As I said in the last post, “We have been thankful for the relatives we’ve been leasing land from these last two seasons. Thank you for your support, encouragement and generosity in having us farm a portion of your land.”

We have taken hold of an opportunity to consolidate and move our farm and family to Greendale. We will be in another lease arrangement and be able to live on the farm, in time.  We’ve actually already begun to move our farm tools and equipment over this winter.

We will be fully moved by early March and are thankful for the chance to have all of our farmland in one location. We’ve heard and seen already that our field has great drainage (something we’ve had trouble with in the past). We are also excited to be a part of the new Eco Market in Sardis this year (see our Markets page).

Andy was able to do some tilling during the dry days of this month so far, and he’s been seeding leeks and artichokes these last few days. He has placed his order for seed potatoes and we are making plans for crop rotations.

On the horizon are taking down, moving and reconstructing greenhouses, more tilling and starting many more seedlings. We are excited about the renewed activity of spring, as we head toward another delicious season of local and ethically grown vegetables.

We have already come through the shortest day of the year and look forward to the longer ones ahead. This fall we were encouraged by the great turn-out of people seeking local food at the Abbotsford Farm and Country Market’s pre-Christmas winter markets. People were excited about many of our winter crops including leeks, lettuce, cabbage, kale, carrots, pie pumpkins and winter squash (particularly Festival and Delicata).
Thank you to all who came out to the winter markets in search of organic food grown very close to where you live.

Our Autumn CSA Garden Box just wrapped up before Christmas and we are thankful for all our Summer and Autumn CSA Garden Box customers. Thank you for your enthusiasm and interest in what we are growing.

We are already enjoying the slower pace winter brings. Different work is around the bend – planning and looking back at our past growing season. It seems the seed catalogues get sent out earlier and earlier every year.

Winter squash took ‘first prize’ in crops that did really well this year. We also enjoyed a good crop of fall lettuce thanks to the low tunnels Andy put up for them to stay protected from the frost. Some of our crops were affected by lack of sun because of positioning in the garden (too much shade from trees) and the garden has turned to muck again in many places.

We have been thankful for the relatives we’ve been leasing land from these last two seasons. Thank you for your support, encouragement and generosity in having us farm a portion of your land.

Andy has been pricing parts for a new greenhouse and has already placed his first order for seed for next year.

We hope you had a relaxing and meaningful Christmas and have a good winter. We look forward to serving you again next growing season. Happy New Year!

Things have finally been slowing down a bit for us here at Abundant Acre Family Farm. This provides a bit of time for letting you know what we are up to.

This was a challenging summer again – weather wise – which resulted in a poorer variety of vegetables than we had hoped to offer. That said, we’ve made a good dent into the squash harvest, which seems to have done really well this year! Andy finished planting the last of our winter crops a week ago. He has made some vole traps recently and we hope that will keep their population under control and out of our root crops.

Lately, in the kitchen, I’ve been enjoying our toscano kale, fall lettuce and collards. I’ve also enjoyed baking with our winter squash – in muffins and pancakes, and baked with chicken so far. Autumn brings so many great flavors and colors.

Our Autumn CSA Garden Box has started up this past week and we are now selling vegetables 2 times a week (CSA box and Abb. Farmer’s Market) rather than 3.

We have secured a spot at the Abbotsford Farm and Country Market for some of their winter market dates. We will be there Oct.29, Nov.5, Dec.3 and 17th so far. If you’d like to sign up for an email reminder for the Abbotsford winter market, please visit www.mymarketsnews.com. The market reminder includes a helpful date specific list of vendors that will there.

Today we are gearing up for our pre-Thanksgiving booth at the Abbotsford Farm and Country Market tomorrow. We are bringing lots of pie pumpkins and winter squash and greens as well.

I’ve uploaded a few new pictures on our photostream as well. Enjoy.

We wish for you a meaningful Thanksgiving this weekend.

There is a lot going on at the farm right now. We are thankful for all the recent heat. It feels like summer has finally arrived. Our tomatoes are in full production and that feels very good – and tastes delicious.

This is the time of year that we are still very busy seeding fall and winter crops in addition to weeding, stringing green bean plants, transplanting fall broccoli and building trellises for the outdoor cucumbers, to name a few things.

We are harvesting three times per week between our CSA Garden Boxes and Saturday at the Abbotsford Farm and Country market.

We’ve bought a trailer which enables our family to be more involved at the farm. There is room for us in the car, and farm stuff in the trailer. We’ve started going down to the farm on Mondays to harvest together for our Monday CSA Garden Box.

Saturday was a wrap up event for Farmer’s Appreciation Week and I (Cara) shared a bit about our farm there and what we do and why we do it. That went well and maybe part of the speech will end up here sometime. It’s great to still meet people who are interested in our CSA Garden Box program…which we do almost every Saturday.

Our Summer and Autumn CSA Garden boxes are both now full, but feel free to contact us and we’ll put you on our interested-for-when-there-is-space list for the future (probably next year).

Garlic scape season is here! The season is short, but brings a welcomed mild garlic flavor.

