Sugar Time

Hello-
February is almost over, but in order to keep us from getting too complacent, a substantial winter storm hit Central New York and dumped at least two feet of snow on us. It's quite pretty until you have to shovel any of it, and then you realize it's been snowing soggy mashed-potatoes that weigh a ton. Ah well, it's good exercise.

It's almost time to start some of the early seeds for Lucky Moon, and tomorrow, I'm headed over there to see how to tap sugar maple trees. One of Lucky Moon's special products is Maple Syrup, and they offer it for sale almost all year (except perhaps in late winter when the year's supply has run out). I've never had a chance to tap trees before, so I'm very excited to see how it's done, as well as the lengthy boiling process. Depending on the type of tree and the age, I think it takes about 32 gallons of sap to produce 1 gallon of syrup! With that in mind, the price for maple syrup is a little easier to understand. And it tastes so incredible.

Every year, I've decided to try and grow more and more of our own food and learn how to preserve it. This year I've had great onions, potatoes, garlic, peppers and jams that I "put away" and have happily used all winter. However, now that it's the end of February, my planning is falling a bit short and I've only got a few cloves of garlic left, potatoes that have some truly impressive eyes (sprouts) growing on them, and the onions are sending up healthy green shoots. They're all still usable, but not really in their prime anymore. So when I heard about the farmer's market in Cazenovia this morning, I hurriedly shoveled the fresh three inches of snow that fell last night and drove out to the market. I picked up some fresh garlic and eggs and found some new sources of locally grown mushrooms, herb mixes, sheep yoghurt and cheeses and meat (beef, pork, lamb, chicken and turkey). I've been eating as little meat as possible (i.e. unless someone serves it to me in their home) not because I necessarily have a problem with eating meat, but I do disagree with how meat is produced industrially. So having sources for local, 100% grass-fed, humanely-treated animals raised for meat is a great thing. I'm not planning on ever eating as much meat as I used too; I've decided that I really do like tofu, and honestly, there are so many vegetables I love to eat, I hardly ever miss meat, but for those few occasions, I want to support the kind of meat-production I can stomach (sorry for the weak pun).

I don't know if anyone who reads this lives here in Central New York, but if you do, you should really hear about the restaurant in Caz where the market was held today. Circa restaurant offers truly wonderful food that comes in a large part from local growers and producers. Alicyn and her husband Eric run the place, and they are always trying to find local sources for the great dishes they serve at Circa. I really recommend it- they're doing what most restaurants write off as too expensive or time consuming, and the result is excellent food that you can really feel good about.

Eat Local! By supporting your friends and neighbors, you get to see exactly where your food comes from and exactly what happens to it before it ends up in your shopping cart or on your plate. It's the rare and elusive win-win situation. As one of the pamphlets from the market said today, "Know your farmer. Know your food. Know your food's food." I thought that was pretty succinct.

Be happy, be healthy.

Mid-winter Garden Blues

Hello everyone

I feel like an addict. It's the middle of January and I've been pouring over the same seed catalogs for four weeks now. I keep re-reading the lavish descriptions of the tomatoes and eating up words like "luscious", "bursting" and "full-bodied" that seem so alien to the frozen landscape outside the window. After the terrible Late Blight (yes, this was the same nasty epidemic that caused the Great Potato Famine in Ireland in the late 1800s- this disease has a seriously nasty record) wiped out most of the solanacea (mainly tomatoes and potatoes) crops last summer, it seems almost reckless to be planning which incredible heirloom varieties to grow this year. But despite the tomato troubles of last season, Sue and I met the other day to talk about what to grow this summer, with the typical January confidence that this year will be different. Maybe the weather will stick to its New Year's resolution to behave itself for once.

If any of you have gardens of your own, or are thinking about starting one, I wanted to let you know about a seed and gardening company from Waterville, Maine, called Fedco Co-op Seeds. It's a fair, above-the-board small company, where the people really know their varieties and give you straight-forward, informative descriptions and guarantee (to the best of their knowledge) that they don't carry any Genetically Engineered seeds or plants. So you won't be supporting Monsanto/Seminis (look them up, or read about them in "Omnivore's Dilemna"- Michael Pollan) with your business. In fact, you'll often be supporting organically and sustainably-grown seeds, with heirloom varieties that you won't find anywhere else. Its a company that I would highly recommend. I only found out about Fedco last year, because that's where Sue gets the majority of her seeds for the farm. It's definitely worth checking out if tomato varieties such as "Cosmonaut Volkov," "Rose de Berne," and "Cherokee Purple" get your mouth watering.

