Winter's work and winter's rest

February is nearly here, which means the farm season begins. We start our seed sowing in just a few weeks, and hardly feel like we've been away from the fields.

This winter we've worked on our greenhouse, seed ordering and planning. And then there's the chores that never go away: collecting compost, harvesting vegetables, cleaning tools and caring for the chickens. And we must be caring well, because take a look at that egg in the picture... wish I knew which one of our ladies was laying that one.

But don't let me steer you wrong, we've also had time to rest a bit, taking a short trip to Maine, relaxing by evening fires, thinking, and writing our thoughts... rejuvenating for the next season, and we can't wait.

Boomers and stickers

In planning a course on food justice and farming, I listened to Wendell Berry's 2012 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities, "It All Turns on Affection." I adore anything Berry writes, and this talk was no different.

One point in particular stood out to me. He reminds us of the "boomers" and "stickers," a notion his great teacher, Wallace Stegner, imparted on him:

"Boomers, he [Stegner] said, are 'those who pillage and run,' who want 'to make a killing and end up on Easy Street,' whereas stickers are 'those who settle, and love the life they have made and the place they have made it in.^' “Boomer” names a kind of person and a kind of ambition that is the major theme, so far, of the history of the European races in our country. “Sticker” names a kind of person and also a desire that is, so far, a minor theme of that history, but a theme persistent enough to remain significant and to offer, still, a significant hope."

And so, there's hope. And maybe there's even a little bit of "sticker" in all of us that has just gotten beaten down in this culture we've created. Indeed, there is little room to be a sticker if we owe thousands of dollars in interest to banks and other entities for the privilege of getting a college education, must purchase health insurance for ourselves and our family (or, more realistically, take a cut in salary so our employer can offer us coverage), have the "American Dream" of a home mortgage awaiting us, live in a place that has devalued community and extended kinship, grapple with rising costs of basic necessities, and are bombarded with messages that we need more, bigger, better...

Let's let our inner sticker shine. Let us be able to love the life we have and the place we have made it in. Let it start with us, because, as Berry also notes, we as individuals are implicated:

"That we live now in an economy that is not sustainable is not the fault only of a few mongers of power and heavy equipment. We all are implicated. We all, in the course of our daily economic life, consent to it, whether or not we approve of it. This is because of the increasing abstraction and unconsciousness of our connection to our economic sources in the land, the land-communities, and the land-use economies."

Food for thought.

2013 CSA season + other happenings

Join Longhaul Farm's 2013 CSA season!

What is Community Supported Agriculture (CSA)? In CSA, a farm offers "shares" or memberships to the public. In return for your investment you receive a weekly box of freshly harvested produce throughout the growing season, typically from June to September/October.

We offer two membership options:

(1) Household share membership: Whatever is seasonal and harvestable, we’ll share with you. The weekly box should feed 2-3 vegetarian adults or a family of 3-4 with mixed diets and include a variety of 5-15 items, season and weather-permitting. Household share price: $700.

-->  Split shares are also available. For a small farm with limited hands, a ‘split share’ will make harvesting more manageable.  You may split your share with a friend or neighbor. Or, if you’d like to split but don’t have anyone in mind yet to share with, we can do the pairing up for you. People often split shares in two ways: (1) every-other-week pick-ups; or (2) dividing weekly pick-ups with each other. Contact us for more information. Split share price: $350.

(2) Community share membership: Receive a weekly household share of vegetables (see [1] above), plus anonymously subsidize shares for families who don’t have the means to become members themselves. Community share price: $1,400.

What kinds of vegetables will CSA members receive? You will receive a variety of seasonal vegetables, from arugula to zucchini and everything in between. Please click here to see a tentative list.

When and where are pick-ups? Pick-ups are on the farm on either Tuesday or Friday afternoons, your choice.

Will Longhaul Farm’s CSA be different from other CSAs? We follow a similar model of CSA as most local, organic farms. The main difference between our CSA and others is that our CSA will be small-scale, offering up to 25 memberships per season. That means we can provide more individual attention to you as members and collaborate on ideas for improving the current CSA model. We hope our smallness leads to more flexibility and a more satisfying season for both us and our members.

How you can become a member: Space is limited. Please contact us at longhaulny@gmail.com or (845) 424-6277 to become a member. We offer two payment options: (1) full-pay: pay your membership fee by January 31, 2013 – this option gives us the most freedom as growers because we can rely on early resources throughout the season; or (2) pay in 2 installments: pay half of your membership by January 31, 2013 and the other half by June 1, 2013. If you would like to request additional payment options, just contact us and we will work something out.

