Now that we’re all refreshed, the farm is back on it again this week in full colorful force. The boxes have a beautiful palette of bold red, orange, white, green and purple. There are a couple of new varietals in the boxes this week that we’re all excited about. Hope you enjoy the boxes as much as we enjoyed growing them!

Team Clay Bottom goes on a river canoeing adventure in Mongo Indiana!

Our tomato haven is growing oh so beautifully... and so fast!

The only thing that beats the lively red hue of our new Champion radishes is their flavor!

In This Week’s Boxes-

Spring Mix

Spinach

A new variety of spinach that we are testing–it’s called Raccoon.  We love the look, it’s leaves are dark and well-ribbed.  But we love the taste even more.  It’s juicier and meatier than our old variety.  Try the recipe below if you prefer cooked spinach.

Joi Choi

A wonderful new variety of the standard bok choi, that has a wonderfully dark green leaf that boasts a succulent and juicy texture. Try this in your stir fry, you won’t be disappointed.

Champion Radish

Also a new variety we are testing out, these have such a wonderful sweetness and crunch to them, along with being much much milder in spice than your typical radish. For those who have never really been radish lovers, this kind may lead you to become one.

Carrots

The delicious fragrance while pulling these from the dirt is like no other. Snack by itself as a healthy snack or top on salads, tacos, or just about anything else.

Harukei Turnips

As a regular part of our farm lunch right now, we sauté both the fruit and the leaves in stir fry dishes. Also, sliced thinly these are amazing to add a bit of spice to your salads. For the more bold at heart, eat them like you would an apple, like we often do here at the farm.

Onions

Asparagus

At the farm, we can’t get enough of these deeply rich purple and green bad boys from our friends at Weaver Farms in New Paris. So young and tender you can eat them raw right out of the box!

Microgreens Bag

A tasty combination of our pea shoots and radish micros.

This Week’s Recipe…

Classic Wilted Spinach

1/2 lb spinach

Olive oil

1 clove garlic, sliced

Salt to taste

1.  Clean the spinach by filling up your sink with water and soaking the spinach to loosen any sand or dirt. Put the spinach in a salad spinner to remove any excess moisture.

2.  Heat 2 Tbsp olive oil in a large skillet on medium high heat. Add the garlic and sauté for about 1 minute, until the garlic is just beginning to brown.

3.  Add the spinach to the pan, packing it down a bit if you need to. Use a spatula to lift the spinach and turn it over in the pan so that you coat more of it with the olive oil and garlic. Do this a couple of times. Cover the pan and cook for 1 minute. Uncover and turn the spinach over again. Cover the pan and cook for an additional minute.

4.  After 2 minutes of covered cooking the spinach should be completely wilted. Remove from heat. Drain any excess moisture from the pan. Add a little more olive oil, sprinkle with salt to taste. Serve immediately.

In Your Boxes This Week…

Arugula 

Salad Mix  Our standard mix but this week all of the greens are from the field, not the greenhouse.

Spinach

Head Lettuce  We harvested these in preparation to move in our newly transplanted peppers…

Carrots  Our first of the season. These were very satisfying to pull up from the ground. The smell is almost as delicious as the sweet taste.

Baby Beets  These are “thinnings”–small beets that we pull to make room for the rest to grow big. These being small, it takes no time ( about 15 minutes) for these to boil, whole. The leafy tops also can be used as braising greens. Just add a little butter, fresh minced garlic and a pinch of salt. Mmmmm.

Microgreens Mix  A combination of kale, radish and pea shoots.

Spring Onions

Local Organic Honey  Consuming honey from local bees is said to help with allergies and boost overall surface immunity. Good for you AND decadently sweet? No complaints here. This delicious diversified blend of wildflower honey is from Perry Miller in Shipshewana.

Asparagus  From our friends at Weaver farms in New Paris. These are so delicate and young that you can eat them right out of the CSA box, raw!

Here are a couple of pics from this week:

Ben with our greens harvester harvesting salad mix

Here's Matthew washing off our first of the season carrots

This Week’s recipe:

Asparagus Avgolemono

A variation of the familiar Greek egg-lemon soup in the springtime when the frist tender shoots of asparagus hit the markets

Serves 2 to 4, yields 5 cups

1 quart vegetarian mock chicken or vegetable broth

1/4 cup pastina, orzo, or similar small pasta

2 cups asparagus cut into 1 1/2 to 1-inch lengths

1 T chopped fresh dill

2 eggs

2 T lemon juice

salt and pepper

In a soup pot, bring the broth to a boil.  Add the pasta and cook until almost al dente, about 4 minutes for pastina and 8 minutes for orzo.

