Month: June 2009

This week I’m not going to say anything about the weather, as there is nothing nice to say. Hope for sun, as we all need it. Instead of bemoaning crop health I thought I’d dig into the heart of cabbage, one of the only crops that seems to be enjoying our present atmospheric conditions.
Cabbage is an old standby for most civilizations around the world. What we think of as cabbage, the green or red heading plant (you are seeing it in abundance for yet another week) is actually just one variation on an ancient plant group known as brassicas. This group includes kale, broccoli, collards, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, and kohlrabi (look for this one next week in your share). All of these European crops derive from a single plant that was most likely a wild mustard and looked somewhat like kale. This original plant was native to either the western coasts of Europe or the Northern Mediterranean coast. Because cabbage and its close friends are so nutritious (they contain some of the highest concentrations of vitamins B1, B2, and C in the vegetable realm) they have been a prized part of the human diet since documented times. The Greeks and Romans grew many varieties and wrote extensively about their cultivation and uses. Cato the Elder declared, “It is the cabbage which surpasses all other vegetables.”
Much has been written about the healing properties of cabbage, including its anti-inflammatory properties, blood cleansing abilities and cancer suppression. Recent research around a compound sugar protein called glucosinolate (which is found in high concentration in brassicas) has revealed a link between eating these crops and the inhibition of cancerous growth of many kinds. Oddly enough it is this protein and the sulphur that is a part of its compound that also give cabbage and its close relatives their distinctive smell and flavor. Cabbage has been used for centuries in folk medicine to reduce inflammation of the skin and muscles and it is still used by nursing mothers around the world to reduce painful swelling of the breasts.
The last great thing to say about cabbage is that it is the one of the keystone crops to eating well and eating local in Maine through the winter. This crop stores great and if we could get everyone in the state to eat two heads a month this winter we would all be healthier and the state could take a major step forward in feeding itself for the snowy months.
Knowing all this about cabbage will hopefully entice you to find a new way to enjoy it this week. It goes great with sauted scallions (in your share this week) and or lamb sausage (in the freezer). Here’s the link to our cabbage recipes on the website it you need a few ideas: http://crystalspringcsa.com/archives/category/recipes/cabbage

Great local products at pick-up. Eggs, organic milk, cheese, fresh bread, lamb sausage, bacon, pork sausage, ground beef, fair trade coffee and organic gelato, all locally produced, will be available. Try out local Pastry chef Annemarie Curnin’s rosemary butter cookies this week as well!
Pre-order bread, milk, and eggs this week for next week’s pick-up. Talk to one of us at pickup if you would like to preorder and reserve these items for next week. Let us know how much you would like, what day you will come for pickup, and if it will be a standing order. Wild Oats bread flavors are six grain and anadama on Tuesdays and honey wheat and molasses oat on Fridays.
Maples Maine made organic gelato is here! This is good stuff. Look for vanilla bean, carmelized banana, dark chocolate sorbetto and many other flavors.
Crystal Spring Blend Coffee. That’s right, our own blend of fair trade locally roasted coffee from Brunswick roaster Wicked Joe’s Coffee. Twelve oz. bags are $10 with all profits going to retrofit the farm buildings. Drink deeply.

Five inches. Not a big number taken by itself but when we’re talking a single day’s rain on the farm, it’s monumental. Those of you who came to the farm last Friday (or spent anytime outside at all for that matter) will not forget the intensity of that rain anytime soon. The farm crew started our harvest day as usual that morning at six o’clock with an inch and half already in the rain gauge. The gushes kept coming and by breakfast at eight o’clock we were seeing small rivers running between each bed in the fields. Major rainfall can be a bit fun if you’re ready for it. The fields are a bit weedy right now which goes a long way towards slowing down the runoff and keeping the soil where we want it (not in Maquoit Bay).Here’s to the positive side of weedy fields! All of us have good rain gear (except for me – my left boot sprung two leaks that morning) and the day was going well until it came time to load the trucks with cabbage and broccoli. We harvest these crops into half olive barrels that weigh up to 60 pounds each when they’re full so we drive around the field and pick them up with the trucks. I had to practice Hollywood stunt driving in 4WD, gunning the old Ford up to a good clip to launch it through the eddies of water and soil between each barrel. Several stops later we had finished harvest and spent most of the remaining morning trying to hear ourselves think while the rain pelted the aluminum roof over the washing barn.
Past the drama of rainy harvest, all of this water and the multiple days of darkness on either side of it has been making this job of growing food a challenge. Wet ground is hard on young plants -which at this time of year is all we have. Without strong root systems all of our crops start to run out of nutrients as the rain washes them from the soil and the lack of sun cools the ground and stops the soil’s biological life from making new nutrients available. I have to look on the bright side. I know that it will come to an end and the likelihood of us completely losing any crop is small at this point.  What I would expect from

