Well, it was another storm near-miss this week, with a tornado touching down in nearby Luck (about 10 miles away). Here we had some stiff wind and a bit of rain, but didn’t feel the need to hunker down in the root cellar this time. The sun came out before the rain even ended, prompting me to declare “hey it’s rainbow weather!” and run down to the field as quickly as possible to check … and yup! A double arc over the greenhouses.

The field is coming in briskly, finally, albeit about two weeks later than usual. The corn that had been knocked over in the storm is standing tall again thanks to the efforts of our squad of summer WWOOFers, who individually staked them back up.

An extremely persistent doe that has learned how to jump our fence and dine on the smorgasbord of crops … she’d munched hundreds of sweet peas, Swiss chard plants, etc – but she really crossed a line with Farm Boss Kristin when she started methodically devouring the edamame.

We have applied for and received a agricultural damage deer hunting permit – if Evil Bambi doesn’t take the hints we are dropping in the form of mannequins, extra fence lines, screaming arm-waving sprinting WWOOFers, wire barriers, shock baits, etc, then we will soon be eating the yields of the field in the form of venison …

In the Box:

• Carrots & Greens – the greens make great soup stock! Or you can make pesto, sautee or blanch them to make delicious greens, or try this chimichurri recipe perhaps.
• Cucumbers

• Zucchini – we have been doing everything with zukes this week; zoodles, fritters, bread, pancakes, galette filling, and slicing and browning them in butter! (tried making zuke chips too but took them out of the solar dehydrator too soon … )

Here are some other ideas you might enjoy:

https://static.nytimes.com/email-content/CK_15619.html?campaign_id=58&instance_id=11212&segment_id=15619&user_id=c4c490fed0cdb0bfe26799dba00189d6&regi_id=93526706&nl=cooking&emc=edit_ck_20190727

• Beans – three kinds of magic beans with which giants’ kingdoms may be accessed, or just eat the things let’s be real
• Cabbage or Okra – two lucky boxes got okra, the rest of ya’ll get the first cabbages of the season.
• Broccoli – various kinds of this tasty edible flower
• Kale – Red Russian & Curly Blue varieties
• Basil – Mammoth Italian

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Well, we finally got a real good soaking rain on Friday night! 3.2 inches of it, actually! But the rain wasn’t the star of the show…

Friday morning I saw that we were in the heart of the severe weather bullseye drawn by the national weather service.

Normally, I am rooting for a storm to hit us, as we often need the rain and I love the energy of a good storm. But this didn’t sound like a good storm at all; this was one I’d feel better about missing out on.

Having a baby and a high tunnel have both made me a little less of a cheerleader for team Stormbringer, it seems. It was oppressively hot and swelteringly humid, so the promised temperature drop of nearly twenty degrees sounded heavenly – but such a drastic relief would come at what cost?

So I spent the day rather compulsively checking the radar with my phone, watching little blobs of storms flare up to our west, and then dissipate or simply miss us. Toward evening, a large blood red system marched eastward past Saint Cloud, heading generally in our direction – but on a course to miss us to the North.

But as I watched (updating a new frame every five minutes), an angry red arm stretched southward from the main storm and began to thicken. The arm clenched a knobby fist, flexing its muscles menacingly as it swung across Minnesota toward us.

The greenhouses were open, plants in trays outside, a shade canopy over the processing area tables, and all of us occupying various lightweight shelters anchored to the ground only by the grace of gravity. As I stood up to go consult with Farm Boss, my phone sounded an alert – and said a storm was approaching with 80 mph winds and golf ball sized hail.

On the radar, the storm’s angry arm unclenched one finger of the fist hurtling our way, and gave me the bird.

Within minutes, we had alerted everyone and gotten the hatches, such as they are, battened down. Greenhouse doors and vents descended rapidly as the western sky darkened and curdled and flashed, and the trees nervously clenched their toes into the sandy soil. 5 adults, one baby, two dogs, and a cat gathered at the mouth of the root cellar – our private concrete cave, refreshingly cool. Kristin took advantage of the opportunity to organize the canned goods, Ace happily sprawled out on the cool sandy floor, Widget found security beneath a shelf. the kitty snuggled into its carrying backpack, and the rest of us sat in the truck topper-roofed atrium watching the pummeling rain blast through the whipping tree branches.

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I had a knife at hand in case I heard the high tunnel flapping loose – I’d cut the plastic free if needed to save the frame. The sky was green and sounded like an engine, but the fist never really struck. When the worst had past, we took stock – structures all intact, no major trees down! The corn rows were smashed almost flat, sunflowers had toppled onto various crops, the peppers and bean plants were tipped over and violently tousled.

Over the following minutes and days we got a sense of what we’d been spared – miles of blasting wind damage across the state, marked by downed power lines and shattered tree trunks.

“widespread straight line winds raked across northern Polk County. Most of the damage was to trees, although some light structural damage was also noted. Trees fell toward the east southeast, which is consistent with the strong west northwest wind. Maximum wind was estimated at 90 mph given the tree damage and a measured gust of 84 mph in Cushing, WI (Polk County.) The same weather station measured a sustained 73 mph wind for 5 minutes.”

