"I choose to risk my significance;
to live so that which came to me as seed
goes to the next as blossom,
and that which came to me as blossom,
goes on as fruit."
- Dawna Markova

What’s in the box this week:

... and if you have an extra-fruit share:
2 additional baskets
of strawberries and
5 additional lemons

CALENDAR

Sat. Jun 23 - Summer Solstice Celebration.
the Banana Slug String Band will be playing this time for sure!
4pm - 10pm

Sat/Sun Aug. 4&5 - Children’s Mini Camp.
noon Saturday - sundown Sunday

Sat/Sun Aug. 28&29
Wood Fired Bread Oven Building project

Sat. Sep 22 - Fall Equinox Celebration,
3pm - 9pm

Sat. Oct 20 - Halloween Pumpkin U-Pick,
all day

Welcome to all our new members joining us in June. Summer is upon us and we welcome the start of the season with a Solstice celebration, June 23rd here on the farm. The Banana Slug String Band (whose members are also CSA members), a must see and hear for children of all ages, will join us with their music. There is always lots of wonderful food, as everyone brings a dish to share, and our traditional bonfire will light up the evening sky. Mark your calendars!!

What's Up on the Farm
Not much to inform you about except perhaps that we survived the first heat wave. Also, several people are eager to participate in farm work activities. Next week I will write up a schedule. I am open to suggestions and ideas as per usual, so please e-mail or call me so that I can consider including them.

Crops and Critters
The lemons in your share are Eureka lemons, thick skinned and juicy. Camille Nash, an organic lemon grower in Corralitos (10 min from our farm), has offered to let us pick these "yellow beauties" from her orchard. As for a crop update: we are planting pumpkins and winter squash this week, next week we are digging our first spring potatoes, and my guess is that we will have green beans in 2-3 weeks.

Of Interest
Sustainable Agriculture: Is it just for farmers? Following are some excerpts from an article written by Judith Redmond and Thomas Nelson (of Full Belly Farms) entitled "The Food Ethic: Values of the Emerging Food System", and published in the CAFF (Community Alliance for Family Farmers) Agrarian Advocate, Spring 2001. "...When one says, "Sustainable Agriculture" it doesn’t bring "eaters" to mind. But why should someone living in Los Angeles feel drawn to a movement defined around agriculture? Many people living in a non-agricultural environment have no emotional or intuitive reason to think that sustainable agriculture has much to offer them. This needs to change. Eaters are as much a part of the food and agriculture system as farmers. We may have access to cheap mass produced food, but at a heavy cost in terms of human health and long-term sustainability. Our current food system values centralization, cheap prices, cosmetic uniformity, high-tech processing and packaging, and homogeneity worldwide. With the globalization of the food system, the trend is towards the loss of independent farms, rural culture, and artisan cuisine. The environment is a big loser, with trends in soil and farmland loss, water quality degradation and heavy pesticide use showing no signs of improvement." Furthermore the article proposes that, "...consumers, farmers and many others need to join under the same umbrella and adopt a set of values that speak equally to farmers and eaters. These common values comprise a food ethic that recognizes the central importance of food in all our lives, helps us build a common vision that unifies and and broadens the sustainable agriculture and food systems movement. At a more practical level the food ethic can be practiced by teaching children about food and farming, by maintaining a garden, by joining a CSA, and/or by shopping at the farmers’ market. On a grand scale, the food ethic is about protecting the capacity of our planet to grow food. At and individual level, the food ethic is about buying food from someone you trust."

Member to Member Forum
Charles Limbach has indicated that a handful of people are interested in building the wood fired bread oven here on the farm. The last weekend of July (28th - 29th) has been selected. Since the oven typically takes a day or two to build, participants have the option to sleep over. We welcome children, however we expect that you will have someone along who will look after them. Food will be provided, and a $25 donation is suggested. Please contact Charles at (831) 663-1161 if you wish to participate.