this biblical period is some reduction in yield for some crops.  Exactly which crops will be impacted and the extent of the losses are unknowns at this point; we will have to wait awhile yet for those answers.
Double cabbage begins this week…nothing like coleslaw. Look for the right hand sidebar on the website and scroll down for cabbage recipes (click on “cabbage” for seven suggestions). Chinese cabbage is also known as Napa and you can use it just like you do the old familiar stuff.
Look for our new “greens key” handout at pickup this week. It tells you what we’re growing in the way of greens and the best ways to use them. We sized them to fit handily on the fridge as a reference for the months to come.

Great local products at pick-up. Eggs, organic milk, cheese, fresh bread, lamb sausage, bacon, pork sausage, ground beef, fair trade coffee and organic gelato, all locally produced, will be available. Try them out to compliment your vegetables.
Pre-order bread, milk, and eggs this week for next week’s pick-up. Talk to one of us at pickup if you would like to preorder and reserve these items for next week. Let us know how much you would like, what day you will come for pickup, and if it will be a standing order.
Crystal Spring Farm Day Camp has a few space spaces available both weeks (July 6th-10th and July 13th-17, 9am-3pm), kids ages 6-10 are invited to join us here at the farm. Read more and register for camp at our website:  http://crystalspringcsa.com/farm-camp or contact Maura at maura@crystalspringcsa.com or 729.1112.
Crystal Spring Blend Coffee. That’s right, our own blend of fair trade locally roasted coffee from Brunswick roaster Wicked Joe’s Coffee will be available this week. Twelve ounce bags are $10 with all profits going to help put a new roof on our barn, re-wire the outbuildings and retrofit our water supply. Drink deeply.

Hope all of you enjoyed the first week of produce from the farm. It was a good first week for sure. Never before in the last five seasons have we come up with strawberries and broccoli in the first full week of June. Both of these crops can be fickle –especially in relation to fertility and the temperatures that come between April 15 and May 15. Strawberries are a perennial crop that we plant into plastic mulch a full year ahead of their harvest. This means that bed preparation and fertilization have to be done well because the plants are on their own from planting to harvest a year later. Broccoli is an annual that we plant many times over the season (the plants you are taking home were set out on the 12th of April) without plastic, but fertilization is also crucial as it is what we call a “heavy feeder”, meaning it requires a lot of nitrogen and phosphorus to establish and grow good size heads. Those of you who are gardeners will know that getting crops to grow in the cold soils of spring is much more difficult that getting them to grow in June or July. We use all kinds of tricks like floating row covers to keep the air warm and plastic to warm the soil but the most important thing we do is fertilize. Cold soils can’t supply plants with all the nutrients they need to grow –especially when they require “heavy” amounts of them. We have been using fish meal (literally ground up fish off-cuts from New Brunswick canneries) for many years with great success in these early crops. Fish are very high in nitrogen, which is crucial in leaf, flower and fruit development as well as phosphorus, which drives root growth. The Native Americans of New England knew this as they used the running alewives, seined out of the rivers with baskets to fertilize their corn fields. The other vital piece of the puzzle for us to grow good early crops is…luck, by way of moderate temperatures. From the middle of April through the end of May this year our coldest night (and there was just one of them) was 28 degrees. Broccoli will withstand anything above 25 or 26 with ease. Berries can’t have anything below 32 after the blossoms form in early May but miraculously that cold night came during the last week of April. I’m not sure if the real story here is how great it is to get strawberries and broccoli so early this year or how crazy it is that we have been working at it for the last five seasons with less success. Maybe this is one of those questions that shouldn’t be asked…we’ll keep our heads down and hope to revisit the success in 2014. Along similar lines, the blessing of cabbage in this weeks’ share is something that may fade for all of you in the next month –we have three varieties maturing at the same time. Get ready for lots of cole slaw recipes.

