October 1st
Our Vibrant Friends!
October! Autumn is decidedly here.
Not that you’d know it this week necessarily at the farm, as we push past 80 degrees and feel like Augustonians again, pouring cupfulls of water over our heads to cool us in between tricky tasks in the field. But the lay of the land and our harvest confirms it is indeed October.
The flowers are slowing. The peppers are slowing. We mow many rows that are no longer serving us, including all but one row of tomatoes that we will keep for fat green heirlooms, which we have been frying up with breadcrumbs and butter and thyme deeeeelicious. Whereas earlier in the Summer a mowed row may mean a making way for something else, now we prepare the soil for cover crop. For Winter.
The fruits of Fall and Winter are now cropping up elegantly. Many team harvested vanfulls of candy roaster and kobocha squash are curing beautifully in our prop house, and two days ago we pulled over 3,000lbs of potatoes from the earth and put them in bags for our cold storage. Our careful cutting of silky salad has become a careful cutting of spicy mix and arugula. Celeriac root and celery are now staples of the weekly harvest menu. We clip starburst heads of coriander seed for eager chefs at our restaurants as we make our way past our old faithful patch of curly and Italian flat leaf parsley that just keeps coming month to month to month. Soon we will gather our extended community for a day of further squash harvest, collecting cratefulls upon cratefulls of acorn, delicata, butternut, hubbard, sweet dumpling, and sugar pumpkin.
Other trusty crops we harvest through seasonal change. Carrots, turnips, beets, collards, kale, cabbage, scallions, chives, thyme, sage, parsley… Many of these look the same regardless of season, but some – namely the root vegetables – still taste as delicious, but require more sorting and obsession to select, both in the field and in the washhouse. We check ourselves as we sort, finding the balance between knowing the difference between what should not be sent out and what may look a bit different from the summer version but what will still be fantastically fit for consumption.
Club root. Rust flies. These and other maladies are major annoyances at the farm, rendering a portion of our tenderly tended crop unusable. To obsessively seed, and water in the prop house, and plant, and weed, and weed some more, and weed some more, and finally harvest, and then keep weeding between harvests, only to discover that for a percentage of our crop, the work is all for naught is a bummerrrrrr.
We are a farm that does not spray. NO SPRAY NO WAY! It is an ethos and a chant for our crew at VVF, and a mantra that hasn’t always garnered us equal cheering from some of our farm friends who do not follow the same path. It is time consuming, laborious, and expensive not to turn to sprays. But it is something we are committed to, for our own health, for your health as consumers, and for the health of our planet.
We are also committed to reduction of crop waste. We celebrate visual imperfections in our harvest, as long as the internal quality is there. We donate our time, food, and flowers weekly to Feed the Mass and other organizations. We compost our castaways, giving back to the land.
We trust that you, as our champion, celebrate this ethos along with us. That you appreciate the long, privileged pathways of our vegetables to your table. That you understand that the cost of our crops may be higher than what you’d find at your outlet grocery, because we are prioritizing the cost of a healthy earth, a healthy us, and a healthy you.
Before I became a farmer I had only a general idea of what it took to grow a carrot, or a zinnia. I certainly had no idea all the work it took to, for example, grow the indigo required for us to process the rich blue dye needed to tie dye a perfect crew neck sweatshirt (available for purchase soon from our friends at Suttle Lodge!)
Now I know the path of that carrot.
I have mixed heavy bucket fulls of the very best soil with the very best carefully measured additions, raking the mixture over and over until it is blended right. I have struggled to pull apart seed trays for filling with soil. I have bent over the seeding table for days, carefully pulling one small seed from many with the precision of a knife for each slot. I have helped water the starts, monitoring them often to ensure they are not too dry but not too wet so as to inspiring molding. I have prepared the rows where the starts will be planted, laying drip tape in long straight lines. I have kneeled in the earth and moved quickly but still purposefully down the row to plant the starts, measuring the distance between each one to ensure they will have just enough space to reach full potential. I have gone back over these rows a short time later to cradle the still fragile young leafing of each start as I pull away greedy weeds surrounding, distinguishing between the near identical fronds of wild chamomile from carrot. Then finally when the crop is ready, I have pushed the garden fork into the earth to loosen the soil, and pulled out the carrots by the bunches, and then kneeled to sort them, peeling away wilted tops, inspecting them for errant bites from little creatures. I have stood over them further in the wash house as I smoothed away the dirt under the spray of the hose, watching for irrevocable damage from the insidious rust fly. Presenting the best of the rest to be packed and sent out to our chefs, to our charities, to you… Isn’t it wild?! All that it takes? For one sweet, brilliantly orange, delicious carrot??
