Week 1

In this weeks share

head lettuce (red oak leaf, green leaf, butterhead)
spinach
broccoli raab
arugula
radishes
salad turnips
dill and cilantro?

The question mark for that last item means we will see if it is big enough.

2 recipes

Greek fritatta

fry in olive oil one medium onion and one medium potato with a pinch of salt and pepper. while that is cooking chop four cups of spinach and two tablespoons of fresh dill. also crack six eggs in bowl and scramble, and crumble 1/2 cup of feta cheese. once the potatoes are soft add the spinach and dill.  once that is wilted add eggs and cover for five minutes, then add cheese and cover again for five minutes.  Then eat fritatta. This is a new staple in our house.  In the fall you will be able to make it with onions and potatoes from your share as well.

The JFK

For all of you who haven't tried broccoli raab, and those who like on the fly cooking like myself (Rachel is the meal planner in our house)

saute in olive oil a few cloves of garlic roughly chopped, and either red peppy flakes or an actual hot pepper chopped up.  Add one bunch of chopped Broccoli Raab and cover.  It will wilt quickly.  Put sliced provolone or Havarti on 1/3 a baguette.  Put greens on baguette.  Eat.  I had this last night.  It was awesome.  Raab is the first green I fell in love with when I started working on farms, so I'm excited to share it with you all.

This is a week earlier than we have ever started our CSA, and I was on the fence about whether to hold off or not.  I did choose to start a little earlier based mostly on the spinach and arugula, which I thought would start going by if I waited, and that seemed like too much.  Why think about it at all: I don't like to have too too many early weeks with just leafy greens.  Well the weeks and weeks of above average temps (about 7 degrees above at least with a few spikes) have brought everything on quick, and we will have peas and beets either next week or the week after, and I can't imagine squash being too far behind that.

Intervale Open House

Hey all, I will be at some or all of this open house (link to details) to discuss with anyone who wants to listen about farming, farming in the Intervale, farming this year (going really well if I haven't specifically mentioned yet), farming on our specific farm, and ways you might get to eat things that are grown on our farm.

While I'm writing about such things I had a few thoughts.

1.  Reasons I like our CSA:  I am at all of the pick-ups, so you get to ask the farmer questions about how something was raised.  More things specifically good about our CSA: Choice.  You aren't just handed stuff in bag or box and that's what you get.  You get to choose your squash, or more importantly, your tomatoes (you may like orange ones better than red ones), or sometimes choose peppers over eggplant or vice versa.

2. Reasons CSAs are still pretty cool beside the aforementioned: you are usually getting a very good deal, sometimes as much as 20% more vegetables.  Secret awesome reason: you are in the position to learn alot about agriculture in America if you want.

3.  Organic is still important:  I know local seems to trump all these days, but I was looking at some asparagus at the farmers market (can you tell I obsess about asparagus (and what was I even doing at the market anyways (bus man's holiday))) and saw some super-huge asparagus.  I'm not naming names, but sufficient to say  it was not from an organic farm, and once I got over my asparagus envy, I remembered that bigger does not always mean better, certainly not better for you, and usually not as tasty (my go to evidence for this is carrots and celery from California, I mean the celery tastes like salt water and the carrots like domino sugar in suspension.)  Now I know organic comes in many shades, heck, I am not even certified organic.  It can be confusing, what the end result healthiest for you and planet food to eat is, which is why I keep circling back to points 1 and 2 on my list.

And how is Open Heart going (just in case you can't make it for cookies and lemonade (uh, did I mention free cookies and lemonade)) - swimmingly is the best word I can think of.  Very much without hitches so far, not even the normal ones you would expect like spending a whole day setting up irrigation or having to reseed something, etc.  If you want to know more you'll just have to come.

Our first asparagus is coming in, slowly.  It apparently doesn't like temps much below 36.  Very Interested to see what the season is like, I've never worked with such young plants (we started them from seed last year).

Today I put up the pea trellis, tilled a bunch of beds (which will contain tomatoes, eggplant, melons, second rounds of beets and head lettuce, among other things), and planted fennel and zinnias.

Tomorrow, put out cosmos, beets, two more beds asparagus, seed first round of beans, and if it is dry enough wheel hoe, but if not just weed the spinach (both plantings had great germination thanks to the wet weather).

just wanted to mention, cause I hadn't in a while, that we do have shares still avaible, - and you can find the brochure for those on your right, right under the link to our new web site, where you can also purchase shares electronically.

things going really well in the greenhouse and out in the field.  all the peas are up, onions beets lettuce kale and more in the ground, along with potatoes and other seeds yet to sprout.  We are going to do one big clean-up of the shed area before we get too far into the season.

Enjoy this last burst of cold (I promise!)

