Philistines vs. Philippines

Hello!

Are you ready for more rain? As you read this, it’s probably raining cats and dogs. Just what we needed … more water. Seriously, it’s like living in the Pacific Northwest but without the good seafood.

I’m keeping it brief tonight because I’m typing in the dark. There is one downside to living in one big room altogether a la the Ingalls family – we need to turn off the lights when it’s bedtime for the boys. We’ve been letting them stay up a bit late but that came back to haunt us this morning when I got a phone call from the grade school telling me that Ben fell asleep on the bus this morning and ended up traveling all the way to Eureka High School. They found him when they did their walk-through at the end of the route. Don’t even ask me how an entire bus load of kids walked past our little porkchop without saying something helpful like, “Hey, that kid is asleep!” It’s a fend-for-yourself kind of world, I guess.

The funny boy thing that happened this week involved a Lego battle. Our little neighbor boy came over to play. When he walked in, Noah said, “Let’s have a battle!” Fresh from church, the other little boy said, “Yea, let’s battle the Philistines.” Noah then responded, “No, you mean the Philippines!” Yikes.

This weekend will be much the same as far as vegetables go … loads of tasty winter squash, fall greens, turnips, carrots, beets, and more! This will be the LAST WEEKED for the summer veggies because of the Saturday night frost in the forecast. So this is your last chance to stock up on sweet peppers and eggplant (if we even have any left). The sweet peppers will be available in mass quantities. Be sure to take advantage of our 5 lbs. for $10.00 deal and then just freeze them for later use in the winter. (Less than 5 lbs. is $3.00 per pound.)

Here’s what we’ll have on Saturday …

Sweet Potatoes
Broccoli
Winter Squash
Parsnips
Eggplant (?)
Leeks
Sweet Peppers
Green Bell Peppers
Summer squash (?)
Potatoes
Carrots
Fennel
Swiss chard
Head Lettuce
Beets
Onions
Garlic

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to email us at blueschoolhouse@yahoo.com, although during the farm season we can’t guarantee that we’ll be checking the email as often as usual. Our phone service is won’t be restored until next week!

Best,
Mercy

The House is Home!

Hello!

The house has been moved. It was amazing – so quiet and smooth. I imagine tomorrow will include more noise – the sound of 85 years worth of sagging being corrected in 5 minutes. Ouch! The world’s most expensive chiropractor visit.
How did you like the early fall broccoli last week? We’ll have more next week if you missed it.

As the cool weather sets in, you need to be prepared for the disappearance of your summer favorites. The first frost, which could happen any time, will kill off the sweet peppers, eggplant, green beans, and summer squash. So get some now before it’s too late!

October confuses people. They think the market is over, that plants stop growing, and that it’s time to stop eating real food until next May. NO! Please let your friends know that the market lasts until October 31 – come in costume, and we’ll throw in a free head of garlic! Ha ha.

Here’s what we’ll have on Saturday …


Sweet Potatoes
Broccoli
Winter Squash
Parsnips
Eggplant
Leeks
Sweet Peppers
Green Bell Peppers
Green beans
Summer squash
Potatoes
Carrots
Shallots
Fennel
Swiss chard
Head Lettuce
Beets
Onions
Garlic

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to email us at blueschoolhouse@yahoo.com, although during the farm season we can’t guarantee that we’ll be checking the email as often as usual. Our phone service is won’t be restored until next week!

Best,
Mercy

Autumn Broccoli and Sweet Potatoes

Hello!

This will be a quick one because it’s early in the morning and I need to get the boys ready for school. This week’s big news is BROCCOLI! Have you been missing it? It’s back, and it will be delicious. This is the first year EVER that Bill has had fall broccoli. It is so sweet and crisp – be sure to get some!
Also, you should know that the squash is getting PROGRESSIVELY BETTER every week. It really needs to cure for a few weeks before the flavor fully develops. We ate acorn squash last night and were amazed at how much better it was than last week (when we also liked it).

We’ll also have SWEET POTATOES! Whoo-hoo! Like squash, sweet potatoes really need time to cure but we can’t wait that long to sell them. If you want to be really diligent, you could buy sweet potatoes and put them in a space heated to 80-90 degrees with 90% humidity for 7 days without burning your house down. (They are really a southern plant, so they like the heat.) We do this by putting them in our little space under the staircase, running a space heater and a humidifier, and covering the crates with wet towels. We just can’t do that for 1000 pounds of potatoes!

Here are two funny things from Noah this week. Yesterday in the car, Noah was reading a book out loud. I heard him read the phrase “a little black male.” I gasped and asked him to read it again. He said the same thing. My sensitivity meter going bananas, I asked for a spelling and it turned out to be “a little blackmail.” He was just sounding it out. Thank goodness. I thought Captain Underpants (the book) was going to have to be confiscated. The second funny thing was at the prayer before supper last night. We all went around the table to say one thing we’re thankful for. Noah said (and I’m not exaggerating), “Thank you God for the world being just like it is and not any worse.” (He’s been watching the Planet Earth series and the most recent episode was filled with some of the bad news, like animal extinctions and climate change.) Noah is already preparing for the worst. We try to reassure him, but he’s pretty smart and opinionated!