Other ways you can participate in Longhaul Farm’s season:

(1) If there is surplus produce, we hope to also offer it for sale on a week-by-week basis through our email list. To learn more about these weekly offers and other opportunities, please join our email mailing list at longhaulny@gmail.com.

(2) One Saturday a month we will host a work-day. All CSA and other community members and their families are invited to join us on the farm for a few farm tasks followed by a communal meal together. We want to offer you the opportunity to really see how your food is produced and the work that goes into it. These work-days are optional, but we hope you can join us and help lend a hand!

(3) We will hold classes on food preserving, food preparation, food waste, gardening skills and other educational issues. There will be a fee for participation in the classes. We are looking forward to these small group gatherings where we can share ideas and learn a skill or two together. We will send out more information regarding 2013 classes in the coming months.

Supporting our neighbors with local, nutritious food and a spirit of community is an important part of Longhaul Farm’s mission that we look forward to fulfilling throughout the year. If you have any questions or would like to join, please be in touch: call us at (845)424-6277, email us at longhaulny@gmail.com, or just do it the old fashioned way and drop by at 69 South Mountain Pass.

Busy sitting down

Like many of us, I spent my twenties moving through a series of office jobs trying to figure out what I wanted to do for a living.  Most jobs revolved around my interests -- education, community organizing, or political change -- but the setting was always the same: some version of a room with a desk and computer, which I sat behind dutifully.

For a long time I was unhappy at work and I always thought the job was the problem.  Invariably after a year or two, I would polish up my resume and head for greener pastures.  Rewind and repeat.  You get the picture (and may even find yourself caught up in it at the moment).

In my early thirties, I found myself in the job I had been working towards, directing a small, scrappy advocacy organization that was working for social change and finding success.  But there I was, behind the computer, moving in and out of meetings, the sun and sky and outside world in a window hanging on my office wall like a picture.  And I had a jarring realization -- what if it was working in an office that made me so unhappy?  That was a lot harder to change than a job.

A recent NY Times article about the sedentary routines of our modern life made me think about all of this again.  The article was mostly about obesity, but linked that growing epidemic to a much larger problem -- the western "sedentary life-style that is colonizing the world".  Research studies noted that almost 45% of American's are caught up in daily routines that are almost completely inactive, failing to walk or be active a minimum of twenty minutes a day.

Breaking ground

They key to healthy vegetables is healthy seedlings. This past year we did everything we could to nurture our young plantings... but nothing beats the temperature control, sunlight exposure, or humidity control of a greenhouse.

42" deep into the 1st foundation hole

Luckily for us, a very friendly neighbor gave us a disassembled Lord & Burnham Imperial Evenspan with a curved eave greenhouse. He had it stored in his barn for years, above his sheep stalls and high up in the rafters. He got his hands on it from another neighbor, who got it from another neighbor, who salvaged it from a rooftop on a flophouse in New York City's Hell's Kitchen in the '90s. And even more luckily for us, our neighbor who salvaged it wrote every single part number on every single piece, and we managed to get our hands on the 2-inch thick stack of plans and papers and blueprints for the structure that have been passed around to even more neighbors.

Just this week we broke ground. We are sourcing some local locust for foundation poles and will build the 3-foot foundation the plans require, hopefully before the ground freezes or snow gets in the way.

And this is all in the name of healthy vegetables.

Kinda what our greenhouse will look like

Recipe with corn

Corn souffle

Adapted from this recipe.

Ingredients: Corn, onion, butter, sugar, salt, cayenne, cornmeal, milk, eggs, cream of tartar

Preparing: Melt 4 Tbsp butter. Add finely diced onion and cook until soft. Then add 2 cups sweet corn kernels (we used frozen, so be sure to drain out excess moisture). Cook until onions and corn have browned, about 10 minutes (when using frozen corn). Add 3 tsp. sugar, 1 tsp. salt, cayenne, and 2 cups milk. Bring to a boil, then turn off, cover and let steep for 15 minutes. In the meantime, whisk together 1 cup cornmeal and 3/4 cup milk. Immersion blend the corn mixture and reheat. Once mixture is boiling, whisk in cornmeal/milk mixture slowly and cook a few minutes until thick. Let mixture cool to room temperature. Preheat oven to 400F now. Once mixture is room temp (and oven should be heated by now), whisk in 3 egg yolks. In a separate bowl, beat 3 egg whites and 1/4 tsp cream of tartar to stiff peaks. Fold in egg whites into corn mixture, one-third at a time. Put in well-greased (I used crisco) 1.5 qt souffle pan and bake for 45 minutes.