The Intervale

Today was just so glorious that I had to take a walk once I was done with my work in the field (put in the first round of hakuri turnips).  So I started down the dirt road deeper into the Intervale.  It was a wonderful walk, insanely beautiful.  I hadn't taken this trail for four years.  Once you get past the back end of Adam's Berries on one side and Arethusa on the other there are giant fields (50 acres ~), some that I think are used for hay, and some that might not be used at all.  After a few minutes you can see the Winooski river, wide and placid.  On the opposite bank, in what is either Colchester or Winooski, was a herd of cows, some of whom were drinking from the river.  it was easy to forget I was in Burlington, the spaces had widened out so much from those more hemmed in closer to town fields.  Then I crossed into Ethan Allen Homestead and after a little turned back.  Sometimes I give the Intervale Center a hard time (see older posts :)) but my farm and farms in general is only a piece of what they must keep afloat.  The farms probably comprise less than half the acres they conserve (is that the right word?).  Anyway, felt very lucky to live in Burlington today, and to get to work in the Intervale on a daily basis.

Also feel lucky to have such great members.  You all have signed back up in droves, making it a lot easier to focus on the farming part of farming, which is going great.  So far, in the the ground: peas, carrots, aforementioned turnips (a sweet mild variety I often call the gateway turnip), spinach.  Next week we will start the mass transplant: chard, kale, onions, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, beets.

A Tale of Two Cucurbits

Today I noticed i was eating two cucurbits for lunch.  I know, weird thing to notice, but these were from such different origins and I hadn't slept much and what can I say, I noticed.  The first was some melon from last year from our farm that I had frozen.  Adam Hausman of Adam's Berries gave me this idea a few years ago.  I was bemoaning the lack of winter fruit and he told me about melon in smoothies,  The unfrozen consistency is such that that is about all the melon is good for.  That or ice cream or mousse or something.  But boy is it good for it.  You would be surprised how flavorful our melons are and how distinct fresh summer flavor comes through even when mixed with aging bananas and frozen blueberries.  The Hardest part is chopping the melon off the giant hunk (I froze it in a gallon freezer bag, which I have made about a 12 smoothies with and could probably make another 12 before it's all gone.

The other cucurbit is pumpkin (this family also includes in case you didn't know cucumbers and summer squash).  My son Ciaran was insisting on pumpkin bread so Rachel bought a can of pumpkin.  This is the second time we have bought a can of pumpkin.  Normally I make mashed pumpkin out of either Queensland blue or the tan long island cheese pumpkins, both great tasting, (and Queensland stores really well too) but the flood more or less wiped out the winter squash crop (which coincidentally is one of the things I am planting up at South Village).  Well, I have heard that this is one thing that you might as well get canned.  People say for all the work it makes little difference if you use canned or fresh pumpkin, so I thought I would try it.  IT DOES MAKE A DIFFERENCE.  Both now and at Thanksgiving I was disappointed.  I mean, the canned was passable, but there is definitely something missing, and to be honest, I don't find the pumpkin cooking process that odious, especially in the middle of winter when you want to heat up your house anyways.

Yep, the next few weeks are always the hardest for fresh and local veg, then it starts to ease up with baby spinach and asparagus etc. 

I wanted to thank all the members that have already signed up.  Link to website has also been added to this sidebar, so now you can just go back and forth between the two, which I know you have been waiting for.

More farm - it happens quickly

Time to seed the broccoli tomorrow.  My main crop broc was going to be limba, pictured here.  But having to switch up to fiesta, not the worst thing, but I have already seen limba do well under many conditions last year, even after the centers get hit by sweet midge they had lots of juicy side shoots.

Also seeded snap dragons, leeks, and beets today.  Next week in the field prepping.  More Later.

21st century

Don't want to blow everyone's mind with too many advances at once, but OHF has moved online in a big way.

For one, we have a website www.openheartfarm.com - the blog will still very much exist, and be the day to day week by week go to, but the website has the brochure also, but maybe even more amazing, at least to me, is you can now buy your open heart veggie shares with your credit card or paypal account.  It is a basic site that may over time include recipes and more stuff, but for now it has our asic info with a few fun features, and looks great, I have to thank Eva Us who is doing it for us and did everything to make it look wonderful.

In even another piece of tech news from the farm, we are officially a google place, which I wanted to do mostly so people could more easily get directions, so let me know if it at all helps with that.  It was a bit of a process, but I have to admit I got into it and can understand how people get into the powers of technology, even tho i am generally a book reading tape listening to guy.

Actual Farm, like on the real earth news: you all know it too: we will be in the ground at least a week earlier than normal and maybe two due to all this heat.  The goal is actually not to get too far ahead of ourselves I think.  Not that there will be a frost or anything, at least I don't think so.  Just don't want to over-extend or have my peas before the CSA starts, actually maybe more of an issue with the spinach, maybe we will for the first time for us in Vermont, have two spring sowings of spinach, which would be exciting.  That was easy in the longer slow progression of coastal Long Island, but this is looking like our year here.