Here’s what we’ll have on Saturday …

Sweet Potatoes
Broccoli
Squash – butternut, acorn, spaghetti
Parsnips
Eggplant
Leeks
Poblano Peppers
Sweet Peppers
Green Bell Peppers
Green beans
Summer squash
Potatoes
Carrots
Shallots
Fennel
Swiss chard
Head Lettuce
Beets
Onions
Garlic

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to email us at blueschoolhouse@yahoo.com, although during the farm season we can’t guarantee that we’ll be checking the email as often as usual. Our phone service is dead for the next few weeks until the house is moved back onto the new basement!

Best,
Mercy

Fall crops are coming in. Welcome, parsnips!

Hello!

We’re still in the neighbor’s basement, but our basement is coming right along. The walls are up, their pouring the floor today, and the house moves back next week. We just need this dry spell to hold.

The school year is also going well. Ben is doing a great job in kindergarten, getting a “smiley face” almost every day (which in his world is a big deal). He’s still in pronouncement mode, where he randomly bursts out with declaratory statements. Last night he said (with no obvious provocation), “You can’t get married when you’re little because your lips can’t reach anyone.” So there.

Noah has taken first grade by storm. He’s a little ahead of the curve right now, which makes our lives easier. He recently came home and asked for a shoebox. No explanation. I said we didn’t have one. He asked for any other box. I spotted a beer box on the floor and said he could have that. He busily got to work, cutting off the top flaps and coloring the inside. I finally asked him what he was doing. He said he was creating a diorama about the snowy white owl for his big assignment. Good lord … a diorama in a beer box. Not appropriate in any first grade setting but particularly inappropriate in such a religiously conservative area!! So he has to cover up the beer logo, etc. before turning it in.

But enough about our kids. Let’s talk farmer’s market. What happened to everyone? This past week marked the beginning of what we call “The Dropoff.” Many people just stop coming. We know that you are still coming, of course, and buying a lot of produce I might add. We appreciate that! Consider bringing a friend or at least talking about the market at work – we could use some extra traffic.

Here’s another reason why you should keep coming – this is Bill’s last season. Yes, Bill is not going to farm anymore. It’s complicated, but let’s just say that he’s tired of being tired. All the time. 10 months of the year. For very little money. Bill’s also concerned about the toll this takes on his body. Pick a joint above the waist, and it hurts. (Fortunately, he doesn’t have knee or hip problems! It’s all back, neck, shoulders, arms, etc.) We would also like to have more of a normal family life. We’ll actually be able to cook and preserve the food we grow next year! Yee-haw!

Clearly, the worst part about not farming will be that we won’t be a part of your lives anymore. We have really loved serving you the best food we have every Saturday for the past seven years. We know your kids, your food tastes, your politics, your favorite college football teams, and more. Sigh. It is sad, but I guess it’s just a seven year cycle that’s coming to an end.

But for the rest of this season, Bill will continue to bring you the best of what he has! No slacking off! (This season is paying for our basement!! Ha ha.) He’s also going to cap off his career with a rockin’ Thanksgiving market.

Here’s what we’ll have on Saturday – note the new PARSNIPS!! …

Squash – butternut, acorn, spaghetti
Parsnips
Eggplant
Leeks
Poblano Peppers
Sweet Peppers
Green Bell Peppers
Green beans
Summer squash
Potatoes
Carrots
Shallots
Fennel
Swiss chard
Head Lettuce
Beets
Onions
Garlic
Basil

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to email us at blueschoolhouse@yahoo.com, although during the farm season we can’t guarantee that we’ll be checking the email as often as usual. Our phone service is dead for the next few weeks until the house is moved back onto the new basement!

Best,
Mercy

Tasty Squash now in season!

A boat-load of squash


A busy day at the Blue Schoolhouse

Hello!
Sorry about missing a blog posting last week. Our house project is pretty time-consuming and I figured you could live without a rambling blog post! Ha ha. Speaking of the house, everything is going well. We should have the basement floor poured early next week and the house moved back to the new foundation the week after. We have gotten so comfortable in our neighbor's basement, though, that I'm not sure how we'll readjust to living in our place!
This week Bill will have some really delicious squash -- acorn, butternut, and spaghetti. We've been eating it, and it's PERFECT! Be sure to grab a few. It's easy to cook squash and scoop out the guts into a ziploc bag in the freezer for later use in the winter.
We will also have tons of sweet peppers. Have you ever roasted and frozen them? It's so easy, and it's wonderful to pull them out of the freezer in the winter to add to homemade pizza. We go through a ton that way. If you do roast them, put them into a covered bowl immediately afterward. The steaminess makes it much easier to peel off the blackened skin.
You'll notice by the veggie selection that we are transitioning nicely into fall. We'll have lots of head lettuces, beets, rose-heart radishes, Japanese turnips, arugula, ruby streaks, and more!! The radishes are pretty mild and very crisp right now. The rose-hearts have a brilliant pink interior -- perfect for slicing onto the side of a main dish. The ruby streaks are for those who like arugula -- it's just another fantastic mustard green with the perfect amount of sparkle in flavor and appearance.
Please come out this weekend. We're starting to experience that September slow-down in customers, which is disappointing because we have so much delicious produce to share! Bring a friend! Here's what we'll have:

Squash -- acorn, butternut, and spaghetti
Tomatoes (much fewer)
Eggplant
Leeks
Poblano Peppers
Sweet Peppers
Green Bell Peppers
Cucumbers
Green beans
Summer squash
Potatoes
Carrots
Shallots
Fennel
Swiss chard
Head Lettuce
Beets
Onions
Garlic
Basil
Okra

Best,
Mercy

Blue Schoolhouse on Stilts

Hello!

