Amarosia Organic Garden

The beauty of zucchini is its ability to absorb flavours and its light crunchy texture, making it perfect for marinading.

Serves 4 as a side salad

• 1lb zucchini
• Juice of 1 large lemon
• 2 garlic cloves, sliced in half
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• mint or basil (optional)
• salt and pepper

1. Wash and slice zucchini as thinly as you can.
2. Place in a ceramic or glass dish.
3. Add lemon juice, olive oil, garlic and a little salt and pepper and mix gently.
4. Cover and leave to marinade for 2 to 4 hours, or over night. Mix half way through, or the following morning.
5. (Optional: Just before serving add some finely chopped mint or basil and mix well)

Excellent served with baked potato and smoked ham or turkey.

008 Zucchini Marinata
Son habilité à absorber les saveurs et sa texture légèrement croustillante rend le zucchini un ideal pour la marinade.

• 4 portions comme plat d’accompagnement
• 1 lb de zucchini
• Jus d’un gros citron
• 2 gousses d’ail, coupées en deux
• 2 c. à table d’huile d’olive
• menthe ou basilic (facultatif)
• sel et poivre

1. Laver et trancher les zucchini le plus mince possible et placer dans un plat en céramique ou en verre.
2. Ajouter le jus de citron, huile d’olive, ail et un peu de sel et poivre; mélanger délicatement.
3. Couvrir et laisser mariner pendant 2 à 4 heures, ou pendant la nuit. Mélanger à mi-chemin ou le lendemain matin.
4. Facultatif: Juste avant de servir, ajouter de la menthe ou basilic finement haché et bien mélanger.

Accompagne bien une pomme de terre au four et du jambon ou dinde fumé.

Large Boxes

1. Baby Daikon Radish
2. ‘Red Ace’ Beets OR Fava Beans
3. ‘Music’ Garlic
4. ‘8 Ball’ Zucchini
5. Chinese Cabbage
6. ‘Royal Burgundy’ Purple Beans
7. ‘Provider’ Green Beans
8. ‘Latah’ and ‘Bloody Butcher’ Tomatoes OR Asian Eggplants OR Lemon Cucumbers or English Cucumber.
9. Spring Greens
10. Shiso
11. Squash Blossoms

Small Boxes

3,4,5,6,7,9,10

Borage Refresher - bright green, very refreshing cucumber flavoured drink

1. Roughly chop up borage leaves then pulse in a food processor (or chop finely)
2. Add milk and ice cubes and pulse again

Borage Salad

1. finely chop the borage leaves
2. Dress with lemon juice and olive oil

Borage Soup

Yield: 6 Servings

Ingredients

1 c mashed potato
125 g borage leaves
1/2 ts salt
4 c chicken or vegetable stock

Instructions

Chop the borage leaves and put into blender with the mashed potato
and salt and as much of the stock as may be added safely. Turn onto
high for a few seconds until the borage is finely chopped and the
mixture properly blended. Pour into a saucepan with the remainder of
the stock. Add more salt if necessary. Heat and serve.

In summer this soup is delicious if chilled and served cold.

Rowena takes Farm Share Members on a tour of the gardens

Well after all my stress that turned out to be a really fun day:-)

Highlights included

• 7 farm share members (plus families) come along for tours between 9 am and just after 2pm (thats 10% of our membership)
• Ripe tomatoes, herbs, zucchini, saskatoon berries and raspberries were sampled
• Organic Persian Mint Drink was served
• Meeka was thoroughly fussed (while Karima watched from the bushes)
• It was the most glorious day; sunny and hot with a nice onshore breeze.
• Farm share members met each other and invitations to cook together were exchanged.
• None of the younger visitors seemed to get too bored despite the lack of farm animals!
• Farm Share Boxes were returned
• Tools were donated
• No-one expected the Farm to be pristine!
• I didn’t have to wear a white floaty skirt or tiny sandals;-)

Dick Lane with his Grandson Spencer and Linda LeBlanc (with Meeka who was in heaven!)

It’s the start of our Farm Share Open Day. We are all a bit stressed. Dave is currently giving a tour. Serge is manning the Market Stand in Shediac. I’m preparing some home-made organic mint cordial and Shawn is on the lookout for arrivals. We have no idea whether to expect 5 or 50 visitors.

For the last for days we have been trying to improve the appearance of the farm. Its quite stressful because there plenty of other things that need to be done, but we don’t want the place to look too untidy either. I’m trying to strike a balance between making the Farm into a nice place to visit and remembering that this is a working farm and not a Historic Village or Municipal Park.