Add asparagus and dill and simmer until the asparagus is just tender, about 5 minutes.

While the asparagus cooks, in a bowl, whisk the eggs and lemon uice.  When the asparagus is tender, whisk a ladleful of the hot broth into the egg-lemon mixture.  Lower the heat and slowly pour the egg mixture into the soup in a thin stream, stirring briskly all the while.

Continue to stir until the soup is thickened somewhat and heathed through, a couple of minutes.  (Constant stirring and low heat prevent the eggs from curdling.)  Add salt and pepper to taste.

Spinach, broccoli, kale may be added or substituted for the asparagus.

Enjoy!

Local Organic Honey- From Perry Bontrager in Shipshewana, this honey has a deep, rich color along with a thick, viscous consistency due to the many different flowers the bees pollinated. Extremely addictive.

Salad mix  This finicky weather  has been working us overtime here at the farm! Ben pulled an all nighter harvesting this batch of salad before last night’s hard freeze.

Hakurai turnips For our farm lunches, we have been sautéing the turnip greens with a little bit of olive oil and garlic in addition to serving the root, diced and raw.

Spring onions A mixture of both red and white varieties.

Asparagus  Delicious with its deep tinge of purple, these bunches are from our friend Elam Weaver of Weaver Farms, in New Paris.

Greens Bouquet A mix of chard, lacitnato kale, winterbor kale, etc.  See recipe below…

Sweet Potatoes From our friend Yuri Miller, an Amish organic grower in Shipshewana.  Sweet potatoes are his speciality, taste them and see why!

Talia composting new potatoes

Corinne is harvesting for our greens bouquet

Wonder what to do with that greens bouquet? Here at the farm, we’ve been devouring our harvest of swiss chard with this recipe, found in the Simply In Season cookbook. Enjoy!

Greens in Peanut Sauce

1 medium onion (chopped)

2-3 cloves garlic (minced)

In a large soup pot, saute in 1 tablespoon of oil.

1 medium tomato (diced; optional)

Add and simmer 2-4 minutes.

1/2 TSP ground coriander

1/2 TSP ground cumin

1/4 TSP salt or to taste

1/8 TSP ground cloves

Add, cook, and stir 2 minutes.

1 pound of kale or collards (8 cups chopped)

1/2 cup water

Add and steam until greens are soft but not mushy. Avoid overcooking. Stir occasionally  to coat greens with the spices.

2-3 TBSP chunky peanut butter

1-2 TSP hot water

Combine and add to greens at end of cooking time.

The newest greenhouse was mostly funded through a USDA grant.  We applied in January thinking it was a long shot because we were competing with farmers nationally.  But a month later the USDA office called and said we were one of the recipients!  We also received a grant to hire an energy auditor to monitor our energy usage and suggest ways we can further reduce our carbon footprint.

Clic here to read a recent article by The Farmer’s Exchange about us and these grants.

Here's a picture of our newest greenhouse. We spent the last two weeks building it with the help of an Amish crew.

An inside view of the new greenhouse. We already seeded it with spinach and spring mix. In the foreground are pea shoots.

Talia and Satria tend our early greenhouse tomatoes. There are little green tomatoes on the plants!

Corinne finds a friendly giant earthworm in the tomato greenhouse. Usually this means that our soil is healthy and alive.

Last week Talia loaded our bee hives with a new family of bees.

Vegetables these days…

Salad mix  This time of year we are starting to harvest from outdoors.  The mix this week is a blend of field and greenhouse greens.

Arugula  Field arugula, eat alone or spice up your Spring Mix.

Pea Shoots  The first crop from our new greenhouse!

Hakurai turnips  As soon as harvest our turnips we re-plant with tomatoes and peppers.  Great raw or cooking.  Slice thinly and add to salads.

Radish  French Breakfast variety.

Spring onions

Asparagus  A simple way to prepare asparagus is to steam them until your preferred texture.  Or try them on the grill!  Baste in olive oil and fresh garlic, then place on a hot grill.  Turn after a few minutes.  Enjoy!

Head lettuce  We mix it up a little bit this week… head lettuce in place of salad mix.