Our house is now floating 8 feet above the ground – what a sight! The boys love it. It looks like our house just sailed in and docked on the side of the yard. They’re getting ready to excavate the basement. It will be a complete mess. The big trucks will have to drive through Bill's new blackberry and aronia bushes, which is quite sad. On the whole, though, they are restricting the damage to a pretty reasonable area.





The guys are all sleeping, so I have nothing that I can truthfully report about the farm. (I’ll avoid my usual strategy of making things up.) I will say that I had a hybrid tomato for lunch, and I honestly can’t believe how much better the heirlooms are. I ate it because I had no choice, but I will not do it again. Lesson: Buy heirlooms.

Here’s what we’ll have on Saturday …

Tomatoes
Eggplant
Leeks
Poblano Peppers
Sweet Peppers
Green Bell Peppers
Cucumbers
Green beans
Dragon tongue beans
Summer squash
Potatoes
Carrots
Shallots
Fennel
Swiss chard
Head Lettuce
Beets
Onions
Garlic
Basil
Broccoli?
Cabbage (Red)
Okra

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to email us at blueschoolhouse@yahoo.com, although during the farm season we can’t guarantee that we’ll be checking the email as often as usual. Our phone service is dead for the next few weeks until the house is moved back onto the new basement!

Best,
Mercy

Heirloom Tomato Week -- We Mean It This Time!

Hello!

The house move is underway. We are in the neighbor’s totally awesome basement, and there’s not much time for the blog. (Too much pool, foosball, air hockey, and Legos to play with! Ha ha!) The house move is going fine. Today we ran into our first two little problems. They discovered a large concrete pad under half of the back room in a location where we could not see it. We think it was the porch floor on the back side of the school house, and then someone just built over it. So they’re having to bust it up with a horizontal jackhammer mounted onto the bobcat – it sounded like a war zone. Then, the plumber found quite the leaky pipe in the back corner of the house where the water comes in from the well. He pulled up a section of the floor and said things you never want to hear about your own house, like “Wow, that’s a LOT of standing water!” and “There’s even a sinkhole!” The late afternoon deluge just added to the general soup-like quality of our yard. What a mess. I’ll post pictures next week.

Bill and Pete are working around the construction zone. This week’s harvest will be greatly complicated by the fact that we have no electricity or water at our house. It will work out, though. Just be sure that his extreme efforts don’t go to waste – be sure to come to the market with a big appetite!

It shouldn’t be hard to convince you to attend this week’s market given the mounds of beautiful heirloom tomatoes that Bill is bringing. I’ve seen the stack of tomato-filled crates, and it’s really amazing. (You’d cry to see all of the tomatoes that go into the compost – at least 75%!! People just won’t buy a tomato with a crack or too many cosmetic issues. Of course, he still has to pick them!) Our favorite market tomatoes this year are Pink Brandywine and Kellogg’s Breakfast. Here’s some tasty information sure to get you to the market with wallets blazing:

Pink Brandywine: This is Bill’s favorite. It’s very difficult to grow for market – lots of splitting. Bill estimates he only gets 10% of the fruit to sell at market. One book describes pink brandywine as winey, robust, mouth-watering, sweet, tart, and complex. Whoa. I’m tired just thinking of all the adjectives.

Kellogg’s Breakfast: Juicy AND meaty, this beefsteak variety is truly scrumptious. Look for a big, orange tomato, and you’ve found it. You can’t go wrong with Kellogg’s (product placement – we get paid for that. Ha ha!!).

Striped German: This is aesthetically the most beautiful varieties that Bill grows. And to top it off, it’s really delicious. I think it has a fruitier flavor with a bit less acidity than a red tomato, but I’m not sure if it’s just the colors that make me taste it that way.

Green Zebra: It’s ripe even though is a green-and-yellow striped tomato. The flavor is sweet and tangy. It’s a perfect foil for a sweeter tomato, and adds a visual flair.

Cherokee Purple: It is said that this variety was originally grown by the Cherokee Indians more than 100 years ago. It’s one of my favorites because it has a wonderfully complex tomato flavor and meaty texture.

Hybrids: The hybrids that Bill grows are also quite good. They’re cheaper at $2/pound because they’re easier to grow and yield much better. Of course, they have nowhere near the complexity of the heirlooms as far as flavor goes, and the skins are a bit thicker (hence their being more blemish and ding-free.) That said, if you need a lot of tomatoes and don’t want to spend as much, these are a very good substitution.

Bill is sure that this will be the biggest tomato week of the season (he was surprised about that, since last week was so good).

You may have noticed the lack of green beans last week, which was due to the beans being just too immature to pick. That means that Bill will be totally overwhelmed by beans this week. (Picking them is torture – seriously, every year I wonder why he does it.) This would, subsequently, be an excellent week for you to buy beans!!

