Yacons

whole yacons, dehydrated pieces and slices of fresh yacon

We mostly eat yacons fresh.  After curing indoors for a couple weeks, the skins get a bit wrinkly and they get sweeter.  Simply slice and eat or grate to use in a salad.  We also enjoy them dehyrdrated.

Radishes

 

Daikon radishes

 

Fall greens

Bok choy

mild mustard greens

Tendergreens

Yukina savoy

Tokyo bekana

Red mustard

Red mizuna

mizuna

Georgia collards

 

Futsu winter squash

 

Mrs. Amerson's winter squash

 

Roma beans

 

North Georgia Candy Roaster

 

Butternut squash

 

Knucklehull peas

 

Che fruit

  Che fruit is a fig relative with maybe some vague similarities in texture but they taste very different.  Che fruit is sweet but with no noticeable acidity, which appeals to some people but other people find uninteresting.  (Our own family is divided.)  The taste is sometimes reminiscent of watermelon.  They look kind of like an extra-large, solid round red raspberry.  They have no seeds or pit so the whole fruit is edible.  All we've ever done with them is to eat them fresh as a snack.

Eggplant

Antiqua, Rosita, Florida Market, Casper, Ping Tong Long

Cushaws

 

  The seed for our cushaw pumpkins originally came to us from a friend in the Brushy Mountains (the same friend that got us started growing the heirloom field corn variety we've been growing every year for going on 20 years.)  This variety makes large (mostly 10-20 lb) pumpkins that are kind of pear shaped.  The skin is creamy white with green mottled vertical stripes.  The flesh is much paler in color than other pumpkins (like the large Cranford Woodleaf pumpkins we've sold for a number of years) but we've really enjoyed them as pie pumpkins.  We also enjoy them cut up into cubes, tossed with butter and salt and then roasted.  The taste is also milder than other pumpkins.  These cushaw type pumpkins have a fair but not outstanding potential storage life, maybe up to about 3 months.

Carrots

 

Flowers

 

All sorts of onions

Multiplier onions, red bulbing onions and scallions

 

Mother hen

 

Garlic Braids

   After watching a few garlic braiding videos, Hattie got the knack and is busy braiding our softneck garlic into braids.  Simply hang up in your kitchen, cutting off a garlic head as needed.

Garlic scapes and green garlic

 

  As we said last week, garlic can be eaten at any stage of its life.  This week, garlic flavor comes in the form of garlic scapes and green garlic.   
  Garlic scapes are the immature flower stalks of hardneck varieties.  These are a really convenient way to add garlic flavor; simply chop them up and use as you would garlic -- there's nothing to peel or remove, but the entire scape is good to eat.  But garlic scapes have a really short season.  As soon as they start growing on the plant, they need to be pulled off so the garlic will put its energy into making a garlic bulb instead of a flower.  So that means a lot of garlic scapes all at once.  They do last at least a couple weeks in the fridge, but to enjoy them later, we've found a number of ways to preserve them.  First, they can simply be chopped, put in a bag and frozen.  Then when ready to use, just pour out the amount you need since they don't stick together in the bag. Another way we enjoy them is as a pesto.  Process them in a food processor with other pesto ingredients then use fresh or freeze for later.  Finally, garlic scapes dry well.  Chop into 1/4 to 1/2 inch lengths and put in the dehydrator.  Dried scapes can be added to soups or powdered in a coffee grinder -- we have a separate coffee grinder for spices that's never used for coffee -- for garlic scape powder.
  Green garlic is simply immature garlic bulbs.  It has started to make a bulb but it is not cured (dried).  Depending on how mature it is when it is pulled, the whole bulb and stalk can be chopped up.  If it is more mature, it can be used more like regular garlic by separating out the individual cloves.

What to do with garlic scallions

 Garlic can be eaten at all stages of its lifecycle.  Right now, we're at the garlic scallion stage: long green shafts with a white tip and flat leaves.  Use it as you would an onion scallion and you're on your way to delicious food.  While it has a noticeably garlic flavor, it mellows quite a bit with cooking, which means you can use a good amount without overpowering a dish.  Raw, on the other hand, it has a very intense garlic flavor.
  Chop it coarsely and sauté it to add to stir-fries, soup, or pasta dishes.  It will take a little longer to soften than an onion scallion would.  Or chop it fine in a food processor.  Add some oil and salt as you process to make a pesto.  This pureed form is easy to add to a roast, in soup, or anything you want to give garlic flavor to.
  To preserve, chop and freeze or dehydrate.  You can also freeze it already sautéed.  Or freeze the puree in ice cube trays for easy flavor additions.

