The Power of Negative Thinking: An Unconventional Look at How CSA Can Help You Reach Your Goals

Farm Update

Fred cleans some yellow shallots with our ancient root washer
that we got working earlier in the season.  Meant for potatoes,
turnips, and other root vegetables, it's also very effective at
cleaning onions and shallots.

 Hi everyone!  It's definitely starting to feel more like fall out there.  We've been continuing to plant crops for the last part of the season; today Fred planted a bunch of arugula and radishes in one of the coldframes.  We've also been planting spinach out in the field in anticipation of next season; the most recent spinach planting will be protected under a layer of perforated clear plastic for the winter so it will be ready to harvest early in the spring.  Fred also transplanted some lettuce last week into another coldframe, which will be the spring mix in the final week's share.  Speaking of the last week of the CSA, that will be the week that runs from October 30-November 3.  So we still have five weeks of veggies left!  In other news, we and a lot of other growers in our area have really struggled with the white aphids this year.  They're a pretty common fall pest, but this year they have been a lot more severe due to the dry weather.  We've been irrigating a lot for the last several weeks, and we were glad to get a little bit of rain this weekend, even though it was a very small amount.  It dried up pretty quickly, but we'll definitely take whatever rain we can get.  We are now entering the home stretch of the 2017 CSA season.  While we're often pretty tired (okay, exhausted) by October, as every endurance athlete knows, this is the time to kick it in and finish strong.  So here we go!  Bring on October!

What to Expect in your Share this Week

Although they start small, by this time of year, our shiso plants
have grown up into a beautiful purple and green hedge!

If you are picking up at one of our regular drop-offs (Alma, Mt. Pleasant, and Midland) this week, here are the options you’ll find at each station!  If you have a half share, you’ll choose one item at each station, and if you have a full share, you’ll choose two.

Broccoli for everyone!
Lettuce
Cherry tomatoes or slicing tomatoes
Carrots or potatoes
Kale, collards, or Napa cabbage
Surprise veggie
Red onion or yellow shallot

And if you’re having your share delivered or picking up in Lansing, Okemos, or the Midand hospital, here are your options.  If you have a half share, choose either share A or share B, and if you have a full share, you get to choose two.

Share A:                               Share B:

Broccoli                               Broccoli
Lettuce                                 Lettuce
Cherry tomatoes                  Slicing tomatoes
Carrots                                 Potatoes
Kale                                     Napa cabbage
Surprise veggie                   Surprise veggie
Red onion                           Yellow shallot

The Power of Negative Thinking: An Unconventional Look at How CSA Can Help You Reach Your Goals

Timmy can't wait until he's old enough to help
take care of the chickens!

One of the occupational hazards of being a farmer is that you have all the time in the world for half of the year, and then you are crazy busy for the other half.  Like, have to work from 5:30 AM to 11:30 PM just to pack in all of the non-negotiables on the to-do list busy.  Given that this is my life from June to November, one of the things that pretty much gets me through the summer is audiobooks.  I check them out and download them from the library’s extensive catalog of audiobooks, then I put them on my phone to listen to while I’m washing dishes, doing laundry, weeding, and packing up all those nice little bags of carrots and potatoes in the CSA shares.  One of my favorite book genres is the self-improvement type, and I find myself drawn to books on organization and time management in particular.  I don’t know why; I think that that type of literature just appeals to my nerdy, type-A self. 

One book that I listened to recently over the course of a few days was by an author named Sarah Knight, and I won’t name the book because it has an expletive in the title, but suffice it to say that it was a very funny take on how to hone your ability to get stuff done.  One thing she talked about was harnessing “the power of negative thinking” which sounds not only counterintuitive, but counter to what pretty much all of the self-improvement people have been talking about for a long time.  Like, aren’t we supposed to be focused on thinking positive?

Before you start saying “Okay, what is this even about?  This has nothing to do with farming, or vegetables, or anything…”  That is all true, but despite the extremely long rabbit trail I’ve just been on, it does have something to do with the CSA.  In particular, why you’re a part of it. 

