"Every aspect of our lives is, in a sense, a vote for the kind of world we want to live in."
- Frances Moore Lappe

What’s in the box this week:

... and if you have an extra-fruit share:
3 additional baskets
of strawberries

Thanks to all who came to Open Farm Day, as it was your support that made the event such a success. A note to Saturday delivery members: I learned that some of you did not get broccoli in your box last week (which you should have). For this I humbly apologize! Los Gatos members: if you would like to get an extra bunch next week, please call and let me know so I can arrange for this. Willow Glen members, you can just let us know at the market and take an extra bunch this week if you like. - Tom

What's Up on the Farm
With Open Farm Day come and gone the focus turns quickly to the many tasks at hand in the field. Although growing a large diversity of crops is what makes farming so exciting for us, it can also be overwhelming. Staking tomatoes and thinning our peaches and apples are a priority. The peppers will be planted this week (we have more than 1000 plants and over 8 varieties this year). We can expect the first ones in our shares by early August. The summer squash are starting to offer their first fruits and will appear in your shares next week (maybe this week?) and their cousins the cucumbers are not far behind. A bounty of summer crops is on the horizon (June) and the color of your shares will start taking a turn, from mostly green to an assortment of warmer colors!

Crops and Critters
During the farm walks on Open Farm Day a popular question was how we control our farm’s gopher population. We used to trap gophers a lot more in the past, however now with the help of predators like our resident family of red tail hawks, a great horned owl, gopher snakes, cats and dogs it seems the population of gophers has gone down. We still need to keep an eye out for them among our young fruit trees, however. We use wire traps there, and if anyone wants to call me on how these are used, the consultation is free!! Another factor that greatly reduces the population of gophers in an area is how frequently the soil is disturbed, which on a farm tends to be a lot more than in a garden.

Of Interest
Hello to all the fellow strawberry lovers out there. My name is Kristin Schafer, and our family (Jim Mack, Linnea, Connor and myself) has been involved with the CSA for four years now. I will be contributing to this section throughout the season, reflecting on issues that come up in the course of my work that may be of interest to CSA members. I work for an organization called Pesticide Action Network (PAN). The North America office in San Francisco is one of five regional centers around the world working to promote sustainable alternatives to pesticides.

PAN works at the state, national and international levels. My projects range from documenting pesticide poisonings among California farmworkers to lobbying US officials at international treaty negotiations. The signing of one such treaty is coming up - the international treaty on persistent organic pollutants (POPs). I will be attending the signing in Stockholm when this newsletter goes to print.

POPs are pesticides and other toxic chemicals that last for many years in the environment, build up in our bodies and can be transported around the world. DDT is a familiar example. The POPs treaty took years to negotiate, and could be a very important tool. It bans an initial list of 12 chemicals worldwide, and sets up a process to add new chemicals for global bans in the future. When I return from Stockholm I will write a bit more about what this treaty means for us here in California.

By participating in a CSA and supporting locally produced, organic agriculture, we are all contributing to a movement that is gaining momentum around the world. As we understand more about what chemicals do to our environment and our health, it becomes more important to support those farmers who are making the right choices. What Tom and Constance have created at the farm is a place where we can teach our children and ourselves the importance of caring for and respecting the land - and the food it brings forth .

Member to Member Forum
Longtime CSA member Charles Limbach is interested and passionate about building an earthen, wood-fired bread oven out here on the farm. He wants to organize a weekend workshop and do this as a way to learn/explore the more traditional ways of building ovens and baking bread. If there is enough interest, it will be set up to happen during July or August (Charles is flexible). It will be a wonderful hands-on experience. Everyone could stay at the farm and take home a freshly baked loaf of bread! Please contact Charles directly for more details at (831) 663-1161 or e-mail him at 4winds@dedot.com

Willow Glen member Lois Moore wants to recommend ‘an excellent cookbook’ to fellow CSA members. She says it is filled with recipes alphabetically by vegetable, and doesn’t hold back when it comes to the unusual (aka difficult to find recipes for) ones. For example, there are 6 1/2 pages of recipes on jerusalem artichokes and 6 pages on kohlrabi (Lois, you’re prescient! We’re getting kohl-rabi in our boxes this week!) It is "The Victory Garden Cookbook" by Marian Morash (the cook on PBS’s show "The Victory Gar-den"). Although it was published in 1982 (Knopff), Lois says it is still available on the internet.

Lois would also like to run a concept by other CSA members for their opinion: she thinks current members should have some sort of material ‘incentive’ for signing up new members, and suggests maybe a week’s share ‘free’ for every new member you sign up, but that those ‘free’ weeks would not be instantly available to you. Rather, they would be kept track of, and you would be able to ‘deduct’ them from your membership cost when you renew for the following season. Please feel free to respond to this through the newsletter.

Remember, if you wish to communicate something to the rest of the CSA membership, you may use this forum to do so. To submit something to be included here, please contact the editor (see below) by Sunday to get it into the following week’s newsletter.

Crop of the Week
Mystery item: Although we do our best to let you know exactly what you will be receiving each week, at times some crops aren't quite ready to harvest when we think they will be (good ol' mother nature), and so box contents can sometimes be difficult to anticipate. So in order to to give us some flexibility, we will sometimes add or change the box contents depending on crop ripeness/availability in the field. Look for a 'mystery item' if you can’t find what’s on the list in your box! But if you know we really left something out that should have been there (i.e. it was in others' boxes, but somehow not in yours), please let us know and we will do our best to compensate you.

Notes from Debbie’s Kitchen . . . . . . . . Have a recipe you’d like to share? Contact the newsletter editor.

Fellow member Becky Tarlow found a "simple and yummy" recipe for baby bok choi (on epicurious.com) and wanted to share it with us. And I’ll give you a little info on kohlrabi, a veggie that is sure to stump at least some of you! - Debbie

Sesame Bok Choi
(Becky says this is great served with brown rice) Makes 2 servings

1 cup of chicken broth
3 tablespoon of unsalted butter
3/4 lb of baby bok choy
1/2 teaspoon of sesame oil

Bring broth and butter to a simmer in a deep heavy skillet. Arrange bok choy evenly in skillet and simmer, covered, until tender, about 5 minutes. Transfer bok choy with tongs to a serving dish and keep warm, covered. Boil broth mixture until reduced to about 1/4 cup, then stir in sesame oil and pepper to taste. Pour mixture over bok choy.


Kohlrabi (the sputnik veggie) info

First: the greens. Like with beets, these can be trimmed off, washed & used separately from the root (saute w/garlic; steam & sprinkle w/vinegar, salt).

The root: peel & slice raw into salads like you would jicama, or cut into sticks & use w/a dip. A simple way to cook them is to peel/cut them & some potatoes up, boil in salted water 15-20 min. (‘til tender), drain & mash with butter and optional cream, then add salt & pepper to taste. (check website for more kohlrabi recipes!)

*Click Here* for a link to a comprehensive listing of recipes from Live Earth Farm's newsletters going back as far as our 1998 season! You can search for recipes by harvest week OR by key ingredient. Recipe site is updated weekly.