Weekly news from the farm!!!

*|MC:SUBJECT|*

 

Greetings Everyone,

We feel extremely fortunate that you readers are supporting organic agriculture either through a CSA, shopping regularly at the Farmer’s Market or purchasing organic food from the grocery store.  We think the best way to rest assured you are eating and feeding your family organic food, is to “Know Your Farmer”, so thank you!   Just this week, the EPA approved the pesticide Chlorpyrifos, while this pesticide is banned for household usage, it is still used by farmers on more than 640,000 acres of crops in California. Studies by the EPA have shown that this pesticide has the potential of damage brain development in children.  If this pesticide damages humans, we wonder what impact it has on all the biodiversity that may be out in the fields where this pesticide is used?  Perhaps the good new is, large swathes of land sown as a monoculture usually don’t have as much biodiversity as small farms. So don’t panic and eat organic.

We had a comment from those custom ordering, that the portion sized seemed larger than what is indicated in the online store.  That’s because we want to share the rewards of those veggies we have in abundance . Quite often the Farmer’s Choice is valued at more than $20 because we share the rewards of an abundant harvest, so we figured we should share them with those custom ordering. Please let us know if you are receiving too much and we’ll be sure to keep your portion size to that listed in the online store. 

You will probably need to white list our email to receive correspondence from us because we have changed our email from farmer@MountainHarvestOrganic.com to Farmer@MountainHarvestOrganics.com (our email is organics plural).

Your Farmers (and cleaning staff),
Carl and Julie


NOTE: Your’re receiving this eNewsletter because you’ve either been a subscriber to MHO in the past OR if you’ve registered for our newsletters from our website.   Feel free to unsubscribe if you no longer wish to receive this eNewsletter!

CSA Shareholders: You can access our online store using this link, if using a desktop you will log in by clicking the icon of the person in the top right hand side of the web page, if you are using a phone click on the menu icon and choose the login option. All orders need to be placed by Tuesday at 8 AM so that we will know what to harvest for your share! Please return your boxes because we re-use them.  Orders will be ready each Wednesday at 8 AM. 


What is new and abundant this week!

Sweet corn is here!!! Carl is proud of this corn because he has been setting raccoon traps nearly every night in an effort to protect it from the critters.   SPECIALS:  For those ordering 12 ears, you will get 1 additional ear free.  We didn’t have a good way to set up a pricing for a “bakers dozen”, so we’ll just throw in an extra ear for those orders. We harvested it a few days ago because the crows were picking the corn ear worms out of the ears and eating the tops of each ear.  Farm Fresh Sweet corn is a delicacy! When fresh, corn can be shucked, and eaten raw, right off the cob. There may be a corn ear worm on the top of the ear, so discard the worm outdoors for the birds, then cut the top and wash your ears. To cook farm fresh corn, get a pot of water boiling, shuck and clean your corn, and once the water is boiling you will want to boil the corn for 2 – 3 minutes.  If you don’t happen to eat all of your corn the day you’ve received your share, consider this Southwestern Corn and Black Bean Salad because it is refreshing and we serve this as the main entre for our meal. We also make these corn crepes because they are delicious wraps for your favorite greens. If your’re having a party, or for a snack at night like we occasionally do here at the farm, this corn dip is fabulous. Growing up fishing with my father, these popular corn fritters (hush puppies) are delicious.

The sweet peppers are starting to ripen from green to red/orange!!! We’re pretty excited that our peppers are now starting to ripen from green to red/yellow/orange.  We don’t eat too many sweets here on the farm, so these peppers are a treat for us.  We simply slice them and eat them raw. These adorable red, yellow and green baby bell sweet peppers are great for lunchboxes or kept sliced in the frig for a snack in between meals!  They are excellent for horderves roasted then stuffed either this way or this way. Another option is to stuff them with goat cheese either this way or or this way

We thought we’d share the easy meals we’ve been making here on the farm with summers abundance. Almost every week, we’ll make a batch of bruschetta and salsa, and keep a bowl of each of us in our refrigerator.  The great thing about these, is each of these start out with the same ingredients: paste tomatoes, onions, garlic, salt and pepper.  The GOOD NEWS we’re harvesting our field Genovese (pesto) Basil and it looks great with no mold even though we’ve had daily rain showers here on the farm!!

Once we have a huge bowl of the base tomato mixture, we’ll divide it in half, then to the first half we’ll add cilantro and serrano peppers to make salsa, to the other half we’ll add basil to make the bruschetta. Depending on your preference, you can divide it however you like.  We simply eat just about the same as each of these each week so we divide them in half.