It’s been suggested by a lot of really prominent people from megachurch leaders to TV personalities with their own networks that what we ought to be striving for “our best life now.”  There is something appealing about this line of thinking.  In my best life, I would always have hair perfect enough to rival any Disney princess, and all the time (and inclination) I’d need to stay in good enough shape to run a marathon with just a few weeks’ notice, and I’d be able to jaunt away to Europe for a few weeks every year or two.  (Spoiler alert:  That’s not actually what my life looks like.)  My guess is that for some of you, signing up for the CSA was a largely aspirational act, because in your best life, you’d be cooking up Martha Stewart level meals every night in your state-of-the art kitchen, and of course you need the highest quality organic produce to make food that phenomenal.  And your family would be amazed, and your kids would beg you to make those awesome veggies, and since you’d be getting so much amazing nutrition, none of you would ever get sick again, not even a cold.  (My guess is that’s not what your life looks like either.  That makes two of us.)

So where does the power of negative thinking come in?  Maybe instead of thinking entirely aspirationally, like in the Disney-princess-hair, Martha-Stewart-kitchen fantasy, we should think about identifying the thing in our lives that isn’t working for us.  Because that aspirational dream of perfection is a moving target.  You never actually get there, and after a while, you start to think, “Okay, this is never going to happen.  Maybe eating well and being healthy is just unattainable.  Better just pick up a dozen frozen pizzas and a huge bulk box of ramen noodles and call it a day.”  But with the power of negative thinking, the though process is different.  It goes more like, “It really bums me out that I get sick so often, and that I can’t wear all my favorite clothes that I could wear 15 pounds ago.  So what do I need to change to get to a point where I feel well consistently and can dig those cute clothes out of the storage boxes?”  That is where the CSA can fit in.  Once you identify a strategy to reach your goal, such as “Replace four processed meals per week with home-cooked veggie based meals”, and you commit to doing the actions outlined in the strategy, you’ll start to see results that move you in the direction you want.  And sometimes an up-front commitment, such as signing up for a CSA, is the kick you need to keep doing the actions you know will move you toward your goal, even when the goal isn’t shiny and new and surrounded by a beatific haze anymore.  And then who knows?  Maybe the day will come that you’re standing in line at the CSA drop-off with your cute market basket, wearing that cute dress that you couldn’t fit into a few months ago, planning the great meal you’re going to cook that night in your fancy kitchen (which is also somehow magically clean all the time), and you’ll realize that at least in one area, your best life kind of sneaked up on you when you weren’t looking. J

Recipes

And speaking of Martha Stewart, here are 30 Tried and True Broccoli recipes she created to get you on the way to those amazing dinners!  Check them out for some broccoli inspiration!

CSA Newsletter for September 23, 2017

Farm Update

Ben harvests cherry tomatoes for the
shares on Thursday.

Hi everyone!  Wow, what a hot, dry week!  We've been irrigating a lot more lately than we usually do this time of year, because it has just been so dry.  Folks to the north and south of us got rain this week, but so far nothing has hit the farm, so keep your fingers crossed for us!  We've also had higher than normal insect pressure for this time of year (especially the white aphids), because of the extended hot, dry weather.  This week we've been continuing to plant for the fall; we planted some spinach this week and transplanted lettuce into the hoophouses.  We're also going to be seeding some arugula tomorrow.  We harvested the rest of the shallots this week, so they are all officially out of the ground.  In some funny news, apparently we've made the list of top 100 organic blogs in the web, coming in at #100!  I'm not sure what metrics they used to create that ranking, but we're on the list, and you can check it out here!  See you all this week! :-)

What to Expect in your Share this Week

If you are picking up at one of our regular drop-offs (Alma, Mt. Pleasant, and Midland) this week, here are the options you’ll find at each station!  If you have a half share, you’ll choose one item at each station, and if you have a full share, you’ll choose two.

Carrots or potatoes
Broccoli or cabbage
Lettuce
Green beans or Brussels sprouts
Cherry tomatoes or 4 larger tomatoes
Onion or kohlrabi
Kale, herbs, or collards

And if you’re having your share delivered or picking up in Lansing, Okemos, or the Midand hospital, here are your options.  If you have a half share, choose either share A or share B, and if you have a full share, you get to choose two.

