Cucumbers, Peas & Beets in the CSA Box This Week

We have guests staying with us from the Beltway this weekend, so I'm excited to be able to share our weekly CSA share with them as we fire up the grill.

Looks like I'll have more red currants to figure out what to do with. My plan is to bake the ones I got a couple weeks ago (which I froze), into muffins.

I'm particularly excited about the beets though. I'm hopeful they'll come with their greens attached.

Here's what's in the box this week:

• Cucumbers
• Green & Gold Zucchini
• Gold or Candy-Striped Beets
• Curly or Flat-Leaf Parsley
• Broccoli
• Tuscan Kale
• Snow or Snap Peas
• Head Lettuce
• Red Currants
• Garlic Chives

Ideological Billboards Abound in S.C./N.C.

Several years ago when Sim and I lived in South Carolina, we'd go out of our way to check out larger-than-life roadside signs like "Trust Jesus" or my personal favorite, "Turn to Jesus or Burn in Hell."

Subtle eh?

This in-your-face evangelism was foreign to me, even having grown up in the Bible Belt and just graduated from a fairly conservative Christian university. 

Well, it's nice to know that not much has changed in the last decade...except the signs are getting bigger, more targeted and, well, hateful.

Take this one we saw a couple times off I-26: "Islam is Rising: Be Warned." The billboard images are dark and ominous, no doubt meant to incite fear. I'm thinking they'll also incite hate and intolerance.

WIS TV reports here that the signs are the handiwork of the Christian Action Network, which didn't appear to want to talk about the signs other than to point viewers to its online anti-Islam rhetoric.

Interestingly, there's yet another billboard debate raging just across the boarder in North Carolina. Not far from our hotel, and just down the road from the relatively new Billy Graham Library, the Secular Association has erected a billboard featuring a 1890s wording from the Pledge of Allegiance, "One Nation, Indivisible."

According to our hosts in the city and this Fox News Charlotte story, it didn't take long for folks around there to notice the missing words, "under God," which were added to the Pledge in the 1950s.

Never a dull moment in the South, especially when it comes to religion and politics.

Tea Party in South Carolina

No vacation would be complete unless it involved some sort of agri-tour. So for our trip to South Carolina this week, I was delighted that I wasn't even the one who had to suggest it.

My brother-in-law wanted to go to the Charleston Tea Plantation, which bills itself as America's only tea garden.

I'm thinking it's probably the largest tea farm in the United States. But I suspect there are smaller growers.

Indeed, Big Island Tea in Hawaii is a hand-picked operation, employing sustainable ag practices.

But I digress...

I'm not a huge tea drinker, yet I found the tour (on a decommissioned Philadelphia trolly bus) to be fascinating.

Turns out the plantation's tea plants are direct clones of a tea operation started up not far from Charleston, first in an experimental U.S. government farm in the mid-1880s, in Summerville. 

The government abandoned its effort. But in 1888, Dr. Charles Shepard decided to give tea another try. He had success with his Pinehurst Tea Plantation, which grew and harvested tea until his death in 1915.

According to our guide, there was renewed interest in American-produced tea during the Cold War. The leaders in this effort were from Lipton Tea Co. The tea giant apparently got a little nervous that its tea supplies would dry up, so they bought some property on an old potato farm near Charleston and had tea experts go up to Summerville and begin taking Pinehurst cuttings for planting on their property.

Currently, there are more than 300 varieties of Camellia senensis growing on more than 140 acres on Wadmalaw Island. The tea is sold under the American Classic Tea brand.

The tea, especially the sweetened raspberry we sampled, was delicious. 

I was impressed with the plantation's agriculture practices. Tea needs to be both regularly watered and rooted in well-drained soil. The plantation accomplishes the drainage with a series of strategically-placed ditches between the fields. And the water not provided by Mother Nature comes from three ponds on the property that are teeming with wildlife.

We were also all intrigued by the on-site invention, the Green Giant, a specialty harvester that takes the place of some 500-700 laborers. Without it, tea production, at least on this site, wouldn't be profitable.

Sea Turtle Surprise at Sunrise

Yesterday morning, I got up at sunrise, found a few tidal pools along Folly Beach, S.C., and saw three crabs and a couple sea anemone.