Brochure still is on sidebar, hope you all like the website and please comment and let me know what it could use.

Next time: to organic or not, and why I mulch with lots of leaves

Poor Man's Fertilizer

Poor Man's Fertilizer is a spring snow once the ground is already thawed.  Ours is a little bit, so I'm hoping to get some of the positive effects, which mostly come from the higher nitrogen content in snow.  So these past few snows have been nice for me.  Even went to the Burlington Country Club hill for the first time with Ciaran.  Rachel and I both survived a few rides.  Ciaran, as per usual had to be dragged away from the action.

But I digress, the whole fertilizer thing was making me think of a few things people may not know about our farm in particular and farms that grow organically in general, especially with regards to the soil.  One of the organic mantras is "feed the soil" - keep the soil healthy and you'll be in good shape.  Mostly in the past I did that strictly though compost, which supplies lots of organic matter, but is also rich in other nutrients.  Now trying to balance that with green manure more, as I believe I mentioned in earlier posts.  But we also do use fertilizers.  Ours aren't made from petrochemicals, instead mostly from two sources: pasteurized chicken manure and various forms of seaweed.  Actually, luckily for us, the are made locally by a great company: North Country Organics.  Even when I was farming in Long Island, we had pallets of their cheep cheep (I know, cute name) basic chicken manure mix sent to us.

This year we are in really good shape, after the floods we did lots of soil testing and one thing it revealed (besides a lack of toxins) was the all our fields had an average of about 3.4% organic matter.  That is fairly good.  5% is ideal, really don't want to go that much over that I don't think, and under 2.5 - 2.25% you start having significantly less fertility.  So that plus a little poor man's fertilizer and things are looking good, as far as the ground is concerned, at OHF.

Working Members

As we start to get our members for this years farm season together I wanted to remind everyone of the working member option.  We have three working member slots this year.  Traditionally, a working member comes out to the farm and works a few hours for 12 weeks out of the season, and gets a discount on the farm share.  It is ideal for those interested in getting a bit closer look at the farm and how it works, and being part of that.  There is a less dirty way of being a working member though: we have in the past had "recipe members" who have dedicated themselves to finding one good recipe a week to match up with what we are giving out in the share.  Look back in the archive for some great recipes (and an idea of what we had available each week).

We also have working members with special talents like photography.  Last year Monica Donovan took these wonderful photos.  Those tomatoes look like they are glowing, I can practically taste them.  Monica specializes in photos of people working, especially rural work, so the working membership made perfect sense.

In Farm News:  I know its early, and I hate to break it to everyone, but, winter is over, so I went down to the field for the first time just to check-in.  There is still ice in spots, but the winter rye cover crop is definitely up, and the peach and pear trees are starting to look alive again.  (These fruit trees are all just a few year old but I think we might get a few pieces of fruit this year.)  Rhubarb and asparagus and garlic all dormant still, but my guess is three weeks before things start looking green.

No matter what the temp it is just a week and a half until we start seeding onions.  I hope to mulch some or all of them this year, but that will be dependent on how much mulch the perenials and garlic take up.  Mulching once sounds so much better than hoeing 5 times, and leaf mulch is so good at keeping them moist.  It would be our first time doing that at the Intervale, though it was standard practice at our previous farm.

A link to our brochure for the coming year, enjoy the weather.

broken up garlic that will be planted for next crop

 

O Bread

Wanted to share this article on O Bread.  I found there bread first at the Shelburne farmers market where OHF goes on Saturdays, and have been eating it ever since.  This is the second year they are working with us to supply a bread share, which is, not to overstate the obvious, one loaf of bread delivered to you each week, at the same time as you get your veggies from us.  Delicious bread at a reasonable price, kinda like what we are going for with the vegetables.

Here is a link to the article in the Shelburne News:
http://www.shelburnenews.com/news/article/current/2012/02/01/102929/vermonts-artisan-bread-pioneers-o-bread

 As always this time of year, remember the link to our brochure is on the sidebar to your right!

Yeah! our new Brochure is up!

Hi everyone, if you are interested in a share for 2012 click on the permanent link on the sidebar to download or print our brochure.

This front cover painting is by local artist Jesse Azarian.  It was part of an show at Rose Street Artist Co-op where I live, and as soon as I saw it, I thought, "this would be awesome for the brochure."

We are so excited to start the season.  I feel like we have already hit the ground running and that the season has too.  Even though it's cold the gears feel like they are already turning.  I know all farmers are taking this time to make sure all their ducks are in a row, and this year's OHF mantra might just be "ducks in a row" - in the world of farming that means put on row cover right after sowing the seed, pick off potato beetles once a week, etc., just a little extra attention to detail.  Easy to say, right.  I think we at Open Heart are going to try to make it happen by hiring a few more hours of help.  Part of the desire to emphasize this this year is just about the learning curve of farming.  This is my eleventh year, each year picking up bits here and bits there, and alot of those bits are starting to fit together to make one whole puzzle. A delicious puzzle.

