Week 7 – Pekarek’s Produce CSA

Hello folks!

Every once in a while something happens on the farm, that it makes everything else pale in comparison.  This week just such a thing happened.  We spend much of our time picking and harvesting produce.  Usually this means that we harvest things like zucchini and squash by picking them and then putting them into a bucket before bringing them back to the packing shed to be cleaned up and packed.

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This year we purchased a conveyor to cut out a couple steps. We attached the conveyor to the tractor and now instead of picking one bucket at a time, we are able to place the squash and zucchini on the conveyor which takes it from where we are picking up to a person on the hayrack behind the tractor. The person on the tractor cleans them and packs them right away.

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This week was the first time we have used the conveyor.  It was wonderful!  We can pick multiple rows at a time and don’t have to haul heavy buckets of produce all over the world.

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Vegetable production is looking pretty good around here this week.  We are getting a nice harvest of pickling cucumbers, so if you are interested in getting a half bushel or more of pickling cucumbers, give us a call.  Sweet corn is coming along nicely. We plant several times throughout the year, so we expect to have a supply that continues for quite some time.  Kohlrabi are doing great and we just picked the first couple of cantaloupe for the season this week.  There weren’t very many out there yet, but the ones that are were delicious.

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What’s in this Week’s CSA?

  • Sweet Corn
  • Cucumbers
  • Yellow Squash
  • Zucchini
  • Kohlrabi
  • Cauliflower*

Cabbage, Tomato, and Corn Salad

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Cabbage, Tomato and Corn Salad (Photo by Alice Henneman)

Try your hand at the delicious salad from cookitquick.org. Its a simple recipe that makes 4 side-salad servings.

Ingredients

Salad

  • 1 ear of corn, shucked
  • 1 large tomato, cut into bite-size chunks
  • 2 cups of shredded cabbage

Dressing

  • 2 tablespoons canola oil or other mild-flavored vegetable oil
  • 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
  • 1 tablespoon sugar
  • 1 to 2 teaspoons finely chopped sweet onion
  • Salt and pepper to taste

Directions

  1. Boil an extra ear of corn by your favorite method when you’re preparing corn on the cob. (Or follow my directions for making corn on the cob at: http://bit.ly/corn-on-cob )
  2. Drain the corn and immediately plunge it into ice water to stop the cooking process and cool it. Either proceed with the rest of the recipe now or, I like to pat the ear of corn dry with a clean paper towel, wrap it in plastic wrap, store overnight in the refrigerator and then proceed with this recipe the next day.
  3. Cut the kernels off close to the cob; some kernels can be left clinging together to add extra interest to the appearance of the salad.
  4. Combine all salad ingredients in a medium-sized bowl.
  5. Whisk together dressing ingredients and mix with salad.
  6. If time allows, chill the salad for about an hour for flavors to blend. However, the salad tasted good when eaten immediately, too!

Cooking Sweet Corn

It seems there are a hundred different ways to cook sweet corn and hopefully everyone has at least one favorite method!

Sweet Corn

Personally, I am prone to eating sweet corn in the field raw or at a farmer’s market, again raw.  But for some reason people seem to think that’s a little silly 🙂

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When we do cook sweet corn, we most commonly boil it.  Here’s our very simple recipe.  Bring water to a rolling boil. Place cleaned sweet corn in the boiling water for  6 minutes.  After 6 mnutes shut off the heat to the water and let corn sit in the hot water for 3 more minutes.  Remove corn from the water, eat and enjoy!

 

Week 6 – Pekarek’s Produce CSA

Hello Folks!

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It’s hard to believe it’s already July.  On the farm, May feels like we are starting to get ramped up with production, June seems to be in full gear, but July is when we reach our full marathon pace.  At this point, there is no pause or break for us until December (we hope).  This week, we’ve gone from irrigate, irrigate, irrigate to just a little mud – and we are very happy about it.  We caught a gentle rain over a 24 hour period on Saturday that gave us an inch of moisture.  That’s almost a perfect rain 🙂

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The rain also gave Ryan a couple minutes to pause.  Ryan’s daily routine usually begins around 5:30 or 6:00 in the morning and ends around 9:00 or 10:00 pm with paperwork.  The crew shows up at either 6:00 am or 7:00 am depending on the forecast for the day.  The hotter the weather, the sooner we need to be in the field so that the young crew isn’t in the heat in the middle of the afternoon.  We have so many people and so much action on the farm this time of year that instead of a doorknob on the door to the mudroom, we currently have a towel stuffed in the hole where the knob should be because the knob got tired and gave up.

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Ryan checking some sweet corn

 

The greenhouse is full!  Every little bit of bench space is covered by trays of plants, mostly cabbage, broccoli, and kohlrabi.  We have a couple of hayracks of fully grown cabbage plants that are ready to be transplanted.  There’s another bunch of watermelon and cantaloupe plants that need to get in the field this week and onto plastic.

