Adventures in Agriculture: Week 8 Distribution
by Eric Richard
Some of my readers are growing increasingly concerned that I have withered away like an old head of lettuce or suffered an untimely death of food poisoning. You can stop your fretting and rest assured that I am alive and well. I just changed jobs and that has kept me busy. Now, I did consume something pretty rotten on Sunday that did make me feel a little sick, but this isn’t a sports blog, so we’ll leave that for another location.
However, you will hopefully also be happy to know that I have been busy writing some articles in the background and have a nice backlog that I can start posting soon. Hopefully the blog will re-emerge soon.
Anyway, to assure you that I am not starving to death, here is an update on the recent distributions.
- 3 (1 lb.) zucchini
- 5 cucumbers
- 1 oz. sage (take as much as you want)
- 1 oz. thyme (take as much as you want)
- 1 oz. parsley (take as much as you want)
- 1 lb. carrots
- 4 heads garlic
- 1 head (1 lb.) cabbage
- 1/2 lb. basil
- 2 lb heirloom tomators
- 1 head lettuce
- 1 bunch (1/2 lb.) chard (choice of chard, pickling cucumbers, scallions, or beets)
- 10 pickling cucumbers (choice of chard, pickling cucumbers, scallions, or beets)
- 1 pint cherry tomatoes
- 3 quarts green beans
on September 11th, 2007 at 6:27 pm
Funny. Our distribution is looking very different. Part of that is that we’re sharing a large share with another family. Last week, for example, we picked and shared three *quarts* of cherry tomatoes. Another part is that there’s a lot of choice in what you take (take 3 of 6 possible items). And I get fresh flowers every week.
I have a huge amount of pesto saved up for the winter, with promises of more (thanks to Costco for the ability to buy olive oil, romano, and pine nuts in large quantities).
We’ve been enjoying a lot of edamame recently (wow, is it ever good) and corn and tomatoes. We’ve been making “lazy man’s caprese salad” with lettuce, spicy green peppers, chopped tomatoes, basil, and chunks of fresh mozzarella.
This has been a great adventure and I’m crossing my fingers that our share mate will want to repeat the experience next year.
– liz
on September 11th, 2007 at 7:40 pm
This distribution list is from a few weeks ago, which is probably why it looks so different. For example, this was before the onslaught of tomatoes.
I don’t want to step on one of Eric’s future posts, but I will say that this adventure has stretched us in a lot of ways. For example, there have been weeks when we brought home 12 pounds of tomatoes and a large bunch of basil. While we both love bruschetta, there are so many servings two people are going to eat in a week.
Because of this, I did learn a neat trick that brings science into the kitchen. (Mr. Wizard would be proud.) If you have fresh basil (the whole stems, not just the leaves), you can snip off an inch or so off the bottom to expose healthy cells. Then, place the basil stems in a couple of inches of water and cover the whole thing with a plastic bag. Finally, cut a few holes in the bag and place everything near a sunny window. The basil will regenerate roots and last weeks this way.
Before learning this trick, the basil wouldn’t last more than 4-5 days in our refrigerator, so we were racing to do something with it. With this system, we use basil as needed and don’t worry about it. (The tomatoes are our new enemy.) We’ll probably make and freeze pesto at some point, but for now, the science geek in mean is enjoying the fact that I actually got the basil to grow flowers at one point! I’ve actually thought of replanting a bunch so we could have basil over the winter.
on September 11th, 2007 at 7:44 pm
Another lesson learned is that Sudbury (and many of its surrounding towns) doesn’t have much of a canning culture. If someone knows of some place in the area that sells canning supplies, I would be grateful for the tip. Right now, I am having to buy things on line, which is ridiculously expensive once you factor in the shipping costs.
on September 13th, 2007 at 5:00 pm
Vicki,
Try checking at a hardware store for canning supplies. I’ve seen some of the basic things at a local store.