2012 Week 1

Hi everyone and welcome to another great season at Lucky Moon Farm!

We had our first day of the CSA yesterday, and things are off to a good start. For those of you who are new to the CSA model, kudos for trying something new! And to returning members, thank you for your continued support of local, sustainable agriculture. Local farms can't survive without local patrons!

So another strange spring in CNY- because of all the early hot weather, we were able to start the CSA earlier than ever before. It's always an adventure, because you never know what the weather is going to do next around here. But this spring Sue and Claude were able to put up a second permanent greenhouse, which will give added protection to whatever crops will fit in the two houses.

Hopefully you all had a happy and healthy winter season and are hungry for some fresh veggies! Here is the list of what's in your bags this week:

Kale
Salad Mix
Spinach
Shallots

Lots of lovely greens, and some nice shallots from last fall. There's nothing quite like tucking into a great big spring salad!

New Recipe:
Here's a recipe from Kelli Johnson that sounds wonderful, if you still have some kale from last week:

Braised Kale with Smoked Almonds  (from the The Flat Belly Diet Cookbook)

2 T. olive oil
1 large red onion, cut into thin wedges
3 T. red wine vinegar
2 bunches kale (about 1 1/2 pounds), trimmed and chopped
1/4 c. water
1/2 t. salt
1/4 t. red-pepper flakes (optional)
1/2 c. smoked almonds, coarsely chopped

Heat oil in large pot or Dutch oven.  Cook onion until lightly browned.  Stir in vinegar to deglaze pan.

Meanwhile, rinse kale, allowing water to remain on leaves.  Add kale and water to pan, stirring and tossing until kale wilts.  Stir in salt and red-pepper flakes.

Transfer to serving bowl and sprinkle with the nuts.

As always, feel free to email me with questions or recipe suggestions to share on the blog. Thanks for taking part in another growing season at Lucky Moon!

Sarah VanNorstrand
for Lucky Moon Farm

sarah_ziegi at yahoo dot com

CSA 2012

Hi everyone,
Just letting you know that we're signing up people for our 2012 CSA at Lucky Moon Farm, and we'd love for you to join us this year! If you'd like to receive a brochure with all the information and to hear about some new changes at the farm, please send an email to either luckymoonfarm4976@gmail.com (Sue & Claude) or to me (Sarah VanNorstrand) at sarah_ziegi@yahoo.com.

We'd be happy to answer any questions and tell you more about how the CSA system works at Lucky Moon Farm.

Find out how you can receive fresh, beautiful, delicious vegetables all season from a local farmer. It's a win-win situation: you get produce that far outshines anything you'd find at the grocery store, grown sustainably and without any artificial chemicals, and in turn, you support your local economy and help CNY farmers stay in business. And the food goes right from the field to your kitchen all in a single day!

All the best,
Sarah VanNorstrand
for Lucky Moon Farm

Week 17 - Final Week!

Hi everyone,
Here we are at week 17! Thank you all so much for supporting Lucky Moon Farm- it's consumers like you who make the CSA possible, by putting your time and money into supporting local farmers and sustainable agriculture. We appreciate it!
We've had a set of beautiful fall days lately, and the color in the trees is reaching an absolute peak. Out at the farm today, the hillsides were simply glowing with color. Every time I looked up from pulling up beets and carrots, I was stunned. The trees really seem to emit their own light- if you have a chance to drive out Lincklaen Rd towards Chittenango, it's worth the time to see the leaves right now.

So you've got some nice heavy bags this week to wrap things up. We've loaded up some bags of carrots, potatoes and onions to help stretch your remaining veggies for a couple weeks.
Here's the list:

Mixed Onions and Shallots
Mixed Potatoes
Butternut squash
Cabbage
Carrots
Beets
Parsley root (looks vaguely like a white carrot)
Tomatoes
Collard Greens (best to do a quick double-check while rinsing these for little catepillars- they're everywhere right now and very hungry as they get ready for winter, and you want to avoid surprises :>)

For storing these vegetables, different ones prefer different conditions.
Most of us don't have root cellars, which provide ideal conditions for many storage vegetables, but you can keep produce quite a while even without one.

