2015news:july 1- 3 - Gorman Farm
JULY
CSA
N E W S L E T T E R
1-3
G O R M A N FA R M T H E H A RV E S T MAGENTA LETTUCE C ARROTS - N A P O L I / PURPLE HAZE
C ABB AGE CU C UMBERS / SL IC ING
AND
PICKLING
KO HL RABI RED RU SS IAN KA L E S UMMER SQUAS H / ZU CCH INI A ND Y EL LOW NEC K
RED ONIO NS GARLIC
Down on the farm it’s hot and wet! Hot & Wet! – That’s the name of the game this season so far. I have been told this is the wettest June and the >ifth wettest month on record in Maryland. We are really seeing the effects on the farm but are still able to pull off a great harvest. The two biggest hurdles that come with wet episodes, as everyone is asking, are;
1 – You can’t do the jobs you need to do in the timing you need to do it. You must assess your crystal ball and layout all the potential scenarios with what the weather could do and how moist your soils already are and how the future will affect this. 2 – Erosion. This is the biggest issue. In our organic system we do not use herbicide to remove plants or weeds,
“The soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all. It is the healer and restorer and resurrector, by which disease passes into health, age into youth, death into life. Without proper care for it we can have no community, because without proper care for it we can have no life.” - Wendell Berry GARLIC IS PULLED AND CURING
O N THE HO R I ZO N: CUCUM B E R S , B E A NS , E GGPLA NT, CHE R R Y TO M A TO E S , O K R A , LE E K S , GAR LI C, FE NNE L, M E LO NS
we use tillage. Meaning we use a machine or hand tools to scuff up the dirt and kill the weeds. This leaves loose soil on the surface that then runs off the bed when large volumes of water come down.
DON’T TELL THE CROWS WHAT I SPY!
Continued . . . A few of these last storms have been disastrous in this regard. As heavy rain comes down fast water it starts to run down the rows taking soil with it. The more water falling from the sky and the further the distance in the rows velocity builds up and really moves fast. This creates ruts that then grows into mini trenches and the speed of water builds taking more soil with it. Thousands of pounds of valuable un-‐retrievable topsoil is removed in these erosive weather events. Also removing precious organic matter we have spent years building up. Crop loss is so low on my priority it’s the loss of my dirt that brings tears to my eyes. It’s one of the disadvantages to organic farming that is rarely revealed. A secondary issue is that all the rocks that you didn’t know you had in your soil are then left on the surface. Between my rows are now gravel beds making soil preparations much more dif>icult and really bangs up my equipment. Now with all this muddy run off and trenches that have eroded at the end of the beds makes getting around for chores a perilous event. All week I have been removing stuck trucks whose tires are several inches in the mud spinning in 4-‐ wheel drive. This rain has made a mess of our farm’s drive lanes that are very important. The more rutted up they get the slower you have to go, the more banged around the harvest gets and very dif>icult to move equipment around. Don’t get me wrong I don’t mean to sound like I’m complaining it’s all par for the course. On a positive note, we have a huge harvest this week. There is an abundance of great food available for this 4th of July weekend. Many of the
items in your share are excellent for the BBQ and grilling. Grilled veggie salads are always a hit. I like to grill everything in large chunks then dice after grilled put together in a bowl toss with kosher salt and pepper and drizzle a light balsamic on it. YUMMY!
This week there are great items for making some very original and tasty slaws. With cabbage, carrots and onion in your shares don’t forget to shred or shave kohlrabi into it to make it extra nutritious and yummy. We have harvested the very >irst of the onions. Staggered varieties will be pulled over the coming weeks. These onions are uncured. Curing is the process they go through to be “storage onions” or onions that will last in your kitchen for weeks if not months. This really isn’t good onion growing country and the varieties available for us to grow successfully don’t really cure well. Not to mention the ridiculous humidity always present during the time of year when onions mature. So use them ASAP, they are not a storage type and will do better stored in the crisper. You’ll see the tops are still on them. The process to cure is to let those types dry to a brittle crisp with out rotting and then cut them off. I don’t recommend trying this; they need full
sun for several days and an environment void of high humidity. That is not available right now. The non -‐ rotting part is what’s nearly impossible in Maryland humidity and without those state of the art onion-‐ drying facilities like they have out west. I’ll let those farmers who grow 500 acres of onions and have that type of infrastructure manage that battle. We will try to get the onions to maturity then give them out and eat them up. Garlic just got pulled and is fairly successful in its curing process. We pull them out, bundle them and hang them to dry in the tractor shed for a few weeks. The foliage on the garlic plant tends to dry nicely and uniformly unlike the onion and rendering us a pretty good head that stores for a bit. Take a look at the tractor shed and all the garlic hanging it not only looks neat but also smell pretty good too!