Eating: Serve immediately out of the oven, but it's also delicious reheated the next day. When serving at the table, just spoon the souffle out. I like this as a substitute for cornbread, which I often find to be too dry.

Dish history: We had friends over who had supplied us with all of our sweet corn, so we had to showcase the vegetable.

Voila!

After writing about it over a year now, sinking the foundation poles last November, and a lot of other farm work in between, we've finally raised the roof on our wood shed/rain harvest roof/pole barn. We had the help of some friends, advice from others, and a really windy day to make the mounting of our last metal roofing panels that much more challenging.

Do it for the workers

We listened to a story this morning on the radio about immigrant farm workers in New York. Apparently, state labor laws do not apply to them: they are not entitled to overtime pay, have no right to a day of rest, and can not collectively bargain.

When will farm workers' wages be something us customers are willing to pay more for? I pay extra to buy organic seeds, organic food, free-range chickens. A lot of this extra cost is going to workers, precisely because there are some (organic farming is more labor-intensive than conventional farming). But why is it so difficult to get me to pay even more so the laborers who are planting and harvesting and packaging can earn a decent wage and a day off?

There are plenty of driven advocates working on this issue. But rather than tax incentives to farmers to encourage higher pay, I think we're in need of a cultural change. We all have to start paying more for our food. So farmers can make a living and their workers can, too.

But raising prices is not what most producers want to do. Perhaps we can start, market by market, with farmers collectively agreeing to charge a little more so they have more to give back to their staff. And we can continue, market by market, with creating educated consumers who learn to care more about the welfare of human laborers than a farmyard animal.

Our changing climate

In the wake of Superstorm Sandy, I, along with many others, have been thinking about climate change. I was engaged in a conversation just the other night with a family friend who does not subscribe to the argument that indeed our planet is warming due to increased emissions of CO2. So I asked him, "Why do you choose not to believe in it?" He immediately replied by asking me why I do believe.

I believe for three reasons.

First, I have concern for future generations of humans, wildlife and plants and the overall life of the planet. I do not want us or them or it to become extinct prematurely. Just as I exercise regularly to be sure I live long and prevent premature death, or someone quits smoking cigarettes or another person receives heart bypass surgery to do just the same, I am willing to take action to prevent the premature extinction of our earth and its inhabitants.

Second, I am a scientist. I have read research on global warming and climate change and understand the use of statistical models to predict the future, and based on my read of the decades of evidence, see a potential for truth. In other words, the evidence is strong enough to me that I reject the possibility that the patterns we are observing are happening by chance alone.

Third, I appreciate the argument's ability to raise ecologic consciousness. If I choose to believe that the warming of our climate, rising of sea levels, and melting of ice caps are a result of me and my fellow humans, it makes me very conscious of what I do on a daily basis. What natural resources do I consume, and can I potentially reduce my consumption? How far do products travel to get to me, and can I choose local purveyors to reduce that travel time? This daily self-reflection, I think, is healthy, because it makes me consider things in a broader perspective. It connects me to so many layers and nodes around the globe and empowers me to realize that what I do matters.

My friend's response to my question of why he chooses not to believe can be boiled down to two reasons, unfortunately (mind you, I'm boiling them down): because the solution costs too much and he doesn't like being told what to do. It's a fascinating response, and I wonder if there are other reasons to shrug off the evidence of climate change... in spite of the storm that flooded NY and NJ after years of rising sea levels and a changing jet stream. I am very willing to listen.

First roast

It's getting cold outside, so we decided to enjoy a nice roast chicken - eating the first bird that we harvested a few weeks ago. It was tasty and substantial and we can't wait to appreciate more!

First roast

Recipe with roots

Glazed roots (such as turnips, or carrots, radish, rutabaga, parsnips)

Ingredients: turnips, butter, sugar, water

Preparing: Cut turnips to desired size. Melt a few tablespoons of butter in a shallow pan. Add turnips, sugar (can use brown or white sugar) and water (can use broth) and a pinch of salt. Cook on low heat, partially covered, until the water has evaporated and the turnips are glazed (the longer you cook the more caramelized the turnips will be- but be careful not to burn!).

Eating: A good side dish to add to your Thanksgiving table.

Dish history: Our take on the classic glazed carrots. You could mix a variety of root vegetables, I'm sure, but be careful of different cooking times. You could try honey or maple syrup as the sweeteners, too.

There's always time to vote

After a long day of mulching and covering up vegetables, we voted. Hope you did, too.

