June 12, 2009

Springdale Farm News

This week's vegetables: garlic scapes, cilantro, strawberries, lettuce, spinach, salad mix, scallions, zucchini, European cuke (full shares and some half shares)

Next week: spinach, lettuce, strawberries, mushrooms, parsley, scallions, zucchini, European cucumber, maple syrup

Soon: snow peas and snap peas, more scapes, basil, broccoli, more pea shoots?

Vegetable tidbits: New subscribers may be unfamiliar with the thin, curly, 'sticks' that are in today's boxes. These are part of the garlic plant, which we remove from the plant in order to encourage it to send more energy into its bulb. They can be used either fresh or cooked. Website? Some of today's strawberries are on the dirty side, as we were picking them shortly after a hard rain which splashed some dirt onto the berries. Better for you to wash them than us, since they should be eaten soon after being washed. Today there's both a fair amount of lettuce, along with salad mix. We aim to have either of the two every week; while many weeks there might be both. As the salad mix will probably deteriorate quicker than the lettuce heads, it might be good practice to eat the mix first, and save the heads for later in the week. Spinach quantity will decrease greatly from now on. To help get rid of today's quantity, check out the recipe(s) below.

False Bread Warning: Last week we mentioned that you might be receiving a sample bread from a new baker that we will be working with this year. We got our day wrong -- it is the Tuesday's pick-up sites that are receiving the free sample, not the Friday folks. (We deliver our shares twice a week, with roughly half of our total members on both days.) The baker, Dean Malloy of Fond du Lac, is able to deliver his 100% organic, sourdough bread on Tuesdays, but not Fridays, and will be providing a weekly bread to bread share purchasers for nearly our entirely delivery season. His number is (920) 251-6036 and his e-mail address is surrealbread@yahoo.com if this sparks your interest.

Cilantro-Mayo Spread
3/4 cup mayonnaise 3/4 cup cilantro
1 Tblsp. fresh lime juice 1 tsp. soy sauce
1 clove garlic to taste
Place all ingredients into food processor and blend smooth & spreadable.
Great with turkey, roasted red peppers, and green onion wrapped in lettuce leaf.

Spanakopita from Moosewood Cookbook
( a little oil, butter or - 2 lbs. of fresh spinach, stemmed and finely chopped
oil spray for the pan) - 5 medium cloves garlic, minced
2 Tbs. olive oil. - 3 Tbs. flour
2 c. minced onion - 2 cups (packed) crumbled feta cheese ( about 1 lb.)
1/2 tsp. salt - 2 cups cottage or pot cheese
1 Tbs. dried basil - black pepper, to taste
1 Tsp. dried oregano -

1/3 c. olive oil - or 1/2 c. melted butter - or oil spray
1 lb. filo pastry (16 to 20 leaves), thoroughly defrosted

1) Preheat oven to 375F. Lightly grease a 9 by 13-inch baking pan.
2) Heat the oil in a Dutch oven or deep skillet. Add onion, salt, and herds, and saute for about 5 min, or intil the onion softens. Add the spinach, turn up the heat, and cook, stirring, until the spinach wilts (5 to 8 min.). Stir in the garlic.
3) Sprinle in the flour,stir, and cook over medium heat 2 to 3 more min. Remove from heat.
4)Mix in the cheeses, then correct the seasonings, adding black pepper to taste along the way.
5)Place a shet of filo in the prepared pan, letteing the pastry edges climb up the sides. Brush it all over with olive oil or melted butter, or spray it with oil spray, then add another sheet.
Keep going until you have a stack of 10 oiled or buttered sheets.
6) Add the filling, spreading it evenly to the edges.Continue layering and oiling or buttering the remaining filo on tpo the filling.
Oil or butter the top layer.
7) Gently (with a serrated knife in a sawing motion) cut the unbaked Spanakopita into squares. Bake uncovered for about 45 minutes or until golded and crispy. Serve hot or warm



Good to know about: 1) From the Weston A Price Foundation:

HR 2749 FOOD SAFETY BILL

A new food safety bill is on the fast track in Congress-HR 2749, the Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009.

HR 2749 gives FDA tremendous power while significantly diminishing existing judicial restraints on actions taken by the agency. The bill would impose a one-size-fits-all regulatory scheme on small farms and local artisanal producers; and it would disproportionately impact their operations for the worse.

HR 2749 does not address underlying causes of food safety problems such as industrial agriculture practices and the consolidation of our food supply. The industrial food system and food imports are badly in need of effective regulation, but the bill does not specifically direct regulation or resources to these areas.

To read a detailed account of the bill, go to: http://www.ftcldf.org/news/news-15june2009.htm.

Some of the more alarming provisions in the bill are:

* HR 2749 would impose an ANNUAL REGISTRATION FEE of $500 on any "facility" that holds, process, or manufactures food. Although "farms" are exempt, the agency has defined "farm" narrowly. And people making foods such as lacto-fermented vegetables, cheeses, or breads would be required to register and pay the fee, which could drive beginning and small producers out of business during difficult economic times.

* HR 2749 would empower FDA to REGULATE HOW CROPS ARE RAISED and HARVESTED. It puts the federal government right on the farm, dictating to our farmers.

* HR 2749 would give FDA the power to order a QUARANTINE of a GEOGRAPHIC AREA, including "prohibiting or restricting the movement of food or of any vehicle being used or that has been used to transport or hold such food within the geographic area." Under this provision, farmers markets and local food sources could be shut down, even if they are not the source of the contamination. The AGENCY can HALT ALL MOVEMENT of ALL FOOD in a geographic area.