Bedding up the sweet potatoes

  We bedded up our sweet potatoes a few weeks ago.  The process actually began last fall when we set aside our sweet potato seed.  We choose fairly small, well-shaped and blemish free potatoes then simply put them loose in labeled paper bags or cardboard boxes.  We then put them upstairs in our house, which stays fairly warm all winter.  This is not ideal for eating potatoes, but for the seed potatoes it works well to get them to start sprouting.  Around early April, most of the varieties have about an inch of sprout growth.

  The next step is making our bed.  We simply place cinder blocks in our garden, making sure the distance between the rows is the correct distance for our storm windows.  We then fill the bottom with a few inches of aged sawdust.  Next, we lay out the sweet potatoes.  They can go fairly close together as the goal is to get a lot of slips in a small area.  We grow about 30 varieties, so we use corn cobs pushed into the sawdust to separate the varieties.  We then cover all the sweet potatoes with 4-6 inches of sawdust, making sure the corncobs are still above the sawdust level.  We then water it well and cover the bed with storm windows.
  It takes quite a bit of monitoring to keep the temperature within a good range for the sweet potatoes.  If it is going to be quite cold in the night, we'll add some blankets on top.  On sunny days, we take every other window off to vent it or remove the glass altogether.  It can get really hot really quickly if the glass is left on and we've accidentally burned sweet potato growth that was even an inch under the sawdust.  It is also important to keep it well watered.
  From making the bed to having slips to start cutting takes about a month or so.  Some varieties are really quick to slip while others are very slow.  For the slower ones, we plant extra potatoes to make sure we have enough of that kind at planting time.

  After we've cut all the slips we need from the bed, we usually let it keep growing all summer as we cut sweet potato greens from it.  They are a delicious cooked summer green.  Then in the fall, we clean out the bed, spreading the sawdust on the garden, feeding the old sweet potatoes to the goats and collecting any newly grown sweet potatoes to eat.  We often re-use the bed for multiple years, but we always put new sawdust in it every year to prevent any possible disease carry over.

STATESVILLE CSA PLAN

  Below is the plan for our CSA customers that will be getting their shares in Statesville.  (If instead you will be picking up shares at our farm in Yadkinville, see this link.)

CSA OVERVIEW
  If you'd be interested in making a weekly commitment to buying a $22 assortment of our vegetables, then our CSA might be for you.  In exchange for the commitment our CSA members make to us, we commit to growing a full assortment of weekly vegetables for them.  Most of the things we grow for our CSA members are available to our Statesville home delivery customers as well, but we give our CSA members priority so our CSA members get the greatest variety of things from our farm. 

WHERE AND WHEN
  CSA members receive their shares by taking part in our home delivery program which allows for the option of picking up your share at a drop-off point (normally your house if you live in our delivery area, otherwise probably someone else's house) or meeting us in Statesville at whatever time we make our delivery (which for the farmers market season is on Saturdays at the farmers market.)

WHAT'S INCLUDED IN CSA SHARES
  Our standard $22 CSA shares contain a full assortment of several dozen different seasonal fresh vegetables (tomatoes, onions, sweet potatoes, cucumbers, peas, beans, lettuce, okra...), shitake mushrooms, and other garden and specialty field crops (like peanuts, strawberries...), all from open-pollinated seed and grown without chemical pesticides or fertilizers.  Here is a link to photos of sample CSA shares. 
  We're glad to pack your share with an assortment of whatever we think is at its best each week with maximum variety from week to week.  But we also offer the option to marginally customize your share, depending on what we have available.

CSA COMMITMENT
  We expect to be able to offer CSA shares nearly every Saturday from May to October but also probably one or two weeks in April, two or three weeks in November, probably one week in December, maybe one week in March... We'll just let you know in the newsletter we send out before each drop-off whether CSA shares will be available to order that week.  On the weeks we make deliveries but don't have CSA shares available, mostly mid-winter, you are welcome to just order items off from the list, but we won't fill in or substitute to make a $22 share like we normally would.
  In order for us to continue our commitment to each of our CSA members, we expect our CSA members to order a CSA share at least 85% of the times we offer shares (but if you get at least 25 CSA shares per year, we'll count that as close enough, even if we make enough drop-offs that 25 winds up being less than 85% of the total number of weeks.)  So you should expect to spend at least $550.00 with us if you want to take part in the CSA.

ORDERING
  In response to the newsletter we send out announcing a delivery, you will need to e-mail us back to request a CSA share.  If you have specific requests for what you'd like us to include in your share, that's also the time to make those requests.