Great local products at pick-up. Eggs, organic milk, cheese, fresh bread, lamb sausage, bacon, pork sausage, ground beef, fair trade coffee and organic gelato, all locally produced, will be available. Try them out to compliment your vegetables. We will begin pre-ordering for milk, eggs and bread at the end of the month for those of you that want to bring them home every week without fail.

Crystal Spring Farm Day Camp has a few space spaces available both weeks (July 6th-10th and July 13th-17, 9am-3pm), kids ages 6-10 are invited to join us here at the farm. Read more and register for camp at our website:  http://crystalspringcsa.com/farm-camp or contact Maura at maura@crystalspringcsa.com or 729.1112.

CSA Shares still available! Summer is here and we might as well eat good food with our friends and neighbors.  www.crystalspringcsa.com

Crystal Spring Blend Coffee. That’s right, our own blend of fair trade locally roasted coffee from Brunswick roaster Wicked Joe’s Coffee will be available this week. Twelve ounce bags are $10 with all profits going to help put a new roof on our barn, re-wire the outbuildings and retrofit our water supply. Drink deeply.

Here we go! Another farm season is underway this week as we begin to take back out of the fields some of the work we have been pouring into them over the past months. We hope you all enjoy your first share of the season, greens mostly, and just the tip of the iceberg (no, not iceberg lettuce). Every year I feel like I need to say again, especially to those new to CSA, that the size of the share starts slow. In June greens slowly give way to hard vegetables, which build rapidly to the crescendo of August and September. As you look at your bag of greens this week, imagine ahead to the onions, peppers, watermelon and tomatoes in the weeks ahead. The fresh taste of these greens hold all the promise of what we have coming.
In addition to our produce we also have several items available for sale each week. Most of these are high quality locally produced items that we think are outstanding. This week look for frozen natural meats from Maine Farms Brand, Seal Cove chevre (amazingly creamy goat cheese), Straw’s Farm raw organic milk and natural pastured eggs and our own natural lamb sausage. In the weeks to come we hope to have more local cheeses, bread, fair trade coffee, organic Maine ice cream, maple syrup, and honey. Starting at the end of the month we will be taking pre-orders for milk, eggs and bread so that you can rely on sharing these great Maine products with your families.
In response to the many “what do I do with this vegetable?” questions over the years we are selling a great cookbook, written especially for CSA members. “From Asparagus to Zucchini” covers all the bases on how to tackle a fresh seasonal produce diet. With 200 pages of recipes, cleaning, cooking, and storage tips for each vegetable, this book is an invaluable tool to get the most out of your CSA share we have them for sale at $18 ($2 off the retail price).
The Upic field is coming along and we hope you’ll be picking the first crop (peas) by the Fourth of July with green beans not far behind. We have had lots of help from CSA members Bob Leezer and Barb Harvey preparing and planting this field in the past few weeks. More on the upic field and how it all works in future newsletters.
The best place to view lambs is in the Upic field this week. They are pastured right next to the southern side (although it may be hard to see some of them as the grass has gotten away from them (and us). We finished lambing this past week and have over forty-five lambs in this group.
Please enjoy the farm when you come to get your share. You’re always welcome to hang out and check out what is going on. That being said, there are a few things to remember, especially if you have kids, when you’re here.
•    Watch out for fences –they are all electrified.
•    Please stay out of buildings and off of the equipment –neither are safe for the young or old.
•    Don’t open closed doors or gates, they generally are closed for a reason.
•    Keep an ear out for equipment coming through the farm. Tractors are working here seven days a week.

Crystal Spring Farm Day Camp has spaces available for the first week only (July 6th-10th) 9am-3pm, kids ages 6-10 are invited to join us here at the farm. Read more and register for camp at our website:  http://crystalspringcsa.com/farm-camp or contact Maura at maura@crystalspringcsa.com or 729.1112.

CSA Shares still available! Tell your friends, family, neighbors, strangers on the street! www.crystalspringcsa.com

Hope for more sun and we’ll see you at the farm.