Here’s what we’ll have on Saturday …

Tomatoes
Eggplant
Leeks
Poblano Peppers
Sweet Peppers
Green Bell Peppers
Cucumbers
Green beans
Dragon tongue beans
Summer squash
Potatoes
Carrots
Shallots
Fennel
Swiss chard
Head Lettuce
Beets
Onions
Garlic
Basil
Broccoli?
Cabbage (Red)
Okra

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to email us at blueschoolhouse@yahoo.com, although during the farm season we can’t guarantee that we’ll be checking the email as often as usual. Our phone service is dead for the next few weeks until the house is moved back onto the new basement!

Best,
Mercy

Heirloom Tomato Week!!

Hello!

Two words … HEIRLOOM TOMATOES! This is it. The week to end all weeks in 2009. The tomatoes have ripened and we’ll have a few hundred pounds to send home with you. We will set them all up on the outermost tables. And as was the case last week, there’s no pre-selecting your tomatoes before the bell rings. We have to keep it fair and minimize conflict. (There was actually some nice camaraderie last Saturday when the whole group of customers was irritated en masse about the new policy!)

We will also be bringing loads of onions. These are just about the best onions we’ve ever grown. Someone actually asked me what we do with onions, to which I almost asked what you CAN’T do with onions! It’s like garlic. Does a meal go by without it?

Bill may also have some muskmelons (incorrectly A.K.A. cantaloupe) and watermelon. I have a serious genetic defect in Bill’s mind because I just don’t like muskmelon (or honeydew for that matter). It does look beautiful and has such a nice mouth-feel. I hope you enjoy it as much as he does! (By the way, you almost NEVER see real cantaloupe in America. It’s not grown in many parts of this country. The stuff in the stores is really muskmelon.)

We are preparing for the house move, which starts on Monday. They’ll do some light excavating around the foundation so that they can run steel beams under it. They’ll actually move it over the course of a few days later that week. I think we have the logistics worked out – we’re staying at one neighbor’s house, our freezer is bunking with another family, and our ice blocks will be visiting Henry Brockman’s freezer. It takes a village, you know.

Here’s what we’ll have on Saturday …

Tomatoes
Eggplant
Leeks
Poblano Peppers
Sweet Peppers
Green Bell Peppers
Cucumbers
Green beans
Dragon tongue beans
Summer squash
Potatoes
Carrots
Shallots
Fennel
Swiss chard
Head Lettuce
Beets
Onions
Garlic
Basil
Broccoli
Radicchio
Cabbage (Red)
Okra

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to call us at 309-467-9228. You can also email us at blueschoolhouse@yahoo.com, although during the farm season we can’t guarantee that we’ll be checking the email as often as usual.

Best,
Mercy

Do you need onions? Yes, you do.

Hello!

This past Saturday was another record-setter, and by quite a margin. We have never brought so much food to the market before. We actually had to ask our friend Kevin, who had innocently offered to help harvest not knowing what he’d be getting into, to take a bunch of the food home with him on Friday and bring it to the market on Saturday morning. Another volunteer on Friday took another load to Kevin’s house, which is a few blocks east of the market. Kevin loaded it all into his mini-van and brought it down at 6:30 a.m. What a guy! We actually plan to use his house as a delivery point for the next few weeks because we have more food than we can fit into the truck/trailer/my car. Crazy.

Speaking of loads of food, we watched the movie Food Inc. this weekend. Did you? I could not stay for most of the movie because the boys were too squirmy, so Bill watched it solo. He thought it was quite good but nothing that he hasn’t read before.

We just got news today that the house mover will be here on August 17, weather permitting, to move our house. Yes, we’re moving our house. We need to dig a basement and, well, the house is in the way. You can look forward to hearing all about this adventure in the coming weeks. We have a marriage counselor on retainer.
We have wrapped up the first week of the boys having returned from the grandparents’ house. I’m not sure how long it will take for us to re-program them! Here’s a taste of what we’ve heard since they’ve been back …

1. Not two hours after returning from grandma’s, Noah announced that he was bored and wanted to go back to her house. (He wrote on the sidewalk in chalk “I M Bord.” Pretty good spelling for a little guy!) We have tried to explain that it’s not always that fun at grandma’s and that she actually has a full-time job. They don’t get it – they think my parents go to The Magic House or up in the Arch every day.

2. We went to pick blueberries and then vacuum sealed them to store them over the winter. Noah said, “You know, dad, there is a freezer bag that prevents freezer burn.” Seriously. He sounded like a little commercial (and we don’t have television here at the house for them to watch). He couldn’t remember the brand name, so the advertisers only did half the job.

3. When Bill got out the homemade yogurt, Noah asked how many calories it has, noting that “some brands have more than 100 calories per serving.” This from a kid who has never heard the word calorie to my knowledge.

4. Noah asked me more than once yesterday if I knew that I may be “missing an opportunity to buy a Honda.” He seemed pretty concerned about missing the opportunity, so it must have been a pretty compelling commercial. He now refers to himself on occasion as “Mr. Opportunity.”