Breakfast options for champions… Julie’s brothers family makes fresh salsa a few times each week, after all it is so refreshing.  Nearly every weekend, for breakfast they will have fresh tortillas, a bowl of black beans (not refried, simply cooked with oregano, parsley, salt and pepper), scrambled eggs and salsa.  What we love most about this breakfast, is they gently heat the salsa in the same skillet the eggs were cooked, then it is served in a bowl as a topping.  This recipe is similar to theirs.  We made this breakfast for the Lenny Boy retreat at the farm and it was a huge hit. This breakfast can be easily made vegan, substituting sauteed squash for the eggs.

When making bruschetta, while we might just add in some balsamic vinegar and serve the topping over a bed of lettuce, it is also good served on top of roasted eggplant or bread.  This summer, we’ve been enjoying this topping on toasted baguettes from Annie’s Bakery.

We love to keep grilled summer squash on hand in the refrigerator for breakfasts and a quick snack!!!  We used to eat eggs and yogurt nearly every morning, but since the foxes ate all our chickens and we quit milking Ms. Daisy May, we’ve been eating vegetables for breakfast.  We wonder, is there anything wrong in eating vegetables for breakfast?  I guess General Mills wouldn’t make a dime if they promoted eating veggies for breakfast.  So for our breakfast lately, we’ve been pulling out some grilled zucchini, yellow squash or eggplant from the frig, heating it, finally topping them with either bruschetta or salsa.  We cut the veggies fairly thick before grilling, 1/4 inch thick, then baste with a mixture of olive oil, garlic salt and pepper.  Once grilled, we keep them in a glass dish in the refrigerator, that way we can take out slices and heat for either breakfast or our evening snacks. Until recently we hadn’t thought too much about what we’d been eating for breakfast, except we were talking with a neighbor, who was wondering what to eat for breakfast because there has been a lot of bad press about boxed cereals.  Most cereals have a lot of sugar added, probably so industry can get you addicted to them, so we thought this may be a good topic for discussion.  

This Weeks Farmer’s Choice Shares

Above is a bin full of sweet corn that you’ll find in the online store.  Please remember that you’ll probably find a corn ear worm on the top of each ear.  We use organic farming practices and these pests are hard to control organically.

This week’s Farmer’s Choice Share includes: (share contents are subject to change based on our actual harvest.)

We’re offering both a Farmer’s Choice Veggie and Farmers’ Choice Veggie & Meat Share.  Items common in both shares are listed first, followed by items specific to the veggie share the finally the veggie/meat share. The Farmer’s Choice Veggie & Meat share normally has smaller portions of vegetables. )

The following are included only in the veggie share:

The following are included only in the meat share

What’s Happening on the Farm

We’re missing Kaiser

This past week Argus and Kaiser went on a walk about and Argus returned without Kaiser.   Normally when they roam, they both return to the farm together, so in our mind we think that Kaiser has gone to heaven.  Argus has injuries from being in a fight, and we’re thinking perhaps they were in a fight with each other over something dead and tasty in the forest, because we can’t imagine anything they might encounter that they wouldn’t have been able to protect themselves against.  At this time we are extremely heartbroken, so maybe next week we can write a story about Kaisers life here at MHO and all the love he has given us over the years.  We thank all you CSA Shareholders who have loved on him over the years, because that means the world to us.

What does it take for us at MHO to organically grow and harvest corn?

You might wonder why on earth would we transplant sweet corn rather than put the seeds directly in the soil? We’ve adopted organic farming practices, so we use organic and/or untreated seed. You may be surprised to know that much of the conventional seed used is treated with fungicides. Have you ever gone to a Feed and Seed store and noticed that the corn kernels are an unusual bright red/orange color? That is because they are treated.  We find it interesting that our resident crows won’t touch treated seed that has been carefully buried in the soil, yet they’ll find all untreated kernels, underneath the soil even before it sprouts. Many years ago we began transplanting corn, because here in our extreme biodiverse valley with our resident crows, that is the only way we’ve been able to harvest an ear of corn. We love ourselves some fresh organically grown sweet corn, and so do the crows, so this is the only technique that we’ve found so that we can harvest corn. 

In fact, a lot of our corn seed has been genetically modified with Bacillus thuringiensis, a soil bacterium, produces several crystal (Cry) protein toxins that destroy the gut of invading pests, such as larval caterpillars. So far, over 50 cry genes have been identified and found to affect insect orders differently.  We can’t help but imagine that the bacteria in the corn is also harmful to our pollinators, and because so much of the corn planted across the world is GMO corn, maybe that is contributing to the decline in our pollinators?  We’re thankful for all y’all who support organic agriculture because it is so much better for our planet!

Leave a Reply