The countdown is complete and it’s time to begin the third season of the Pitchfork & Crow CSA!  We’re glad to have you join us for the next six months in eating local, seasonal vegetables.

Here’s what’s in the share:

• Green Garlic – young mild spring garlic
  
• Spinach
• Prize Choy  – just like bok choy
• Radishes – you know what to do with these, but don’t forget, the greens are also edible steamed, fried or simply raw!
• Salad Mix – a mix of three leaf lettuces
• Sunchokes – also known as Jerusalem Artichokes,
• Carrots – the variety is ‘Tonda di Pirigi’, a small sweet French heirloom that’s new to us

Welcome to the third season of the Pitchfork & Crow CSA!  We’ve been busy planning for a fantastic season of local, seasonal, and organic vegetables.  Over the next 28 weeks we hope to introduce you to some new veggies, stock your kitchen with the standbys, and continue to build this community of vegetable enthusiasts.  Are you ready for the adventure?

We’re excited to welcome back returning members and to welcome many new members.  We’ve grown the CSA from 35 members last year to 50 members this year which is enough of a leap that we’ll be seeing quite a few new faces at the pick-ups.  We’re also happy to say that we’ve officially filled the CSA to our goal of 50 members.  We wholeheartedly appreciate your support and truly couldn’t do this without you.

Of course in addition to 28 weeks of tasty veggies, we’re already looking forward to the on-farm events.  We’ll host an early season tour and potluck in late June so you can visit the farm and see your vegetables growing in the fields.  In August we’ll invite you back out for another potluck in the height of the growing season and in October we’ll have the pumpkin patch and apple cider pressing day.  We love inviting members out to the farm and are excited to have even sparked some lasting friendships between members over farm potluck meals.

So, here we go!  In future newsletters we’ll give you updates on the growing season and goings-on at the farm as well as suggestions for how to tackle the less well-known veggies.  This week we’ve got some tasty ideas for radishes and sunchokes in the recipe section at the bottom of the page.  We hope you enjoy the veggies and we’ll see you here again next week!

Here are a few recipes to get you inspired:

Sunchoke Soup with Crispy Chips & Rosemary

Serves 6

• 1 1/2-2 pounds of sunchokes
• 2 medium sized russet potatoes
• 1 yellow onion
• 2 small leeks (you might want to substitute green garlic here)
• 4 cloves of garlic
• 1 cup of dry white wine
• 1 bay leaf
• 2 sprigs of rosemary
• 1 cup of heavy cream
• sea salt & pepper
• olive oil
• butter
• for chips reserve one sunchoke and vegetable oil for frying.

1. When choosing sunchokes try to choose ones that aren’t super gnarly. You have to peel them and the more knots they have the harder they are to peel. It’s a tedious task and you don’t have to be perfect.  In this particular recipe I peeled them, though I am interested to see how the soup would be without peeling them. Since most of their nutritional content is in the skin. (Note: Here at Pitchfork & Crow we don’t peel our sunchokes.)
2. Peel and cube sunchokes into similar sizes and place into a bowl with water. You want to place them in water so they dont oxidize and turn brown. Do the same with the potatoes, peel and cube. Chop leeks, onions and garlic finely. In a soup pot add a tablespoon of butter and a drizzle of olive oil. Turn to medium heat and add your onions, leeks and garlic. Season with salt and pepper. Cook till tender about 4 minutes. Add 2 sprigs of rosemary, a bay leaf and the cup of white wine. Allow the soup to return to a simmer and add the drained potatoes and sunchokes. Add enough water to cover the vegetables and turn the heat to med-high. Allow soup to simmer until potatoes and sunchokes are tender about 30-40 minutes. Keep an eye on the water level and add more if necessary.
3. To make the sunchoke chips use a mandolin on the thinnest level and slice a whole sunchoke. In a medium saucepan heat vegetable oil, carefully lay the sunchokes into the oil. The addition of a few sprigs of fried rosemary is a nice touch. Watch for splattering. Don’t crowd the chips, once light browning occurs set on a bowl lined with a paper towel and season with salt. Right before soup is ready to be blended be sure to remove the bay leaf and rosemary sprigs. When potatoes are tender remove from the heat and using a hand held blender, blend until smooth. Add more salt and pepper to taste and a cup of heavy cream. Run the blender again until smooth. You can allow the soup to simmer on low heat or it can sit at room temperature until reheated before serving. Top with a drizzle of olive oil, sunchoke chips and fresh ground pepper.