5. As you may have guessed, they watched A LOT of commercial television while on vacation. My dad has a TV on at all times, even during dinner. The boys are totally in love with Animal Planet. Given how much moaning and groaning Noah has been doing about farming, we asked him if he’d live on a farm or in the city when he grows up. He immediately responded, “I want to live in the television.” Whoa.

I know some people think raising two boys on a farm must be idyllic (while members of my extended family think it sounds like torture). Let me assure you that our kids dislike us and our lifestyle (on occasion) as much as in-town kids dislike their lot in life. It just depends on the hour of the day. And our kids are “behind” in some kid activities. Like Noah can’t ride a bike yet without training wheels. We just haven’t gotten around to taking him somewhere that he can practice. On the other hand, he can use very sharp knives and clippers. Ben is similarly precocious with the dangerous implements.

Were you able to watch the big storm roll in on Tuesday? It was really impressive out here on the farm. Bill said it was like being on a movie set with special effects – like a scene out of Lord of the Rings (Gates of Mordor scene, anyone?). I was in my bunker of an office, where I never have any idea what the weather is doing. Bill said they were harvesting for the CSA on Tuesday morning – him and three interns. They knew a huge storm was coming from looking at the radar. The interns were furiously picking veggies while Bill tried to quickly mow a section of weeds. All of the sudden, a perfectly straight line of dark clouds moved over the trees next to the field. The temperature dropped, the wind picked up, and before Bill knew it, they were all staring at the sky. It was biblical. Fast-moving, low-to-the-ground, rolling clouds then moved in, followed by an amazingly powerful rain. Bill said it was awesome. And then they ran for cover, barely making it out of the field before it got too slippery to get the truck up the hill.

This week’s featured vegetable is the SWEET ONION. It’s hard to get people excited about onions, which is really too bad. Onions are CRITICAL to good eating. What meal, what dish, can’t benefit from a delicious, sweet onion. Bill’s onions – Walla Walla, Candy, and Copra – are truly divine. And I’m not exaggerating. The difference between Bill’s sweet onions and the onions in the store (you know, the cheap 5-pound bag) is AS STRIKING as the difference between store tomatoes and Bill’s tomatoes. It’s really something. You can roast, grill or sauté these suckers and eat them plain. Not kidding. And I’ll be totally honest here, we need you to buy a lot of onions. We have THREE THOUSAND POUNDS of them in our garage. It’s not a big garage. I fear they will turn up in my house if you don’t buy some, and quick. Ha ha. Seriously, we have a boatload and you need to start eating them! We’ll be selling them by the pound or in 5-pound bags.

We’re looking at another monstrous harvest this weekend. I’ll be driving a big portion of it in to town (to Kevin’s garage!) on Friday night. Kevin will most likely be unavailable to deliver it on Saturday morning because his wife Christina is expecting their second baby any minute now. Good luck, Kevin and Chris!

Here’s what we’ll have …
Tomatoes
Eggplant
Leeks
Poblano Peppers
Green Bell Peppers
Cucumbers
Green beans
Dragon tongue beans
Summer squash
Potatoes
Carrots
Shallots
Fennel
Kohlrabi
Swiss chard
Head Lettuce
Beets
Onions
Garlic
Kale
Collard Greens
Basil
Parsley
Broccoli
Radicchio
Cabbage (Red)
Okra

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to call us at 309-467-9228. You can also email us at blueschoolhouse@yahoo.com, although during the farm season we can’t guarantee that we’ll be checking the email as often as usual.

Best,
Mercy

The Great Onion Harvest of '09

Hello!

The boys have returned … let the chaos begin!! Seriously, they are SO LOUD. And I think they grew while they were gone. It was probably from all of the horrifying snack food they were able to eat – are there growth hormones in Oreos? (The first night, I called to see how they were doing. Noah said, “It’s great, mom, but I have a little bit of a tummy ache.” I asked him what he’d been eating, and he said, “Well, there were some M&Ms, grapes, and hot chocolate.” Hmmm. Sounds puke-ifying to me.)

They did have an amazing time. If you have 5-7 year olds in your life and need tips on what to do in St. Louis, call me. They went up in the Arch (where Ben accidentally smacked some guy in the face while he was talking with his hands – the guy asked my parents if Ben is Italian!), visited Grant’s Farm, went to The Magic House, saw Ice Age 3 (the movie – I think it was the third one), swam at the public pool, and took a trip down to Johnson’s Shut-Ins and Elephant Rocks (where my dad started referring to Noah as Sir Edmund Hillary) in the Mark Twain National Forest (Missouri). They are covered in scratches and mosquito bites but otherwise seem to be unharmed. The worst part is the readjustment to life on the boring and awful FARM! Oh yes, they were immediately taken down to the field where they had to ... help pick tomatoes. Call DCFS; it’s child abuse if you ask them. Ha ha.

It’s great to have them back, of course. Ben is already saying hilarious things. It’s so interesting to hear his thought process right now. At 5 years old, he has given a lot of thought to life, death, and “spirits.” I’m not sure where he’s getting this, but he recently announced that “you can’t kill a spirit … you can only melt them.” Heh? He was so earnest that we had to cover our smiles.

