OH WINTER VEGETABLES!!

I'm singing to myself in the kitchen...fying garlic & onions & cayennes, parboiling potatoes, pureeing spinach & tomato, defrosting eggplant, chopping carrots.....EVERYTHING from the farm!! I'm working at a north Indian feast for dinner tonight: baingan bharta (eggplant mash), sookha gaajar (fried carrots with lots of cumin seed), palak aloo paneer (spinach & potato - with a bit of paneer left from a previous Bailey's order, and probably a good heap of goat's yoghurt stirred in because I love it so much). On the side, chili pickle that Taa made with a variety of hot peppers from the farm. And maybe some of Karin's chutney too!

Cooking up so many different vegetables in February is making me rather blissfully happy - there is nothing in this that feels like sacrifice for eating locally. Nothing at all.

Here's a few pics of some of the dinner veg in their raw form, to inspire you for your own summer garden planning:

Member-Supported Community Shares Available

I'm bowled over by the generosity of my returning CSA members!! So far, $650 $900! has been donated to create a pool to fund sliding-scale subsidized shares for the coming season.

If you know of anyone (ideally in the Mount Hope/Mary Allen neighbourhood) who might be interested in a flexibly-priced share, please ask them to be in touch. I'm really excited to be able to offer a portion of the shares at a more accessible price point this season.

Thanks so much to all who have contributed so far!

Some upcoming workshops

There are some GREAT workshops coming up in the KW area, for those interested in food & farming-related issues. Thought I'd post a few here:

Little City Farm ALWAYS has fabulous workshops on their roster!
A few coming up include:
Intro to Soap Making, Sat Jan 22
Intro to Cheese Making, Sat Feb 19
4 Season Harvest: Extending the Growing Season, Sat Mar 5
Starting Seedlings at Home, Sat Mar 19 (with me!)

Farming for Foodies: The realities of farming sustainably in Ontario
Sat, Feb 5, Fiddleheads
Ever wanted to know just a little bit more about farming and the way your food is grown? Farming for Foodies is a venue for food lovers and the farm curious. Facilitated by my much-respected farmer friend Tarrah Young of Green Being Farm, this workshop is designed to give you the nitty gritty on how your food is grown. Learn more about the basics of organic agriculture, how to apply these fundamentals to your own backyard garden, how to find 'real' organic food, and get your questions answered about the barriers preventing farmers from getting good food into your hands.  Cost: $75. More details at http://farmingforfoodies.blogspot.com/. To register, contact Margo McIntosh margo@balanceyourapple.com, or (519) 894-0002.

 Finally, the Waterloo Region Food Systems Roundtable posts events here. Lots of workshops, conferences & other events coming up, including a few in particular that caught my interest:

Deconstructing Dinner for Resilient Food Secure Communities 
Tuesday, January 25, 6:30-8:30pm,  KPL Forest Heights Branch
Where Does Your Meat Come From?
Tuesday, February 22, 2011, 6:30-8:30pm, KPL Forest Heights Branch
FOOD JUSTICE: Our food, Our bodies 
March 18-20, 2011, Waterloo (conference coordinated by WPIRG)

Geeking Out

I've been playing with a lot of numbers recently. I do love winter for all the time it allows me to spend cozied up with a mug of hot coffee and pages & pages of Excel data... (I'm serious)

The most fascinating has been the crop profitability data I've been crunching. I've been trying to figure out which crops are most profitable to grow based on the amount of space they take up in the garden. If I set the target of grossing $25,000/acre, then crops need to average $3.44/bed foot. $30,000/acre requires $4.13/bed foot. The calculations are based on yield/bed foot * price/unit of yield. Here's a few outstanding examples at both extremes:

Swiss Chard: $8.13
Cucumber: $1.54
Arugula: $10.97 (!!!)
Broccoli: $1.88
Eggplant: $10.61
Spinach: $2.27

This is based on just 1 year's worth of data, so the numbers will become more meaningful over time. And, more importantly, none of this takes into consideration the amount of work different crops are to grow and harvest (this is really quite variable), nor the expense of inputs required (row cover, extra compost etc), but I have a pretty good sense of how that layers in without trying to put hard numbers on it.

What does all this mean? Well... not much for my CSA members, who will continue to get essentially the same array of vegetables as they have in the past. It may, however, affect how hard I work to market particular crops, push me to figure out how to improve the yields of some lower profitability crops, make me increase some individual crop prices, or change the balance of what I bring to market on Saturdays.

Next up....seed orders!!

That's it that's all for fieldwork 2010

It being a warm day & all, I decided to give starting Ruby 1 more try this afternoon. Brought out battery charger, hauled a long extension cable down from the barn & hooked it up, but the charger just clicked & whirred & told me the battery was already charged (lies!!). So I called my awesome brother Jamie for advice, and he kindly swung by in his 4-wheel drive Subaru which he drove right through the snow to where Ruby sat. We hooked them up for 15 mins or so, he revved the engine a bunch, and after a few deadly-sounding clicks, Ruby's engine started to cough. A few more tries & she was running smooth!!

So now Ruby & the bush hog (which would not detach from the PTO) are tucked into the barn for winter. A few last outstanding tasks are taken care of too: I finally scraped all the hornets' nests down in the greenhouse, made sure the roof is sufficiently shedding snow, grabbed the last few wayward bins & tools still kicking around, and am ready to call it a year.

Well, other than the never-ending spreadsheets of course...

I need to remember this

I just got pretty much my all-time favourite CSA feedback from a member today. It's had me grinning for hours. Emily is a wonderful childcare provider to 5 or 6 little ones, one of whom ("Mr. O") came with her on a farm visit back in August or early September. I remember him carefully helping us shuck edamame beans  - with surprising patience! Now, more than 3 months later, this story from Emily:

Angie .. You and Fertile Ground have had a major positive impact on half a dozen little kids, thanks to your warm welcome to little Mr O that day we visited. He has shown an interest, hesitant at first, but now much more enthusiastic, in eating vegetables. First carrots. When I told him they're "from Angie's farm" he ate them. Of course, the younger ones had to have some too. Then it was kale. Then squash. Today at lunch I served lentils and rice and squash. "But Emily, we need kale from Angie's farm"!!!! (and Mr. O isn't even here today). Their reward for eating the rest of their food was kale from Angie's farm. GOTTA LOVE IT."

I need to remember what an incredible impact 2 hours can have on a child's life. And just what it means for kids to experience a sense of real connection with the source of their food - in person but, apparently, even just in story!

Stuck

Poor Ruby. Can't get her battery to fire up (despite hooking it to the car battery for at least 10 minutes last week) so she's stuck in the snowstorm instead of tucked into the barn for winter shelter where she belongs.

Need to decide if I'm going to give starting her up 1 more try (maybe with a battery charger instead of the car?) or just tarp her & leave her in the snow. For the moment I have little choice, given that she's probably been drifted in by the recent snowfall & I doubt her engine would turn over in this cold anyways.

I don't really know how much worse it would be for her to spend the winter fully outdoors rather than in an unheated barn, but it somehow feels wrong & neglectful.

Oh summer....