From Betty Bradley
 
3/4 lb Kale (I used my whole bunch) remove ribs and stems
3 garlic cloves, peeled
3/4 c. basil leaves (or a combination of basil and cilantro)
1 lemon or lime, juiced
2 Tb. olive oil, light
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
another 1/2 cup of olive oil
1/2 cup fresh parmesan cheese
1/4 cup pine nuts
 
Wash and stem the kale.  Leaving water on leaves from washing, coarsely chop kale.  Place in a large microwavable bowl and cover.  Microcook on high (100%) for 4 or 5 minutes, stir, rotate, cook another 4 or 5 minutes.  Let stand 3 to 5 minutes.  Remove cover to cool.
 
Drop garlic into the bowl of a food processor with the motor running.  When finely minced, add the basil, cilantro and cooked kale.  Process until uniform.
 
Add juice, 2 Tbsp. olive oil, salt and pepper.  Pulse to combine.  At this point you can freeze and later add to soups and stews.  If you want to eat as a “dip” or toss with pasta you will add the other 1/2 cup olive oil, nuts and cheese.  Pulse these until you have a consistency of a spread.
 
Enjoy!  I think it is even better than pesto made with just basil.

From Natalie Ehmsen

adapted from a Southern Living receipe from 2003.  Enjoy!  -Natalie

Pasta with Sausage and Kale

Ingredients

• lg bunch of kale or chard
• 1  (12-ounce) package bowtie pasta
• 3/4  pound  hot Italian sausage
• 1  medium onion, chopped
• 4  garlic cloves, minced
• 1/4  cup  balsamic vinegar
• 1  (14 1/2-ounce) can chicken broth
• 4  fresh basil leaves, thinly sliced
• 1  tablespoon  chopped fresh or 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1/4  teaspoon  pepper
• 1/8  teaspoon  salt
• 3  tablespoons  pine nuts, toasted
• 6  ounces  crumbled feta cheese

Preparation

Cook pasta according to package directions; drain and set aside.

Remove and discard casings from sausage. Cook sausage in a Dutch oven over medium heat, stirring until it crumbles and is no longer pink; drain.

Add onion to sausage in Dutch oven, and sauté 5 minutes. Add garlic, and sauté 1 minute. Add vinegar, and cook 3 minutes. Add chicken broth and kale/chard; cook 5 minutes, or until wilted. Stir in basil and next 3 ingredients; cook 1 minute. Stir in pine nuts, pasta, and feta cheese; cook until thoroughly heated. Serve immediately.

From The Farm

Everything is bursting with spring on the farm. The last few days have brought overcast weather and some good soaking rains. Here are some recent pictures from the field

Click here to view the slide show in a larger size…

What to Expect!

Harvest starts soon, so I thought I would try to give you an idea of what to expect for the first 4-6 weeks of harvest. Its important to understand that despite our very early start this season in the field, the crops we harvest in June and July are limited! Overall, the fields are looking fantastic and I am expecting a bountiful harvest, but don’t expect too much at first – we are starting extra early this year which means a slightly longer wait until the veggies of summer hit – so enjoy all the greens of spring while we tend the corn, cucumbers, squash, tomatoes, peppers and other summer crops.

Below I have listed all the veggies I can think of that we will be harvesting in the next six weeks. As for fruit, cherries usually start by the end of June, we will have fruit nearly every week after that until the end of the season.

Early Harvests
Here is what we plan to harvest for the first few harvests (spring starts green!):

Salad Mix – we strive to have salad nearly every week of the season by planting salad greens regularly.
Braising Mix – we only have this in the spring, one or two times. a bag of spicy greens for cooking – baby kale, tatsoi, chard, mizuna.
Bagged Spinach – the first few weeks we’ll bag the spinach, which is at its best in the cooler spring weather. We’ll switch to bunched spinach in July and have spinach regularly until the heat of summer arrives.
Green Garlic – We’ll dig up the growing garlic plants – these will mature into garlic bulbs by August, but for now try these for a delicious mild garlic flavor.
Radishes – we will have a variety of radishes for the first few weeks
Kale – we have beautiful kale coming in now. This year we have green frilly and purple frilly kale, plus red russian kale and tuscano or lancinato kale. The kale is really at its very best in the spring, but we usually have kale all season long. Email your favorite kale recipes and I will share them with the group! We will vary the type each week and may bag the baby leaves until they are large enough to bunch.
Chois – we will have beautiful baby chois for the first couple of weeks – these have been covered under floating row covers, but may show some small pert damage (flea beatles). This will probably be some of the only chois of the season, so enjoy their crunchy stems and mustardy flavor.
Head Lettuce – we’ll have romaine, green & red butter, summer crisp and some beautiful frilly, colorful & unusual types. Head lettuce lasts the spring, then fades away in the heat of summer.
Herbs: Early season herbs include cilantro, chives, marjoram, sage and dill. Later in the season we will have thyme, oregano, and lots of basil!