Here’s another good travel idea for you … Plow Creek Farm in Tiskilwa, Illinois, 8 miles south of Princeton (http://www.plowcreekfarm.com/). It’s a wonderful U-Pick berry farm where they use little or no chemicals. The farm is part of an intentional community affiliated with the Mennonite faith. It’s quite a hike – probably 2 hours from Bloomington-Normal – but it’s worth it for excellent blueberries. We’re going tomorrow and then again later in August for red raspberries.

If you’re looking for a night out at a restaurant, we heartily recommend Chef Leo’s in Peoria on Monroe Street in the same building as the Peoria Bread Company. Leo uses a lot of local food, and the dishes are tasty. Check it out.

And if you’re looking for a fun local thing to do, join us this weekend at the Normal Theater for Food Inc. I believe we’re going on Sunday night, but it runs on Thursday, Friday and Saturday as well. The movie website is at www.foodincmovie.com. They’re serving local organic popcorn and potentially Pepsi Throwback (with real sugar!). See you there!

So on to actual farm news (or the Mercy version of farm news). The onion harvest has been a humongous success this year. Notwithstanding the amazing patch of weeds that grew up around the onions, Bill and the farmhands were able to harvest two entire wagonloads of storage onions and beautiful Walla Walla onions (2000 pounds!!). I helped one day, and it was a lot like an Easter egg hunt. Bill had to whack the weeds back with a scythe first – very Grim Reaper of him. The last onions to harvest are the “candy onions.” Bill expects to get another wagonload’s worth.



Noah is going at the tomatoes like a little pro. When he didn’t know that I was listening, I heard him in the tomato row muttering, “I’m gonna get you, sucka!” to an unsuspecting tomato. He is a little carbon copy of Bill sometimes.
Harvesting tomatoes is one of the dirtier activities. It turns your skin green and grinds dirt into the smallest cracks in your skin – you basically look like a dirtbag for weeks. There’s no scrubbing it off. Pete, the farmhand, said it’s the worst part of harvesting tomatoes. He was lamenting how dirty his hands were the other day when Bill decided to start blaming him for all of the dirt (about 10 pounds of sludge) in the bottom of the wash tub. Pete did not think that was funny.

I am happy to report that Bill and the coons are at an impasse. Bill has successfully protected one bed of corn, which he will be bringing to the market this Saturday!! The coons are already checking out the next bed, of course. It is starting to ripen, and Bill needs to get the electric fence over to that bed ASAP after harvesting your corn for this weekend. It’s such a battle. Bill also has a new set of potential varmints to deal with – the wild turkeys are eating the oats in the potato bed. Of course, there’s not much he can do about that because turkeys are just too cool.

We’re also bringing some mushrooms this weekend. They are unbelievable. I really count them among my favorite things to eat – turn the cap upside down, brush on olive oil, good balsamic, salt and pepper and then grill them for about 10 minutes or until the edges start to get a bit crispy. I can make an entire meal out of them.



This Saturday will be another crazy-great harvest. This is the most diverse and plentiful time of the farm season. We hope to see every one of you this weekend, because we’re bringing a boatload of food. Here’s what we’ll have …

Tomatoes
Sweet Corn
Okra
Eggplant
Leeks
Poblano Peppers
Green Bell Peppers
Cucumbers
Green beans
Dragon tongue beans
Summer squash
Potatoes
Carrots
Shallots
Fennel
Kohlrabi
Swiss chard
Head Lettuce
Beets
Onions
Garlic
Kale
Collard Greens
Basil
Parsley
Broccoli
Radicchio
Cabbage (Red and Green)

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to call us at 309-467-9228. You can also email us at blueschoolhouse@yahoo.com, although during the farm season we can’t guarantee that we’ll be checking the email as often as usual.

Best,
Mercy

Empty Nesters on the Farm

Hello!

Or should I say bon jour! I’m preparing for a presentation tomorrow in which I will talk to a group of international students visiting ISU for a few weeks to learn about American systems (i.e. government, planning, education). The audience members will all be from Africa, and everything I say will be translated into French! I’m so excited. I anticipate that I will sound very intelligent and compelling in French!

I’ve also been working on plans for the upcoming run of the movie “Food Inc.” at the Normal Theater next weekend. It shows NEXT Thursday (July 30) through Sunday (Aug 2) at 7 p.m. Have you heard of the movie? Check it out at www.foodincmovie.com. The movie includes interviews with Michael Pollan (author of many foodie books such as In Defense of Food and The Omnivore’s Dilemma) and Eric Schlosser (of Fast Food Nation fame). I talked to Dawn, the theater manager, and she will be serving Pepsi Throwback (with REAL SUGAR rather than High Fructose Corn Syrup) and potentially locally grown popcorn (if it will work in her popper). If you go to the move, be sure to show her some appreciation for the extra effort. I HOPE TO SEE YOU THERE! It’s your chance to see Bill on the social scene as well. Now there’s a reason to come out!

Tomorrow is also the beginning of our boy-free week. My parents are taking Ben and Noah down to their house for a week of pure indulgence. I shudder to think of what they’ll be doing, and of course, what they’ll be eating. Ben and Noah are already planning a raid on Grandpa Rick’s Oreo cookies. We’ll miss them but not enough to refuse the offer. This will be the first time we’ve ever been without them. (We’ve been without them separately but not together.) I may just lay on the floor of the living room and enjoy the silence.

