| What's Growing This Week | |
Strawberries
Sugar Snap Peas
Salad Mix
Cherries
Green Garlic
Salad Mix (M,L)
Spring Onions (S,L)
Asparagus # (M,L)
Carrots (M,L)
Kale (L)
Summer Squash (L)
English Peas (L)
Items are subject to substitution without notice.
# Asparagus comes from two different farms this week: Jim and Deborah Durst in Esparto. It is CCOF certified organic. |
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Berry Care 101
-- TFF strawberries are highly perishable. If you want them to keep for more than a day, store them in a sealed, airtight plastic container in the fridge.
-- Don't wash them until just before you eat them.
-- Recycle the green baskets. We can't reuse them here (for food safety reasons) so there's no reason to send them back to us.
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Get More Berries!
Did the basket of strawberries in your box disappear before your spouse/partner/roommate got it home? You can get a half flat (6 baskets) of TFF berries delivered with your box, for just $12. Log on to your account and go to the Web Store, then select strawberries. Deliveries will start the first of May.
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For Grapefruit Lovers only
Juicy, tangy, intense -- some people love it, others hate it. If you aren't getting enough Ruby Red Grapefruit in your weekly box to meet your needs, you can get a 10 lb. bulk box for $12. You can buy one box, or sign up to get a weekly delivery for the next month. To order, email us at csa@terrafirmafarm.com.
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Contact Us:
| terrafirmafarm.com
csa@terrafirmafarm.com
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| CSA Rates 2011 | Boxes are charged on Monday for the week's deliveries at:
$14 Small
$24 Medium
$32 Large
For a payment of $300, get a 3% bonus. Your account balance will be $309.
For a payment of$850, get a 5% bonus. Your account will be posted as $892.00
For a payment of $1,400, get a 7% bonus. Your payment will be posted as $1,498.
Vacations are charged weekly when notice is given as a fee, no charges occur during the vacation week.
$4 Small
$8 Medium
$11 Large
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Payments, Billing, and Changes
| Schedule vacations, change box sizes, make payments or sign up for autopay by logging in to your subscriber account at terrafirmafarm.com
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News From Terra Firma Farm
Community Supported Agriculture
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Greetings!
What would happen if it started to rain at your workplace -- inside. I would guess it would probably cause havoc. People would be trying to cover their computers and their work, looking for someplace to shelter themselves, and generally freaking out.
Terra Firma is an outdoor work environment and not an office, school or factory, and during the winter, rain is just part of the workday. We wear rubber boots and wear our rainsuits if it is stormy. The produce we are harvesting actually likes the rain, which keeps it cool and damp. It's never fun working in the rain, but as long as you're prepared for it it's fine. Rain in mid-May is another story, especially when it starts hours before the forecasters said it would. Granted, it's not unheard of for it to happen, but it still causes havoc.
The single biggest problem is the crops. Rain can pop ripe cherries and turn strawberries to mush; neither can be harvested when they are wet. So on a day like Monday, we were racing to get as much ripe fruit harvested as possible before the rain started.
TFF employees don't come to work in May prepared for wet weather: no boots, no raingear. So when the rain started yesterday, everyone went running for shelter. Then when the showers stopped, back into the fields. This happened several times until it began to rain steadily and we sent most of the crew home early.
Thankfully, the strawberry field somehow stayed mostly sunny and dry all day, allowing us to harvest all the ripe fruit. Terra Firma's fields are spread out over a 5 mile area west of Winters, each with their own microclimate. From where I was working -- in the steady rain -- I could see the sun shining on the berry patch, 5 miles away.
