CSA Newsletter for August 9, 2014

Farm Update

Look at all these gorgeous veggies!  This photo is
courtesy of our very own Joe Cecil, who knows a
lovely setup when he sees it, even in the midst of
a busy harvest day!

Hi everyone!  We had some really nice weather last week, and our tomatoes are finally starting to ripen!  We've eaten a few of the very first ones here at home, and they have been delicious!  Fred and the guys seeded the carrots and beets for some of our fall plantings this week as well.  The pigs are starting to get pretty big, and they have been bathing in their mud pit frequently due to the warm weather.  We just set a butchering date for October 29, so the pork will be ready sometime in mid-November.  We're not exactly sure what we're going to be charging for pork this year, but we'll have four pigs available, and you can get either a half or a whole pig.  There will be more information about the pigs coming up, so I'll let you all know when we'll start taking orders.  This week, we are officially halfway through the season, so there are 10 more weeks of lovely veggies after this!  

What to Expect in This Week's Share

Most of the broccoli in the
shares this week won't be
as huge as this beast, but
it will still be delicious!

Choice of salad mix or head lettuce
Choice of potatoes or surprise veggie
Choice of beans or summer squash
Choice of carrots, broccoli, or cucumbers
Choice of kale, chard, or cooking greens
Choice of turnips, bok choy, or beets
Choice of onions or basil

Heirlooms, Hybrids, and GMOs:  What's the Difference?

For the last few years in the media, we have been hearing a lot about GMO's, and most people are at least somewhat familiar with the debate on whether or not they are good for us.  We get asked frequently what they are, and how they are different from the traditional breeding methods that farmers have used throughout history.  So for those of you who want to brush up on your knowledge of plant propagation, here is a brief tutorial on the difference between heirlooms, hybrids, and GMO seed varieties.

First, we have the heirloom varieties.  These are varieties that have been around for a long time, anywhere from several generations to several centuries.  These varieties are open pollinated, which means that they mix their pollen in the traditional way without human intervention.  You can save seed from them and expect the seed to produce plants with the same characteristics of the parent plant, so these varieties will be consistent from year to year.  We grow several of these heirloom varieties at the farm, including Golden Globe Turnips, Black Cherry tomatoes, and Vates kale.  These are varieties your grandparents could have been growing, and maybe they did.

Our happy chickens pecking around for bugs in the grass.

Hybrid varieties are the next step up on the tradition ladder.  This requires human intervention, but not the kind that occurs in a lab.  This occurs when a grower takes two parent plants of different varieties and crosses them, so that the offspring plant will have characteristics of both the parents.  For example, a grower might cross one variety with excellent disease resistance with another variety that has superior taste to try to create a hybrid variety that tastes awesome and withstands disease.  Hybrids are commonly used in organic production systems for this very reason.  Since we don't spray synthetic chemicals on our plants, we want varieties that are naturally disease resistant.  For example, we chose a hybrid variety for our sweet corn called Trinity, because it is bred to have a tight wrapper that is hard for worms to penetrate.

The pigs have been hanging
out in their mud puddle a lot
lately due to the heat.

The last type of seeds are the GMO's, which are the new kids on the block in terms of plant propagation.  These genetically modified varieties are made in a lab, and scientists actually take genetic material from one life form and splice it with the DNA of another plant.  With hybrids, you take to kinds of peppers, get their pollen mixed, and hope that their offspring has the characteristics you want.  With GMO's, you take a pepper (or more likely, a soybean) and add genetic material from a completely different plant or animal.  These are obviously expensive to produce, and these varieties can be patented, so they are much more expensive to the farmer.  The main benefit to the grower is that many GMO's are created to be used in conjunction with a particular pesticide or herbicide (such as Roundup-ready soybeans), which makes the farmer's life easier.  However, that makes the farmer dependent on the expensive GMO seed.  There has also been a lot of debate about whether GMO's are actually safe in the long run, because we just don't know enough about how these genetically modified foods behave in our bodies or in our environment over the long haul. That's a whole other article, so I won't get into that too much here, but suffice it to say that GMO varieties are not allowed in organic production systems, and many countries have outlawed them altogether.  In fact, many European countries won't allow American brands that include GMO's on their store shelves.  Also, as a family we avoid buying products that have GMO's, which is fairly hard to do, because they are pretty pervasive.  So if you're concerned about the presence of GMO's in your ground beef (because most beef in stores came from cows fed on GMO corn) or your ranch dressing (don't ask me why they need to but GMO high-fructose corn syrup in salad dressing), spring for the organic varieties, because they can't contain any GMO's.  In fact, maybe that would be a good article for the near future: what you need to know to make educated decisions and avoid GMO foods.  I think I'm going to put that on the newsletter roster, so stay tuned for that sometime in the next few weeks!

So hopefully you now know a little more about the different types of seed varieties, and have an appreciation for all the farmer-experimenters of the past who brought us many of the excellent veggie varieties we have today!

Recipes

Pasta with Pesto, Potatoes, and Green Beans

This recipe for Pasta with Pesto, Potatoes, and Green Beans from Martha Stewart was sent to me this week from one of the CSA members at our Mt. Pleasant drop-off, and it includes a lot of the veggies in the share this week!  It looks delicious, so I figured I'd pass it along to all of you.  Thanks, Jessica!