Greenhouse 2

Another fall, another offseason building project! After the success of our first year with our greenhouse, I've decided to build a second one. The new one will be smaller and dedicated to seedlings so that I don't end up trying to juggle space between seedling benches and young plants in soil. This way I can have a separate space just for seedling benches and I don't have to worry about when to move them aside for bed space.

I'm also making the new greenhouse warmer than the other one in a few different ways. One is to make the walls a double instead of single layer of plastic. Another is to replace the roll up sides (used for ventilation on hot summer days) with non-movable insulation to retain heat.

Other designs for added warmth are still in progress - like a water tank for the seedlings trays to sit in that will circulate water warmed by the daytime sun overnight to keep temperatures steady. I'll post more updates as this project moves forward!

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Recipe: Winter Radish Salad

Strikingly beautiful black radishes are larger and spicier than your usual May radish, but the long, cool nights of fall give them a sweetness and soft texture. They get milder tasting when cooked and are pretty intense raw, however rubbing slices with salt and letting them sweat for 10 minutes or so takes some of the heat off. Grating or cutting into thin slices or matchsticks is the best way to prepare raw winter radishes, and they go fantastically well with salads of all sorts. A simple vinaigrette is the finishing touch.

Ingredients:
Salad:
- 3 medium size black radishes
- 1 large or 2 small carrots
- 4-5 stems of parsley
- ½ tsp salt
- 1 tsp sesame seeds
Dressing:
- 2 tbsp lemon juice
- 3 tbsp olive oil
- ½ tsp maple syrup
- ½ tsp minced ginger
- 1 garlic clove, minced

Steps:
1) Grate radishes with largest size grater and place in a small bowl. Add salt and mix well. Leave to soften while you prep the other ingredients.

2) Grate carrots with largest size grater. Finely chop parsley and combine with carrots.

3) Mix dressing ingredients.

4) Squeeze excess water out of radishes and move to a colander. Rinse well and add to salad bowl with carrots and parsley.

5) Add sesame seeds and dressing and mix well. Let rest for 5 minutes to allow flavours to mix and then serve.

This is our final recipe of the 2015 season. We will start up again with weekly recipes featuring the seasonal bounty of the farm in June 2016. Until then, we'll be blogging about life on the farm in the off season - the work never ends!

Thanks to all our CSA members for supporting the farm this year!

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Garlic Planting

It's the time of year for garlic planting. I wrote a long post last year describing the process, and am pretty much following the same routine this time around. I'm using the now vacant potato bed. The season of potato cultivation followed by the chicken cleanup patrol results in low weed pressure and slightly depleted fertility, which makes garlic a good fit (garlic is very sensitive to weeds and a light feeder in terms of fertility).

After lightly tilling in some amendments, the last step is to loosen the soil with a broadfork like above. It is very labour intensive, but aerates the soil without inverting the layers, which is much better for the soil ecology. Once the soil is prepared, individual cloves can be planted. Cloves are painstakingly selected by hand based on size and overall quality. Friends and family who have visited the farm around this time of year have all been roped into clove popping. Miraculously, they have still wanted to return for more visits...

Little hands make for good clove popping. Below is photo from 3 years ago, when we had just moved to the farm and were still living in a tiny trailer while building our house.

That's 3 year old Rose, working hard to pop and sort cloves while 8 month old Sylvia tries to figure out which end of the garlic bulb to put in her mouth.

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Recipe: Maple Roasted Butternut Squash

While this dish is baking your kitchen will smell heavenly - maple syrup, butter and cinnamon bring out the warm sweetness of everyone's favorite squash. To make prep go faster I prefer to cook it with the peel on and then scoop out the butternut flesh at the very end. However, it will be a prettier result if you take the time to peel and then chop it into cubes prior to baking. This recipe is the simplest version of this dish, but you can play around with fun variations like adding beets or tossing in toasted pecans at the very end.

Ingredients:
- 1 butternut squash
- 1 tbsp. butter
- 1 tbsp. maple syrup
- 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
- salt to taste

Steps:
1) Preheat oven to 400 F. Slice butternut squash lengthwise in half and scoop out seeds and pulp.

2) Melt butter on low heat and whisk together with maple syrup and cinnamon.

3) Place butternut squash in a baking dish or roasting pan and drizzle butter-maple syrup over top. Salt lightly.

4) Add 1/2 cup water to the dish or pan and cover with a lid or aluminum foil. Bake until very tender, about 60 - 75 minutes.

5) Scoop out flesh with a large spoon and serve.

