CSA Week #8

• Lettuce
• Carrots
• Sweet onion
• Green onions
• Basil
• Tomatoes
• Kale
• Zucchini
• Cucumbers
• Strawberries

The morning cloud cover has already burned off into a beautiful sunny day as I sit and write to you here at the farm. The boxes are filling up with the warm weather crops now as you see cucumbers and tomatoes in all the boxes this week. We grow many different varieties of tomatoes so you may find cherry tomatoes, heirloom tomatoes, or early girl slicing tomatoes in your share of the harvest!

Recipes:

Melted Tomatoes

Karen Vosika, a regular shopper at our Veneta Market booth, gave these recipes to me, which she found in Better Homes and Gardens magazine. She was very excited to share it with us as she finds it absolutely delicious! She was especially excited about his recipe because it works well with rescued tomatoes that come off the vine a little over or under-ripe.

• 2 lb. medium tomatoes
• 3 Tbsp. olive oil
• ¼ cup snipped fresh basil
• ¼ tsp. salt
• ¼ tsp. ground black pepper
• 1 recipe of green onion chicken, lemon wedges, and fresh basil

1. Preheat oven to 300°F. Place tomatoes in an even layer in 3-quart baking dish. Drizzle with olive oil, and then sprinkle with basil, salt, and pepper. Bake, uncovered, for 1 ½ to 2 hours or until tomatoes are slightly dried and soft. Cool about 15 minutes.

2. To serve, transfer tomatoes to serving platter. Add green onion chicken, lemon wedges, and fresh basil. Makes 4 to 6 servings.

Green Onion Chicken

• 4 whole chicken legs
• ½ cup chopped green onions, white and green portions (about 4)
• ½ cup olive oil
• salt and ground black pepper

1. Skin chicken, if desired. In plastic bag set in shallow dish place chicken, green onions, and olive oil. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Turn chicken to coat in green onions. Cover and refrigerate for at least 8 hours.

2. For charcoal grill, arrange medium-hot coals around drip pan. Test for medium heat above pan. Place chicken, bone side down, on grill rack over drip pan. Cover and grill 30 minutes. Turn then grill 25 to 30 minutes more until chicken is no longer pink (180°F). (For gas grill, preheat grill. Reduce heat to medium, adjust for indirect cooking. Grill as above. Serves 4 to 6

Other recipes to try…

Spinach and Kale Greek Yogurt Dip

Grilled Romaine Salad from Taste by William and Sonoma

I have gotten a few questions about garlic this year and wanted to let you all know that we will not be giving out garlic this season in the CSA shares. After many garlic growing challenges that stemmed from our previously wet and endlessly soggy springs, we decided that we could not continue to loose income to our garlic crop.

We shuffled around the amounts of other vegetables we grow to make up the difference, and are excited to offer you a different option as a way to get garlic through our CSA program, while also supporting another great farmer we know very well. This week I want to introduce you to a key member of the Winter Green Farm employee community. Whenever there is a mechanical issue on the farm, with a truck, tractor, tiller, miscellaneous farm implement…Keith Walton is our guy. 

Keith has been working at the farm as our mechanic for 15 years, and brings with him his huge depth of mechanical knowledge, his overall wisdom of agriculture, and an easygoing, calm personality that makes him such an important part of the Winter Green Farm community. Keith works here at the farm three days a week and when he’s not maintaining all our farm machinery he is working on his own farm, called NettleEdge.

Tyson (my husband and fellow WGF employee), our almost 3 year-old Ella and myself went out to NettleEdge to visit Keith and his family this past weekend. NettleEdge doesn’t have a website so I wanted to show you a glimpse into the life of this farm, and connect you to a place where you can order delicious garlic (and get it delivered to your drop site!)

Keith Walton and his partner Rachael DeBuse live at NettleEdge with their son Kiegan, two farm interns named Tuula and Hannah, two dogs, goats, chickens, ducks, and so much more, all on beautiful land that has been in Keith’s family since his grandfather bought it in 1911. 

NettleEdge is situated right on the edge of the urban growth boundary in north Eugene. It’s a drastic contrast as you leave the city sprawl and wind your way down the road to NettleEdge. You see the fields before you get to the house and as the road straightens out, the fields to your left are lined with beautiful mature golden plum trees, just dripping with the delicious fruit.

The house they live in was built in 1914 and in 1940, Keith’s mother’s parents moved onto the adjacent farm and the two farms became one. Because of the 85 acres of already established cherry trees, Keith’s family became cherry farmers. When it was time to pass the farm on to Keith and his brother Eric, they divided the farm again, back into the two different parcels, but they still work closely together, helping each other out, and sharing farm equipment.

NettleEdge Farm is about fifty acres and Keith and Rachael raise goats for milk they sell along with their free-range chicken eggs. They grow garlic each year and sell it at The Kiva in Eugene. For many years they ran a winter CSA, where they grew some hearty salad and leafy greens, but mainly focused on storage crops to provide people with a local source of their delicious food during those cold months when farmers markets are closed and vegetables in the grocery store travel from far away places. They took a break from their winter CSA, but plan to try it again sometime in the future (we’ll keep you posted!)

NettleEdge Farm is a productive farm, but is also an impressive homestead. They grow as much feed as they can for all their different animals, including the straw they use for bedding. They grow or have grown over the years, triticale, rye, wheat, barley, dry corn, flax, and amaranth. They feed their family and their family of animals almost exclusively from the farm.

They have an on-farm compost based fertility system. They do buy in some minerals like kelp, oyster shell and fishmeal, but try to use as much from their land as possible. They practice gentle tilling techniques, with very little deep tilling of the soil, so as to not break apart the soil structure, and use organic methods of farming, although they are not certified.

Keith and Rachael were kind enough to take time out of their busy day to walk around their farm with us and show us the goats, vegetable fields, chickens, fruit trees, and the beautiful crop of garlic, curing under a stand of Port Orford Cedars.

They have been saving garlic seed for twelve years and have some absolutely beautiful heads of garlic for sale.  All the garlic is the hard-neck variety and has been selected over the years for good storage qualities, flavor, clove size and number, and beauty.

If you are interested in ordering garlic and having it delivered to your drop site, you can contact Keith at 541-689-3672.  You can purchase a 1 lb. bag of garlic for $9.00 or a 3 lb. bag of garlic for $25.00. If you want to get all your garlic for the season, you can talk to Keith about purchasing more. You can also choose how you would like to receive your garlic, with the tops on or off. (If getting a large quantity it is recommended to store your garlic with the tops on and bundled) Make sure to give Keith the name of your drop site so we can deliver your labeled bag of garlic!

We feel very lucky to have Keith on Winter Green Farm and we hope that if you are missing garlic in your box this year, you consider supporting NettleEdge and give them a call.  We hope you have a great week and enjoy the bountiful box of goodness from the farm!

-Sara