Coming Soon – week 3 plus
After the first few weeks more of the early harvest crops will begin to mature
Carrots – we will have baby carrots from time to time then later we will switch to full size carrots. Several types and plantings extend the carrot harvest over many weeks
Beets – we will start with baby beets, then switch to full sized beets for a few more weeks before beets are done. these are mainly a spring crop, but we sometimes have a few weeks in the fall as well.
Peas – peas are a spring treat that come and go pretty quickly. Our first planting was eaten almost entirely by what I guess was a flock of birds shortly after they came up, but the second planting looks beautiful and should produce at least a few weeks of sugar snaps, snow peas and shelling peas.
Rainbow Chard – we have a large planting with some wild color variations this year, so you can expect a regular supply of chard. we will try not to overwhelm you with chard!
Scallions – we usually have these just a couple of times in the season.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What am I supposed to do with all these GREENS!?
A: Some people love cooked greens and can eat them every day, others can’t figure out how to eat all the chard, kale, spinach, lettuce and salad that the early CSA boxes contain! If you fall into the latter group, here are a few suggestions: check out our website for recipies, use a cookbook and try something new, or add the greens to something old, like a lasagna with spinach. Finally, see if you can find a friend or neighbor who might want them rather than just letting them go to waste! As we enter the summer season boxes fill out with other vegetables, we will lighten up on the greens, and offer these in the “extras” area.

Q: Why didn’t I get radishes (or kale, or spinach or something) in my box?
A: Each week I type out an email for members, and I make a best guess at what will be available for the box harvest later in the week. Sometimes what we actually harvest might be a little different than my list, or there might be a shortage of one crop and an abundance of another. As we pack the boxes each week, we try to ensure everyone gets the exact same box, but sometimes (usually as a particular crop is just beginning to ripen and we don;t have that much) there isn’t enough for everyone. In this case, we substitute another crop, so if you didn’t get carrots you got beets, or if you didn’t get braising mix you got extra baby chard. We also watch the overall dollar value of the box each week to insure you get a great deal for your box fee. The first weeks of the season are always slim, later season big boxes are more abundant!

Welcome to spring!

Its May again on the farm and the bees are buzzing! Our new early water proved to be incredibly valuable, allowing us to plant a small very early section of crops including spinach, beets, carrots, kale and lettuce. The new system  took some work to get the kinks out, but eventually worked perfectly, keeping our pond filled for the few weeks in April before Fire Mountain water comes on.  This main season water (Fire Mountain Canal) is now of and going full tilt. Early water means early harvest and we are on track for starting harvest the first or second week in June! There is still time to sign up before the harvest begins.

the field beyond the old apple orchard	packed greenhouse
garlic and baby lettuce	beds ready to plant

With a little under an acre planted so far, spading is a big activity at the the moment. I spend more time on the tractor in the spring than any other time of year, and now is crunch time, trying to get all the beds I need for the year ready. The recent rain has helped a lot – without it, I have to irrigate before I can spade – or the soil is too dry and hard. After a day of solid rain, the fields are perfect for tilling this week.

In addition to the field crops, we have been working to get the hoop house planted. This big field house gets the first planting of tomatoes, cucumbers, squash and other heat loving crops. We rebuilt the house this spring in a new location and we are now getting the soil prepared for planting, we should start filling it up next week. 

We are also busy working in the heated greenhouse – we are transplanting the tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, flowers and other long season crops into jumbo six packs. These will go out into the field in late May or early June. We are also planting the last of the spring head lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, chard and kale crops as well as large seeded annual flowers and some veggies like our early cukes and squash. 

 

We had a flurry of signups for the CSA before the discount deadline, but we also still have plenty of room for new members. Our first harvest is just five or six weeks away, so if you or anyone you know has been thinking about signing up – now is the time to act! Thanks for your support!

Turkey Hill April 2009 Update

Time to plant!

The humidity of the greenhouse is hard to
communicate in a picture! This is just the early crops, at the peak
every square inch of space is crammed with plants.

The garlic is up and slowly coming to life.

Spring is a lovely time on the farm! The air is crisp and cool, and the days are warm. Spring winds have been whipping up, and today a new storm is bringing snow to the mountains.