Garlic scapes are the curly shoots of the garlic plant, picked before it blooms. Harvested in full curl, they are ‘tender and delicious.’

Last year my experimenting with scapes had me tossing them in the blender raw for hummus, roasting them with potatoes, sautéing them as a base for pasta sauce and really enjoying them minced in a garlic potato salad (see eating tab for recipe).

I found I just use the tender part of the scape – from the base up until it gets a little bulbus where the flower would start.

*Another use for scapes I tried this year includes just steaming them and eating as a side dish. Fresh lemon juice, butter, salt and pepper made a great topping. They aren’t as strong as the garlic bulb, so it wasn’t a problem to have a nice healthy helping of them:)

*I chopped them fine and added them to baking powder biscuits. Very nice.

*A great article about scapes can be found here. At the end of the article is a terrific recipe for pesto that I tried.

More reading here and I found more pesto recipes, suggestions for use in stir-fry and as a fresh bracelet (at the market perhaps?).

To all of our CSA Garden Box Customers:

Just wanted to put the official word out there for those who’ve signed up for the Summer CSA Garden Box, that we are hoping to be starting with the boxes at the end of June or early July. Our wet, cold spring has set us back by 3-4 weeks with some crops.

In the meantime you can find us on Saturdays between 9am-1pm at the Abbotsford Farm and Country Market.

Thank you for your patience and we will contact those who are signed up when we are ready to start this season’s local eating adventure.

I invite you to check out the “Farm to Table: Keeping Food Close to Home” article in West Coast Families Magazine.  This is a great little article about CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) in our area and Connie, one of our customers, was quoted half-way through!

Click here to see the online version of the magazine. You’ll find the article on page 15.

It’s neat that our farm is mentioned in the section on taste because that is one of our goals – to grow fantastic tasting vegetables. We select our vegetable varieties for flavor and based on how well they grow in our area. For example, we don’t have to select carrots varieties that can be mechanically harvested, because we harvest everything by hand. This allows us to grow for flavor — a sweet, crisp crunch — that’s what we like from our carrots!

You know you are a commuter farmer when:

-you have to cut your day’s work short because you didn’t pack a big enough lunch

-your trunk is a toolbox

-vacuuming your car seems pointless

-it takes 10 min. to transform the car from a farm vehicle to a family car (farm stuff out, car seats in)

-you keep looking out your window in the morning, trying to guess how warm it is getting inside the greenhouses

-you spend more time chaperoning underage plants than you wish to

Edible Schoolyard by Alice Waters tells the inspiring story of the creation and flourishing of Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School’s schoolyard garden in Berkeley, California.

Waters is the founder of Chez Panisse restaurant - also of Berkeley - which is guided by the philosophy of serving ‘the most delicious organic products, only when they are in season.’

The transformation of an abandoned lot adjacent the school comes to life with full-page photos of the students working, learning and enjoying meals together. It is inspiring to see how their one acre vegetable garden, chicken coop, and school kitchen are integral to the core academic mission of the school.

One of my favorite parts of the book were photos of the student’s written work where each recounts a memorable cooking moment. Reading these reminded me of how impressionable kids are and how everyone connects with food in some way, even those considered ‘picky eaters.’

Waters states, “Right there, in the middle of every school day, lies time and energy already devoted to the feeding of children. We have the power to turn that daily school lunch from an afterthought into a joyous education, a way of caring for our health, our environment, and our community.”

I encourage you to pick up this book for a refreshing view of holistic education – one where children engage in some of the most basic activities of life — growing food and preparing it. In doing so, these children look at a whole range of subjects through events happening in the garden.

After you’ve checked out the book, you can head to http://www.edibleschoolyard.org/. Of particular note is the ‘resources’ page where they list publications available for creating an Edible Schoolyard of your own.

Another book that caught my eye here was Raising an Adventurous Eater: Ideas & Inspiration from the Edible Schoolyard which gives parents ten ways to help their children love healthy foods. 

Growing at the Speed of Life: A Year in the Life of My First Kitchen Garden by Graham Kerr.

Career chef Graham Kerr recounts the story of his first kitchen garden in a light and amiable way. Starting with his personal journey toward gardening and the resources he gathered to do so, he continues to list cooking methods and a glossary of gardening/growing terms. He then profiles 60 vegetables, fruits and herbs that one may grow or can find easily. Included throughout the book are over 100 recipes.

I found this an enjoyable read or flip through (what I did mainly). Most of the vegetables we grow were included in this book, so in that way it is a great resource for getting to know some of the vegetables that will be in your CSA Garden Box (there are a handful of recipes for each vegetable he highlights).

This book acts as both an introduction to gardening and a resources for home cooks although I don’t know how much I’d rely on this book for gardening advice. It’d be best to compare and consider a range of books (Eliot Coleman and Steve Solomon are some of our favorites).

It seems we are getting some windy and wet spring weather this week. Before the rain our family made it out to the farm to fill sandbags to be used around the farm to hold down things like plastic that is used for covering plants.
Andy has been busy potting on the tomato transplants and preparing pieces for another greenhouse.

There is still time to register for our CSA Garden Box program. Great to hear from all who have signed up so far.