BALANCE AND RECEIPTS
  Just as for the home delivery program, you'll keep a balance with us from which we will deduct your weekly orders.  This makes it straightforward if you would like to order items beyond your weekly share.   For example, you could order a share plus a bouquet of flowers or plus an additional 20 lbs of sweet potatoes.  We'll simply deduct the amount of your total order from your balance.
  Within a few days of each drop-off we'll send you an e-mail with (1) the total cost of what you ordered at the last drop-off, (2) your remaining balance -- if your balance drops below $66, we'll ask you to go ahead and replenish your balance, (3) the number of CSA shares you've gotten and the number of weeks we've offered CSA shares so far that year (so that you can make sure you're ordering at least 85% of the time, assuming you want to continue receiving CSA privileges.)

NEW CSA MEMBERS
  New members take part in the CSA as trial CSA members.  This gives you a chance to see if the amount and types of food work for you, if the amount of out-of-town traveling you do is compatible with the regularity of the CSA, if the drive to pick up your food (if you live outside our home delivery area) is manageable, etc.
  We ask trial CSA members to request CSA shares 11 out of 12 consecutive CSA deliveries.  You can begin any week we're offering CSA shares to regular CSA members. 
  We invite trial CSA members to order as if they were CSA members.  That means you can request a CSA share any week when we're offering CSA shares to our regular CSA members, and as with regular CSA shares we'll fill in whatever portion of the $22 CSA share for which you don't make requests and we'll make substitutions for any requests you make that we can't fill, sometimes including items that weren't part of the list in the preceding newsletter.  The one difference is we'll pack the shares of our regular CSA members first, so sometimes we may need to short you and you won't receive the same priority as regular CSA members. 
  After you've requested 11 CSA shares (within a period of 12 consecutive CSA deliveries) we'll count you as a regular CSA member so long as you keep ordering shares at least 85% of the time.
  If during this time you realize the CSA isn't working for you, you can simply drop back to the home delivery program.  This means you'll just start using your balance just like any home delivery customer, ordering as much or as little as you want as often as you want, skipping as many weeks as you want, and you'll no longer be able to order CSA shares except on the weeks when we offer sample CSA shares to everyone. 

HOW TO PROCEED IF YOU'RE INTERESTED IN JOINING THE CSA
  (1)  Let us know you're interested in joining the CSA
  (2) Plan a visit to the farm.  Any of our customers is welcome to come for a farm visit/tour, but we require a farm visit of new CSA members.  This gives you a chance to better understand what our farm is all about, what the CSA partnership is about, and what it means for what you'll be receiving in your CSA shares. It also helps us better explain the logistics of our system to first time CSA members and to answer any questions you have.
  (3) Join the home delivery program (if you're not already a home delivery customer.)  To join the home delivery program, you'll need to give us a check for at least $150 and commit to spending a minimum of $150 over the course of the next 12 months -- the first $150 required for taking part in home deliveries is non-refundable regardless of whether you decide to continue with the CSA -- but your first 11 trial CSA shares will add up to more than that, so you'll need to plan to add to your balance soon into your CSA trial to continue unless you make a larger initial payment.  Any amount over $150 is fully refundable.

  If you have more questions about our CSA, please send us an e-mail or call us (704-546-5074) or make plans to visit the farm.

CARROT AND YACON SALAD

  This is a favorite winter salad of ours.  It keeps a couple days in the fridge so we often make a big batch. 
  Shred about equal amounts of carrots and yacons.  Add some finely chopped ginger root, a small amount of apple cider vinegar and honey, a pinch of salt and optionally some chopped dried figs (or raisins would probably fill a similar role) and walnuts.

Roasting sweet potatoes

 They are almost too pretty to eat!

Germination testing

It's seed germination testing time.

Any seed we want to carry over from last year or was saved by us last year, gets germ tested.

Seeds get laid on old cloth diapers in numbered rows, then another diaper is put on top. We keep them warm and moist.

Within 4-6 days the seeds have germinated enough for us to decide if they are healthy enough to use this growing season.

 

Eating local in the winter

  There's really nothing to even scavenge in the garden these days.  The extreme cold a couple weeks ago put an end to everything except for the remaining carrots that got a foot thick blanket of hay.  Some years we still have some fresh greens mid-winter, but some years, like this, there is nothing to be found.  

  Cold weather or not, one can still eat local all winter long.  It just takes some planning ahead.  Canning, freezing, dehydrating, and root cellaring can provide a constant supply of a wide variety of things to eat.

  Here's an okra dish we made recently with all dried vegetables: okra, tomatoes, onions and powdered garlic scapes.  We added some water then cooked it a short time in a pressure cooker.

 

Sweet potato tastings

 We've been doing some family sweet potato tastings now that the sweet potatoes have fully cured. If you'd like to do your own tastings, try our sweet potato sampler bag which includes at least 8 varieties. It's an easy way to explore the range of tastes, textures and colors sweet potatoes come in.