This week we nearly completed the hoop house setup project. Our 200′ x 20′ hoop house has been in use for six years, but last year we took it apart to relocate it and never managed to finish putting it back together. This year we got an early start and the hoop house is nearly ready for planting. It will still be a few weeks before we can really get crops planted in there, but its great to have it ready to go! The hoop house adds night time heat that brings crops in weeks ahead of outdoor planting. This means a wider variety of crops early in the season.

A little bit of snow is rolling into the valley today, so winter is still here, but the last week of sunny, warm weather got the farm thawing out. Spring is right around the corner and projects are sprouting like weeds. Several tractor implements need work, and we’re building a new chicken coop down at the farm this spring. We’re re-locating the hoop house which was unused last year, and doing all the usual spring tasks: clearing rocks, spreading manure, discing, spading, planting cover crops.

This year the hoop house will get planted with an assortment of early favorites for the CSA:
tomatoes, cucumbers, summer squash as well as a few peppers, eggplants and melons. This should help insure a good supply of early crops. This year we are continuing to focus on the CSA and providing the best supply of veggies. We are extending our season by starting CSA harvest two weeks earlier, and collaborating with a few other local organic/natural producers to fill in possible weak areas.

Another reason we are able to extend our season this year is that for the first time we are going to have early water. Usually our irrigation season begins April 15th, when Fire Mountain Canal is turned on, and we can’t count on rain to keep early plantings wet, severely limiting what we can plant early.

This year our neighbor developed his very old water right that provides a huge amount of spring runoff water from Jay Creek. He reestablished the old ditch a few years ago, and this winter he buried a 15″ pipe nearly one mile from his property up the his diversion out of the creek. Before installing the pipe, most of his water seeped, overflowed or evaporated before reaching his property, now he’ll actually get all his water. This ditch and now pipe also flow directly across our farm property directly beside our large irrigation pond and the new pipes will fill the pond soon after the snow begins to melt. This means we’ll be planting early peas, lettuce, spinach, scallions, kale, chois and more some 4-6 weeks earlier than we usually do. I’m pretty excited about the prospect of starting harvest earlier than usual.

If you are interested in joining the CSA this year, we are now offering memberships. The 2009 sign up for is available at the website (turkeyhillcsa.com) and includes all the details, including slightly updated prices. Other than the earlier start and longer harvest season, a few other changes are in store. This year we are offering half share members a new half fruit share. Also new this year we are using re-usable plastic totes for our delivery customers, a $35 refundable deposit is required for two totes. Farm pickup customers can purchase totes if they want to use them or just bring their own containers.

Happy spring, please call if you have any questions.

Turkey Hill CSA Newsletter – 2008,

Last of the Season

Farm Survey

We want to hear from you! please email or call with your comments, or take a few minutes and complete our quick and easy 10 question online survey.

On the farm

We have two  weeks of CSA left.  The last pickup at the farm will be Fri. Oct. 10th. The last delivery to Crested Butte will be Sunday, October 12th.

This week we picked the ornamental corn (we’ll process it for you by next week), the leeks, and more broccoli and cauliflower and kale.  Amazingly it still hasn’t frozen and some of the tomato plants have decided to make ripe tomatoes. I’ll dole those out as I can.

We picked the last of the cabbage this week, you’ll all get that one more time. We are leaving the last of the carrots for next week – expect some huge storage carrots in the final box.

Cucumbers and squash are done, and we are still letting the butternut and other winter squash ripen, with no freeze to kick them into ripening they are just growing and mostly sitting there. I did pick some acorn squash this week, but it and all the other winter squash deserve a little ripening before you eat them. let the acorn, delacata and next weeks winter squash sit on a kitchen or cupboard for at least a week before you eat them!

We keep digging onions, as they size up, and we dug ALL the potatoes (there weren’t that many unfortunately, it wasn’t a great crop this year. You should get potatoes in the last two boxes, and plenty of onions.

This week’s box (probable box)

Broccoli – still coming,
Cauliflower – orange (‘cheddar’) or purple (‘graffiti’) – still a bit more
Kale – chard is nearly spent!
Carrots – still more
Onions –  white, yellow & red onions
Garlic – keep saving this up!
Cabbage – green, red & savoy
Sweet Corn – Delectable bi-color, the peak for our corn – chop the end 1″ off before shucking if you feel a wormy tip.

Fruit Share
 
Apples – Galas
Pears – Red Bartlett
 
This is the last week on fruit, hope you enjoyed the Santa Rosa plums from Ela Family Orchards last week, what a treat!