When Sim got up this morning with my niece Lisa, I was still pretty sleepy, so I took a pass. Big mistake.

Sim and Lisa came back with news that they'd just watched a giant sea turtle leave her nest and return to the Atlantic. I bolted right out of bed, still in my jammies, hair mussed up and headed straight to the beach. 

I missed the old girl. But there was still plenty of activity. A staffer from the Charleston Aquarium was there with volunteers to dig up and move the loggerhead turtle's nest to higher ground, a few feet straight back into the protected dune.

She'd laid 134 eggs that the staffer, Shannon, carefully dug up and transplanted, careful not to rotate them.

Then they staked out the spot and their work was done.

Sim and Lisa got some great pix of the whole exciting event, a rare treat for vacationers.

We learned we can track the progress of the nest at a site called Folly Turtles - Nest 20.

We'll try to upload more photos later. Busy morning here and we need to send our pix off to the volunteers whose cameras weren't in working order. Maybe some of our pix will end up on the Folly Turtles site!

Update: Here are some more pix from the morning, including a screen shot of the Folly Turtles site, which posted one of Sim's pix. Thanks Nancy!

Here she is, headed back into the water. No estimate on her age, though she has to be at least 30. This photo is courtesy of my niece Lisa....excellent shot:

Here are the implements to mark the spot and the staffer and volunteer digging out the eggs from the original nest.

Staking out the secondary, human-dug nest up in the dune:

Screen shot of the Folly Turtles site featuring Sim's money shot:

1st Summer Share Is In The Fridge, But Will It Go to Waste?

We picked up our first box of veggies from the Sandhill Organics CSA drop off.

It's a nice variety. Unfortunately, we won't have much chance to enjoy it since we'll be traveling. I tried to barter the bounty for pet sitting, but there was no interest.

To avoid wasting the lot, I hope to do some freezing and prepping so we can store some of the food while we're away. And, if there's space, I may just shove a head of lettuce into my luggage.

This week's box:

• Red Currants [Will need to check with my CSA support group to find out what to do with these.]
• Garlic Scapes [Yay...more pesto]
• Broccoli [Easy to freeze]
• Strawberries [Will probably freeze these too.]
• Swiss Chard
• Spinach
• Lettuce
• Baby Leeks

I think the leeks will keep. But I'm not sure what to do about the Swiss chard, spinach and lettuce.

Mid-Week Market - Less Market, More 'Street Festival' - Starts This Week

Oak Park's new Mid-Week Market starts this week and I have mixed feelings about it.

I'm all for more programs and events that draw attention to locally-produced food and help forge relationships with farmers.

I'd been led to believe that this Mid-Week Market would be another farmers market, featuring local agriculture and home-grown businesses with a sustainable focus.

But the marketing materials present this as more of Chamber of Commerce-sponsored night on the town:

"More than a farmers’ market, closer to a street festival, the Mid-Week Market features locally grown fruits and vegetables, food vendors offering a wide selection of ready-to-eat items and local retailers selling goods and services...Local microbrews and wine are available for on-site consumption as well, along with food demonstrations and live music. "

Don't get me wrong, I think it's great that my village is looking for ways to drum up consumer support for local business. But if it's not farm-focused, then let's not confuse the two.

And if there is a farm focus, I sure hope the produce is grown locally and not just what I can buy 2 for 1, trucked in from Florida and California, at Jewel.

If you want to check it out, the Mid-Week Market is on Wednesdays starting this week through mid-September from 4-9 p.m.

Kohlrabi/Radish Coleslaw to Top Slow-Roasted Pulled Pork

To feed the dozens of people who streamed in to congratulate Photo Farmgirl Maddy on her graduation from Mississinewa High School, the family and a good friend got up at 4 a.m. and roasted a whole hog.

We missed the actual roast, but not the final product - some of the best pulled pork I've ever tasted, perfectly slow cooked and seasoned.

But pulled pork isn't the same without a topping of coleslaw and a few dashes of hot pepper sauce. It's a favorite combo I picked up while living in South Carolina.

So when my family shared some of the frozen leftovers, I was in heaven...except I didn't have any cabbage for slaw.