Share A:                               Share B:

Carrots                                 Potatoes
Broccoli                               Cabbage
Lettuce                                 Lettuce
Green beans                         Brussels sprouts
Cherry tomatoes                   4 tomatoes
Onion                                   Kohlrabi
Kale                                     Collards

Recipes

You know I always like to give you recipes for things in your share that might be new to you.  This week, that thing is collards.  (Unless you're from the South, in which case, you probably know how to handle collards like nobody's business, and I should take some lessons from you.)  So if like me, you're a Midwesterner who hasn't been eating them since you learned how to walk, here is a great recipe for Kickin' Collard Greens from allrecipes.com!

Veggie Spotlight: The Humble Carrot

Farm Update

After being harvested and washed, these carrots dry in our
packing area before going into your shares.

Hi everyone! It's been another buy week at the farm!  This morning Fred and Logan cleaned 2000 pounds of onions using an old root washer Fred found in one of our outbuildings.  Although it's designed for washing potatoes, beets, and turnips, it also does a great job of taking off the excess peels of onions and brushing off the dirt.  We also pulled the last wave of onions and shallots out of the ground, and they are now drying on top of the soil in the field.  It's been really dry lately, so we've been irrigating a lot as well, but we know in a few weeks, drizzly October will arrive and we'll have to irrigate a lot less.  The tomato vines are starting to get old and worn out, and once that happens, the tomatoes begin to dwindle until they eventually die back for the year.  But even as one crop begins to wind down, others are just starting their lives.  Our fall radishes and spinach have germinated, and they've just poked out of the soil and emerged into the light of day.  It won't be too long until they're fully mature and ready to harvest and eat.  Each farm season is a series of beginnings and endings, and fortunately, we still have seven weeks of veggies left before the season winds down for good.

What to Expect in your Share this Week

If you are picking up at one of our regular drop-offs (Alma, Mt. Pleasant, and Midland) this week, here are the options you’ll find at each station!  If you have a half share, you’ll choose one item at each station, and if you have a full share, you’ll choose two.

Cherry tomatoes or slicing tomatoes
Carrots
Potatoes
Onion or garlic
Cooking greens mix
Surprise veggie (choices from a whole bunch of odds and ends coming from the field)
Lettuce, green beans, or Brussels sprouts

And if you’re having your share delivered or picking up in Lansing, Okemos, or the Midand hospital, here are your options.  If you have a half share, choose either share A or share B, and if you have a full share, you get to choose two.

Share A:                               Share B:

Cherry tomatoes                  Slicing tomatoes
Carrots                                 Carrots
Potatoes                               Potatoes
Onion                                  Garlic
Cooking greens mix            Cooking greens mix
Surprise veggie                   Surprise veggie
Lettuce                                Brussels sprouts

Veggie Spotlight:  The Humble Carrot

When harvesting carrots, we use the undercutter attachment for
our tractor to loosen up the ground underneath the carrots, which
makes harvesting them by hand a lot easier.

The carrot is extremely common in the American diet.  Orange carrots are found in every grocery store across the country, and virtually every small child knows what they look like (even if they’re a little shaky on identifying many other vegetables). But what do you really know about this ubiquitous food that you’ve probably been eating your whole life?  Welcome to the life and times of the humble carrot.

This popular vegetable originated somewhere in modern-day Iran or Afghanistan, but was extremely different from the orange carrot we now have at our tables. Thousands of years of traditional breeding have turned the original carrots from a tough, thin, bitter purple root into the typically orange sweet root we have today. The first carrots were mostly used for the aromatic foliage and for the seeds, much like we now use dill, which is a close relative of the carrot. Through medieval times it is referenced many times for medicinal purposes. When it first came to Europe is widely disputed, and there are a lot of historical unknowns due to its confusion in ancient writings with the closely related parsnip. However, its movement to the Americas is a little more certain, as it showed up very soon after Columbus came to the Americas is 1492. Back in the 1600s, more definite descriptions of carrots appear, and orange is mentioned along with many other colors of carrots that were present. The real push in the US and Great Britain came during the first and second world wars, when other foods were highly rationed but carrots could be grown at home and stored well. During World War II, Great Britain didn’t want the Germans to know how effective their radar was, so they famously spread the rumor that their fighter pilots could see so well at night because of their high carrot intake.