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Frost

Frost on the grass is a regular sight now in the morning. I ran out and took a quick photo at dawn this morning.

Last weekend right before the hard frost hit we rushed to bring in winter squash (pumpkins, butternuts, acorn squash), and the last few summer veggies that were still in greenhouse: sweet peppers and tomatoes. Right now everything is in our cold storage area indoors, waiting to go out for our final two CSA weeks.

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Recipe: Sauerkraut

Humans have been using lactofermentation to process and preserve food for thousands of years. Long before we had the ability to sterilize or refrigerate perishables, people all over the world were submerging food in brine to encourage friendly bacteria cultures to proliferate. Not only do these "good bacteria" keep the "bad bacteria" from rotting perishables, many of them are the same microbes that help our guts stay healthy. In addition, fermentation makes certain nutrients in food more bioavailable, meaning the nutrient content is effectively higher.

The best part of lactofermentation? It's really easy to do. Food is submerged in salty liquid for days or weeks until the process is complete. And that's pretty much it. Nerds like me appreciate the elegance of the science involved: Food rots when aerobic (air-loving) bacteria break down protein in the presence of oxygen, however by submerging food in liquid, oxygen is dramatically reduced. In this environment anaerobic (air-hating) bacteria thrive and fermentation occurs. Using salty liquid further limits which bacteria can proliferate, and fortunately the good, gut-friendly bacteria is salt-tolerant. As food ferments in a salty, low oxygen environment, lactic acid is produced. The acidity gets so high that bad bacteria species can't survive and thus the food is preserved. This acidity is also what gives lactoferments their pleasantly sour flavor.

Vegetable fermentation is a safe and ancient activity. Here is some more information about the food safety issues if you're nervous - but by all means if you don't feel comfortable culturing bacteria in your kitchen, then don't.

Ingredients:
- 1 medium sized white cabbage (approximately 2 lbs)
- 2 tbsp. pickling salt, sea salt or any other salt without additives (avoid using iodized salt or "free-running" table salt)

Steps:
1) Wash cabbage thoroughly and remove any wilted outer leaves or leaves with bad spots. Thinly slice and place in a large, non-reactive (ie, not metal) bowl.

2) Add salt and massage it into the cabbage for 5 minutes. Within a minute it should start to feel wet and slippery between your fingers as the salt starts to pull out water from the cabbage.

3) Pack the cabbage down into the bowl and leave it for 15 minutes to let it sweat out more water.

4) Transfer the cabbage into a glass jar. A canning funnel will make this a much faster and less messy job. Depending on the size of your cabbage you'll need a 1 or 1.5 L jar. The cabbage should be tightly packed into the jar, with a 1-2 inch space at the top. Push it down with your fingers to squeeze out as much air as possible.

5) Once you've fully packed in the cabbage, all of it should be underneath the brine. If not you can top it up with a little bit extra in the ratio of 1 cup water to 2 tsp. salt. Distilled water is the best choice as some municipal water treatments can discourage fermentation.

6) After the cabbage is fully submerged in brine you'll need to weigh it down with something to keep as much air out of the jar as possible. You can use a jar or a small plastic (food grade) bag. Either option should be washed thoroughly beforehand and half filled with water to increase the weight. Place the jar on a small plate in a cool spot of your kitchen (ie, not in front of a sunny window).

7) Within 48 hours you will start to see bubbles around the cabbage. This is carbon dioxide and is a by-product of lactofermentation so don't worry that oxygen has gotten inside your jar. Some brine will inevitably spill out of the jar as a result of this bubbling and the expansion of the cabbage as it ferments, but as long as everything is still completely covered in liquid it's ok. If you need to you can add some extra brine back in (1 cup water to 2 tsp salt).

8) After one week the bubbling will have slowed down and the cabbage turned from light green to pale golden in colour. Take the weight off and test a piece of sauerkraut. It should taste sour, salty and crunchy. Keep it out on the counter and taste it every day (you can put a regular lid on now, but make sure the cabbage is still submerged in liquid). It will continue to mellow and develop in flavor.

Sauerkraut purists will tell you to keep it out for at least four weeks to allow the full, multi-stage cycle of fermentation to occur. I think the common sense approach for newbies is to refrigerate once it's reached the flavor you really like. It will continue to ferment in the fridge, just more slowly. Once refrigerated your sauerkraut can last for several months. If the veggies become discoloured, slimy, or foul smelling discard the batch. A thin layer of white mold on the very surface can be safely skimmed off so long as the veggies still smell and taste ok.

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Eva Mae Farm