It's a bit early to start any seeds yet, but it won't be long before we get some germinating to start seedlings for Lucky Moon. I can't wait to taste that first tomato! (or pepper, or peas, or carrot, or lettuce, or beet... you get the idea)

To get me through the dark days of winter, I picked up a book I've been meaning to read for a long time: "Animal, Vegatable, Miracle" by Barbara Kingsolver. Now, I know she's a great author, but I had no idea she was so cool in real life! The book is a loose journal of her family's decision to try and eat for a year from food that they could obtain locally, from sustainable producers, or that they grew themselves. They move from Tucson, AZ (one of the more difficult places to live sustainably in our country, as much as I love it there) to a small farm in Virginia and begin a true adventure, daring to examine their eating and living practices and how they help or hurt their local economies, the environment and their own bodies. It's not an impassioned rant, but it is witty, hilarious and very compelling. I can't put it down. In addition to Barbara's wonderful writing, her husband and her eldest daughter both include short essays on various topics that coincide with particular chapters. These also include simple recipes featuring seasonal and locally-available produce as well as lots of internet links for finding out more on a particular subject. It's a wonderful read.

Gardening can be a slippery slope- once you start cultivating your own fruits and vegetables from the garden, or start getting them from a local CSA like Lucky Moon, or the farmer's market, or a co-op, your standards for what you eat start changing. Once you see how good real food can be, it makes you think about other things you might make yourself (or get from someone who has) instead of getting the industrial version that is produced simply to be a certain shape and have a certain color (why would we care what it tastes like?). I learned last summer that Sue makes her own bread, and I couldn't believe that she could possibly have time to do such a labor-intensive thing while running the farm. Without a bread machine. She told me that it really isn't that hard, or labor-intensive, when you do it a lot. And she's right. I decided to give baking bread a try, and even my first unpracticed attempts produced such tasty loaves that I kept at it. This is home-made bread, we're talking about. It's delicious! There's no way frozen dough that's baked in a supermarket oven can ever taste that good. I've been baking our own bread now since July and it really isn't a horrible chore. It's actually quite enjoyable, and is a skill that many of us in my generation, and even my parents' generation have not taken the time to learn. The next thing I want to try is making cheese. I know, I know, it sounds really drastic, like I've jumped off the deep end. But apparently Mozzarella takes 30 minutes to make, and as long as the milk isn't ultra-pasteurized, any milk will do. I'll keep you informed.

Keep dreaming of that summer garden- I keep looking out the window at my garden beds quietly blanketed with snow- the promise of another year.

Calling All Foodies!

Hello everyone, Sorry it's been a while. We're having a warm, dry stretch that seems suspiciously pleasant for mid-November and I've been trying to enjoy it while it lasts. It's actually some of the nicer weather we've had since April. It was really a wash out of a summer, in my book. But those who live in Central New York should know better than to complain, I guess.

Anyway, my garden at home is fully winterized by now- I've fenced the raspberries from the deer and rabbits, added compost and leaves to all the beds, composted all the safe vegetation from this year's crops, and covered everything with a nice fluffy layer of hay. Lucky Moon is pretty well set, too. The gardens there are much more extensive than my humble home garden, so there's obviously a lot more to do.

The focus now is shifting to planning what to grow next year, where to put it so it will do the best, how much of it we'll need, ect. And it all depends on who's going to join the CSA for next year. I don't know if any of you read my previous post where I did my best to explain the CSA concept and what you can get out of it as a consumer. The main thing is super tasty food, of course, and then there are all the other reasons that may or may not interest you. But I want to encourage anyone who's the least bit intrigued by the CSA concept to email me or give Sue and Claude a call. We're hoping to expand the subscribers to the CSA for next year and I'd especially like to introduce the idea to some of the folks here in Manlius. We're thinking that we might be able to use my house (right in the middle of Manlius) as a pick-up spot for people who live in the area. That would allow people to still take advantage of the discount for picking up their share, without having to travel all the way to Cazenovia. If you'd like to find out more, email me at luckymoonfm@gmail.com and I'll be happy to answer any questions.

