Community-Supported Agriculture for the Upper Valley of New Hampshire and Vermont
2012 Week One
May 14, 2012
Good Morning CSA-ers:
When I woke up Sunday morning, there was a red fox in the field staring at the chickens under their roof. I think he or she made off with a chicken in the night - the first bird we’ve lost to predation in many years. Much as I sympathize with this beautiful creature’s need to eat, I set up a second perimeter of electric fence last night, which seems to have done the trick. Everyone looks safe this morning.
We’ll be starting our first veggie harvest of the year in a few moments, and here’s what I think we’re going to have. Choose any six from among the following:
*Lettuce, green romaine
*Rhubarb
*Asparagus
*Parsnips
*Tatsoi
*Napa Cabbage
*Arugula
*Scallions
A few recipe ideas follow in a moment. First, some other details.
We have a bunch of retail items for sale in the barn already, including cheese (Ascutney Mountain from Cobb Hill; brie, camembert, and gruyere from Blythedale), frozen yoghurt from Cobb Hill, or own maple syrup (while supplies last), and ground beef (both patties and loose) from Clay Hill.
We’ll have lamb sausage starting in a week or two, and hopefully Strafford Organic ice cream. No eggs yet - the hens haven’t started producing in sufficient quantities.
For this of you interested and having raw milk delivered weekly from Cedar Mountain, talk with me today as we need to place the pre-order this week. (There was more info about this in an email last week.)
Finally, bring a check today if you think you owe us for the balance of your share. I’ll have an up-to-date list in my pocket if you can’t recall.
That’s the scoop - see you later in the day!
—Chuck
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Recipe ideas:
Rhubarb… I eat this stewed on everything from ice cream to oatmeal. It’s super easy to make - just dice up the stalks, add some sugar, and let sit in a sauce pan for an hour or so while the juice leaks out. Then cook just until the stems dissolve. Add more sugar if desired.
Parsnips… the classic approach is to slice them up, toss with olive oil, and roast them in the oven, but here’s another idea - make them into hummus. Combine 3 parsnips, peeled and cut into 1/2 inch pieces, with 3 garlic cloves and 3/4 c. water in a skillet. Boil and cook uncovered until the water has evaporated (5-10 minutes.) Lower the heat and allow the parsnips to caramelize and sweeten, stirring occasionally, until the parsnips are tender (20-30 minutes.) Then combine in a food processor with another garlic clove, 3 T water, and 2 T tahini. Season to taste with salt, pepper, and lemon juice. Note on the parsnips: the larger ones have some orange discoloration on the outside from winter damage… just peel it off and enjoy the rest.
Tatsoi and Napa cabbage… I just discovered the key to making these greens over the weekend: drop the whole leaves into boiling water for 60 seconds, then remove quickly and submerge in cold water to stop the cooking. It cooks the greens without reducing them to mush. Then chop them up and either enjoy cold in a salad, or with a vinaigrette, or tossed into pasta. We’re leaving the outer leaves on the Napa for you to either cook or discard. When you buy Napa in the store, all the outer leaves are gone, but since they’re tasty and edible, we’re giving you the option.
CSA Opens This Week
Hello Sunrise CSA members:
We’ll be opening the CSA season this week with a lovely harvest of greens and other edibles. Thanks to both improved systems and favorable weather, this will be our earliest opening ever, two weeks ahead of last year and more than a month ahead of our first season back in 2000. Yay!
I’ll email again on Monday/Thursday morning with more specifics, but here are a few details in the meantime.
The barn is open for pickup between 11 AM and 6 PM. Come any time that’s convenient for you. I’ll be sure to be on hand for the first few weeks to help out and answer questions. I’ll also introduce you to Jake and Derek, my excellent employees this year. Please feel free to find us any time you have a question or want assistance.
You’re welcome to either bring your own bags for your veggies or use ours, which we have in abundance.
Parking is usually available in the barn parking lot, which holds 6 cars easily. If the lot is full, just park at the end of the road by the mail boxes. Directions to the farm are on the website: ww.sunrisefarmvt.com.
Dogs are welcome on the farm as long as they are leashed when around the barn and in the field. Wait until they’re in the woods to let them run so that we don’t scare or disrupt the animals or vegetables. Our two dogs, Olive and Maizey, are often walking around loose, though they’ve been trained to walk between the vegetable beds and poop up in the woods. (That’s the answer to the question I often get: why do you have standard poodles on a farm?!)
We encourage you to explore the farm and let your kids run free, with only a few places being off-limits: the upstairs of the barn, because there is no railing around the hay loft, and the pond, because our insurance carrier won’t allow aquatics. Also, though we often turn the electric fences off during pickup days, we don’t always, and it’s good for your kids to always assume that all fences are on. (Getting shocked is very frightening though not dangerous.)
Swinging on the swings and climbing on the tractor, meanwhile, are encouraged. Adult supervision suggested. Adults are also free to climb on the tractor when their kids aren’t looking.
Animal update: the sheep are in the main pasture and the first batch of chickens is right behind them. The piglets should arrive next week, as will the next batch of baby chicks.
Those are the highlights… summer starts this week! See you then,
—Chuck
Longest Spring in History
May 6, 2012
(Note: The CSA is sold out for the 2012 season. If you’d like to be on our waiting list for 2013, send me an email so that I can contact you in March of next year. Sorry we can’t hook you up this year.)
