Urban Farming

Excuse my absence friends... sometimes you just have writer's block and are generally uninspired, right?

Moving on. As part of our church's "Just Food" ministry, an urban vegetable garden has been installed in our back yard. Some friends, TK, and I have spent several weeks installing and caring for this living beast. Over a weekend, we leveled the ground, built raised beds, filled in soil, and planted a wide variety of veggies. The past weeks have been filled with rain, sun, and plant care. It's been amazing to see the garden come to life in such a short span of time.

We've planted herbs, tomatoes, squash, zucchini, cucumbers, peppers, beans, kale, broccoli, and more.

It's been about a month since we started planting and look at all the growth! While I haven't enjoyed the rainy weather we've experienced over the last few weeks, our plants are drinking it right up. It's amazing to watch as the sun does it's wonder on the earth. I'm particularly intrigued by broccoli. When you're used to getting food in a plastic bag from the grocery store, there's something magical about cultivating it with your own two hands and watching it become something from nothing.

CSA Week 13 & 15 | Tomayto, Tomahto

We've had an overwhelming influx of tomatoes around these parts over the last few weeks. Besides what we've received in our CSA box, it seems like everyone and their brother is growing a vine and giving away its fruits.

In an effort to use my plethora of tomatoes before they all bit the dust, I decided to invite over a special birthday girl and make a tomato feast. We started out with some bruschetta, then had some homemade tomato soup, and finally finished off with some pasta with tomato basil cream sauce. Did I mention that each recipe called for basil as well, something else I'm up to my ears in? They all did... and the harvest (of basil) was plentiful. I'll share with you the recipe for the tomato soup, which was too delish (and easy) to keep a secret. It's hearty and packed full of flavor.

Ingredients
1 yellow onion
1/2 bulb garlic
4 large tomatoes
1/2 cup fresh basil
1/2 cup fresh parsley
1/8 cup olive oil
2 cubes bouillon (1 beef, 1 vegetable)
4 cups water
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese, grated
fresh cracked pepper

Directions
1. Peel and dice onion. Peel and mince garlic. Clean and cut tomatoes into small wedges. Clean herbs and pat dry on paper towels. Slice basil and chop parsley.
2. Heat oil in a large stockpot on medium for about 3 minutes. Add onions and sauté for about 2 minutes. Add garlic and sauté for about 2 minutes. Add tomatoes. Reduce heat to low and add vegetable broth (2 bouillon cubes incorporated into 4 cups of water). Simmer for 1 1/2 hours, uncovered.
3. Add herbs and simmer for 30 minutes, uncovered.
4. Serve soup in individual bowls. Sprinkle each serving with Parmesan cheese and pepper.

CSA Week 9 and 11 | The Good Earth

Our CSA shares have become much more diverse over the last couple of weeks. Compared to the beginning of June when we were receiving lots of variations on greens, the good earth is now producing carrots, potatoes, turnips, beans, squash, cucumbers, onions, tomatoes, garlic, basil...the list goes on. I just thought I'd share a little peek into our most recent deliveries.

CSA Week 5 and 7 | Whole Fryer

Over the past few weeks we've received our third and fourth boxes of CSA produce as well as our first installment of our meat share. I've never had a refrigerator full of vegetables. Then again, I've never had a full refrigerator, but that's another story for another time. We've been eating a lot more salads these days and I've become a little more familiar with vegetables which were once unknown to me. Kohlrabi, cabbage, radishes, garlic scapes, and kale, are now somewhat a regular part of our dinner options. This past week we also received our first batch of carrots... don't they look crunchy?

In our meet share this month, we and the Daigles divided our delivery of two (whole) mini chickens, some beef steaks, pork shoulder, beef patties, and a dozen eggs. A few nights ago, TK and I decided to grill up our whole fryer which is, essentially, a chicken that is butchered around eight weeks old. Look how cute it is!

Well, not for long. In our attempt to cut up our bird, we realized early on that we had no clue what the heck we were doing. Our inexperience with meat - an entire body of meat, complete with bones, skin, and other things I don't even have the first clue about - was evident and humbling. I mean, I've prepared a Thanksgiving turkey a time or two, but this, for some reason was a new experience. One doesn't need to ponder the composition of a chicken's body or meat content when they buy boneless, skinless chicken breast from the store, packaged and ready to cook.

We commandeered what meat we could from this baby, doused it in some wing sauce, and put it on the grill. Served up with a salad made of mostly CSA veggies, we tasted - for the first time I can recall - chicken from a local farm, completely free range and unprocessed. I was wary of and didn't want to convince myself that the meat would taste better, just because I had been told and had read that it was supposed to. But chickens who live in open space, and are not fed garbage, or aren't "abused" - essentially "happy" chickens - must taste better, right?

RIGHT! It was scrumptious! This bird honestly tasted different from other chicken I've tasted before...more meatier, if you can imagine, more substance. We did feel a little like scavengers, pulling every last morsel off the bones after having cluelessly quartered it. Hopefully our next installment will include a larger chicken with more breast meat so that we can feast for a little longer. For now though, I am thankful for the meal this little whole fryer provided us.

CSA Week 3 | Beets in the Big City

Check out Amy's post on the second installment of food from our CSA. I have yet to try our turnips and beets, but will attempt them next week.

CSA Week 1 - Spring Means Greens

This summer and fall our church is partnering with a local farm in their CSA (Community Sustainable Agriculture) program through ResCov's Just Food mission. TK and I bought into a share of vegetables and a share of meat (beef, pork, chicken, and eggs) with Amy and Andrew, and we'll be receiving veggies and meat from Mike and Clare's Farm from June through October. We've been thinking a lot about our food lately...where it comes from, who is making it, what it actually is. I've never been one to get excited about organic food or farmer's markets in general, but the more I learn, the more eating locally is making sense to me (not that I can live with out limes, mangoes, etc.).

Inside this week's box we received spinach, lettuce, radishes, baby kale, arugula, green garlic, and mizuna. In our newsletter from the farm, Mike and Clare wrote that cool weather and soil temperatures favor leafy vegetables, and that over the next month or so, our boxes will contain a lot of greens like spinach and lettuces. They also said that greens have a short season and that as soon as the hot summer temperatures come, we'll have to wait until autumn for these types of greens to return. I think that it will be exciting to know what's in season and eat what the land is producing according to the temperature, sun, soil, etc. I also think it will be telling for us to learn to differentiate between what vegetables are what, without the help of plastic packaging to aid us in the identification of what we're eating.