The early pick-ups always feature rhubarb and our members sometimes share their recipes. The following was contributed by Pat Weiler. It was baked in the Orchard Hill Farm test kitchen last night with rave reviews!

Rhubarb Coffee Cake

1/2 cup butter

1 cup white sugar

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

2 cups spelt flour (wheat flour can also be used)

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

3/4 cup milk + 1 Tspb lemon juice ( let stand for 10 min.)

3 – 4 cups chopped rhubarb

2 Tbsp flour

Topping:

1/4 cup very soft butter

2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 cup flour

1/4 cup oats

1/2 cup brown sugar

Cream butter and sugar

Add in flour /soda/ salt mixture alternately with milk (don’t over beat if using spelt flour).

Dust rhubab with flour. Fold rhubarb into the mixture.  Grease 9 x 13 pan. Spread batter in pan and add topping. Bake at 350 degrees for about 40 – 45 minutes.

We always feel a bit of a whirl wind of activity when the CSA begins and we still have the big push to get all the transplanting done! To top it off we discovered some wire worm in an area of our garden and as a result have had to prepare some new ground to plant our susceptible crops in. It’s quite an unexpected side step in our garden dance. Fortunately, we figured out the problem before all of our planting was completed. It will also impact our rotation. We had already ploughed the ground for the 2013 garden so that we could begin preparing the soil with cover crops and compost…now we will plant wheat there in the fall and prepare another area for the 2013 garden.

Michelle Jory was coming down for a visit and we asked if she could stay on and help us out for a week. It has been great to have her experienced help. Michelle apprenticed here for three seasons followed by a two year incubator farm of her own with Fairmeadow Farm Fall CSA.  She is looking to purchasing a farm, hopefully she will be able to find one in the area. Elias Neugebauer, a Waldorf high school student from Germany, has aslo arrived for a farm experience.

We started off with the squash field. It has all been mulched, watered in, planted and covered  with row cover to keep the cucumber beetle off. The transplanting continued through the week with summer squash, peppers, eggplant, tomatoes and melons. The next  big push is to get all the early sweet corn transplanted at the same time that we focus on weeding. The potatoes are coming up. We always do some early weeding before they come up with the harrow and finger weeder around the tiny plants with the draft horses. Now it’s time go through with the hoes and then the hilling can begin.