Overages . . . “Take it if you need it, want it, or really think you could use it.” A common question I often get is what do you do with all the left over produce if people don’t show up? Where does it all go? The answer is we donate it to the local food banks. We have been working with them over the years and it is a great way to make sure nothing really goes to waste. On some occasions we have very little overages and almost all the produce is utilized by CSA while other weeks we have a fair amount left over, it all depends on the production the weather and the variables we have to work with. This week we have some overage and prior to contacting the food bank we’d like to offer it to you. This week we will have an additional area called “Overages”. This area will be comprised with extra produce we have for one reason or another. We want to give our members what we are growing! So this week we are implementing a new section. Here’s how the Overages Section will work. The overages section will not be pre-‐delegated the way your share is. It will be on a “Take it if you need it, want it, or really think you could use it” program. The availability will differ from week to week and the quantities available will be sporadic. Some weeks it may be available and some weeks it may not. This is nothing to count on but we want to offer it as we have it. Pay attention to any signs at the “Overages Section” that give you info about what you can have and how much. Limits will be listed. This is an extra’s situation that may be of value to some members and not so much for others. We have many members who can consume much more than we provide, while for others our quantities are on the edge of too much. We grow all of our produce for CSA members; we’d like to give you the option >irst before spending resources giving it away elsewhere. Take a look at the overages section and what is available after you select your share and maybe do some trading at the trade table. If you see something you really could use see the limits sign and take an item. If you don’t think you can use it don’t take any. You don’t have to take something just because it’s available. This has nothing to do with the value you paid for when you signed up it’s all a bonus.* For those of you who sometimes feel like your share is too much food. You may trade an item for your share into the “Overages Section” much like you would the trade table. One of the common issues CSA farms, not only us face, is the concept of too much. It’s the number one complaint in CSA distributions amongst most farms. Farmers are holding back on what’s available to not loose customers. To me this is silly. This is a funny one when your on the farming side of things and really have a personal
relationship with how Mother Nature provides when she does. When a crop is successful it can be really abundant, and vice – versa. Trying to equate exactly how much food to grow for “X” amount of people is very dif>icult. As we have
WE RECOMMEND: 1)SELECT YOUR SHARE 2)VISIT THE TRADE TABLE AND SWAP OUT IF DESIRED 3)VISIT THE EXTRAS SECTION AND TAKE AN ITEM. always focused on our CSA cropping plan we have gotten better at this over the years. Yet still huge plantings come in de>icient, while others come in over. Often we have crops that keep on giving prior to renovating that particular >ield and sometimes we will still harvest it, but it’s not enough to divide up evenly for everyone or the quality has gone downhill but is still usable depending on your consuming preferences. That’s mostly where the Food Banks come into play and take our overages. This week, it makes sense to offer it to you >irst.
Keep in mind nothing in your share or the way we delegate the share types to each member will change. We are only moving our produce in the donations section of the fridge out to the distribution >loor and offering it to you prior to loading it on the food bank’s truck.
CSA
N E W S L E T T E R
1-3
G O R M A N FA R M T H E H A RV E S T MAGENTA LETTUCE C ARROTS - N A P O L I / PURPLE HAZE
C ABB AGE CU C UMBERS / SL IC ING
AND
PICKLING
KO HL RABI RED RU SS IAN KA L E S UMMER SQUAS H / ZU CCH INI A ND Y EL LOW NEC K
RED ONIO NS GARLIC
Down on the farm it’s hot and wet! Hot & Wet! – That’s the name of the game this season so far. I have been told this is the wettest June and the >ifth wettest month on record in Maryland. We are really seeing the effects on the farm but are still able to pull off a great harvest. The two biggest hurdles that come with wet episodes, as everyone is asking, are;
1 – You can’t do the jobs you need to do in the timing you need to do it. You must assess your crystal ball and layout all the potential scenarios with what the weather could do and how moist your soils already are and how the future will affect this. 2 – Erosion. This is the biggest issue. In our organic system we do not use herbicide to remove plants or weeds,
“The soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all. It is the healer and restorer and resurrector, by which disease passes into health, age into youth, death into life. Without proper care for it we can have no community, because without proper care for it we can have no life.” - Wendell Berry GARLIC IS PULLED AND CURING
O N THE HO R I ZO N: CUCUM B E R S , B E A NS , E GGPLA NT, CHE R R Y TO M A TO E S , O K R A , LE E K S , GAR LI C, FE NNE L, M E LO NS
we use tillage. Meaning we use a machine or hand tools to scuff up the dirt and kill the weeds. This leaves loose soil on the surface that then runs off the bed when large volumes of water come down.
DON’T TELL THE CROWS WHAT I SPY!
Continued . . . A few of these last storms have been disastrous in this regard. As heavy rain comes down fast water it starts to run down the rows taking soil with it. The more water falling from the sky and the further the distance in the rows velocity builds up and really moves fast. This creates ruts that then grows into mini trenches and the speed of water builds taking more soil with it. Thousands of pounds of valuable un-‐retrievable topsoil is removed in these erosive weather events. Also removing precious organic matter we have spent years building up. Crop loss is so low on my priority it’s the loss of my dirt that brings tears to my eyes. It’s one of the disadvantages to organic farming that is rarely revealed. A secondary issue is that all the rocks that you didn’t know you had in your soil are then left on the surface. Between my rows are now gravel beds making soil preparations much more dif>icult and really bangs up my equipment. Now with all this muddy run off and trenches that have eroded at the end of the beds makes getting around for chores a perilous event. All week I have been removing stuck trucks whose tires are several inches in the mud spinning in 4-‐ wheel drive. This rain has made a mess of our farm’s drive lanes that are very important. The more rutted up they get the slower you have to go, the more banged around the harvest gets and very dif>icult to move equipment around. Don’t get me wrong I don’t mean to sound like I’m complaining it’s all par for the course. On a positive note, we have a huge harvest this week. There is an abundance of great food available for this 4th of July weekend. Many of the
items in your share are excellent for the BBQ and grilling. Grilled veggie salads are always a hit. I like to grill everything in large chunks then dice after grilled put together in a bowl toss with kosher salt and pepper and drizzle a light balsamic on it. YUMMY!