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We started picking pickling cucumbers this week.  They are delicious!  There’s not very many yet this week, but in just a couple of weeks we will have enough for to start pickling. We also started picking sweetcorn just yesterday.  The first batch was picked late morning, we ate several ears raw, and then cooked up some more for lunch.

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Kale Banana Smoothie made by cookitquick.org

 

If you are looking for ideas on how to use your produce this week, be sure to check out the blog at CookItQuick.org.  Alice Henneman is a food and nutrition Extension Educator with the University of Nebraska who is also using our weekly CSA.  Each week she uses the produce from the box and shares a series of photos and recipes on cookitquick.org.  If you haven’t seen it yet, be sure to check it out.

Your Farmers,

Ryan, Katie, and Crew

Macaroni and Cheese with Broccoli

Looking for something new to do with your Broccoli??  Check out the recipe for macaroni and cheese with broccoli at cookitquick.org.  I had no idea that I could add about 3 cups of fresh broccoli florets during the last 3 minutes of cooking my noodles and then just drain and continue as usual with my macaroni and cheese recipe.

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Macaroni and Cheese Broccoli from cookitquick.org

How do I eat Kale?

Kale is one of those vegetables that became popular (or returned to popularity) a few years ago. This little gem gets a lot of attention for it’s nutritional punch.

Dinosaur Kale

 

In a 3 ounce serving, raw kale provides 49 calories and is a rich source of vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin K, vitamin B6, folate, and manganese. Kale is a good source of thiamin, riboflavin, pantothenic acid, vitamin E and several dietary minerals, including iron, calcium, potassium, and phosphorus. Boiling raw kale diminishes these nutrient contents, with the exception of vitamin K.

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So how do we eat Kale?  Take the tough stem out of the middle, then do one of the following:

  1. Add Kale to a smoothie just like you might add spinach to a smoothie.
  2. Make Kale “Chips” – recipe here: Pekarek’s Kale Chips
  3. Massage it into a salad.  Kale can seem a bit tough, but if you give it a good squeeze with your hands and some type of dressing, it softens up and becomes easier to chew and digest, without losing the benefits you get from eating it raw.
  4. Throw it in soup.
  5. Saute it!

 

Week 5 – Pekarek’s Produce CSA

Hello Folks,

Happy Independence Day (early)!

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I tried not to mention it last week, as I was hoping for some rain, but the name of the game this week has been “Irrigate, Irrigate, Irrigate!”  It’s almost hard to remember having how wet it has been this spring when just a few short week[s ago everything so muddy that we couldn’t get transplants in the ground on time.  Now, the rain has shut off and we haven’t been able to catch more than 30 hundredths, which is just enough to knock down the dust, but not enough to make anything grow.  There will basically be water running at all times on the farm from now on.  We have two wells running water in a million different directions in the hope of keeping water on everything.

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We had just a few plants still in trays in the greenhouse that got kicked out and put in the ground earlier this week. That included three varieties of nearly 800 pepper plants and five varieties of almost 400 tomatoes. Before we even had those plants in the ground, the greenhouse was getting filled back up with broccoli for the fall. We seeded 90 trays of broccoli and have about another 130 trays to go. I would like to say we have some fancy air seeder that seeds 72 seeds at a time, but some things are better done by hand, so each seed is pulled out of the packet and hand planted one-by-one, just like you might do at home.

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We also seeded seven varieties of winter squash in the field.  We seed multiple varieties of every crop we plant, partially because its neat to see an acorn squash next to a spaghetti squash next to a kabocha squash.  But really, the multiple varieties planted act as a sort of insurance for us.  For example, this spring we had those fun white satin carrots that we tried for the first time.  They did great for us, but we had to replant all of the orange carrots twice before we had something that would grow.

There are a couple things in this week’s produce that you may be seeing for the first time, be sure to look at the blog for some recipe ideas!

Week 5 CSA

Your Farmers,

Ryan, Katie, and Crew

Cook it Quick….

If you are looking for ways to use your produce from Pekarek’s Produce, checkout cookitquick.org for some amazing ideas.  Look at all of the things made with a week of produce from the CSA… (pictures courtesy of cookitquick.org)

Egg Salad Sandwich
Egg Salad Sandwich with Lettuce
Green Onion Yogurt Dip with relish
Onion Yogurt Dip with Relish Tray
Pasta Salad with veggies
Pasta Salad with Veggies
Radish Mouse
Radish Mouse
Tomato topped with Egg Salad
Tomato topped with Egg salad
Tuna and Lettuce Salad
Tuna and Lettuce Salad

Kale Banana Smoothie

Check out this quick and simple recipe for a Kale Banana Smoothie from Cookitquick.org…

Kale Banana Smoothie
Kale Banana Smoothie courtesy of cookitquick.org

 

All you need is:

  • 1/2 cup skim milk
  • 1 cup nonfat vanilla Greek yogurt
  • 1 large kale leaf, torn into pieces and without thick pieces of the rib (about 1/2 cup)
  • 1 ripe banana
  • Approximately 4 to 6 cubes (smaller ice cubes work better)

Get the instructions here!