From Food52, http://food52.com/recipes/15260_sunchoke_soup_with_crispy_chips_rosemary

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Sunchoke Latkes

Ingredients

From Culinate, via Ashely Griffin Gatland, http://www.culinate.com/search/q,ctype=recipe,q=sunchokes,stype=/36904

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Radish Butter

½ pound round red radishes, trimmed, at room temperature
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, completely softened
¼ teaspoon kosher salt, or ½ teaspoon Maldon salt
⅛ teaspoon freshly ground white or black pepper
About 24 thinly sliced rye toast points, toasted slices of French bread, water crackers, 2-inch celery sticks, endive leaves, or romaine heart halves

1. Put the radishes in the bowl of a food processor and pulse until the radish is chopped into very fine dice, four or five 3-second pulses.

2. Transfer the contents to a length of cheesecloth or a double thickness of paper towels and wring out the excess liquid.

3. Transfer to a medium bowl and add 4 tablespoons of the butter.

4. With a rubber spatula, cream the radish and butter together, adding more butter 1 tablespoon at a time, until the mixture comes together in a smooth, pliable mass.

5. Transfer the mixture to a 2-cup ramekin or bowl, sprinkle the salt and pepper over the top, and serve immediately. (The butter will keep, covered with plastic wrap, in the refrigerator for up to 2 days.

6. Remove it from the refrigerator 15 minutes before serving to let it soften. Sprinkle the salt and freshly ground pepper over the radish butter before serving).

From The Splendid Table, http://www.publicradio.org/columns/splendid-table/recipes/app_radish_butter.html

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Green Garlic Pesto

1 bunch green garlic (3 to 5 stems)
1 cup raw walnuts, or nuts available in your market
1 to 2 oz. Hannah Bridge Heritage cheese from Ancient Heritage Dairy, or other hard, salty sheep’s-milk cheese
⅔ cup good-quality extra-virgin olive oil
½ tsp. sea salt

1. Cut root ends of green garlic and discard. Cut into 1-inch lengths, discarding the tougher green portions on top.
2. In a saucepan over medium heat, toast walnuts by cooking for about 7 minutes, stirring constantly.
3. Place nuts and green garlic into a food processor and process on low until roughly chopped. Cut cheese into chunks, add to food processor, and process. In a steady stream while processor is running, add olive oil until desired consistency is reached.
4. Salt to taste. Keep in airtight container in refrigerator until ready to use.

From Culinate via Sarah Gilbert, http://www.culinate.com/recipes/collections/Contributors/sarah_gilbert/green_garlic_pesto

Hello from Pitchfork & Crow ~

We’re harvesting for the Salem Saturday Market!  Here’s a selection of what we’ll be bringing to market:

• Cauliflower (hard to believe, but this is the last of our overwintered cauli)
• Prize Choy
• Radishes (Lots and lots of Cherry Belles, Pink Beauty, and French Breakfast bunches this week!)
• Salad Mix
• Spinach
• Sunchokes (aka Jerusalem Artichokes)

We haven’t had much downtime since we saw you at Market last Saturday.  The beautiful weather has found us pushing hard to get through our spring plantings.  The past few days have been allium planting mania but we’re happy to say that our bunching onions, sweet onions, storage onions, shallots, and leeks have all officially made it into the field and are even being well-watered!  After last year’s total onion failure we think we’ve learned our lesson and are looking forward to a wealth of oniony goodness this season.

It’s been one of those busy, busy weeks when we wonder if we’re not a little crazy to take on so much.  The to-do list kept growing longer as we tried to avert our eyes from the various projects popping up around the farm while staying focused on the planting that needed to get done.  In the midst of it we had a tiller breakdown that sent Jeff to the tractor junkyard in town in search of parts.  Luckily if we’ve learned nothing else from farming, we have learned to deal with new and unexpected problems.  With the tiller repaired and the tractor back in action we pushed through to the end and the happier for it.  Now on to the potatoes!  Our sweet potato slips arrived yesterday and our seed potatoes are ready for planting too.

This week we’re bringing an abundance of mild radishes from our field houses.  Jeff did a big sowing a few weeks back and they’re ready for Market now.  We’ll have red Cherry Belles, pink Pink beauties, and red/white French Breakfast bunches for you to enjoy.  We’ve heard some fantastic recipes from customers in recent weeks, but one of our favorites it Radish Butter!  What could be better than fresh butter and spring radishes?

We hope to see you Saturday sometime between 9am and 3pm.  You can find us at the Salem Saturday Market near the intersection of Winter and Union streets in downtown Salem.