To add to the stress, one of our apprentices decided that farming was not for him in the middle of the harvest on Friday and took off with one of the Wwoofers, so we are two men (well, one man and one woman) short.

I just read this article in the Globe and Mail and I think that certain aspects of it do ring true. We are extremely grateful to our fantastic Farm Share Members and market customers for their support, but while we are working hard to grow quality food while respecting the planet, I am a little paranoid that we are supposed to be creating some idyll that simply can’t exist in real life. I can’t remember the last time I skipped through a corn field or had time to hug a tree…

Vanity Fair photo shoots of frilled white dressed and Trilbys tipped against dappled sunlight we are not. These guys need to have a couple of buckets of mud thrown over them, followed by being attacked by mosquitoes and of course they should all be wearing rubber boots!

Me on a typical Monday Morning… well the one on the right does look suitably spaced out.

“Get yer hair cut boy” as my Grandfather would say, “You can’t see a darned thing”

1. Shell Fava beans.
2. Lightly fry garlic in butter or olive oil over a low heat.
3. Add fava beans to the pan and stir fry until the skin of the beans start to split revealing a bright green interior.
4. Serve as a side dish, on Bruschetta with fresh riccota cheese, mix into a salad or serve with chopped sweet red onions and finely sliced mint.

NOTE: You can either suck the inner bright green bean out or eat the entire bean including the outer skin for additional fibre.

Gourganes à l’ail

1. Écosser les gourganes
2. Faire sauter légèrement de l’ail dans du beure ou de l’huile d’olive sur un feu doux.
3. Ajouter les gourganes à la poêle et remuer jusqu’à ce que la pelure du haricôt fende et nous montre l’intérieur vert brillant.
4. Servir comme plat d’accompagnement, sur un Bruschetta avec du fromage riccota, mélanger dans une salade, ou servir avec des oignons rouges coupés en pièces avec de la menthe coupé finement.

Manger la pelure du haricôt pour une source supplémentaire de fibre.

1. Preheat the oven to 400°F.
2. Peel away the outer layers of the garlic bulb skin, leaving the skins of the individual cloves intact.
3. Using a knife, cut off 1/4 to a 1/2 inch of the top of cloves, exposing the individual cloves of garlic.
4. Place the garlic heads in a muffin pan. Drizzle a couple teaspoons of olive oil over each head, making sure the garlic head is well coated.
5. Cover with aluminum foil. Bake for 30-35 minutes, or until the cloves feel soft when pressed.
6. When cool enough to handle use a cocktail fork or your fingers to pull or squeeze the roasted garlic cloves out of their skins.
7. Eat! Or spread over warm French bread, mix with mashed potato or serve with cheese over pasta

Ail au four

1. Prechauffer le four à 400°F.
2. Peler les couches extérieur de l’ail en laissant la pelure de la gousse individuelle intacte.
3. Couper le dessus du bulbe de 6 à 12mm, exposant les gousses individuelles.
4. Placer les bulbes dans une tôle. Arroser le bulbe d’huile d’olive en s’assurant que l’ail est bien recouverte.
5. Couvrir d’une feuille d’aluminium et cuire au four pendant 30-35 minutes, ou lorsque les gousses sentent molles lorqu’on les appuis.
6. Lorque refroidi suffisamment pour les manipuler, utiliser une petite fourchette ou vos doigts pour retirer la gousse de sa pelure.
7. Manger! Ou, étaler sur du pain Français, mélanger avec des patates pillées ou servir avec du fromage sur des pâtes.

This was a bit of a sparse week due to three weeks of no rain. Most of the spring crops; sugar snaps, greens etc are over, but the summer crops; beans, tomatoes, cucs etc are not quite ready… really close but not quite!

Consequently, although the smaller boxes contained a regular amount of vegetables, the large boxes were lacking. There will be extra next week to compensate.

Large

1. Melokhiya (Egyptian Spinach) or
2. Calaloo (Amaranth)
3. Latah Tomato
4. Napoli Carrots
5. Fava Beans
6. Fresh Garlic
7. Head Lettuce
8. Snow Peas
9. Spring Greens

Small Boxes contain 5,6,7,8 and 9

Katherine is a Psychology and French student from British Colombia. She arrived on Monday and has been busy being super helpful ever since. She has done a fair amount of weeding plus preparation for the Farm Share Program, seeding Buckwheat in the big greenhouse, working on the drip irrigation in the other greenhouse and yes, more weeding.

Last night we went to Shediac and stopped by on some of the more touristy spots.

Shawn, Katherine and Hayden - and the prize for the most imaginative pose goes to?