Towards sundown, the full brunt of the storm moved in and all of our fields got soaked, berries and cherries and everything else. It rained most of the day Tuesday and all through the night, so it's unlikely that we will be harvesting those crops either today or tomorrow. Much of the fruit we would have picked will be lost. That means that the fruit we picked on Monday has to be divided up among two days worth of CSA boxes, instead of used just in the Wednesday boxes. Translation: subscribers are going to get fewer berries and cherries this week, thanks to the weather,
Thanks,
Pablito |
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In your boxes  Everyone should get some cherries in their boxes this week. Harvest began in earnest on Friday and we were able to pick a substantial amount of fruit by the time the rain began on Monday. The rain's effect might be seen more dramatically in next week's boxes, but we won't know for a few more days how many cherries we have lost. On the bright side, there is still a bumper crop of unripe cherries set to ripen later in May and June that are not yet vulnerable to rain damage. Over the last few days, the strawberries we are picking have gotten noticeably more delicious. It seems they have reached their "flavor peak" after getting off to a mediocre start. It's unfortunate, then, that weather issues have forced us to reduce the amount of berries in some of this week's boxes. Nonetheless, the trend towards cooler weather likely means a longer strawberry season for us this year. If you've been waiting for the flavor to improve before signing up for additional berries, I'd say your wait is over. We are close to the end of the season for Green garlic and Spring onions; both are swelling up quickly now in preparation for harvest of their bulbs. In this "in between" stage, you will probably find the tops of the plants to becoming tougher and stronger tasting. It's probably best just to focus on the bulbs, which are approaching their full size. Next week or the week after, we will begin removing the tops for you. You will also want to remove the outer layer of the onions, which is beginning to turn into a skin. And as the garlic heads beginning to differentiate into cloves, the membranes between them will also become tougher and less edible.
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Size up for Spring
Subscribers will probably notice their boxes being noticeably lighter now. Many of the labor-intensive crops we're harvesting now -- strawberries, peas, cherries -- have relatively high values. That means it takes fewer items, weighing less, to fill up the boxes.
Small boxes are probably the most dramatically affected. It doesn't take many berries and cherries reach the $14 value of Small box. The spring Small boxes are full of fun items, but they won't make much of a meal. We could almost call it the "Snack" box.
If you're finding this week's Small box tasty but less filling, you might want to invoke your inalienable right as a Terra Firma subscriber to switch sizes from one week to the next. Check out what's in the Medium box today. If it looks good to you, you can log onto you account and make the change for next week.
If you're getting a Medium box, you can upsize to a Large. Alternately, anyone can add a second box of any size to their delivery for the week.
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Recipe -- Caramelized Carrots and Peas Not your grandma's peas and carrots. You can substitute sweet potatoes for some or all of the carrots.
Preheat the oven to 425.
Slice 1 lb. of carrots in half lengthwise. Toss to coat with 1 T. toasted sesame oil, then arrange in a single layer in a cast iron skillet. Add 3 T. soy sauce and then enough water to cover the bottom of the pan.
Cover the pan with foil and bake for 20 minutes or until the carrots are tender.
Trim 1 C. snap peas. Remove the foil from the carrots and stir the peas into the pan to coat with the glaze. If possible, everything should still be in a single layer. Return to the oven and then cook until the carrots are caramelized.
Bonus Recipe: Asparagus Vinagrette This unusual recipe must have been invented by someone who hates throwing away the tough bottom ends of asparagus. The result is an asparagus-flavored dressing with no actual asparagus in it.
Trim 1 bunch of asparagus. Reserve the asparagus for another use.
Boil the trimmings in 6 C. of water with 1 small spring onion (bulb only) until they are tender, about 7 minutes. Add 2 T. fresh parsley and tarragon and cook another minute.
Transfer the herbs, trimmings, and onion into a food processor. Add 1/4 C. of the cooking water and 2 ice cubes. Puree until smooth.
Add the juice of 1 lemon and a pinch of salt. Then, with the processor running, add 1/4 C. each grapeseed and olive oil (or all olive oil).
Let the dressing sit for 10 minutes, then strain it through a sieve.
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Max the Bulldog -- 2002-2011 
If you've ever been to TFF, you've probably met Max, my English Bulldog. Max wasn't a real working farm dog -- he couldn't catch a jackrabbit or a gopher and he didn't know how to herd sheep. But he did a great job of making everyone he met smile and laugh.
An avid lover of fruits and vegetables, he was the perfect mascot for the farm. He patrolled the edges of our fields, always on the hunt for a discarded head of cauliflower or a reject tomato or strawberry -- sometimes walking five miles around the farm in day. He also loved riding in my pickup truck or on the farm golfcarts, and was friends with almost everyone who works here.
Despite his generally calm demeanor, Max had a weakness for chasing cars and trucks along the farm roads, biting their tires. We couldn't cure him of this addiction, and it ended up costing him his life last week. Terra Firma won't be the same without him. If you knew Max, eat a strawberry in his honor this week.
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