Thanks!
Carri Heisler and Jeff Bramlett

Hello from Pitchfork & Crow ~

We’re harvesting for the Salem Saturday Market!  Here’s a selection of what we’ll be bringing to market:

• Cauliflower (our overwintered cauliflower is on!)
• Celeriac
• Potatoes (Only fingerlings this week)
• Prize Choy
• Radishes (Just a handful of bunches this week)
• Rutabagas (aka our infamous juicing Huge-abagas!  We hear they make good fries too.)
• Spinach (Only the best spinach we’ve ever grown!)
• Spring Salad Mix (more lettuce!)
• Sunchokes (aka Jerusalem Artichokes)

We’re headed to Market tomorrow with a whole lotta tasty overwintered cauliflower in tow.  Our supplies of many other offerings are dwindling but this is the week for cauliflower and we’re not about to pass it up.  We’re counting on you getting in on the cauli action too!

Over the past week we’ve kept busy planting in the field during the sunnier moments and catching up on sowing seeds during the rainier ones.  The propagation house had emptied over the past couple of weeks as we readied to transplant starts but we’ve quickly filled it up again.  With help from our visiting nieces last weekend we started our winter squash and pumpkins and the first rounds of cucumbers and summer squash.  It feels like summer must not be too far off if it’s time to sow squash seeds.  We hear there’s more dry weather just around the corner and we’re looking forward to planting out onions, leeks, and potatoes.  For now though, we’re planning for a great day at Market!

We hope to see you Saturday sometime between 9am and 3pm.  You can find us at the Salem Saturday Market near the intersection of Winter and Union streets in downtown Salem.

Thanks!
Carri Heisler and Jeff Bramlett

Hello from Pitchfork & Crow ~

We’re harvesting for the Salem Saturday Market!  Here’s a selection of what we’ll be bringing to market:

• Cauliflower (our overwintered cauliflower is on!)
• Celeriac
• Kale Bunches
• Potatoes (Only fingerlings this week)
• Prize Choy
• Radishes
• Rapini (Kale)
• Rutabagas (aka our infamous juicing Huge-abagas!  We hear they make good fries too.)
• Spinach
• Spring Salad Mix (finally, lettuce based this week!)
• Sunchokes (aka Jerusalem Artichokes)

We’ve been at full speed this past week, planting the first crops into the field.  The tables we use for hardening off transplants have been nearly emptied and we’ve direct-seeded the next rounds of carrots, turnips and radishes as well.  Over the last several days we’ve transplanted peas, salad mix, head lettuce, spinach, beets, cabbage, broccoli, kale, fennel, and kohlrabi.  Needless to say we’ve been busy, but we’ve also had an eye on the weather.  Black storm clouds routinely threatened our progress but we luckily made it through the majority of our planned plantings and the rain and thunder storms mostly passed us over.  It’s hard to believe that soon we’ll be irrigating these crops.

As with last week’s market showing, we’ll have less to offer than we’d like.  However, this week we’re happy to bring you the results of our first lettuce harvest of the season!  We’ve mowed the chicories to make way for other crops and are diving into the gorgeous lettuce we planted in the field house last month for salad mix.  Also, we’re excited to bring the bulk of our overwintered cauliflower to market this week.  We’ve heard tales from other farmers suggesting that cauliflower that heads up after the long months of winter tastes the best, so we put in an experimental bed this past fall.  Are you ready to experience Leamington’s Winter Giant cauliflower for yourself?

We hope to see you Saturday sometime between 9am and 3pm.  You can find us at the Salem Saturday Market near the intersection of Winter and Union streets in downtown Salem.

Thanks!
Carri Heisler and Jeff Bramlett

Hello from Pitchfork & Crow ~

We’re harvesting for the Salem Saturday Market!  Here’s a selection of what we’ll be bringing to market:

• Celeriac
• Garlic (slightly sprouting, but still tasty!)
• Italian Dandelion Chicory Bunches
• Kale Bunches
• Potatoes (Only Fingerlings this week)
• Radishes (We’re bringing 90 bunches of French Breakfast radishes!!!)
• Rapini (Brussels Sprout, Kale, Red Cabbage)
• Rutabagas (aka our infamous juicing Huge-abagas!)
• Spinach
• Spring Salad Mix (escarole and radicchio based)
• Sunchokes (aka Jerusalem Artichokes)

The weather is slated to give us another fabulous day at the Saturday market tomorrow.  We prefer a nice sunny day for market (who wants to stand out in the rain all day?) and we know we’re likely to see more of you when the sun is shining too!  It’s the rainy days in between that make farmers like us nervous.  We’re antsy to get transplants out into the fields but need a dry spell of several days before the soil is workable.  In anticipation of the “window” of dry weather, we check the weather report repeatedly and try to will the rain to let up.

