TOMATOES IN THE SNOW

GROWER’S LOG, 11.12.13 The addition of a high tunnel to an organic farming operation has innumerable financial benefits ranging from season extension of marketable crops to ease of production and labor costs. Here at The Dahlia Farm however, what we find most exciting is the complete juxtaposition of the normal farming curve. This year’s addition of our passive solar temporary building has enabled us to have summer bouquets of May peonies (hydra-cooled) and August dahlias side by side – a first in 50 years for us! It has also given us spring gladiolas, near-winter lettuce and Halloween dahlias. The coup-de-grâce however is this morning’s harvest: tomatoes in the snow! It is indeed financially beneficial to add at least one of these greenhouse structures to nearly any farming operation, but it is a spiritual trompe to any seasoned grower to finally have a laugh at nature… even if for just an hour.

2013 Season

Greetings everyone! We are fast approaching another new season here at The Dahlia Farm, and again this year we’re excited to offer CSA membership. We will have both the Half-Share and the Full-Share sizes, so that you can choose the quantity of vegetables, fruits, herbs, eggs and flowers that best fit your family’s lifestyle. We’d like to take this opportunity to thank you for your support over the last 5 years and let you know we look forward to seeing you again this season! If you have not yet signed-up for this season, now’s the time! Simply visit our website TheDahliaFarm.com and print out the ‘CSA sign-up sheet.’ We can usually accept memberships throughout May, but don’t delay as openings are filling up quickly. Here’s to a wonderful season for all. We look forward to seeing you soon!

Some Chicks Can't Catch A Break

Backyard chicken-keeping is growing around the country, spurred by the interest in local food and sustainability.

Once upon a time everyone in Plymouth County had chickens, but recently even in Middleboro, we had a "Right to Farm" vote. That's right, we actually had to vote in a town election if a farm community that sustained a 90's real estate development boom and commuter rail installation still had the right to farm!

Apparently this is a problem around the country.

Town officials in Maplewood, N.J., decided this week that their community is ready for home chicken cooping—but only just. In a 3-2 vote, the Township Committee voted to allow a pilot program for a YEAR starting NEXT March where up to 15 households may be allowed a maximum of three chickens each; AND ROOSTERS ARE BANNED!

Read the ABC News article here.

CSA Week #1

CSA Week #1 Full share includes:

SNAP PEAS Whole pods, best eaten raw as a snack (do not shell).
SPINACH Sauté or eat as a salad green.
RAMPS Treat as asparagus. Sauté French-style (Julienne-cut and skillet with butter and coarse salt).
ITALIAN DANDELION Bitter green. Wilt and serve, or add to other dishes, soups or stir-fry
MIZUNA Braise or treat as a raw green.
RADISH Raw snack, prepared for salad topping, or sliced and baked with olive oil and salt for “radish chips.”
RAPINI (Brocolli Raab) Sauté, stir-fry, or incorporate into soups.
PAC CHOI (Mei Quing Choi) Use as a raw green, sauté, stir-fry, or incorporate into Asian soups.
HERB: LAVENDER Edible flowers or dried for its aroma (use as a sachet in drawers, in laundry dryer).
HERB: SAGE Use fresh or dried
CUT FLOWER: KNIFOPHIA

SCAPES

From French country cuisine to the brautmasters of Germany to even us Swamp Yankees of Plymouth County, there has been a long standing opinion in cooking, that there is no waste in the hard-earned reward of food.

Just as snails are flavored with garlic and meat scraped to the bone to make sausages, the economy of the traditional harvest continues today. "We shall waste no part of the animal," Peter Straub once observed. ...Or plant!

I cannot recount how many times my grandfather from Madeira practiced this belief, knawing on trotters (pickled pigs feet) or the turkey's gizard and anus - all the while stating as fact their delicacy.

Well we don't have to go to quite that extreme to illustrate this week's true delicacy: garlic scapes.

Pictured here are the wrangled snarls of the "waste" of the garlic plant. Technically, garlic scapes are the flower & seed stem, which twist into a bizarrely beautiful coil prior to blossoming. Garlic farms routinely cut down the stem at this point as it directs the growth energy of the plant into the bulb rather than the foliage and blossom. A 30-35% increase in the bulb yeild can be managed by this method.

Cooking of scapes is very easy and the flavor is not as intense as the bulb itself. If you have never had scapes before, you will truly find them to be a "new" delicacy, but enjoy them while they last, because they are VERY, VERY seasonal.

Bon appetit!





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PODCAST

Hot off the MP3!

I did an interview recently with the infamous blogger & Middleboro Gazette columnist Bellicose-Bumpkin on a number of issues related to natural, bio-diverse farming. Today it was posted to the world and can be found on his blog at: http://bellicose-bumpkin.blogspot.com/2009/04/csa-middleboro.html