I’m going to start with the things that are not going quite so well, move onto the things that may be redeemable and conclude with the successes so that I can finish the post on a high:-)

I’ll start with the beans. Beans need warmth to germinate and then they need moisture to grow. This year we had a cold start followed by a long dry spell. Firstly they got munched on by corn worms so many did not germinate and then (due to us not having anything resembling an irrigation system, beyond praying for rain) they just didn’t grow. It’s quite a sad sight:-(

One of our few tiny bean plants

Having got the onions in the ground super early and then mulched them a bit, they got forgotten (we only planted a couple of beds so other, bigger crops, diverted our attention).

Last week we got in and weeded them a bit and there are some lovely looking (and VERY sweet and tasty) tiny onions there, they would just appreciate some light, moisture and love and attention please!

spot the onions….

Brassicas (cabbage, kale, broccoli etc) like cold springs, which they got and so they did very well then, but they really don’t like the heat and we have had rather too much of that! We have eaten some very, very tiny heads of broccoli. Far too small to bring to the market or put in the boxes. What we need now is some rain to help them grow bigger so that you can have some too!

Hayden, cheerfully(?), weeding the broccoli

Purple peas anyone? This variety is called Desiré and having grown purple beans I couldn’t resist trying out the peas. They grew very well but were sadly very bland tasting and we are leaving them to go to seed so that we can till them in and then use them as pea shoots with beautiful purple and pink flowers.

The potatoes have, once again, been scouted for potato beetles, they have been watered, more compost has been applied and they have been mulched with straw. Now we are waiting for them to grow please!

Potatoes, mulched with organic straw.

The evil Colorado Potato Beetles doing their dirty work. Hayden hails from Colorado and has been told that when he returns he will find his suitcase packed full of them!

Eggplants are grown by very few farmers in this area, simply because they like a lot of heat and New Brunswick is not known for its warmth (except from the locals of course!). We grew them in the greenhouse last year where each plant produced about one small eggplant each which we sold for about $1… not really an effective use of greenhouse space! So this year I tried them outside on black plastic. They seem to be going nicely despite being attacked by the potato beetles in the spring. Two have small fruits on them which may make it into the boxes… we just need another 75 please!

Eggplant plant

Eggplant flower (see the resemblance to tomato and potato flowers)

Eggplant fruit!

Norbert Kungel, the Godfather of organic farming in Nova Scotia apparently says the following of eggplants. “Each year I plant Eggplants, and each year I pick some Eggplants”. That pretty much sums it up. The yields are low, the returns are poor but for some unknown reason we keep doing it!

Fava beans are some of the oldest pulses eaten by man, yet they are not widely grown as a human food. Odd considering that they are delicious when fresh. Normally we have terrible problems with aphids attacking them. This makes holes in the plants which allows in diseases that turn the plants and beans black.

This year I read that Seaboost (a seaweed based plant spray) was supposed to deter aphids on roses, so I tried it on the fava beans. I found one plant at the edge of the field that was covered in aphids and pulled it out then thoroughly sprayed the rest of the plants with the Seaboost and NO APHIDS!!! It could be co-incidence of course, but I’ll be doing it again next year:-)

Last year we had some great zucchini (8-balls) but most of them were not a great success due to the lack of moisture and excess of weeds, plus they were badly assaulted by the cucumber beetles in the spring. This year we planted them through black plastic, covered them with row cover and they are beautiful, undamaged and weed free despite being planted really rather late in the year due to our miserable cold Spring.

Beds of summer squash and zucchini on black plastic with wild flower strips down the middle and (to the left and right) white row covers still over the top of the melons and cucumbers.

Male Zucchini Blossom. These arrive first and, without the presence of the female flowers, are not able to pollinate anything… so we pick them, dip them in batter and eat them as a fried snack.

Female Zucchini blossom. We leave these on the plants to be pollinated by the wild bees after which the area just below the flowers starts to swell up to produce….

…Zucchini fruits! This round kind is called ‘8′ Ball.

This is a ‘Cousa’ type Lebanese Zucchini, known for its superior flavour.

Scallopini Summer Squash, closely related to zucchini. They will turn yellow when ripe.

Directly after harvesting the great crop of sugar snap peas we tilled the plants plus the many accompanying weeds in before they went to seed. We will now seed with with a cover crop such as crimson clover and oats which will help to enrich and build the soil, while keeping the weeds at bay.

Crimson clover and oats growing in a wildflower strip in the garden. These are used as ‘insect highways’ to attract beneficial pollinating and predatory insects into the garden to make our lives easier!