This week there are great items for making some very original and tasty slaws. With cabbage, carrots and onion in your shares don’t forget to shred or shave kohlrabi into it to make it extra nutritious and yummy. We have harvested the very >irst of the onions. Staggered varieties will be pulled over the coming weeks. These onions are uncured. Curing is the process they go through to be “storage onions” or onions that will last in your kitchen for weeks if not months. This really isn’t good onion growing country and the varieties available for us to grow successfully don’t really cure well. Not to mention the ridiculous humidity always present during the time of year when onions mature. So use them ASAP, they are not a storage type and will do better stored in the crisper. You’ll see the tops are still on them. The process to cure is to let those types dry to a brittle crisp with out rotting and then cut them off. I don’t recommend trying this; they need full
sun for several days and an environment void of high humidity. That is not available right now. The non -‐ rotting part is what’s nearly impossible in Maryland humidity and without those state of the art onion-‐ drying facilities like they have out west. I’ll let those farmers who grow 500 acres of onions and have that type of infrastructure manage that battle. We will try to get the onions to maturity then give them out and eat them up. Garlic just got pulled and is fairly successful in its curing process. We pull them out, bundle them and hang them to dry in the tractor shed for a few weeks. The foliage on the garlic plant tends to dry nicely and uniformly unlike the onion and rendering us a pretty good head that stores for a bit. Take a look at the tractor shed and all the garlic hanging it not only looks neat but also smell pretty good too!
Overages . . . “Take it if you need it, want it, or really think you could use it.” A common question I often get is what do you do with all the left over produce if people don’t show up? Where does it all go? The answer is we donate it to the local food banks. We have been working with them over the years and it is a great way to make sure nothing really goes to waste. On some occasions we have very little overages and almost all the produce is utilized by CSA while other weeks we have a fair amount left over, it all depends on the production the weather and the variables we have to work with. This week we have some overage and prior to contacting the food bank we’d like to offer it to you. This week we will have an additional area called “Overages”. This area will be comprised with extra produce we have for one reason or another. We want to give our members what we are growing! So this week we are implementing a new section. Here’s how the Overages Section will work. The overages section will not be pre-‐delegated the way your share is. It will be on a “Take it if you need it, want it, or really think you could use it” program. The availability will differ from week to week and the quantities available will be sporadic. Some weeks it may be available and some weeks it may not. This is nothing to count on but we want to offer it as we have it. Pay attention to any signs at the “Overages Section” that give you info about what you can have and how much. Limits will be listed. This is an extra’s situation that may be of value to some members and not so much for others. We have many members who can consume much more than we provide, while for others our quantities are on the edge of too much. We grow all of our produce for CSA members; we’d like to give you the option >irst before spending resources giving it away elsewhere. Take a look at the overages section and what is available after you select your share and maybe do some trading at the trade table. If you see something you really could use see the limits sign and take an item. If you don’t think you can use it don’t take any. You don’t have to take something just because it’s available. This has nothing to do with the value you paid for when you signed up it’s all a bonus.* For those of you who sometimes feel like your share is too much food. You may trade an item for your share into the “Overages Section” much like you would the trade table. One of the common issues CSA farms, not only us face, is the concept of too much. It’s the number one complaint in CSA distributions amongst most farms. Farmers are holding back on what’s available to not loose customers. To me this is silly. This is a funny one when your on the farming side of things and really have a personal
relationship with how Mother Nature provides when she does. When a crop is successful it can be really abundant, and vice – versa. Trying to equate exactly how much food to grow for “X” amount of people is very dif>icult. As we have
WE RECOMMEND: 1)SELECT YOUR SHARE 2)VISIT THE TRADE TABLE AND SWAP OUT IF DESIRED 3)VISIT THE EXTRAS SECTION AND TAKE AN ITEM. always focused on our CSA cropping plan we have gotten better at this over the years. Yet still huge plantings come in de>icient, while others come in over. Often we have crops that keep on giving prior to renovating that particular >ield and sometimes we will still harvest it, but it’s not enough to divide up evenly for everyone or the quality has gone downhill but is still usable depending on your consuming preferences. That’s mostly where the Food Banks come into play and take our overages. This week, it makes sense to offer it to you >irst.
Keep in mind nothing in your share or the way we delegate the share types to each member will change. We are only moving our produce in the donations section of the fridge out to the distribution >loor and offering it to you prior to loading it on the food bank’s truck.