Fall happenings

Nick clearing the West field

Gathering mulch for beds

We are starting to close up shop. We've got parsnips, carrots, beets, turnips, leeks, lettuce, collards, spinach, parsley, scallions, Brussels sprouts and cabbage still in the ground. But all the rest of our vegetable beds have been put to bed, with hefty doses of manure (thanks workationers!), compost and mulch. Nick is clearing a new field to the west of our garden where we will put our pigs this spring. The hens have been moved to their winter housing. We are burning the burn piles in the orchard space so we can bring in our friend with an excavator to dig 30 tree holes. Our roofing material will be delivered on Monday so we can complete the wood shed/rain harvest roof. And we are planning out the foundation for our future greenhouse. This point in the season is really a race against snow cover...

Putting the beds to bed

Hens in their winter coop

Wood shed waiting for roofing

Recipe with squash and greens

Squash and greens

Ingredients: winter squash (butternut, acorn, etc.; could even use sweet potato or yam), greens (collards, chard, spinach, etc.), bread (can be stale), garlic, cumin, salt, pepper, olive oil, red wine vinegar

Preparing: Peel and cut a winter squash into cubes (the size of a dice; we used butternut). Put in baking dish, drizzle with oil (don't be stingy) and bake at 350 for 30 minutes (until perfect, not falling apart and not too hard). Meanwhile, in a saucepan heat olive oil (1-2 Tbsp). Cut bread into cubes (the size of dice) and fry in the hot oil until nice and brown. Add a bit more oil if necessary and add sliced garlic (3-5 cloves), ground cumin, salt and pepper. Cook until garlic has browned (which will give a nutty taste and aroma). Then pulse bread/garlic mixture in a food processor or blender to make breadcrumbs. In another, larger saucepan, heat some olive oil and cook chopped greens (we used collards). Once desired texture (collards took about 10 minutes), add 1-2 Tbsp vinegar (we used red wine vinegar) and cook off a bit. Add breadcrumb mixture and mix well. Then add squash and mix gently.

Eating: Great with a steak.

Dish history: Found this recipe and adapted it to use some of our sweet butternut squash and frost-kissed collards. It's a great way to use up some stale bread, too. The toasted breadcrumbs really make the dish.

Using all of the parts

I hate wasting. I'll even re-use a piece of saran wrap or a pretty clean paper towel. So it's no wonder that I try to make use of all of the parts of the food I cook. I do things as obvious as making a stock out of a chicken carcass or toasting croutons out of stale bread, and will even be adventurous and use carrot greens and fennel fronds.

With recent estimates warning us that Americans waste nearly 40% of our food, I wish that some others might start to hate wasting as much as I do. Sometimes we waste because we buy too much, we over-consume, our shopping carts are bigger than our family's stomachs. And so food gets thrown out with the garbage. Other times we just can't be bothered to make use of it all - how many of us have been guilty of not making turkey soup after Thanksgiving? And a lot of the time we just don't have any idea what to do with all of those parts. It takes time and energy to be creative with your onion ends, flat beer and watermelon rinds.

That said, there are some things even I haven't figured out how to eat myself... and so there's always pets and composting.

Recipe with butternut squash

Butternut squash ravioli

Ingredients: Pasta (2 c flour, 2 eggs, 2 egg yolks); Filling (butternut squash, sage, mozzarella or ricotta cheese, garlic, salt); Sauce (butter, shallot, sage, cream, maple syrup, salt)

Preparing:
To prepare pasta: I use Alice Waters' recipe and technique. Simple.
To prepare filling: Put a little bit of water in a baking dish and put whole butternut squash in. Bake at 350 until tender. Once cool, scrape out flesh of squash and mash with mozzarella or ricotta cheese. Smash garlic cloves with salt and add that to the squash, along with some chopped sage.
To prepare sauce: Melt about 4 Tbsp butter. Saute diced shallot. Add small sage leaves once the butter has started browning a bit. Add about 1 cup heavy cream and a drizzle of maple syrup (to taste). Whisk for a minute or so, add some salt to taste, and you're done.

Eating: You can't eat pasta without some fresh parmesan.

Dish history: I finally made use of my pasta machine and it made me realize how easy it is to make your own fresh pasta. We usually eat our butternut squash ravioli with a brown butter/sage sauce, but we decided to try this more decadent sauce. Double the recipe and freeze your leftovers for another day.

Recipe with carrot greens

Carrot top "seaweed" salad (adapted from Melissa Clark)

Ingredients: Carrot greens, sesame seeds, soy sauce, mirin, sake, sugar

Preparing: Cut off greens of carrots (cutting off most of stem, too) and wash well. Blanch greens in salted water for 2 minutes and then plunge in ice water to stop cooking. Then soak greens in cold water overnight, changing the water about 3 times (this removes the bitterness of the greens). The next day, drain and cut greens to 1-2 inch pieces. Make dressing: Toast 3 Tbsp. sesame seeds and grind into a lumpy paste (if you can't grind all seeds well, then drizzle some sesame oil into the dressing), and mix with 1 Tbsp soy sauce, 1 Tbsp sake (or white wine, if you don't have sake), 1 Tbsp mirin and 1/8 tsp sugar (or up the sugar amount a bit, if you don't have mirin). Pour dressing over greens and let marinate for at least an hour before eating.