In other news, we went foraging a bit and made a delicious cake with the blackberries and raspberries we found.

And upon investigating a strange metallic chewing sound, I made friends with a flying squirrel that had been gnawing the grease off the grill.

https://weather.com/storms/severe/news/2019-07-19-severe-outbreak-upper-midwest-forecast

In the Box

Zucchini 

Pea Tips – Turn a boring limp salad all fancy and delicious, or add to a sandwich for a good time.

Cucumbers –

Onions – we left the skin on so you can store them if you want, in a cool dry spot

Beans – beans beans and beans, three colors of em!

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.thekitchn.com/10-ways-to-turn-a-bag-of-fresh-green-beans-into-dinner-246257

Basil – basil basil and basil, three kinds of it. (Lemon, Mammoth Italian, & Purple) . Clip the stem ends and do the water in a vase on the counter thing.

A recipe for basil AND beans:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/recipes/chopped-string-beans-basil-and-pine-nuts/16241/?utm_term=.e116f6fbab61

Beets – beets beets and beets – three colors of them

Radish pods – “Pop the pods off the stem and enjoy their zippy flavor in a salad or on a sandwich. They will lose their heat if cooked but you could stir fry them.” – Kristin

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Summertime summertime some some summertime …

This week saw more fall crops transplanted out into the field, more insect enemies of the people destroyed, more weedy weeds weeded. We got a couple rejoiceable rounds of rain, plenty of sunshine, and a bit more humidity than we’d really prefer. But hey! Summer!

Probably the most noteworthy event this week is also pretty gross. So you might want to just skip down to the Box section.

You’re still here? OK then. Have you ever heard of fish emulsion? It’s an organic fertilizer made from the carcasses of dead fish. Plants LOVE it – which is why Native Americans would bury dead fish next to their corn crops. Well, we got a tip that someone in nearby Saint Croix Falls was giving away 55 gallon drums of organic fish emulsion – and for years, we’ve been hoping to start using liquid fertilizer to feed nutrient-hungry crops through our drip irrigation lines. But it’s not easy to find locally and expensive as hell to ship. So we pounced on the opportunity, and within a few hours I was on the road to pick it up with our friend Steffan (Kristin stayed back to go to the township meeting where the citizens planned to speak out against a proposed mega pig-farm that’s been menacing our area).

The good news was that we timed it to arrive at the same time as another farmer was picking up a massive vat of the stuff – he brought a skid steer loader, which he was willing to use to load up our little trailer with three of the ~500 lb barrels.

The bad news was that the plastic lids had degraded and broken in the sun over the three years they’d sat out – and they sloshed EVERYWHERE as we rocked them into position in the trailer. On our feet, our legs, our hands, all over the trailer – and at one point, a wave spewed up and out, forming a fist that punched Steffan in the mouth.

And I haven’t mentioned yet …. this stuff was the grossest smelling stank that we’d ever smelled – and we’re both veterans of exploring sewer tunnels, if that tells you anything. Don’t even try to imagine what three year old slurried carp carcass juice smell like. It’s amazingly pungently horrid, and the smell stains anything it touches.

Then once we finally got them loaded and hit the road, a spotted deer fawn darted out in the wet road ahead of us …I slammed on the brakes, squealed down to a crawl that just missed the baby deer – as thousands of pounds of fish goo barrels slid forward and sloshed a wave of stench at the van.

We stink, the van stinks, the air around the field stinks, and the trailer will never not stink again. It was epically gross and hilarious and a memory that will linger much as the smell of the fish emulsion does … now we just have to figure out how to get the barrels out of the trailer, and how to filter and inject the stuff into our irrigation lines. It should be … interesting.

These are the things we do to grow for you! :)

BOX FIVE:

Red Onions

Peas – Snow & Sugar Snap

Zucchini – three color varieties

Radishes – French Breakfast

Kohlrabi / or Cucumbers / or Okra – we didn’t have enough kohlrabi for everyone, due to a combination of an epic cutworm boom this spring, and that June frost we had. So some of you get the first of the cucumbers instead – and the Goat Farmers get okra. We have a second round of kohlrabi coming for the late season though!

Thai Basil

Kale –  Curly Blue, Red Russian, & Tuscan

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This will be a short one – not only is the laptop still dead (resurrection pending), but my phone is swelling up and threatening to explode. It keeps rebooting…

This week we used sorcery fire to repell a horrendous invasion of potato beetle larvae, planted kohlrabi, trellised tomatoes plants up, hay mulched, and hosted family.

The garden is looking lovely overall (if you skip the warzone potato rows), (and the weed row where the beets are supposed to be).

Kristin asks, “Why is it so cloudy all the time?” And also,

Kristin says:

Week 4 box

Salad mix – this is the last of the salad for awhile..

Purslane –

“is packed with vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants and has the highest Omega-3 content of any leafy green.” It’s also an abundant weed in the garden. It doesn’t seem threatening and isn’t useless like bindweed and quack grass so we let it grow. I like it raw. Here’s some inspiration:

http://www.thegardenofeating.org/2014/08/purslane.html?m=1

Basil – mostly mammoth leaf basil.

