelled 1,200 miles to get to them.

The other farmstand at the Highlands Market now displays signs --- local produce on this side, out-of-state produce on the other side. This makes me happy. We don't need signs like that at our farmstand, which makes me even happier. Sadly, no such signs exist at the Cherry Creek "Fresh" Market, or at the others markets around town. And, despite the claims made in the article below by the Cherry Creek market manager, I'm sure local & non-local signs at that market would be pretty enlightening for the shoppers.

Many thanks to Joel for covering this... I wish for even more bullhorns to spread this message.

http://blogs.westword.com/latestword/2009/06/urbavores_dilemma_separating_t.php

You can help make change happen - consumer DO control what is sold at the market (and how it is labeled). Please share this post with anyone who might be interested. Ask where the food is grown the next time you visit the farmers' market. Ask to speak to the market manager, and tell her/him that you want your market to feature LOCAL food (and insist on labeling for anything grown or produced out of state!).

More Than One in Ten U.S. Farms Run By a Woman

Thanks to Everett for sending me this article from the Washington Post. How fantastic to learn about these women that are running successful farms. Be sure to click on the photo gallery in the right column of the article. The pictures are beautiful (and very inspiring!).

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/27/AR2009062702386.html

The Incredible Will Allen

I've met many people who are fans of Growing Power's Will Allen, including my friend Lisa Rogers of Feed Denver. The New York Times just did a great feature on Will, and how he's growing a tremendous amount of food using greenhouses, aquaponics, vermiculture, and other cool things in an underserved part of Milwaukee.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/05/magazine/05allen-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&emc=eta1