This is the time of year we’ve heard referred to as the ‘hunger gap’.  Our winter storage crops are dwindling and the spring burst of growth that we enjoy as rapini is on it’s way out but the first crops aren’t quite ready for harvest and we’re still in a holding pattern, waiting to get the field fully planted for the season.  We’re lucky to have covered space in our field houses that allows us to plant some crops into dry ground earlier in the season, but the small amounts of lettuce, spinach, and radishes never go as far as we’d like.  This in-between time is probably the toughest time to eat seasonally.  As we plan for the future we hope to have more in storage, larger overwintering plantings, and even dry beans to bring to early spring markets.  This week however, you’ll notice our booth will be smaller but we’ll have the first radishes of the season!  Hurrah for radishes helping us through the ‘hunger gap’!

We hope to see you Saturday sometime between 9am and 3pm.  You can find us at the Salem Saturday Market near the intersection of Winter and Union streets in downtown Salem.

Thanks!
Carri Heisler and Jeff Bramlett

Hello from Pitchfork & Crow ~

We’re harvesting for the Salem Saturday Market!  Here’s a selection of what we’ll be bringing to market:

• Cabbage (overwintered red and red/green savoy)
• Celeriac
• Collards
• Cooking Greens
• Garlic (slightly sprouting, but still tasty!)
• Italian Dandelion Chicory Bunches
• Kale Bunches
• Potatoes (German Butterball & Fingerlings)
• Rapini (Brussels Sprout, Kale, Red Cabbage)
• Rutabagas (aka Huge-abagas!)
• Spring Salad Mix (Chicory based)
• Sunchokes (aka Jerusalem Artichokes)

Many thanks to everyone who made it out last weekend for the opening day of the Salem Saturday Market!  We appreciate your continued support, and that fabulous weather didn’t hurt anything I think.  Hopefully you’ll be joining us for another week of seasonal veggies tomorrow!

Our week has been a busy one, as they tend to be in the spring.  Jeff has been gathering the last of our major supplies for the growing season.  This past week we purchased enough irrigation pipe to more than double our current supply.  More pipe means less time moving pipe this summer, which we’re both looking forward to.  We also had 7 tons of organic fertilizer delivered to the farm, and next week (assuming the weather cooperates) we’re hoping for a lime delivery.  These two additions will certainly result in happier vegetables for you!

This week we also spoke to farmers taking the OSU Extension’s Growing Farms course.  We had fun sharing our three+ year adventure with other folks interested in farming.  And it was especially exciting for us because we took the same course back in 2009 which prompted us to rent that first acre outside of Stayton.  Things have changed somewhat since that first year, but I realized during our presentation that we’ve been lucky enough to have some of our same Market customers for four market seasons!  Thanks for sticking with us and we hope to see you soon!

We hope to see you Saturday sometime between 9am and 3pm.  You can find us at the Salem Saturday Market near the intersection of Winter and Union streets in downtown Salem.

Thanks!
Carri Heisler and Jeff Bramlett

Hello from Pitchfork & Crow ~

We’re harvesting for the first Salem Saturday Market of 2012!  Here’s a selection of what we’ll be bringing to market:

• Arugula
• Broccoli
• Cabbage (overwintered red and red/green savoy)
• Celeriac
• Collards
• Cooking Greens
• Garlic
• Kale Bunches
• Potatoes (German Butterball & Fingerlings)
• Purple Cape Cauliflower
• Rapini (Arugula, Brussels Sprout, Kale, Kohlrabi!)
• Rutabagas
• Spring Salad Mix
• Sunchokes (aka Jerusalem Artichokes)

It’s the first weekend in April and we’re excited to celebrate the re-opening of the Salem Saturday Market!  Thanks to a mild winter and good on-farm storage, our booth will be stocked with a nice selection of storage crops and overwintered veggies.  This is the time to enjoy the tasty spring shoots of the overwintered brassicas and we’ll have Brussels sprout, kohlrabi, and kale rapini tomorrow!  We’ll also be sharing frost-sweetened collard, cabbage, and kale greens and are happy to be bringing some staple root crops including sunchokes and potatoes.