Radish  

Turnips  “Hakurai” turnips, a Japanese variety.

Microgreens  Clay Bottom Farm mixed micro greens.  The purple leaves are a radish variety.  The yellow flowers are mizuna flowers.  The petite greens are mizuna.  Also kale micros.

Asparagus  First of the year asparagus!  This is again from Weaver farms in Wakarusa.  Elam Weaver is a German Baptist greenhouse farmer who has helped Ben over the years with greenhouse questions.

Swiss Chard  Contains vitamins A,C,D,E, and K plus calcium, iron, potassium and antioxidants.  See recipe suggestion below.

Maple Syrup  From Atlee Yutzy in Nappannee.  Atlee farms for a living and also produces organic milk and eggs.  Maple syrup season came early this year.  Enjoy on fresh pancakes!

Onions  Fresh green onions.  See recipe below…

Chard Cheese Bake from Simply in Season

1# swiss chard or spinach (chopped), cook and thoroughly drain

4 eggs beaten

1 C milk

1 C Swiss cheese or another cheese (shredded)

1 C bread (cubed)

1/2 C green onions (sliced)

1/4 C Parmesan cheese

Combine with cooked greens.  Pour into a greased 2 quart baking dish.  Cover and bake in preheated oven at 375F until set, 25-30 minutes.  Enjoy!

On the Farm…

What a week…  Sometimes everything seems to happen at once, usually for us that means it’s April!  Our onions arrived and needed to be planted, we potted up and transplanted tomatoes and peppers, we seeded our summer field crops, transplanted kale, broccoli, cabbage, on and on.  Did I mention we got two sheep.  Luckily Rachel is on Spring Break this week…

Plus, we’re building another greenhouse!  For this one we received partial funding through the Elkhart County Soil and Water District conservation office.  We’re so excited!

New sheep!

Ben uses our new chisel plow on the site of the newest greenhouse. Our neighbor gave us the chisel plow--it was tucked away in his woods, unused for years. It helps to loosen the soil very deep without inverting the soil layers..

Rachel paints the brand new bucket on our skid loader. The old bucket cracked in half (in was rusted through) when we were moving compost last week. Jomar Welding custom made this one.

Satria, MCC exchange visitor from Indonesia, is working with us until July. Here is uses our transplanter to poke holes in the plastic mulch for broccoli. We use white mulch to keep the temperature cooler.

Spring Mix  Washed and ready to eat.

Spinach  Washed and ready to eat.

Spring Onions  Our first spring onions, you can use the whole onion, good addition to salads

Hakurei turnips  A Japanese variety, we like to eat them fresh.  Can be peeled if you like.  The tops are also edible, for a Southern treat of turnip greens.

Radishes

Kale  We are using our kale on pizza this week.

Mizuna flowers  Delicious and pretty.  You can use these to garnish your salads.

Fresh herbs  Romemary and thyme

Rhubarb  We’ve never seen rhubarb so early!  Ben picked this on Friday afternoon, just before the delivery.  Just three weeks ago the rhubarb was barely out of the ground!  See recipe below.

Rhubarb crisp, from Simply in Season

Rhubarb crisp is a delicious dessert, made with a rolled oats and butter and cinnamon topping.

Cook Time: 55 minutes

Total Time: 55 minutes

Ingredients:

• 1 cup light brown sugar, firmly packed
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup quick cooking rolled oats
• 1/2 cup melted butter
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 4 cups sliced rhubarb
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 2 tablespoons cornstarch
• 1 cup water
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

Preparation:

In mixing bowl, combine brown sugar, flour, oats, butter and cinnamon; mix together until crumbly. Press half of the brown sugar and oats mixture into a buttered 8-inch square baking dish. Top with the sliced rhubarb.

In a saucepan combine 1 cup granulated sugar, cornstarch, and the 1 cup of water and vanilla. Cook together until clear, then pour over rhubarb.
Top rhubarb with remaining crumb mixture and bake at 350° for 45 to 55 minutes.

On the Farm

We are in the process of converting our "Spring" greenhouses of lettuces and spinach and pac choi into "Summer" greenhouses with tomatoes and peppers and eggplants, etc.

We also tended our strawberry patch. It is hard to find local organic strawberries so we are growing our own this year.