Hello Sunrise Shareholders:
Has this been the longest spring in the history of Vermont or what? We started our spring chores on the farm back in February and now, a week into May, we’re still waiting for the trees to fully leaf out. If the growing season were likened to an airplane flight, I feel like we pushed back from the gate in early March and have been taxiing down the runway for 8 weeks now.
But we hope to be taking to the air next week. We’re ahead of schedule on the planting chart and, if a little warm weather comes our way, we should be ready to open the CSA for the season the week of the 14th. The only holdup at the moment is that the veggies are still small as they wait for more summery weather. Today’s sun will help enormously.
We’ve had a fabulous spring on the farm, finishing up lots of small projects and extensively weeding and fertilizing the perennials: asparagus, raspberries, blueberries, and fruit trees. We installed new lights in the CSA room and spruced up our veggie washing facilities. We have two dozen lambs on the pasture and 150 chicks in the barn, with the piglets due here this week. We’ve also been busy in the woods cutting new trails and creating roadways.
A few logistical notes for the week:
Meat. We’re still taking orders for Sunrise chicken and lamb and Clay Hill beef. If you didn’t see the ordering email a few weeks back, let me know. The last two batches of chickens are sold out but the rest is still available.
Milk. We’re going to be bringing raw milk to Sunrise twice each week from Cedar Mountain Farm in Hartland, as we did last year. (Take a peek at their operation at http://sites.google.com/site/cedarmountainfarmvt/home/cows.) The raw milk laws are complicated, and we’re not actually selling their milk, we’re just delivering it free of charge as part of our regular trips to their farm for cheese, FroYo, and whey. Therefore, you need to pre-order your milk for the season. The cost is $77 to receive a half gallon every week for 22 weeks, $137.50 for a gallon, or $253 for 2 gallons. If you’re interested, email back to me so that I can place the group order. Then bring your empty jars with you to the first CSA pickup week – you’ll need twice the number of jars as your order so that you have one in your fridge while the farm fills the other. (We highly recommend using half-gallon canning jars – always available at Dan & Whit’s if the box stores are sold out – because they fit nicely in our carrying crates.) Make checks payable to Cedar Mountain Farm. Email back to me if you have more questions about this – we’ll be organizing the jars and payment in week 1 of the CSA so that the milk will start flowing in week 2.
Emails. If you want me to add anyone to this email distribution list, let me know.
I’ll send another email at the end of the week with a final update. Meanwhile, Happy Longest Spring ever!
—Chuck
The Case For Eating Meat
April 9, 2012
(NOTE: CSA signups are still underway, and we have a half-dozen spots still available. Click on “Join the Farm” for more details.)
Why should we eat meat? The New York Times recently ran an essay contest on just this question, asking readers to make the ethical case for carnivore. Here’s what I sent in.
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The children hustle past the deep-green broccoli crowns and freshly picked tomatoes, ignoring the golden carrots and rainbow chard, making instead a bee-line for the baby chicks in the barn and the lambs gamboling about on the pasture.
For visitors to our farm in the hills of eastern Vermont, animals are the draw. As biologist E.O. Wilson points out, biophilia – “a love of life or living systems” – is encoded into our human DNA; we have an innate affinity for living creatures.
Humans and livestock evolved into a planet-altering arrangement many thousands of years ago. We humans protected these animals from predation, nurturing their young, and caring for them through the lean times of drought and cold. Livestock, in turn, became docile and compliant, losing their wild edge in order to live in close proximity with us, trading the constant fear of death in the wild for the certainty of death in the barnyard.
From the perspective of natural selection, this alliance has been mutually beneficial and extraordinarily successful. Together our species have fanned out across the globe, colonizing inhospitable regions and living in numbers far above what would have been possible without the other. Grazing animals gather solar energy from land too steep for growing vegetables and convert this energy into both delectable protein and rich fertilizer to be spread on flat vegetable fields. Absent animals, and absent fossil fuel, human habitation would be limited to the relatively few parts of the Earth’s surface where vegetables can be grown in perpetuity without fertilizer. But in alliance with animals, we humans now live in such unlikely places as the Tibetan Plateau and the rolling hills of Vermont.
Those of us with the freedom to make dietary choices have the ethical obligation to eat the food that is most sustainable given the environment in which we live. Golden Rice may be the best solution in sub-Saharan Africa, but rice doesn’t grow well in most parts of the world. For large swathes of the earth’s surface and significant percentages of the world’s population, the most sustainable diet possible includes eating meat.
But not industrial meat. Fossil fuels have enabled us to violate our end of the bargain and enslave our livestock companions in unspeakable conditions, far removed from the land. The many valid criticisms of meat-eating in today’s culture – carbon debt, health concerns, ethical treatment of animals – all result from how we raise animals, not that we do raise them.
Some will say that a small farm like ours is an exception (true), that boutique agriculture can no longer feed the world (probably true), and that farming is not a profession available or desirable to most people (certainly true.) But this in no way translates into an ethical prohibition on eating meat. Few would argue that spiritual seekers should forego a monastic life simply because such a life isn’t available or desirable to everyone.
One of the highlights of my wintry mornings is to shoulder open the door to the barn, flick on the light, and wake up the sheep. I feed them hay and water; they feed my soul, glancing contentedly in my direction from time to time as they pull apart flakes of hay, their warm breath redolent of summer. Most of these animals were born in this building, at my hand, and most will die here as well, also at my hand. When I die, soil microbes from their manure will just as surely eat me, continuing the partnership our species formed so many millennia ago.