Anyway, check out our brochure, and if you have any questions feel free to call that number on the side as well.

New Stats to look for

As most of you have looked at the blog for a few years know, I regularly check the river page to see what level the Winooski is at, this year, I, and surely lots of other farmers, are looking at these numbers, particularly the snowfall for the season and month.  The numbers tell a good deal, but not all of the story.  They tell us that we have 29 inches less snow than last year this time, which is more than 50% less, or probably more importantly, even if it started snowing at the record rates of last year, we would have still 25% less than last year, and hence signigantly less flooding.  If we hang out at average or the  even less than average that we are getting so far we could even be looking at some early starts, like we had in the 2010 season.  Some of this number crunching is just too much time in the winter, but still, a good way to plan how much one should try to get on the highest ground one has, and to look ahead and say, maybe we will be in the greenhouses a week earlier than last year, so get ready.

heres the link in case you want to watch along with me: http://www.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/findweather/getForecast?query=ICAO:KBTV&almanac=1

 Burlington International, Vermont (KBTV)

Weather Almanac for January 19, 2012

	Actual	Normal	Record	Last Year
Yesterday:
Max Temperature	44°	27°	53° (1996)	31°
Min Temperature	9°	10°	-24° (1974)	11°
Precipitation	0.00 "	0.07 "	1.61 " ( 2006 )	0.21 "
Month-to-date precip.	0.93 "	1.19 "	--	1.19 "
Year-to-date precip.	0.93 "	1.19 "	--	1.19 "
Snowfall	0.0 "	0.6 "	9.7 " ( 1978 )	2.1 "
Month-to-date snowfall	8.1 "	12.2 "	--	21.0 "
Season-to-date snowfall	20.1 "	35.5 "	--	49.3 "
Heating degree days	38	47	--	44
Month-to-date heating degree days	754	831	--	785
Since 1 July heating degree days	3010	3590	--	3569
Since 1 Jan cooling degree days	--	--	--	--
Maximum humidity: 86%, Minimum humidity: 45%, Average humidity: 66%																													P.S. for those looking for the brochure I will be getting it ready for the end of January beginning of Feb.

Seeds are coming in

As with most years I start ordering seeds with the new year, which seems appropriate.  Well, they are already coming in, probably mostly in by the end of the week, which means the next step will be organizing them. (Reminds me of another thing I like about farming, one step seems to so naturally lead you to the next.  You take care of a plant for a while, then you harvest from said plant for awhile.  It's probably just as natural in other jobs but I couldn't always figure it out).  After that I will get on to making this years brochure . . . before you know it greenhouses.

But to savor the moment a little, there are some seeds I am excited about this year.  Mostly tomatoes.  Because I have access to hoophouses this year I was able to bring back a few I had given up on.  Pinapple, above, is one of those striped ones that I love but are just too darn big and cracky to get reliably in the field.  Most of these striped ones (like gold medal) are pretty sweet but large enough to have some nice complex tomato flavors as well.  Dad's Sunset was just too nice looking and such a great name couldn't pass it up.  I have one other orange tomato, Valencia, that is pretty, but I've never been one hunred percent satisfied with it's flavor.  Other tomatoes I'm bringing back for a run in the hoophouses are Cherokee Purple, which in the field always had a week or two of nice early ones but then were worthless, and Brandywine, which I was truly contemplating giving up before I secured our land at South Village (where our hoophouses are and a chunk of higher ground, the need for which, see earlier posts).  Brandywines really are as awesome as their reputation but I was getting two usable tomatoes a plant, maybe.  Even for field tomatoes I am going back to my old regime of using Serenade for a few weeks in the beginning, probably up until the time they set fruit.  It is an organic spray that I think can add about two or three weeks of life to the plants, and when you are talking tomatoes every week is worth it.  They're here and then they're gone.

Other veggies that I'm excited about: I just can't stop thinking of the peas.  I'll probably be dreaming about them tonight!

What I do during the Winter

my new book: Cloud Computing (this is the cover photo by Ciaran to your left) which I should warn you, should probably not be read if you want to have a more meaningful understanding of how cloud computing works, at lest in a technological sense, is available on SPD (small press distribution) and possibly amazon as well.

I started it last winter after what had been a pretty good farm season, which left me time to coach basketball, watch the kids and write some at night.  A year  and much tinkering later and voila. 

I do hope to do a reading or two before the next farm season starts in earnest.  hope you enjoy the book.  Did I mention it is perfectly sized for a stocking stuffer!