You’ll find many similar items in the shares this week.  We want to make sure those picking up every other week get a full selection, so we try (as best we can) to keep items similar for two consecutive weeks.  The early Spring shares feature greens pretty heavily, which is one reason we love this season!  Our asparagus and rhubarb and onions are creeping up, so more is on the way.  In your shares this week…

Spring Mix  Wow, our lettuces grew fast last week.  Washed and ready to eat.  Enjoy!

spinach  We know that some of you like to cook with spinach, so this week we include a bag of larger leaf spinach for cooking.  Or cut it up for salad.  Ben likes to steam spinach with his eggs in the morning.  Washed and ready to eat.

arugula  Arugula has great flavor this time of year.  Eat alone or spice up your Spring Mix.  Also good steamed, like spinach.  Washed and ready to eat.

pea shoots and sunflower shoots  We recommend eating these first as they don’t keep as long.

kale flowers  The seed head that kale sends up at the end of its productive life.  A specially item, like broccoli raab.  You can steam and use like broccoli, or add to you favorite stir fries.  The yellow flowers are also edible.

cabbage  This is a storage variety.  See recipe below for an idea how to use.

organic popcorn  Last week for the popcorn.  It’s a ladyfinger variety, with less hulls and smaller size.

pac choi  One of our favorite early Spring vegetables.  A variety of Chinese cabbage in the “chinenses” family.  Very popular in Southern China and southeast Asia.  It is very winter hardy and so is growing in popularity in Europe.  Literally means “oil vegetable” in Mandarin because most of the vegetable oil in China is extracted from pac choi.  It makes a great stir fry vegetable, you can use the leaves as well as the crunchy lower part.  We like to cut in half and steam for an attractive side dish (see picture below).

Edible Michiana  Free copy.  Ben has a short piece in this issue.

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Cabbage Salad Supreme

1/3 to 1/2 head cabbage, thinly cliced

2 green onions, chopped

.5 (3 oz) package ramen noodles, crumbled

2 T sesame seeds

2 T slivered almonds

Dressing

1/3 C extra virgin olive oil

1/2 t pepper

1 t salt

2-3 T sugar

2-3 T vinegar

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On the farm….

Steamed pac choi with sliced oranges. We simply cut it in half and steamed it in a pan for a few minutes.

Greens inside one of the greenhouses.

Here we're creating a raised bed and laying mulch for our onions. Rachel stands on the plastic to keep it in place while the implement creates a raised bed, lays drip tape irrigation, and covers the edge of the mulch. It was a great week for field work.

Japanese or "Hakurei" turnips. These are sweet and juicy. Eat like radishes. The greens can also be cooked.

Enjoy!

This time of year is like a second spring–we are busy seeding spring crops like radishes, turnips, spinach and salad mix.  Many of these crops are sweetest this time of year, and there is nothing better on a dreary winter afternoon than working in a cozy, warm and humid greenhouse.  Temperatures can easily reach into the 70s in the greenhouse, even in the middle of winter.

Front view of our new greenhouse, as our cow looks on.

There is still time to sign up for our Fall CSA.  Find out more and sign up here.

Here are a few more recent pics:

View of tomatoes and peppers inside our greenhouse.

The September garden: salad mix, romaine, spinach, cherry tomatoes, turnips, zinnias, golden beets.

As our summer season is winding down, we realize we will have a lot of good memories from this year.  We feel fortunate to be able to farm as part of our livelihood.  It’s a lot of work, but also a lot of fun.  Without great customers like yourselves, this would not be possible.  Thank you for supporting local farms.  We appreciate it!

Kale and potatoes are a great combination.  Here’s a kale potato soup recipe from Simply in Season that we like this time of year:

Kale Potato Soup

1 bunch kale (chopped)

steam and set aside

1 T butter

1 large onion (chopped)

1 clove garlic, minced

Melt butter in soup pot.  Add onion and saute until golden.  Add garlic and saute another minute.

2 large potatoes, diced

2 C hot water or broth (we recommend broth)

Add, bring to boil, reduce heat and simmer until potatoes are soft.  Remove half of the cooked potatoes; puree the rest with the cooking liquid and return to the soup pot.  Return reserved potatoes and steamed kale to soup pot.  (Puree everything if a smooth texture is desired)

3 C water or broth

1/2 t salt or to taste

pepper to taste

Add along with additional hot water or mild to preferred consistency.  Heat gently until hot and serve.

Enjoy!

Ben and Rachel