Eating: Tastes delicious with any Asian-inspired meal or otherwise.

Dish history: We were visiting Jason's sister to celebrate his niece's birthday and we decided 7 bunches of carrot greens couldn't go to waste, so we tried out this recipe at the party. It really does resemble seaweed salad (mainly because of the dressing and color) and accompanied delicious sloppy joes and tabbouleh salad.

Recipe with pumpkins

Roasted pumpkin tacos

Ingredients: Pumpkins, tortillas, various fresh veggies (radish, cabbage, onion, scallion, parsley, cilantro, ginger, etc), roasted pepitas (pumpkin seeds), cheese, sour cream, lime juice, hot sauce

Preparing: Wash your pumpkin, cut in half, scoop out seeds (and roast them with salt while you are roasting the pumpkins!) and cut into wedges. Coat wedges with some oil and sprinkle with salt and a spice (we use homemade garam masala, you can use cumin, oregano, cinnamon) and roast in a single layer at 350 for 40 minutes or until tender. Meanwhile, chop up your fresh veggies as taco toppings.

Eating: We make our own homemade flour tortillas, melt some cheese on them, throw a pumpkin wedge or two on there and then top with anything we can get our hands on.

Dish history: We made this for a local farm-to-table event and they were a hit! We leave the skins on the pumpkins since they were grown organically (in fact, the roasted skin is the best part). And we top the tacos with our homemade hot sauce. Enjoy!

Recipe with flour

Flour tortillas

Ingredients: Flour, milk, vegetable oil, baking powder, salt

Preparing: Mix together 2 cups flour, 2 tsp. vegetable oil, 1.5 tsp baking powder and 1 tsp. salt. Slowly add 3/4 cup warm milk. Stir until sticky ball is formed and knead on floured surface for 2 minutes. Cover dough for 20 minutes. Then break off 8 sections, roll into small balls, cover and let rest for at least 10 minutes. Now you're ready to roll out each ball on a floured surface and cook on a hot-hot-hot cast iron skillet for ~30 seconds each side.

Eating: Perfect for tacos, burritos, enchiladas, etc. The hot-hot-hot cast iron skillet (with grill ridges, if possible) is really key, as it blackens the tortillas a perfect amount.

Dish history: While living in Argentina we would get serious cravings for tacos. And there were no ready-made tortillas readily available. So we found this recipe that uses wheat flour (as opposed to corn flour which we also could not find anywhere) and are always happy with the outcome. Nothing beats a warm, freshly made tortilla with your taco fixings.

Organic vs. Local

I have been asked so many times what I think is "better"... organic or local?

Hands down, my first answer is "both." There are small, local farms popping up all over the place, and the majority of these farms farm organically. That's organic with a little "o"... the uncertified organic practices that rely on crop rotation, manures and composts, integrated pest management and other ancient ecologically non-degrading practices, but haven't spent the years or $$$ to become official with a big "O."

If you can't have both (even though you can, see websites such as this to find the dynamic duo near you), then it's time to weigh the pros and cons.

Going local might mean you actually know your local farmer and can ask him/her directly about their practices. You can find them at farmer's markets or driving on secondary highways. They may not be able to label themselves as Organic, but their practices might be. But sometimes these local guys run conventional farms, which means they use inorganic pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers. And this is a tradeoff that we make, that we consumers should consciously grapple with when we purchase our vegetables, fruit, and even honey and wine.

Going organic might mean your foods are (nearly) inorganic pesticide/herbicide/fertilizer-free. This is good for your health and the health of the environment. But a lot of times the organic avocados, lettuce, celery and other produce we buy in supermarkets comes from humongous farms across the country or even the world. So what we spare in runoff into our water and waste streams, we contribute to in carbon footprint as our produce travels thousands of miles just to get to us (not to mention heavy irrigation, or unfair labor practices, etc.; see this article for some commentary). This is a tradeoff that we make.

There is considerable debate on this issue that continues in journals, the media and around dinner tables. I say go with your gut. Let's actually think when we make purchases about what values we want to uphold. And rather than ignore the part we play in modern agriculture's destruction of our ecology, get active each and every time we make that exchange of $$$ for food.