December 21, 2011 - Morning Song Farm

Okay, so no goats in the house. We’re all on the same page with that. But a cat would be welcome. We’ve had a beautiful feral cat hanging around our packing house for a while, an inport from a local elementary school whose principal asked a member of our crew to take him to our farm as a “mouser.” A few days ago he made his way up to our home, and invited himself inside. He either is a genius, or at some point in his life was an inside cat, because he immediately plopped himself down on my bed and fell asleep. He knows all about cat boxes, we’ve discovered, and hasn’t stopped purring. He’s been here for 3 days now, and the mouse in the house is gone. Since there’s no dead mice pieces lying around, my guess is, his very presence is a deterent, the very best, pest management of all.

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We’re excited this week to include a bag of passion fruit in the large shares. And another week of spaghetti squash. This squash has an unusual characteristic. When opened and cooked, it takes on the appearance of spaghetti. I didn’t even believe it until I tried it, the whole spaghetti thing seems so unlikely. I cook in the oven, often when the oven is on anyway while cooking something else. (Open the squash lengthwise with a sharp knife, or do as we do and slam the thing on the pavement to open. Using a knife can be dicey, don’t take a chance if you’re at all nervous. Take it out front and slam on your sidewalk or pavement. No, it doesn’t open with perfect edges, but who cares?) Cook at 350 with a little olive oil (try Temecula Olive Oil’s local stuff, (website here: http://www.temeculaoliveoil.com/) , salt, pepper, and crushed garlic. Once the strings are easily loosened from the shell pieces, I remove from the oven, let cool, and then add the finished product to stir fries. Or you can eat it just like that, either hot out of the oven or chilled as a salad. The thing I love about Temecula Olive Oil (beside the fact that they are actual local growers of olives) is that they infuse their oils with an assortment of different offerings with results that never fail to amaze. We actually have started a small olive grove here and have been offered the TOOC facility to make oil once we’re harvesting. I can’t wait to have our own organic olives and oil to add to the CSA boxes!