The start of the market season makes it official: the 2012 growing season is upon us.  We’ve been preparing for months and now we’re ready to get back to growing vegetables and seeing you at the Market each week.  Check out this post for an update on our winter fun.  You can also read about us in an article in the Salem Weekly this week!  It’s fun to see our little red tractor featured there.  We appreciate the support of our local community and look forward to another fantastic growing season!

We hope to see you Saturday sometime between 9am and 3pm.  You can find us at the Salem Saturday Market near the intersection of Winter and Union streets in downtown Salem.

Thanks!
Carri Heisler and Jeff Bramlett

Here we are in March, well on our way towards full-blown Spring!  Can you believe we’ve made it through the darkest days once again?! Our winter break was filled with planning for the upcoming season.  We poured over the seed catalogs, discussed seed varieties and crop successions, and calculated our lime and compost needs for the fields.  We also attended a couple of good farming conferences where we had the opportunity to meet up with other farmers and hear their thoughts on common issues.  It’s always fun to hear how other folks tackle a problem.  Farmers are resourceful people!

Our winter months were also filled with farm paperwork.  We updated our organic certification paperwork with Oregon Tilth, worked on our business plan, and filed the necessary records with the Farm Service Agency for help in buying the farm we are currently leasing.  Our initial meeting with the FSA went well (they didn’t think we were crazy!) and we’re hoping to make some progress on that front over the next several months.

At the farm we’ve already begun sowing seeds and monitoring germination rates.  Our first rounds of lettuce and onions are popping up and the cherry tomatoes have surfaced too.  We’ve also begun directly seeding into our field houses.  Radishes and carrots are on the way!  Thanks to a fairly mild winter we had success with our overwintered crops too.  Winter cabbages!  Purple cauliflower!  Winter is an exciting time out there in the fields.

The field work is starting to ramp up, the propagation house is once again filling up with flats of baby plants, the growing season is upon us.  The 2012 CSA is also filling up.  Many thanks to folks who have signed on early to save your spot.  We appreciate your support and are planning for a fantastic season of organic vegetables for you! There is still some space in the CSA, if you’d like to join us for another adventurous journey!

Hello from Pitchfork & Crow!

We’re ready to begin accepting members for the third season of the Pitchfork & Crow CSA program!  CSA’s are supported by community members who pre-pay for a weekly share of the farm harvest.  The Pitchfork & Crow 2012 CSA season will last 28 weeks, from May 22nd thru November 27th, and cost $620.  In exchange for joining, members will receive a weekly share of fresh, local, organic vegetables and a weekly newsletter updating members on what’s in the share, what’s happening on the farm, and recipe suggestions.  Plus members will get to visit the farm at our three on-farm open houses!

Further CSA details can be found on the CSA page.  If you decide to join the CSA, you’ve got two options for signing up!  Either sign-up online using our handy web form or download the CSA Commitment Form and either mail it to us or sign it, scan it and e-mail it back.  Note that no payment is due at this time and all members will receive an invoice in early January.

We will also be returning to the Salem Saturday Market in May 2012.  If you choose not to join the CSA we hope to see you at the Market!

Thanks,
Jeff Bramlett and Carri Heisler

Hey, it’s cold outside!  December has really decided to bring the wintry weather and though it’s been fairly dry we’ve been fully aware of the icy, frosty goodness that is the out-of-doors these days.  We’re finding more inside work to do, but trying to enjoy the dry weather as much as possible too.

Jeff has been seeing to tasks that quickly move to the bottom of the priority list during the growing season.  The barn is neatly organized, tools have been put in their proper place, and field supplies have been rescued from a long, wet season in the field.  He’s also been in his own “Farmall 101″, learning all about the finer points of our little cultivating tractor.  We purchased this tractor in the spring and put it to use right away weeding, marking beds, and planting and eventually digging potatoes.  Having only done minimal maintenance during the summer and fall, he’s happy to have a little extra time to spend tracking down spark plugs and air filters and to tinker with the internal workings of the machine.

Soon we’ll begin our crop planning for next year.  The seed catalogs have begun to arrive in our mailbox and I can’t help but begin pouring through them, looking for sources of our now-favorite vegetable varieties and finding new varieties to try out.  Long, cold nights provide the perfect excuse to snuggle up with a cup of hot tea and a stack of seed catalogs!  Before too long we’ll be gearing up for spring planting and the push towards next summer, so we’re trying to enjoy the slow time as much as possible.

Finally, we’ll be posting CSA program information for the 2012 season soon, so watch for details!

Carri & Jeff