I begin with the proposition that eating is an agricultural Act
Pictured: Heirloom Cherry Tomatoes
Available: August to October More
Well, spring is right around the corner, and that means it time to sign-up for this year’s CSA. Online payment is now available.
Download the 2012 CSA registration form.
If you have any questions, please contact Sue or Jeff at csa@rootsdown.ca.
Well, spring is right around the corner, and that means it time to sign-up for this year’s CSA.
Download the 2011 Kingston CSA registration form
Download the 2011 Ottawa CSA registration form
If you have any questions, please contact Sue or Jeff at csa@rootsdown.ca
This is a quick note about the produce we have in season this week which you will receive through the CSA or at Kingston/Ottawa markets. The French breakfast radishes are great for salad, but also in a stir fry. The spinach is still quite tender, so is nice for salads. We may have more spinach next week, but if not, enjoy because we will not have any more until the fall! In the spicy salad mix, it is the red giant mustard that gives the wasabi flavour (we have had a few people asking). The fresh garlic is garlic that has not been cured. Please use this soon or store in the fridge. The outer peel has not yet set but will still have to be removed to get to the clove. Next week we will have some zuccini, beets, peas, salad mix, kale or chard, and possibly some cucumbers and spinach.
In other farm news, we are calling out to our CSA members for a bit of help with some weeding this Saturday, starting at 10am. Please RSVP by e-mail by this Friday if you are able to help out. Lunch and refreshments will be provided. Also, please note the event for CSA members the following week-end; details can be found in the latest newsletter pdf on this website.
As I write this, I am warming up by a fire in the woodstove…not what I expected for June! But despite this cool weather, we are well underway with the seeding and transplanting, and the brave little plants are growing!This week’s share of the harvest includes:
A note about spinach: this is the last cut from this crop and is not as tender as the previous weeks’. I recommend using it in a recipe that requires cooking it rather than using it fresh in a salad. Not to worry, there will be more spinach to come throughout the season!
We have included with this newsletter a wonderful article [PDF] contributed by CSA member Tracy Hodge. The article describes the nutritional values of various greens in season this time of year. Tracy is nearing her completion of her training to be a Registered Holistic Nutritionist (RHN)! You will find contributions of her articles and recipes about seasonal foods and nutrition in future newsletters. Thank-you Tracy for your contribution and for the great information!
Another CSA member, Dorianne, has contributed this wonderful Rhubarb Crumble recipe from an issue of Food and Drink magazine from the LCBO. Everything Dorianne makes is absolutely delicious, especially the desserts, so I am very grateful for this. Thanks Dorianne, and I hope you all enjoy this!
Although we have had a nice visit with our friend Jack Frost, he seems to be overstaying his welcome! Despite this, we are pleased to be able to provide you with a nice assortment of greens from the greenhouses here at Roots Down. Some of you made it out here to the farm a couple of months ago to kick off the season in the greenhouses, and to help with the seeding. Now the greenhouses are bursting with vitality.
For the next couple of weeks, the greens you will be receiving will come from the greenhouses.The bagged greens you have received today were picked this morning, soaked in cold water and spun dry before placing in the bags. This practice, as well as the perforations we have added to the bags, will provide a good shelf life for your greens (although you will be devouring them quickly enough anyhow)! Simply store them in these bags in your fridge. The greens will need to be washed before you eat them, but only do so just before you use them. Make sure to dry them well in a salad spinner so as not to water down your dressing, resulting in a soggy salad.
Details of your items this week posted here and some recipes posted here. Next week's newsletter will contain more information about what produce to expect in season over the next few weeks, June calendar, and an update on the people and happenings on the farm. We hope you enjoy the first local flavours of Spring!
Suszane & Jeff Klug
It is time for our reflections on last year’s growing season and our dreams for the upcoming season to turn into reality.
We hope you and your families had a wonderful holiday season and are enjoying this snowy winter. We really enjoyed seeing our families over the holidays and just slowing down a little bit. Now we’ve begun shifting gears to start preparing for the 2009 season. The New Year seems to have brought with it uncertain times, but we remain confident that this cloud will have a silver lining. Recently, Jeff spoke to a class as Queen’s about organic farming and the local food movement. He was shocked at their lack of knowledge about the sources, farming practices and seasonality of their food. These kids’ parents must not have been CSA members! More than ever, we feel reassured that Community Supported Agriculture is the way to strengthen our community and environment.
Recently, we had an opportunity to attend the Great Lakes Region CSA conference in Orillia and compare notes with about 200 other CSA farmers. It was a great way to evaluate how we structure our CSA, and pick up a few tips for improving it; our ultimate goal being to adapt the basic CSA model to meet the wants and needs of our members. Therefore we will be holding our 1st Annual CSA Member Meeting Saturday March 7th, at the Queen St. United Church Hall at 11:30 A.M., to receive input from our members. Snacks and refreshments will be provided. We will be going over what you would like to see in each week’s share, ways to cut down on plastic use, pick-up locations, on farm events and answer questions. This will also give us an opportunity to see you all again, we miss you guys!
On March 14th at 11:00 A.M., we’ll be having an Opening up the Greenhouse celebration at the farm and plant the first seeds of the season. This will be a fun, family event, and a bit of a work bee… planting onions as well a few things for the kids to take home. Snacks and refreshments will be provided, but you may want to pack a lunch. Hope to see you here!
We hope you have all been enjoying your veggies from Roots Down. We thought we would update you a bit on what's been happening on the farm. We are transitioning into some different, more typical summer veggies that many of you have been long anticipating. We have been finding it difficult to predict what will be ready by your given pick up date as this season it seems as the growing has been slower due to some cooler temperatures and overcast skies, however the rain has been great. Other than this, the crops look healthy and abundant. So, in the next couple of weeks you will start to receive beans, cherry tomatoes, summer squash, carrots, and after about 2 weeks, larger tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers.