This is all to say that as farmers at Vibrant Valley we obsess. We labor with love. For all of our careful plotting and planning and learning, we also learn to embrace the perfection of imperfection. We learn the necessity of letting go. We embrace the change of season. The mowing of the tomatoes. The final harvests of the peppers. The burn of our muscles when we dig for potatoes, carry squash, lay out road fabric for our new perennial flower garden.
We relish in the heat of this October day, and are thankful for our sweat. For our opportunity to tend this land, and work together, and harvest for you.
Until next week, with love and gratitude to you and yours,
-- Rosemary Stafford for Vibrant Valley Farm
ROSE’S RECIPE IDEAS OF THE WEEK:
FRIED GREEN TOMATO SANDWICHES
Ingredients
Butter for frying
Thick slices of green tomato
Flour
Breadcrumbs
Eggs for dredging
Milk for dredging
Fresh thyme
Your favorite bread
Salt and pepper to taste
Butter lettuce
Mayo
Chives
Thick cut bacon (optional)
Preparation
Slice your green tomato into medium thick rounds and discard the ends. Set aside.
Whisk eggs and milk together in a medium sized bowl. Scoop flour onto a plate. Mix breadcrumbs, salt, and pepper to taste onto another plate.
Dip tomatoes in flour to coat. Then dip the tomatoes into milk and egg mixture. Dredge in breadcrumbs to completely coat.
In a large skillet, heat butter over medium heat with thyme leaves. Place tomatoes in frying pan in batches of 4 or 5, depending on the size of your skillet and the slices, being careful not to crowd them so they can have good space to fry. When the tomatoes are browned, flip and fry them on the other side, adding further butter and thyme as needed. Remove the tomatoes when fried to perfection and drain them on paper towels.
Toast your bread. Slather with mayo, stack with butter lettuce, sprinkle with cut chives, and optional thick cut bacon. Add your friend green tomato masterpiece slices.
Enjoy the absolute blazes out of that sandwich, ok? Ok.
Tomatoes are also excellent by themselves as a side dish!
CARROT JAM
Ingredients
4 lbs of carrots, coarsely shredded (about 18 cups)
6 cups sugar
2 tablespoons finely grated lemon zest
1 cup fresh lemon juice (about 8 lemons)
4 teaspoons kosher salt or to taste
Three 3 inch cinnamon sticks
12 whole cloves
Big pinch freshly grated nutmeg
Cheesecloth
Preparation
In a large enameled cast iron casserole or heavy pot, combine the carrots, sugar, lemon zest, lemon juice, and salt. Mix well. Wrap the cinnamon sticks and cloves in a double layer of cheesecloth and tie into a bundle. Tuck the bundle into the carrots. Cover and refrigerate overnight.
Add the nutmeg and ½ cup of water to the carrots and bring the pot to a boil. Cook over moderately high heat, stirring occasionally, until the carrots are shiny and the liquid is syrupy, about 40 minutes. Discard the spice bundle. Let the carrot jam cool to room temperature, then refrigerate.
Jam is delicious spooned atop goat cheese or ricotta for a tea tray nibble, or spread on grilled sandwiches with prosciutto and parmesan. Also wonderful mixed into marinades, or salad dressings. Jam can be refrigerated up to 3 weeks.
SPICY GARLIC STIR FRIED NAPA CABBAGE
Ingredients
4-5 cloves of garlic, chopped
Kosher salt to taste
4 scallions, finely chopped
3 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1 tablespoon water
Dashes of fish sauce
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
½ teaspoon sugar
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
Fresh squeezed lime juice
One 1 ½ lb head napa cabbage, thinly sliced
2 teaspoons toasted sesame seeds
Chopped chives for garnish
Preparation
Mash the chopped garlic to a paste with a pinch of salt. Stir together chopped scallions, soy sauce, fish sauce, sesame oil, water, red hot pepper flakes, and sugar together in a small bowl and set aside. Sauce can be made up to 2 hours ahead and kept at room temperature.
Heat the vegetable oil in a wok or large skillet over high heat. Add the cabbage, season with a pinch of salt, and stir fry, using tongs to stir, until the cabbage is just wilted, 3 to 5 minutes.
Remove cabbage from heat and pour the dressing over it, tossing gently to combine. Transfer to a serving dish and squeeze a little lime juice over it, and further dashes of fish sauce to taste. Top with chopped chives and toasted sesame seeds.
Serve as a side to grilled fish, or meat, or atop rice.