It would really be great to start a local food movement here in Manlius- we live in a wonderful farming region and our local farms produce some incredible food of which we're often completely unaware. You just have to try farm-fresh lettuce, or home-grown onions, peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers... the list goes on and on. And if the taste and quality aren't enough, you know that your consumer choices are helping protect a local, chemical-free, small-farm economy. These are our friends and neighbors- I trust them with my food a whole lot more than giant food factories whose main goal is to make money. Regardless of the nutritional, environmental and social consequences of doing so. I don't blame them. Large corporate companies are designed to work that way, but that doesn't mean that I want to support them with my food choices.

Alright, I'll hop off my soap box for a while... I get excited about this stuff. But it all boils down to eating good, wholesome food from local farms. Not rocket science or a social movement. I hope everyone has a really wonderful Thanksgiving with family and friends-

All the best,
Sarah

So what's a CSA, anyways?

Hi everyone-
Cleanup and winterizing continues at Lucky Moon. Now that we've finally had a few sunny, dry days, we were able to get the garlic planted for next year. 3 beds, 4 rows per bed, and 120 cloves per row: that's 1,440 garlic plants for next year! And boy, is it tasty....

So, I wanted to give a little description/explanation of what a CSA is and how it works, in case any of you might be interested in joining for next year.

CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture, and is also called Subscription Farming. It's essentially a way for farmers and consumers to interact directly, without the produce having to go through all those middle men before it reaches your table. Members of the CSA sign up and pay for a share of the harvest at the beginning of the season, and then the farmer provides those members with a box or a bag of fresh produce once a week. By paying for the vegetables up front, the members ensure that the farmer has enough funds to purchase the seeds, tools and natural soil amendments that he or she needs to grow the crops. It also means that the CSA members and the farmer share the risk of a crop doing poorly due to weather, disease or insect problems. However, shortfalls are pretty rare and more often than not, members end up getting extra produce when a crop does better than expected.

I really like subscription farming for lots of reasons. My personal favorite is that as a member, you can see for yourself exactly how your food is grown. Eating real food, grown by someone you know in your own community, makes a big difference when you consider all the repercussions of our country's current method of growing and transporting produce. Whether you're concerned about ingesting chemicals from industrial herbicides or pesticides, or you are aware of the incredible amount of oil that goes into petroleum-based fertilizer, or the effect of the chemical run-off from industrial farms on surrounding ecosystems, the CSA system offers a sustainable alternative.

And even if none of those issues really influence your eating choices, you simply have to taste the difference when a tomato or a carrot or lettuce isn't shipped all the way across the country (or from a different hemisphere!) Eating produce grown a few miles away and harvested the day you pick it up is an experience that too few of us enjoy these days. The difference in flavor and texture is incredible!

So that's my spiel- Subscription farming offers a sensible (and tasty!) alternative to the produce section of the average chain grocery store, and it helps you and your family get reconnected with the land. Knowing where your food comes from and how it's produced is really important. We are eating this stuff, after all.

If you're interested in joining the CSA for next year, or want to find out more about Lucky Moon's program, please contact me by email or give Sue and Claude a call.

First Post/ End of the Season

Hello everyone-

This is Lucky Moon Farm's first official web presence. My name is Sarah and I help out Sue and Claude on the farm and offered to start this blog so people could find out more about Lucky Moon and what it has to offer.

Lucky Moon Farm is located on Lincklaen Road, in the rolling hills just outside of Cazenovia, NY. It's a vegetable farm that has a seasonal CSA (subscription farming- I'll explain more later), offers fresh eggs year-round, flower bouquets, hay, maple syrup and homemade braids of Lucky Moon's famous garlic. (These make really great Christmas gifts, by the way)

Sue and Claude have been farming here since 1992 and use organic methods with absolutely zero chemical fertilizers, pesticides, or herbicides. Instead, they use cover crops, compost, natural mineral and rock powders, and organic fertilizers. The difference in the produce is amazing! As far as the flavor goes, it's a whole other world compared to the stuff you get in the produce aisle. You have to taste it to believe it...

So there's plenty more to come. Even though the season is about over by now (middle of October), the planning for next year's garden is just beginning. If you're interested in getting involved with the CSA for next year, please get in touch with us. It helps with the planning so Sue and Claude can get a better estimate of how much seed they need to get for next year.

I hope everyone is enjoying their fall as much as I am!

Sarah