Remember, if you wish to communicate something to the rest of the CSA membership, you may use this forum to do so. To submit something to be included here, please contact the editor (see below) by Sunday to get it into the following week’s newsletter.

Produce Storage Tips
(in lieu of "Crop of the Week")
Fellow CSA member Emily Levy of Santa Cruz asked if we could share some storage tips for the veggies found in our boxes, as sometimes she has difficulty getting certain items to last. Since I expect she is not alone in this concern, I thought I'd expand some on the little 'spinach prep' blurb I wrote for last week's recipes. If there are other box items for which you'd like storage tips, feel free to contact me (via newsletter editor contact info, at the bottom of this page) and I'll see if I can't cover it in a future newsletter. - Debbie

Let's address leafy greens in general. When you are considering a particular green for storage, you need to take a couple things into account. Most important are how hardy the green itself is, and the air-and-moisture content of its storage 'container'. Let's start with the air/moisture issue. Ideally your greens like a bit of humidity to stay crisp and fresh. Wetness, however, accelerates rot. Exposure to air can also bring on premature degradation. The process I described last week for preparing spinach -- wash, spin away excess water, place layers of damp (not wet!) leaves in between layers of paper towels, roll up jelly-roll style, stick in a plastic bag, squeeze or suck out excess air and tie closed -- covers all three issues, and works well for any of your more delicate greens (such as spinach, arugula, mustard greens, etc.). The reason it works so well is because the paper towels wick away the remaining moisture on the leaves and become damp, providing that ideal humidity-without-wetness condition. Then sucking the air out (I actually do this, reverse-balloon style, and it works great) reduces that other bugaboo: exposure to air. When I prepare my spinach this way, it will easily last a week or more. Typically the hardier greens (such as kale, chard, collards, etc.) hold up pretty well by simply storing, unwashed, in their original tied/bundled state, in a plastic bag... as long as they are not wet.

A corrolary to this is, what if your greens arrive home a bit limp (say if your box of veggies got warm, or you didn't get to them right away)? You can often 'crisp up' limp greens by immersing them in a sink with cold water for a little while, then spinning or shaking off the water before using (or storing á lá spinach).

The only thing I do not know definitively is the relationship between length-of-time-since-harvest and loss-of-nutrients. I believe there is a direct relationship, but I have not found any specifics. However, I can guarantee your CSA produce is much fresher than anything you can get in a grocery store, so you're ahead of the game there.

Notes from Debbie’s Kitchen . . . . . . . . Have a recipe you’d like to share? Contact the newsletter editor.

This is a recipe I ran in '99 and '98, so you long-term members, I hope you don't mind! (But I think new members will appreciate it.) We've got most of the key ingredients this week: broccoli, cauliflower, garlic, onion and fresh lemons, and as I have said in the past, this is really a wonderfully flavorful dish. - Debbie

Cauliflower-Broccoli Saute with lemon, garlic and ginger
excerpted from "Gourmet Vegetarian Cuisine: Friendly Foods" by Brother Ron Pickarski, O.F.M.
Serves 6

2 tbsp. olive or canola oil
1 C diced onion
1 tbsp. minced garlic
1 tbsp. peeled minced ginger
1 tsp. salt
1 C water
3 C cauliflower florets & pieces
3 C broccoli florets & pieces
1 tbsp. lemon juice
1 tbsp. lemon zest

This dish has a delicately balanced flavor. A word of caution: when acid is used with a green veggie, it loses its appealing bright green color. To avoid this, I recommend that you wait to add the lemon juice until just before you serve this dish.

Heat oil in a large skillet. Add the onion, garlic, ginger and salt. Saute 5-6 minutes. Add water and cauliflower, cover and steam 3 minutes. Add broc-coli and cover again, steam for 4 more minutes. Add lemon zest and juice just before serving.

*Click Here* for a link to a comprehensive listing of recipes from Live Earth Farm's newsletters going back as far as our 1998 season! You can search for recipes by harvest week OR by key ingredient. Recipe site is updated weekly.