Ken and I went on a field trip the end of last week organized by the Ecological Farmers of Ontario. We are very grateful to our apprentices and working shares who were here to gather together a lovely array of produce for Saturday’s pick-up. We saw a number of other farms and visited the Rodale Institute for their field day. One of the farms we visited was Eric and Anne Nordell’s in Pennsylvania. They are a model farm for weed control with the use of draft horses. It is interesting for us to be able to leave the farm to see other farms during the growing season.

This time of year we have lots of produce coming in and we welcome recipes from our CSA members. Colleen Burns has supplied us with a Cold Cucumber Soup recipe that she has been enjoying.

Cold Cucumber Soup

3 T. Butter or marg.

1 cup chopped onions

4 large garlic cloves – minced

3 cups chicken or veggie broth

4 cups seeded diced, unpeeled cucumber (2 medium)

1 cup swiss chard or spinach

1 cup sliced, peeled potatoes

1/2 tsp. salt or to taste

1/4 tsp freshly ground pepper

1 T lemon

1 cup table cream

In a large saucepan heat butter and saute onions and garlic until soft. Add broth cucumber, spinach, potatoes, lemon juice, salt and pepper.

Simmer covered until potatoes are tender (10 min.) Tansfer mixture in batches to blender or food processor to puree (Blender makes soup smoother)

Transfer to large bowl. Stir in cream. Let soup cool. Then chill overnight or for several hours. Serve in chilled bowls. Can garnish with thin slices of cucumber.

 

 

 

Harvest time is coming early this year with the warm spring and hot weather that we have been experiencing. Usually we don’t harvest wheat and oats until later in the summer, but our wheat is all off and the straw is in the barn. The oats are half harvested, one of our fiels isn’t ready yet. Our old combine has held together so far, but Ken says there is a vibration that is starting to concern him…fingers crossed that it all holds together for another season. We are selling our old thrashing machine today so we can’t use that as our fall back position.

The garlic was also harvested earlier than usual this week. It came out of the field as a bumper crop!  We dug it all in one afternoon Ken and Bill ploughed it out with Gena and Buttons, two of our Suffolk Punch horses, and a walking plough. Then we gathered it up and tied two bunches of ten together on either end of a length of twine, loaded it onto a wagon that the horses pulled up to the barn and it is all nicely hanging to dry.

We have been irrigating the garden  because of  the dry weather and are thankful that we have a pond and equipment to do so. It does add to the work load and it isn’t the same as rain, but it helps keep the garden growing! We are hoping for rain soon to help our hay and pasture fields to grow.

The CSA pick-ups keep rolling around twice a week and we are harvesting beautiful produce to give to our CSA members. Our early carrots have been the most disappointing, because of the wire worm damage early in the spring. We are hoping that the later plantings will come along better. The taste of the carrots that we have harvested is very good despite the lower yield. Because of the wire worm we have decided to move our garden plot for the 2013 season to a different location. We had the area where we thought we were going to have the garden all ploughed in the spring and thought we were going to avoid summer ploughing in the hot dry weather. Now we are in the midst of ploughing the new area and it is hard on the horses and the teamsters. The ground is so hard that it is difficult to keep a plough in the ground. The apprentices are also working at preparing other plots for our 2013 potatoes, squash and new asparagus planting. Each of them have a field that they are responsible for and are doing all the tillage with the draft horses to prepare the ground. Some of the cover crops have been planted and the other fields are almost ready to be seeded.

We are happy that Princess,the belgian mare we had for sale will be going to Edencrest, another CSA farm in Ontario north west of Barrie. Mater is still for sale.

It’s Pesto time with fresh garlic and basil! Here is a recipe from Our Mothers’ Kitchens by Anita Stewart that I use:

PESTO

3 garlic cloves

2 cups packed leaves

1/3 cup pine nuts or walnuts

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp pepper

3/4 cup olive oil

In blender or food processor process garlic, basil, pine nuts, salt and pepper until finely chopped. With machine still running, gradually pour in oil and puree. Scrape into freezer container. Seal and freeze for up to 6 months. Makes 1 cup.