Uncategorized Archives - Page 4 of 43 - Morning Song Farm

So after a year of pondering the dilemma of increasing fuel costs, we have decided at last to trade in our larger Econoline Van for a more fuel efficient Transit Van. The new van is easier to drive, and with only 4 cylinders; is more fuel efficient. The downside is that we have little margin for error during our CSA deliveries. The van went out for its first delivery this morning, and Louie; head farm guy here….remarked that we only have room for a week’s worth of returning empty boxes. Here’s the problem: Many of our subscribers save up their boxes and return them all at once, and there’s no way we now have the latitude to accommodate that practice. So, please, if you are having a problem remembering to return your box, don’t take it home to begin with. Bring bags to transfer your produce into, and leave the empty behind from the start. Let us know if you have an accumulation to deal with, and we’ll have to do weekly figuring and allocate days for each accumulation to clean up past practices.

Also, while I’m on the boring topic of boxes and such…a strange thing is happening to some of our returned boxes…subscribers’ kids(?) are drawing on the boxes and then leaving it for us to recycle for use. We don’t want those ruined boxes back. Many years ago we had a program of checking off each named box and billing for missing boxes. At some point we didn’t have any missing boxes anymore, and stopped the nuisance of keeping track. Now we have the problem of ruined boxes, and sometimes as much as a third of our subscribers not returning boxes on any given week. Not only is it a huge unaccounted for expense to build new boxes unnecessarily  for your CSA farm, wasting boxes is a significant, unfortunate addition to our landfills. So, please…return your box or don’t take it to begin so that it can be wisely reused.

An interesting week unfolds as Tuesday boxes only receive a very small portion of our Baby Pea Shoots for the first time. Grown from a very small pea seed intended for shoots or sprouts, the entire plant is eaten. Wednesday boxes will be getting our popular Crunchie Bean Mix. The image above shows no where near the actual quantity of Spring Mix….I included a tiny bit to show we’d included Spring Mix this week; the actual quantity took too much of the image up. Pea Shoot eaters: please give us your feedback!

Some of you may recall that the family New Year’s Resolution involved demonstrating once and for Who Is Really In Charge Here and definitively fence in (corral) Carl The Goat Terror and his cohorts where they belong, like the rest of the goats on the planet. This has been a long term endeavor, and not to be over reaching; we agreed that getting the task done SOMETIME in 2014 was a reasonable goal. Setting about the job without proper consultation would never do, as we mean business this time, Carl. So I called Premier Fencing’s tech support line in the first week of January. They’re the folks that handily instructed us how to create a llama corral that was never, ever questioned. Not by the resident coyotes, and not by our herd of three hundred pound llamas. The fence was never defied..a flagship of human will over a grazing animals instincts to eat the surrounding landscape into dust. Our otherwise untrainable dog was indeed trained in a single dog-meets-electrical-fence event, and that was that. So I had every reason to believe we were entering our next successful corral building endeavor. Pricey though the components were, I selected the sturdiest and best in each category. Let it not be said that failure was due to parsimony.

Tech support guy said the first strand would be 4 inches from the ground, and the last would be shoulder height. Days of digging post holes and cementing in posts turned into hours, and hours, and hours of drilling insulators exactly thus, and then days of stringing (the very best) electrical wire through all those insulators..until finally we were ready to flip the charger switch and do the family We Beat Carl And His Band of Criminals Dance. Ha. Son Frankie did the electrical switch honors, and daughter Tess insisted on a lawn chair and snacks to witness our dominion. As expected, Carl came charging toward us, with the fence surely at the ready to halt him. As he approached, he didn’t even slow down. No. He leapt through the lines, thereby losing his grounding, absolutely a necessity for a shock, and sooooo, fence was totally worthless. A decorative frame etched on our hillside as as some sort of modern art installation. Tech guy apparently wasn’t aware I have special,  flying goats. The rest of the herd followed in seconds, each flying through the lines, just like Carl the Criminal had shown them. Tessa handed her snacks to Carl in defeat, and tight lipped.. folded her lawn chair up without comment.  Frankie rolled his eyes at me like only a teenager can, and just said, “really, Mom?”

To be continued….

Large Share Garden n Grove box subscribers will find the ghostly parsnip in their boxes this week.
So, no more difficult than mashed potatoes, and prepared essentially the same way. You just need to add less butter and salt to your end product because parsnips are more flavorful. Peel and cut your parsnips and boil, just as you would to make mashed potatoes. Be careful not to overcook into mush. Drain, and either use a mixer or a potato masher to puree into a mash. Add salt, pepper, and cilantro garnish. Serve warm.

Ok, I admit I’ve proclaimed this distinction before, but this time I REALLY mean it. Anyone who is a carrot cake aficionado needs to try this recipe just once. Considering there doesn’t seem to be anything really that different about the recipe, I don’t get it. Why is it so much better than I remember carrot cake being?  Anyway, Crew Member Shay, brings this in from time to time, and he’s kindly offered the recipe to our CSA members today. I know some Large Share Garden N Grove subscribers have quite a few carrots to contend with lately. (I’ve been juicing mine.) But today….cake.

Cake
2 cups flour (white, unbleached, non GMO)
2 teaspoons baking powder –aluminum free
1 teaspoon fine sea salt
2 teaspoons cinnamon
2 cups sugar
1 cup canola oil
1/4 cup butter from hormone free cows
3 large, natural eggs
3 cups peeled, and grated carrots
2 tablespoons grated ginger
1 cup coarsely chopped walnuts (optional)
1 cup raisins (optional)

Frosting
8 ounces of cream cheese at room temperature
5 tablespoons butter at room temperature
2 cups powdered sugar
2 tablespoons of maple syrup

Preheat oven to 350. Butter and flour two 9 inch cake pans.
Line bottom of pans with parchment paper.
Whisk first 4 ingredients together in a medium bowl.
In a mixer on medium speed, blend sugar, oil and butter for about 3 minutes.
Mix in eggs 1 at a time then add flour mixture and remaining ingredients just until combined. Do not over stir. Divide batter in pans and bake for approximately 30-40 minutes or when a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Cool in pans for 15 minutes, then remove from pans and cool completely.

Beat cream cheese and butter until light and fluffy. Slowly add powered sugar until well blended, then add maple syrup. Chill until you are ready to use. Frost cake and chill serving.

Kind of a funky week, we have only a few Oroblanco Grapefruit ready to harvest, and the last of the baby carrots; so large shares got one or the other. Normally when we have only a little of something, it ends up in the Trade In boxes, but we had too much of both for that. So the harvest crew decided on that division. We’re skipping a macadamia packaging week, but will have macs back in boxes next week.

Gardens and Groves Large Box

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