Trusty farmhand Pete will be on a family vacation next week (July 27+), so if you’ve had a hankering to help farm for a day or two, this would be the week to do it! As always I have to say that harvest days (Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays) are the most social days. If you need directions, just email us.



From Bill … I spent much of today raking the second cutting of hay, and I’m still trying to keep the raccoons out of the sweet corn. I’m also planting fall crops such as radishes, carrots, lettuce, arugula, Japanese turnips, bok choy, broccoli, cabbage, and radicchio. These crops are being planted in a new section of the field where I tilled in a clover, alfalfa, orchard grass cover crop, so they should do really well. And as always, Pete and I are weeding and thinning previous plantings, trellising tomatoes and peppers. It’s particularly gratifying to till in the empty beds and cover crops.

Today’s most exciting news is that Pete picked TOMATOES. I’d make a bigger deal of it but we still won’t have that many to sell this week. So if you’ve made it this far into the blog posting, you have been rewarded with an early warning about the tomatoes! Pete and I also moved the onions and shallots that we harvested last week out into the sunshine to help them dry out. We’ll be selling them for weeks to come.

Today I started working at 7am and finished at 8:30pm. I still am not able to keep up – one particularly frustrating thing to see this time of the year are all the giant weeds growing in various beds that are maturing and setting seed. That means lots more weeds next year. On a more encouraging note, the melons, winter squash, and sweet potatoes look really good. If all goes well I will have a lot of these crops to bring to market.

It will be another bountiful harvest this week, so we hope you have your re-usable bags ready for a big shopping trip! Here’s what we’ll have …

Eggplant
Cucumbers
Green beans
Dragon tongue beans
Summer squash
Potatoes
Carrots
Shallots
Fennel
Kohlrabi
Swiss chard
Head Lettuce
Beets
Onions
Garlic
Kale
Collard Greens
Basil
Parsley
Broccoli
Radicchio
Cabbage (Red and Green)

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to call us at 309-467-9228. You can also email us at blueschoolhouse@yahoo.com, although during the farm season we can’t guarantee that we’ll be checking the email as often as usual.

Best,
Mercy

Sweet Corn Blues

The field is just beautiful this year! The periodic rain, cool breezes, and fertile soil make for a happy farm (and farmer)!

Hello!

A word from Bill … The raccoons are totally destroying my sweet corn. I knew they would come, but I was not prepared for the overnight dinner party. I am in the process of trying to recover, but my feeling is that I will not be able to keep them out of the corn this year. I could probably keep them out next year if I spend a lot of time working on that and hundreds of dollars on fences and traps. I could also just give up and buy corn at the market. Part of me wants to put up a fight, but raccoons are very smart and determined animals. They are unnaturally abundant in our area and in many parts of Illinois. This is due to several factors, including our highly fragmented landscape, low fur prices, lack of natural predators, their adaptability, and lots of corn to eat. I gave up raising chickens because the raccoons kept eating them. The next few weeks will determine if I will give up growing corn too. So next time you buy corn at the market you can be glad you got the corn before the raccoons did.



An ear of corn enjoyed by a local raccoon





You can see how the raccoon "tested" this one to see if it was sweet enough before moving on to another ear.



A corn massacre

And now a word from Mercy … Bill’s down at the field trying to rig up something to keep the raccoons out of the sweet corn. He hasn’t tried to grow sweet corn in many years, and as I recall the raccoons had something to do with it back then, too! Raccoons are great eaters – they know a good thing when they find it. So in the course of one night, they wiped out about 75% of his sweet corn. He was tempted to just mow the rest of it down, but then he pulled a Caddyshack on me and headed down the field to do who-knows-what. Just picture him, like Bill Murray, setting out explosives and you get the general idea.

I will be at the market briefly this weekend with the boys. Noah, Ben, and I are going down to St. Louis on the Amtrak at 9 a.m. to a baby shower for my brother’s girlfriend. (It’s very 2009, to be sure.) I hope I get a chance to see many of you before we have to bug out.

Last week’s market was our best ever. (Do you remember that I said that just about every week last season?) The rain came late enough that most of the serious eaters had already been and gone by then. It was just tremendous. Bill thought the market had a really different feel last weekend as well – we both noticed A LOT more people that we’d never seen before. That’s great – I guess the word is finally getting out that fresh, local food really is worth the special trip!

The boys finally appear to be moving from farm liability to farm asset -- between the two of them (and with much arguing that could be heard ACROSS the field), they harvested 150 lbs. of summer squash and 120 lbs. of cucumbers. Noah is genuinely helpful (although he doesn't always enjoy it). Ben is only helpful when he wants to be. One day this week, he spent a significant amount of time spinning around like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music so that he could "see the world spinning." Very helpful. The boys are also so very curious. Bill tried to explain to them the difference between birds of prey (like turkey vultures) that can't be hunted by humans and "game" birds that can be hunted in the right season. Ben immediately wanted to know if we could also play games with them. Sheesh.

