|
Wood Duck Farm
September
27th, 2010
Every fall,
here at the farm, we are fortunate enough to see a little bit of Mother Nature
in "fast action mode;" kinda like a National Geographic thing. Basically our
farm ponds become an "overnight" rest stop for migrating waterfowl heading to
the coast for winter. This year is no exception as over the past few days we
have seen lots of green and blue wing teal making their annual trip to Mexico.
Although smaller than most ducks, teal are very acrobatic and seem to fly in
formations of ten to twenty. They fly just above the treetops around here, so
you don't see them coming. All of a sudden though you hear this "thutter" and
in a moments notice you see the teal soaring about fifty feet above the ponds.
Looking for some "chow," as well as protective surroundings, they usually fly
several times around our wood lined ponds. Finally, they become comfortable enough to land and
skid across the water to a gliding stop. Overnight, our ponds may
sometimes attract a hundred or more teal, so occasionally the mornings greet us
to see the skies fill, as they go airborne all at once. What a blessing this is site is to behold.
Speaking of
blessings, two days until the fall equinox and wow does the weather feel great.
Still planting here at the farm and at our lease down the road. With the rains
last week, we have a new generation of weeds to contend with. Extracting these
weeds by mechanical means is a pain, but a necessary task. The key is to stay
ahead, which I cannot say we do as well as we should. Hoping our carrots and beets are not too covered just yet. Now if we only get those deer to eat the
weeds and leave the veggies? Oh what a beautiful world it would be!
It is official
the New Hope Presbyterian Church in Katy is now one of our CSA pick up
locations. We had a little write up which can be found at this link Katy
Magazine Article CSA members can pick up their shares in Katy on
Wednesday's between 6 & 7;30 at the New Hope Presbyterian Church. A map to all ten of our pick up location in
and around Houston can be found on our website at CSA Pickup Locations FYI the first CSA pick up date for the Fall 2010 program should be in about two weeks, i.e. around the October 12th-15th time frame.
As mentioned
last week, we are hosting three farm dinner events beginning in October. The
Houston Press, had a nice little article about our "All-Star Chef Dinners
earlier this week. Please take a look if you'd like at the following link
Spotlight
All-Star Chef Series You can read more our dinners below.
Our All Star Chefs Line Up
Saturday October 2nd This coming Saturday's Farm to Table dinner still
has about twelve seats available for purchase so if you were waiting on the
weather forecast, don't wait any longer as it is supposed to be awesome, cool
and dry. In fact we are going to be serving outside, but don't worry about
bringing that sweater as we'll have a real nice cozy fire handy if you get the
chills. The chef's, Seth & Justin, came out to farm last week and made
their Research & Development into a mini video. Take a look on You Tube at Chef R&D Trip for WDF
Dinner While the menu is not
yet ready for publishing, it will include something like the following:
Appetizers,
A
Garden Course
Texas
Gulf Coast Whole Fish With Lavender & Citrus Leaves Smoked
Porchetta, Hoja Santa and Purple Hull Peas
Dessert:
featuring Sweet Potato Cake, Grains of Paradise, "Burnt Honey" & Fig Leaf.
Seek more
info about our guest chefs for this weekend? Seth
Siegel-Gardner and Justin Yu, two of the three chefs that collaborated to
create the Just8 Project with the highly acclaimed pop-up restaurant in
Montrose this past August. Chef Seth has worked with the celebrated Marcus
Samuelsson in New York and Chicago, where he served as executive chef at
Samuelsson's C-House and just returned earlier this year from a month-long stint at The Fat Duck, a Michelin three star restaurant in London. Chef Yu's culinary
resume includes The Grove, before taking off to work under the late great chef Jeremy Fox
at Ubuntu,
the Michelin-starred "vegetable" restaurant in Napa, CA..
Interested in hearing more about their talent? Visit these two links, Just
August Project Houston Press, Allison
Cook's Just 8 Project Review, Top
10 and JustAugust
Project Chronicle
Sunday October 24th Chef Justin Bayse is Chef de
Cuisine at Stella
Sola and was named 2010 James Beard Award Semi-Finalist Rising Star Chef of
the Year (FYI Deemed "the Oscars of the food world," by Time magazine,
The James Beard Foundation Awards
are the country's most coveted honor for chefs) Also a Houston native, Chef
Bayse has worked locally with Executive Chef Chris Shepherd of Catalan and at
the Hotel Icon restaurant Voice. Outside of Houston, he has worked at a
farmhouse restaurant called Blue Hill at
Stone Barns in New York and was also at Restaurant August in New Orleans
learning under Chef John Besh.
Sunday
November 7th "Que
Sera, Sera" Our Guest Chef for this date, LJ Wiley of Yelapa, ended up having
a scheduling conflict so we have to revisit this date. We've got some ideas and
will keep you posted as new details develop.
Dinner tickets
can be purchased at our Urban Harvest Farmer's Market booth on Saturday morning
or via PayPal on our website at Farm
Dinner PayPal Purchase . Prices are $75 per
person and the events will be BYOB. The Saturday dinner will begin with a
reception around 3:30 or so and we will start our farm tour around 4 with
dinner to follow around 5:00. The Sunday events will likely begin about
an hour earlier The dinner menus will focus on locally grown/raised food and
will likely include five courses or so. For more info/photos about our
earlier farm dinners visit WDF Spring Dinners
Visiting the Urban Harvest
Farmer's Mktl on Saturday morning? Please stop by
and say hi!
Incidentally,
a lot of our farm events and details can be found on our Face Book page as
well.
All the Best,
Van Weldon
Cell 713 876
8645
www.woodduckfarm.com
email csa@woodduckfarm.com
PS If you have moved or not
interested in receiving our updates, please click the "unsubscribe"
link above to "option out" of any future emails.
| 