The carrot has great nutritional benefits, the most well-known of which is the high beta carotene levels found in the orange carrots.   This beta carotene, once ingested, either converts to vitamin A (which the body can use in a variety of ways), or becomes an antioxidant to help mitigate the harmful effects of free radicals in the body.  Our mix of carrots is yellow, purple, and orange, and you can see that each has a slightly different flavor than the others.  The sweetest is the orange, where there have been more breeding efforts. We expect in future years there will be greater improvements in the yellow and purple carrots that will increase the sweetness and ease of growing.

Our carrots start their lives out by being seeded directly into the ground during the first planting of the season. They are also one of the last seedings of the year due to the extremely frost-hardy nature of this plant. After being seeded, they come up and are cultivated with our basket cultivator, and then they are hand weeded two or three times before becoming mature. During most of the summer, they are irrigated heavily with our drip tape, mostly to germinate the seeds, but also through dry periods to prevent the bitterness that sometimes occurs when the plant is stressed by lack of water.  They are then harvested by hand and cleaned through a combination of soaking in our wash sinks and being sprayed by a high-pressure hose. Carrots can be harvest very late into the year; it is typical to harvest them through December, although care has to be taken to harvest when the ground is still thawed. They can also be covered and harvested anytime that the ground thaws throughout the winter. 

We really love cooking with carrots, and have many favorite preparations when it comes to this surprisingly sweet root.  We hope you enjoy them this season as much as we have been! J

Recipes

Okay, I can't be the only one who got a little bit geeked when I saw this gorgeous carrot cake from Martha Stewart!  This is just one of her many fantastic carrot recipes, just in case you're looking for something new to do with an old favorite.  And if you're new to the concept of cooking greens (which everyone will be getting in the shares this week), here is what we do with them:  Normally we cut up some bacon into little pieces and cook it down until it's not quite done, and we add some coarsely chopped cooking greens to the pan.  Cook them until the greens are slightly wilted, and then add a little salt and brown sugar to balance the flavor.  Apple cider vinegar or balsamic vinaigrette are also great.  Enjoy!

CSA Newsletter for September 10

Farm Update

Jewel shows off her solution for the nest of hornets that have
taken up residence in a section of metal piping in our packing
area, occasionally stinging people and generally making
themselves annoying.  She simply made a plug out of a
potato and put it in really fast before the hornets could get mad.
Because sometimes you just have to work with what
you have on hand. :-)

Hi everyone!  Well, it certainly got chilly pretty quickly! We had our first frost last weekend, which fortunately was a light, patchy frost that didn’t end up being too serious.  The frost last night seems to have been deeper, but we’ll be able to see more clearly later what effects it’s had at the farm.  We’ve also been irrigating a lot lately, which seems counterintuitive considering the cold moisture in the air lately.  But since all the rains we’ve gotten have been pretty light and pretty sporadic, the plants have needed some more consistent watering.  We’re putting in some of the last fall plantings for the year as well!  We recently planted spinach, cilantro, and the last field plantings of lettuce, so any subsequent lettuce plantings this year will be in the greenhouse.  We’ll also do a few more plantings of spinach this year, because it actually overwinters in the field under layers of insulating plastic, and then it gets growing again early in the spring.  We’ve also started planting in the greenhouses again; we just planted some bok choy in the heated greenhouse, and we’ll be putting spinach and lettuce in the coldframes pretty shortly.  Over the next week and a half, we’ll have our last major round of hand weeding!  Around this time of year, the weeds really slow down and they become a lot easier to manage, and we definitely look forward to getting past the heavy weeding time of year.  Although it still seems too early, it’s beginning to look like fall, and I’m starting to be drawn to root vegetables and sweaters.  But even though it feels like the end of summer, we still have plenty of weeks of veggies left!  Just in case you’re wondering, our final CSA dates are October 30^th-November 2^nd.  Also, thanks so much to everyone who filled out Carson’s research survey!  He is still needs several more people to fill it out in order for him to achieve his desired number of participants, so if you haven’t filled it out, we’d really appreciate it if you would!  You can find the survey link below.  Thanks so much, and we’ll see you this week! Carson's Survey:  Hunting, Fishing, and Food Values Study

What to Expect in your Share this Week

If you are picking up at one of our regular drop-offs (Alma, Mt. Pleasant, and Midland) this week, here are the options you’ll find at each station!  If you have a half share, you’ll choose one item at each station, and if you have a full share, you’ll choose two.

