I love pick up day! It’s so fun to harvest and watch people take home vegetables. I’m happy that it’s that time again – rather than early spring, when you don’t know when you’re going to be able to plant things, or if everything is going to get eaten by slugs, flea beetles or voles…phew! We are getting ready to plant a few rounds of corn – sweet and polenta varieties, and some squash and melons. Hopefully it doesn’t rain too much this week and we can get them in the ground. It was nice to get some moisture this weekend though – to encourage the plants that are out there to keep growing!
We have a great team on the farm this year, so I thought I’d tell you a little bit about them – here are their faces – Yoan and Maike are married and have already worked together on other farms in Australia and Germany. Connor is the one in the front.
Yoan is an Electrical Engineer who believes that there is more in life than Ohm’s law. He started learning about permaculture, herbal medicine and gardening many years ago volunteering on farms on three different continents and is now in his third full time season of working at organic market garden farms. He really likes picking vegetables straight from the field and eating them when they are still sun-warm, fixing and improving tools on the farm in creative ways, and working the soil with his hands rather than a computer keyboard.
Maike is a trained anthropologist, but rather than starting a research project on young professionals who decide to move from the city to the country, she decided to give it a go herself. After a first year of interning on horse-powered CSA farms in Germany, she is very happy to keep learning about market gardening, driving horses, and managing a CSA farm at Orchard Hill. She particularly likes entering the stable early in the morning and being greeted by horses whinnying, helping to grow vegetable from seed to harvest, and finishing the day with a delicious homegrown, home cooked meal.
Connor came to Orchard Hill with high recommendation from a restaurant in Guelph called ‘Artisanale’, where he worked for 2 years. He’s 23, and grew up in Hamilton and Port Coburn, Ontario. He loves dogs, making desserts and rolling his eyes at the political ‘admin’ in the States.
I’m so grateful for their enthusiasm and hard work!
As promised, here is Maike’s mother’s rhubarb cake recipe…
Regina’s Rhubarb Cake
This is what Maike describes as her mother’s ‘best’ rhubarb cake. Recently she made the cake a little soft in the center and I thought it was even better – kind of like a cake batter custard!
Cake
½ C butter
½ C + 2 Tbsp sugar
3 eggs
1 ½ tsp vanilla
¼ tsp of salt
¼ tsp lemon zest
2 tsp. baking powder
1 ½ C all-purpose flour
2 Tbsp milk
3-4 stems of rhubarb
1 tbsp. brown sugar
Meringue
2 egg whites
½ C sugar
Preheat oven to 350°F
To make the dough:
- Whisk together butter, sugar, and 3 eggs until smooth and creamy
- Add vanilla, salt, lemon zest, and milk to the mixture
- Combine baking powder and flour and add to the mixture
- Pour dough into a buttered 9” springform pan
For the rhubarb filling:
- Cut rhubarb stems into 3-4cm long chunks (pealing the rhubarb is not necessary)
- Place rhubarb unto the dough in the baking tin
- Sprinkle brown sugar over the rhubarb
- Bake for 15-20 minutes
For the meringue topping:
- While the cake is baking, beat 2 egg whites until frothy.
- While whisking, add ½ C sugar slowly and continue to beat to stiff peaks.
- Spread on cake
- Bake cake with meringue for an additional 15-20 minutes
Don’t throw out those greens, either! They’re highly nutritious and really lovely added to a soup at the last moment – they have a peppery flavour that really livens up a root vegetable soup, or a chicken noodle soup. The greens are an excellent source of antioxidants such as vitamin-A, vitamin-C, carotenoid, xanthin, vitamin-K and lutein.