-The tomatoes will do best on your counter until you use them
-Onions and Potatoes like it dry and dark, in general
-Winter Squash likes it dry and moderately warm- (50s-60s) I often keep mine in a spare room that I don't heat or in my basement, which is warmed somewhat by the furnace.
-Carrots and Beets (and Parsley root) will keep a long time if you put them in the fridge in a plastic bag with a paper towel folded in half in with them to absorb excess moisture.
-Cabbage will keep a while if you give it the same treatment as carrots and beets
-Not that you plan on keeping the Collards very long, but leafy greens do best in the fridge in a plastic bag until you use them. And it's best to wash them right before using them, since if they're too wet in their bag, they're more likely to get slimy.

Hope that helps.

If you need more vegetables over the winter, Sue & Claude have vegetables, garlic braids and maple syrup for sale at the farm (calling ahead is a good idea to check on availability) and Sue will most likely be at the winter farmers' markets held in Poolville and at Circa Restaurant in Cazenovia. Feel free to call or email for more information.

Again, thanks so much for joining us for the 2011 season and we hope you will join us again next year! Spread the word to any friends or neighbors who you think might be interested in trying out the CSA in 2012.

All the best,
Sarah

16 down, 1 to go

Hi everyone
I'm a bit rushed tonight, so this will be brief.
Things are good at the farm. We had our first frost last night, but it didn't do much damage. The things that are still out in the fields actually don't mind chilly nights.
One more week to go- Thank you all so much for taking part in our CSA this year! The farm literally could not function without your support. Thanks for making the effort to support local, organic, sustainable farms and making the Lucky Moon Farm CSA possible. It is indeed Community Supported Agriculture.

Here's what's in your bags:

Salad Mix
Red Onions or Shallots
Green or Wax beans (some full shares have snow peas instead)
Red-skin potatoes
Garlic
Kale
Parsley
Celeriac (aka Celery root- great in soups or in root vegetable roasts)
Tomatoes
Cherry Tomatoes
Cooking Pumpkins (great for those pumpkin cookies, pumpkin pies, pumpkin breads, pumpkin pancakes.... I could go on :>)

If you're not sure about how to use your pumpkin, check out my post from last November (look in the archives). I went into some detail. But it's much easier than you think! Give it a try!

All the best,
Sarah

Week 15- Two more to go!

Hi everyone,
Hope you all are having a good week so far.
Things are really feeling like fall at the farm. The hills are starting to color up, apples, pears and black walnuts are ready, and the summer birds are leaving as the winter birds start showing up.
This year I've been paying a lot more attention to all the butterflies we have around here. Lucky Moon is a great place to find them because they love all the flowers and the diversity of plant life on the farm. Right now I've been watching all the monarch butterflies getting what nectar they can from the asters and zinnias before heading south on their epic journey. It's incredible that such a delicate insect could fly all the way to Mexico!

In other news, we got all the pumpkins in today. There are plenty of great pie pumpkins to distribute in the CSA and some nice Jack-O-Lantern pumpkins for sale at the farm, if you're interested. If you've never used a cooking pumpkin before, check out my post from last November titled "Late Fall and a Bountiful Harvest." Also, there are some beautiful garlic braids as well as Lucky Moon Maple Syrup for sale. They make great presents (especially for that person who already has everything... I have a few of those in my family) or are nice additions to your own pantry. The syrup comes in pints for $10 or quarts for $16 and the garlic comes in large braids (10 bulbs) for $17 or small braids (7 bulbs) for $10.50. If you're interested, let me know or feel free to stop by the farm.

(Sue's look nicer than this picture, but it was the best I could find online...)