Carrots

Potatoes

Lettuce or beets

Kale, chard, fennel, or basil

Onion or kohlrabi

Tomatoes or cherry tomatoes

Cucumber, parsley, or heirloom tomato

And if you’re having your share delivered or picking up in Lansing, Okemos, or the Midand hospital, here are your options.  If you have a half share, choose either share A or share B, and if you have a full share, you get to choose two.

Share A:                               Share B:

Carrots                                  Carrots
Potatoes                                Potatoes
Lettuce                                  Beets
Kale                                      Swiss Chard
Onion                                    Kohlrabi
Tomatoes                              Cherry tomatoes
Cucumber                             Heirloom tomato

Recipes

When the weather gets colder, my thoughts turn to beets.  Although available throughout the season, for me beets are the quintessential fall food.  Probably because long after the tomatoes, cucumbers, and blueberries are but a memory of a warmer time, beets remain.  As a kid, the only beets I ever had were the sad canned ones from the store on Thanksgiving, so I had no idea what I was missing!  Now, a saute of root vegetables including potatoes, carrots, beets is one of the most common dishes on our table throughout the fall.  Another very popular (and delicious) way to prepare beets is to roast them.  Or, you can check out these 45 Beet Recipes for Roasting, Frying, and More from Bon Appetit!

Finding the Truth About Food

Farm Update

These red lettuces are looking really nice now that the weather
is getting a little cooler, and since we've been irrigating
a lot lately.

Hi everyone!  We are squarely into the second half of the season, and we’ve noted the subtle shift in weather that generally accompanies this time of year.  In fact, we had the first frost last night, which is unusual.  Normally we don’t see any frost until mid-September, and we were really surprised to get hit with it so soon.  We assessed the frost damage this morning, and because it was a fairly light frost, most crops made it through just fine.  We did see some damage on some of the green beans, and it seems to have hit the winter squash fairly hard as well.  A few more days will tell if the squash are going to swing back, or if they’ll be consigned to oblivion.  Fortunately, we don’t have another chance of frost for at least a week.   Another change around the farm is that our crew is two people smaller than before!  Mary and Therese have gone back to college, and Emily is soon to follow in a few weeks.  Fortunately, the rest of our crew (Carson, Logan, Ben, and Jewel) will be able to work at least part time for the rest of the season, so we are going to be in great shape going into the fall!  Because once the weather gets cold and wet, it seems like just about everything takes longer than it used to, so we’ll really need all the hands we can get.  We are so glad to have such a great team this year!  In other news, we had our annual organic inspection today, which is the culmination of tons of careful record-keeping and saving everything.  Fred has been going through our files for the last few days, both physical and digital, compiling all of the information he’d need to show our inspector this morning to verify that all of our seeds and plants are from organic sources, that we haven’t applied anything synthetic to our fields, that none of the posts from our new deer fence were made of treated lumber (to protect against chemicals leaching into the soil), etc.  It was a huge job, but it’s done now, and we can breathe a sigh of relief.  And now we’re launching into week 12 of the CSA!  Just a reminder that this Monday is Labor Day, so if you’re unable to make it to the drop-off, let me know, and we can make arrangements for your share.  See you soon! J

What to Expect in your Share this Week

If you are picking up at one of our regular drop-offs (Alma, Mt. Pleasant, and Midland) this week, here are the options you’ll find at each station!  If you have a half share, you’ll choose one item at each station, and if you have a full share, you’ll choose two.

Fennel or 4 tomatoes
Cherry tomatoes
Potatoes
Carrots
Onion, shallot, or 2 jalepenos
Kale or herbs
Lettuce, beets, or cabbage

And if you’re having your share delivered or picking up in Lansing, Okemos, or the Midand hospital, here are your options.  If you have a half share, choose either share A or share B, and if you have a full share, you get to choose two.