What I did have was some kohlrabi and radishes from the Victory Acres CSA. I figured the texture was close enough, so I fired up the food processor and shredded the German turnip with a red and white radish.

The combo turned out to have a really nice flavor.

I tossed the kohlslaw with a dressing made of a dollop of mayo, whisked with cider vinegar, about a teaspoon of sugar and a couple dashes of celery salt to taste.

[Test Kitchen Note: If I'd had an apple, I would have shredded/added that too. The kohlrabi is sweeter than cabbage and an apple, sweet or tart, would compliment. To add some bite, I might also toss in a little horseradish.]

'Rock Star' Farmers Behind Utah's Produce

It's been so long since I've seen someone refer to a farmer as a 'rock star' that I almost forgot I had a category for these folks on the VFG blog.

Here's a nice story in the Salt Lake Tribune about three of the Utah's farmers (and their families) behind the ever-growing community supported agriculture movement.

The mini-profiles offer a snapshot of the diverse backgrounds of the farmers - backyard gardeners turned organic farmers; ex-high school football star/ballet dancer; and a former office worker who left behind her regular paycheck and health benefits for a life bringing certified organic eggs to market.

[The online article has the Local Harvest Web address wrong, so the link is bad. Here's the correct one.]

Straw hat tip: City Farmer

Garlic Scape Pesto

If you're heading to farmers' markets these days, you'll likely see piles of a green curlicue with a small whitish bulb in the middle. It looks like a green onion that's been curled up like scissor curled ribbon.

They're garlic scapes. Farmers are snapping them off the stalks this time of year to let the rest of the more familiar below ground garlic bulb develop. Many folks just throw scapes away or compost them.

I think they're delicious. They have a mild garlic flavor, but the stalks, even when snapped right on time, are rougher than green onion.

Don't let that deter you from experimenting with them. I snapped off a bag load of scapes from my family's garlic row last weekend.


Last year - my first exposure to garlic scape cooking - I used them in stir fry meals or chopped them up and added bits to cold salads. I've also experimented with dried scapes, using them to flavor soups.

Today, I rough chopped the whole lot and threw them into a food processor with a little olive oil and coarse kosher salt to make garlic pesto.

I'd never done that before, but I'm loving the flavor.

Right away, I used some of the pesto as a marinade/rub for chicken we plan to grill tonight. For tomorrow, I'm thinking I'll slather the rest onto slices of a baguette I picked up from Red Hen Bakery at the Oak Park Farmers Market today.

Sweet Visit - Diplomas & Berries

Had a delightful visit to The Farm this past weekend to watch my sister complete her 12th year of schooling and walk across the stage at Mississinewa High School.

You couldn't have found a more proud group in gym as this Real Farmgirl moves to the next stage in her life.

While we were in town, we got a taste of the early strawberry harvest. A relatively mild spring with spurts of some oppressive heat means strawberries were ripe at least three weeks early.

What a treat.

American Idol Champ Lent Voice to Organics Biz

Catching up on my local news, I turned the page of my weekly Oak Leaves and found this nice hometown boy story about Lee DeWyze, the reigning American Idol.

Besides the fact that I actually have a music category on this blog, and have posted on the pop culture phenomenon, this story makes it to a post because of one of DeWyze's early recording efforts.

Helping out a bandmate with a marketing project in 2008, DeWyze can be heard singing children's songs on a CD promoting River Forest-based Square One Organics.

The CD was the brainchild of ex commodities trader Denise Henderson and her husband Jeff, who were looking for a hip way to launch their new organic baby food business.

DeWyze can be heard singing "Vitamin A" and a lullaby on "Parents Wish."

Hear "Vitamin A" here at Chicago Parent.

I Swear Officer, Those Are Just Tomato Plants & Veggies Back There

I had to share this absolutely delightful Splendid Table interview with Ian Cheney updating us on the Truck Farm he and Curt Ellis have been rolling around the urban East Coast to talk about where our food does and should come from.

I just love the part about the guy at a truck stop who swiped a cherry tomato and the police outside of NYC who pulled them over suspecting they had some different herbs growing in pickup bed.

Hilarious.