Some food prep ideas...
Looking at your list of veggies for this week, I will recommend some ideas for using them. The pesto may be nice with some roasted new potatoes (roast the potatoes coated with oil first, and then coat with a bit of pesto). Also, a pasta salad would be nice with sautéed zucchini and garlic, and then toss in fresh arugula. Toss with your favourite vinaigrette dressing and some feta or Parmesan cheese. With the cabbage and Kale or Chard and Zucchini, try a nice tomato based summer soup (such as minestrone). Make sure the firmer veggies are cooked longer than the more tender (first cabbage, then zucchini, and last chard/kale).
Now that the warm weather is finally here we are in full swing! By the end of this week we should have all of our main season’s crops planted!
Thank you to the CSA members who made the trek out to the farm for our open house. It was great to see everyone out here and show everyone around, and mainly to take the time to get to know you a bit better.
In other farm news, we have had an unwelcome guest here lately, a black bear who has been causing damage to the beehives. Wildlife viewings on the farm often cause mixed feelings as there is the initial excitement of seeing the animals, and then the reality of the consequences e.g. the turkeys who came and ate the kholrabi! So for now, we hope the addition of electrical fence around the bee yard will end the black bear visits.
We do however hope to see more of you here on the farm, but for now the only wildlife we can assure you see are some large mosquitos and a few dusty looking creatures who spend a lot of time in the fields digging around in the dirt and even planting things for us to eat!
Hope everybody’s long weekend went well. Here, the rain allowed us to step back and take some time to take it all in. It’s been nearly a perfect spring, with the frequent rains and fairly warm temperatures, making everything appear so lush and healthy. For those of you who keep a garden, we have a lot of vegetable starts, seed potatoes and organic soil amendments available. If you are interested, send us an e-mail and we can let you know what we have. We got the last of our potatoes planted before the rain, as well some basil in the greenhouse. The last of our early lettuce from the greenhouse will come out this week, to be replaced by tomatoes. Can’t wait for the first cherry tomatoes of the year!
Busy week here on the farm. In addition to the first CSA pick-ups, we got 12,000 onions transplanted into the field, all of the heirloom tomatoes and field peppers potted up, and our first green beans of the season in. The spring has been going pretty well, though we could use a bit of rain!Today we hosted a meet and greet with our local food group “Local Flavours.” It was nice to step out of the hectic schedule as of late and take the time to connect and reconnect with people from our area in the business of local food, whether they are retailers, restauranteur or fellow farmer. Basically, it is about identifying food needs of producers and consumers, then identifying who’s needs answer another’s, and finally the most difficult: maintaining a connection between the two. Being farmers with a direct relationship with our customers, it is great to be able to learn the needs of our customers and connect them with other producers who can meet any of their food needs that we can’t. The only way we can do this is to know what other farmers have available.On a slightly different note, sometimes maintaining connections requires further organization, and so I should mention the Loving Spoonful project now underway in the Kingston area. This project strives to deal with food excess or would be waste by providing a means of collecting and distributing it to meal providers. CSA members will have the option to donate any of their share of the harvest to Loving Spoonful. To learn more about this project, please visit www.opirgkingston.org/lovingspoonful or contact Susan at lovingspoonful@opirgkingston.org. More information about Loving Spoonful will be provided at this week’s CSA pick-ups.
This week we are kicking off our 2008 CSA season, and Saturday we begin attending the Kingston Farmer's Market regularly. For this, we will be harvesting greens from our greenhouse, where most of our May harvest will be coming from.
This spring has moved quickly from the 3 ft. snow banks of only a few weeks ago, and now we are well underway with early plantings of potatoes, peas, broccoli, cabbage, spinach, radishes, carrots, beets, lettuce and greens. Many of you may be busy planning your own gardens, or simply enjoying the greening-up of the environment, warm weather and first blossoms. We find this time of year inspiring, heading into a new season equipped with knowledge gained from previous years’ successes and failures. We are excited for what we will learn this time around. And finally, we look forward to reacquainting with old customers and meeting new ones. Whether you are a CSA member, market customer, or business that uses or sells our produce, we greatly value this direct relationship with you.
Well, despite the 6 foot snowdrifts and mountains of snow in our laneway, Spring is officially here. And that means busy days in the greenhouse. Up and growing our thousands of baby onions, shallots, leeks, greenhouse tomatoes and peppers, eggplant, artichoke (something new this year), and the first crop of head lettuce. This week, will be sowing broccoli, cabbage, more lettuce, field peppers and herbs. In the unheated portion of the greenhouse, we have a nice crop of baby lettuce, arugula and spinach. Planted in Early October, they didn't quite get up to size last fall, probably a result of to many cloudy days and cold nights. They braved the winter hunkered down, waiting for the days to lengthen, and now they have exploded. A welcome site! We'll be going to market tomorrow at Queens, so if you get a chance stop by.
People often ask what we do in the winter so here goes. We've been fixing equipment, building a new shop, dreaming, going to a lot of farming conferences, and meeting with some other local producers to increase are offerings to our members. We're very excited about Cairnlea Farm, who just moved from Ireland to Gananoque. They will be providing us with certified organic eggs, pork and Black Angus beef. All and all, it's been a pretty nice winter. We've made some new friends, gotten some new ideas, and hope to be ready for the upcoming season.
It hard to imagine with all the snow on the ground that we could be planting Peas, greens and barley in 3 weeks, so keep your fingers crossed for a warm spring. The fields should dry up quickly as there is very little frost in the ground thanks to the nice blanket of snow we've had all winter. And so it begins.
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