Share A:                               Share B:

4 Tomatoes                           4 Tomatoes
Cherry tomatoes                   Cherry tomatoes
Carrots                                  Carrots
Potatoes                                Potatoes
Onion                                    2 Jalepenos
Herbs                                    Kale
Lettuce                                  Beets

Finding the Truth About Food

So as a farmer, former teacher, and accidental foodie, I have read a lot of literature about food.  And it turns out that food isn’t just food; there are so many aspects of a topic so fundamental to human life and culture.  There’s nutrition, which deals with the chemical breakdown of what we eat, and how it interacts in our bodies.  There’s cooking, whereby we take ingredients and turn them into meals (wonderful or otherwise).  There’s food culture, about how people groups interact with and build systems, and norms, and traditions around their food.  There’s food activism, where food and the production and procurement thereof becomes a jumping off point for positive social change.  There’s the relationship between food production and the environment in which it is grown, raised, produced, or created alchemically in a lab, as the case may be.  And since there are so many topics surrounding the concept of what we eat, and when, and why, there are plenty of well-intentioned and respectable authors who completely disagree with one another.  So how do we cut through the noise and get at the truth?  Quite simply, I don’t think we do.  It’s probably possible, but I am definitely not qualified to be the sage advisor when it comes to processing all of the entirety of human food knowledge.

But here is what I do know, or at least think I do:

·        Food should be savored and appreciated.  I think traditionally in the US, we’ve had a tendency to vilify food, because we were never quite sure whether what we were eating was “good” or “bad” for us.  It’s hard to be 100% certain when even the experts change their minds every decade or so.  I think some people are so paralyzed by food choices that they would opt out of eating altogether if they could.  Which is kind of sad, really.  Because enjoying food should be a pleasurable experience, without stressing about whether you’re getting the right mix of nutrients, or worrying that something you’re eating might be found to be deleterious to your health in a few decades.  The best way to stay sane is to be mindful about appreciating your food, rather than being anxious about it.

·        Natural whole foods are better than foods created in labs.  While food scientists have tried for decades to break foods down into their constituent parts and rebuild them better, they haven’t managed to get it right, because there is still so much we don’t know.  But what we do know is that traditional foods have been nourishing people for millennia.  A good rule of thumb is to stick with foods that can be seen growing, walking, or swimming in nature.

·        Food that is grown or raised closer to where it is consumed is better than food grown far away.  There are plenty of economic arguments for shipping in food from regions where it is more efficient to manufacture to places where it isn’t; in fact, I’m pretty sure Adam Smith would heartily disagree with me on this.  But I’m basing my decision to favor local food over distantly-produced food on a different set of criteria than the father of modern economics.  For me, eating local is a means to reduce the negative impact on our environment, as well as a way to support my local community and economy.  I love that I can use my food dollars to support people I know who grow and raise quality food, and that when I do, my money has a better chance of continuing to circulate around the local community to the benefit of my friends and neighbors.  I also know that the more industrially-produced or far-flung food I consume, the more resources are consumed in order to bring that food to me.  If I eat locally-produced food, I reduce the potential negative environmental impact of my food choices.  That said, there is no way I am ever giving up coffee.  (See the above section on enjoying food without stressing about it. J)

So I guess that’s my food manifesto, if you want to call it that.  I know that it is pretty simple, and perhaps overly simplistic (for instance, I ignored the whole debate about what constitutes a whole food).  But just in case you’ve been struggling to work your way through all the conflicting opinions, I hope this additional opinion is more beneficial than detrimental in your search for what works for you. 

Recipes

One thing I love about the CSA drop-offs is getting to talk to people and find out how they prepare different veggies!  I was talking to a lady at our Midland drop-off this week who was telling me what she does with kale, and I realized that I am in a kale rut, always preparing it the same way (sauteed in olive oil with a little garlic and onion, and sometimes some shiitake mushrooms).  So if you're like me and you have been making kale the same way every week, here are some ideas to shake it up!  Check out these 16 Quick and Easy Kale Recipes from Good Housekeeping!