Here's what's in the bags this week:
Spinach
Yellow Onion
Hot Peppers
Green & Yellow Beans
"Keuka Gold" Potatoes
Tomatoes
Acorn Squash

Here's a quick spinach recipe:

Sauteed Spinach w/ Roasted Garlic, Sun-dried Tomatoes and Feta
Spinach (~10 oz)
3 T. olive oil
3 cloves garlic, sliced
1/2 cup onions, chopped
1/2 cup sun-dried tomatoes
1/4 cup sherry (I read that apple juice can be used as a substitute)
1/4 cup lemon juice
5 Tbsp butter
1/2 cup feta
salt & pepper to taste
1) Over medium heat, saute garlic and onions in olive oil until golden brown, about 2 minutes.
2) Add sun dried tomatoes, then add sherry and lemon juice and reduce by a third (about 3 minutes)
3) Add butter, and toss until it melts, then add the spinach. Cover and stir occasionally until slightly wilted and warm (about 3 minutes). Add feta and cook until slightly melted. Add salt and pepper to taste.

And in case you still have that red cabbage from last week, here's a recipe from someone in the CSA that comes highly recommended!

Autumn Salad (serves 4)

4 tsp. olive oil

1 Tbsp. white wine vinegar

2 tsp. honey

1/4 tsp. salt

1/8 tsp. pepper

3 medium sweet-tart apples (Braeburn, Empire), quartered and thinly sliced crosswise

1 1/2 c. thinly sliced red cabbage

1/3 c. crumbled mild blue cheese

1/4 c. thinly sliced red onion

1/4 c. coarsely chopped toasted walnuts

Whisk oil, vinegar, honey, salt and pepper in large bowl. add remaining ingredients, tossing to combine.

(from Prevention, October 2010)

Week 14- Last Day of Summer

So it's a sad day... the last day of summer. Sigh...
But fall is a great time of the year, too. Apples, pies, leaves turning colors, pumpkins and winter squash and that wonderful nip in the air- all things I really like.

Here's what's in your bags this week:
Salad Mix
Red Cabbage
Shallots
Green & Wax Beans
Delicata Winter Squash
Russet Potatoes (great for baking)
Carrots
Tomatoes
Cherry Tomatoes

A few people have asked me about cooking winter squash, and the general method is the same for all of them, though there are plenty of other ways to cook them if you care to do some investigating. I typically cut the squash in half, scoop out the seeds and stringy parts and bake cut-side down in a greased baking dish at 350 until the rind can be pierced with a fork and the flesh is tender. Serving it with butter and salt is a great start, but feel free to look up some recipes for more ideas. Allrecipes.com is a very helpful website for finding more recipes than you could ever try.

It's very late, so I'm off to bed, but I'll try and get some recipes up this week, so check back in a day or so.
Thanks!
Sarah

Sep. 22nd
And here they are:
Balsamic Roasted Carrots
4-6 carrots, quartered lengthwise
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper

1) Preheat oven to 450
2)In a roasting pan, combine the carrots, oil, vinegar, salt and pepper. Toss to coat. Roast for 20-25 minutes, tossing occasionally, until lightly caramelized and tender but still firm.

Potato, Red Onion (or shallot) Arugula and Brie Pizza
These aren't all from this week, but you might have things left over from previous weeks, and this recipe looked really good:
Pizza Dough
3 Tbsp olive oil
2 cups sliced (red) onions
salt & pepper
12 ounces potatoes, thinly sliced
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
6 oz Brie, thinly sliced
1 cup loosely packed Arugula leaves
1 med. red pepper (sweet), charred, peeled and finely chopped (cut pepper in half, seed it, place cut-side down on a baking sheet, and broil until the skin is charred black. Once it cools, the skin should peel off very easily)

1) Prepare your pizza dough, however you please, and preheat the oven to 500.
2) Saute the onions with the olive oil until crisp-tender, about 3-5 minutes
3) In a medium saucepan, blanch the potatoes in lightly salted boiling water until crisp-tender. Cool in cold water (w/ ice, if possible) to stop the cooking, drain.
4) Sprinkle the Parmesan over the pizza dough, layer the potatoes evenly on top, followed by the onions and the slices of Brie. Season with salt & pepper.
5) Bake the pizza for 12-15 minutes on the top rack. Scatter the Arugula and red pepper on top and serve immediately.
YUM!