* HR 2749 would empower FDA to make RANDOM WARRANTLESS SEARCHES of the business records of small farmers and local food producers, without any evidence whatsoever that there has been a violation. Even farmers selling direct to consumers would have to provide the federal government with records on where they buy supplies, how they raise their crops, and a list of customers.

* HR 2749 charges the Secretary of Health and Human Services with establishing a TRACING SYSTEM for FOOD. Each "person who produces, manufactures, processes, packs, transports, or holds such food" would have to "maintain the full pedigree of the origin and previous distribution history of the food," and "establish and maintain a system for tracing the food that is interoperable with the systems established and maintained by other such persons." The bill does not explain how far the traceback will extend or how it will be done for multi-ingredient foods. With all these ambiguities, it's far from clear how much it will cost either the farmers or the taxpayers.

* HR 2749 creates SEVERE CRIMINAL and CIVIL PENALTIES, including prison terms of up to 10 years and/or fines of up to $100,000 for each violation for individuals.

ACTION TO TAKE

Contact your Representative now! Ask to speak with the staffer who handles food issues. Tell them you are opposed to the bill. Some points to make in telling your Representative why you oppose HR 2749 include:

1. The bill imposes burdensome requirements while not specifically targeting the industrial food system and food imports, where the real food safety problems lie.

2. Small farms and local food processors are part of the solution to food safety; lessening the regulatory burden on them will improve food safety.

3. The bill gives FDA much more power than it has had in the past while making the agency less accountable for its actions.



2) The USDA has extended the public comment period to June 30th on its proposal to overhaul (& weaken) its oversight of genetically modified crops, which if implemented, would increase our exposure to untested and unlabeled genetically engineered foods. See the Center for Food Safety's website for more details (www.centerforfoodsafety.org).

3) A good source of food-related issues is the Organic Consumer's Association website and newsletter, found at www.organicconsumers.org

Other stuff available: Next week we'll supply you with more information about the possibility of ordering chickens, beef, extra maple syrup, etc., assorted fruit, etc. In the meantime, happy June while it lasts!

New Season - 2009

I'm not sure if I'll keep this up, but I will for a little while. Here's this year's first newsletter for June 12, 2009.

Springdale Farm News
This week's vegetables: lettuce, spinach, zucchini, pea shoots
Greens Share: additional spinach and pea shoots

Next week: lettuce, spinach, zucchini, parsley, sample bread from Fond du Lac baker, eggs (for those who ordered them)

Coming soon: garlic scapes, mushrooms, scallions, peas, strawberries, cilantro, broccoli, maple syrup

Notice: For those of you who get eggs, we will not be delivering them today, but will be delivering them every other week starting next week.

Welcome to the new season! It sure has been a cool spring so far. We even had two very late killing frosts, one in early June that took out a bunch of tomatoes that we had transplanted to the field a few days before. (Fortunately, we had replacements ready to go, so we should still have many tomatoes coming your way!) Usually by Memorial Day it is safe to plant the warm weather crops outside (such as the tomatoes, squashes, melons, etc.), but this year we had to cover all those crops with buckets, blankets (some of which are huge, covering a 1/2 acre in area!), or straw to keep them from freezing. Luckily our efforts were largely successful, with the exception of some low-lying tomatoes that succumbed to the cold. In our five large greenhouses, one is filled with zucchini, which is already producing, one has European cucumbers, which have also suffered some damage due to the cold, and the other three have tomatoes, which are all looking fantastic so far. In the field, the lettuce and spinach does fine with the cold weather, as does the onions, peas, and garlic, while the strawberries seem to have suffered some winterkill, to our huge disappointment, which will likely lead to a few less berries than we were hoping for.

Lots of spinach this week. As usual, despite successive plantings with intervals of 5 to 7 days, the spinach from several plantings seem to want to mature all together, so look for lots of spinach these first couple weeks.

New vegetable: pea shoots. Thanks to a couple of our Hmong helpers, who have continually encouraged us over the years to eat the tender growing tips of the pea plants, we finally succumbed to their pressure and tried them. And we like them. And now you are getting some, too, packed in the bag with your spinach. You could either fry them in some oil, and boil or steam them, and add some salt if you like. Coincidentally, we planted a crop of oats and peas on part of our field that is remaining fallow till late summer, so we went ahead and clipped off the growing tips of those peas. (I would not dare to clip off the growing tip of the sugar snap or snow peas that we are growing for you, since I wouldn't want to adversely affect the yield of the mature peas.) (By the way, these peas are not the new vegetable promised in our questionnaire last fall -- there'll be something else new coming later as well.)

Pick-up reminders: Plan to come every week from now on (till late October) to pick up a box. Barring some horrendous weather, there will be something ready to harvest for you each week, and though the early boxes are always on the lighter side, the planting is going well, and we look forward to a good season. Return the box to your pick-up site the following week, unfold the box (as shown in the 4-minute clip accessed via our website -- www.springdalefarmcsa.org), and place it neatly in a stack.

Exchange Box: At each pick-up site we leave one or a couple of boxes labeled "Exchange Box". We often put some items in the Exchange Boxes before they leave the farm. This week there is some extra spinach in the Exchange Boxes. If you wish, you can take a small quantity of the contents of the Exchange Box to add to your own box. Alternatively, if you find something in your box that you do not want to bring home with you, you can place it in the Exchange Box for someone else to enjoy. For the first month or so, there are usually not so many extras to be found in the Exchange Box, but do keep it mind, both for extras for yourself, and to pass along to others what you may not enjoy in your own box.

More news, information, recipes, etc. to come in the following newsletters. In the meantime, lots of details for us to attend to to make sure these first deliveries go smoothly!