Make some pesto!

Onions – yup.

Garlic scapes – Sleepy Root Farm let us harvest these from their considerably larger garlic patch. Oh the things you could do! You can make garlic scape pesto by food processing the following 

• 1 cup garlic scapes, sliced crosswise (about 10 to 12 scapes)
• ¼ cup raw sunflower seeds
• ½ cup extra virgin olive oil
• ¼ cup Parmesan cheese
• ½ cup basil leaves
• Juice of one lemon

You can cut them into short segments that could be stir fried. Mince them up for a creamy garlic dip or for a salad dressing. Use as a garlic bulb substitute in your recipes. Turn them into fridge pickles. 

Zucchini and summer squash – cute when they are young. Sautéed with garlic scapes? 

Peas – sugar snap and the flat podded snow peas that are preferred for stir frying.

There are a lot this week. A lot. You could bring them to a potluck with veggie dip or share them with a friend/neighbor/coworker/stranger.

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THE END AND WE ALL LIVED HAPPILY AFTER

“Now not enough water puts thirst in a man
And just enough water puts joy in his land
But too much water will overflow
And drown the man’s laptop, so there you go.”

• Roger Miller, sorta

This week’s tale is;

it didn’t rain, it didn’t rain some more, then
it finally rained and it was wonderful and
the crops rejoiced and
the farmers allowed themselves a small smile at this, and then
the next morning realized that
the wonderful rain had ran down the woodstove’s chimney pipe
into the screen porch and
dripped off the elbow and
onto and into and through our laptop
and now it’s dead dead dead:

QUE SERAAAAA SERRAAAAAAAA!

Oops! But let’s not miss the relevant and important thing here which s that we got over an inch of rain finally! A good long soaking for the field, just what we needed. And speaking of good news & rain, we are super happy about the turnips in this week’s box, and thankful to little creatures that look something like this:

Over the last few years, most notably last year, our root crops really suffered from underground bugs called “cabbage root maggots.” Remember the rutabagas with the worm-chewed surfaces? The ones we sent out to you were ugly – and those were the best we got; the others were devoured and ruined. And the little shits were stunting the other crops as well, by gnawing on their roots. We don’t like to use chemical pesticides, not even organic-approved ones … so Kristin ordered us some sea monkeys.

OK not really sea monkeys, but the beneficial nematodes did come to us in a two little cooler packs of organic-looking slush. We waited for a rainstorm, and then these predatory flatworm slushies were dissolved into lots of water. I donned a heavy raincoat (this was during the chilly-wet early springtime) and a heavy 4-gallon backpack sprayer loaded with nematodes, and walked around the full area of the field, trying to spray it everywhere.

These beneficial nematodes work by being ruthless packs of predators, seeking and destroying the root maggots – like this:

It was hard to believe it would work – we couldn’t see anything of course. It wasn’t cheap, and it wasn’t easy to apply – and until today, we didn’t really know if it had done a thing. But!

Last year the turnips were totally destroyed and we didn’t even give any out to you. This year – salad turnips are beautiful! Thank you, little badasses!

Oh! I wanted to invite y’all to come out to our friend & neighbor’s weekly event – every Wednesday evening, Maaren fires up her woodfired pizza oven at her place, for “Peace by Piece” (nee “Pizza on Purpose,” which was a name someone possessive was using alas). She’s quite near the Farm, and there is a good mix of new and regular characters there, enjoying some donation-based pizza chowing, a bonfire, and good humans. We go pretty much every week! 

But that’s tomorrow – today, let’s talk veggies. Kristin?

Box Three

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Kristin sez:

• Lettuce – Baby Romaine & butter crunch & bekana for your fresh leafy green needs. It’s the time of year to enjoy them and eat lots of salad!
• Kale (Red Russian / Curly Blue / Dino) –

• We often enjoy a big pile of  kale sautéed with a little oil, salt and garlic or onions. You can add it to a creamy pasta dish, eggs, or rice. We are also a fan of kale chips and massaged kale salads.
• Sugar Snap Peas

• Definitely Widget’s favorite vegetable and I’m inclined to agree. They are good fresh and sautéed.
• Onions –

• I use a lot of onions when I cook and assume others do too. You can use them raw and temper their flavor with something acidic, like lemon or lime juice or a vinegar depending on how you are using them. Otherwise mellow them out by cooking them in a dish. 
• Garlic scapes – The soon-to-be-flowers of the garlic plant, snipped off so the plant puts its energy into bulb development. Chop them up finely and use ’em like garlic. Goes great in a recipe with:
• Garlic chives – stir fry, pesto, salad dressing …
• Radish/turnip – see above. NEMATODES FOR THE WIN
• Broccoli – The broccoli has been set back repeatedly by cutworm assaults this spring, and so formed small, early heads. They’re tender and delicious – just small. We’ll keep the plants for sideshoots, and have already started a fall season crop – which generally seems to flourish better for us.

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