This week’s featured vegetable is the cucumber. Bill will be bringing traditional and Asian varieties. They’re both very crisp and tasty – a cool burst of flavor in your mouth! Unlike the tough-skinned, waxy cucumbers that you find at the store (or in a restaurant salad), Bill’s cucumbers have a thin, delicate skin with minimal bitterness. The Asian varieties are “burpless,” although chemists have not yet figured out what it is about various cucumbers that are more or less “burpy.”

And what’s with the Zephyr summer squash? You know, the yellow and green ones. Several customers have told us they thought the Zephyr is a gourd. No, no, no! It is a thin skinned, flavorful zucchini-like summer squash. You eat the whole darn thing. Slice and sauté, grill with balsamic vinegar, add to pasta – it’s that easy.

Bill will be bringing BOATLOADS of everything else – prepare to make yourself some side dishes with beets, potatoes, green beans, head lettuce and more. THIS SHOULD BE AN AMAZING MARKET! Bring a (hungry) friend!!

Here’s what we’ll have …

Eggplant
Cucumbers
Green beans
Dragon tongue beans
Summer squash
Potatoes
Carrots
Shallots
Fennel
Kohlrabi
Swiss chard
Head Lettuce
Beets
Onions
Garlic
Kale
Collard Greens
Basil
Parsley
Broccoli
Radicchio
Cabbage (Red and Green)

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to call us at 309-467-9228. You can also email us at blueschoolhouse@yahoo.com, although during the farm season we can’t guarantee that we’ll be checking the email as often as usual.

Best,
Mercy

Down with Kartoffelkafers!

Hello!

The calendar claims that it’s July, but with the cool wet weather I’m starting to wonder! I seriously can’t remember ever wearing jeans and a sweatshirt on July 8. It’s hard to complain since a typical July 8 would be hot and humid. If the weather holds, THIS WEEKEND could be the first comfortable SUGAR CREEK ARTS festival in years. (It’s usually either a thunderstorm or uncomfortably hot and humid.) The Garlic Press will be open all weekend and will have AWESOME food made with Blue Schoolhouse veggies. Be sure to stop in at the Press to get your lunch or dinner during the festival.

We so appreciate all of you coming in last Saturday to the market to buy veggies! What rotten weather!! A special kudos goes out to loyal customer Marilyn Townley, who braved the bad weather only to be doused by a few gallons of cold, wet rain water UNDER our tent. (She thought she was safe under the tent – HAH!) You really have to watch the edges of the tent, even where the two tents come together in the middle. The rainwater collects in the sagging parts of the tent (a common problem with a 7-YEAR-OLD tent!) and then dumps over when a breeze comes through and lifts up the fabric. Marilyn was a trooper!

This week we hear that there’s another slight chance for rain. We hope that’s not the case, but if it is … you know where to find us. At the market, under our pathetic tents. Bring an umbrella, and use it under the tent. Ha ha.

This week’s exciting new vegetable is the cucumber. A cool, crisp cuke is one of summer’s best features. I never liked them until I had Bill’s. The ones in the store and on the salad plate at a restaurant are usually tough-skinned and slightly bitter around the edges. Not so for a Blue Schoolhouse cuke. Be sure to check them out.

There will also be even more summer squash (a.k.a. zucchini), big Walla Walla sweet onions, tasty broccoli, and much more.

It’s worth mentioning that Bill has had a major victory over the potato beetles this season. By relocating the potatoes to a completely new location where potatoes haven’t grown in decades, Bill thought he would have very little beetle pressure. Unfortunately, the beetles found the potatoes. So he’s had the interns and our little boys out there squishing potato beetles for weeks. He also adopted our friend Dave’s method of beetle removal, which involves tennis rackets and baskets. He lightly whacks the potato plants with the rackets, dropping the beetles into the buckets, and then does a little dance on them. He could also just dump them into a bucket of soapy water, but he really likes the dancing part.

Our friend Kevin found some great information about potato beetles online. Apparently, the potato beetle is native to the United States and has proliferated throughout the world. During World War II some propaganda in Europe suggested that Americans had intentionally released the beetles in Europe for diabolical reasons.
Check out these web links for more (it’s truly entertaining!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28N6TSaKQ-g (video with subtitles)

http://www.potatomuseum.com/exPotatoBeetle.html (potato museum with beetle history)

http://potatobeetle.org/memorabilia.html (propaganda posters)

The best part of our potato beetle research is the German name – kartoffelkafer! The boys now refer to them as such. It makes them sound very well-traveled.

This will be the last week for salad mix for a while. Don’t miss it!

Here’s what we’ll have …

Green beans (boatloads – please buy some, as they are a killer to harvest)
Dragon tongue beans (yellow wax beans – even better than green beans, although they look funny)
Summer squash
Potatoes
Carrots
Shallots
Fennel
Kohlrabi
Swiss chard
Head Lettuce
Beets
Onions
Garlic
Salad Mix
Kale
Collard Greens
Basil
Parsley
Broccoli
Radicchio
Cabbage

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to call us at 309-467-9228. You can also email us at blueschoolhouse@yahoo.com, although during the farm season we can’t guarantee that we’ll be checking the email as often as usual.

Best,
Mercy

Celebrate the Fourth with Green Beans!

Hello!

We hope that you have big cooking plans for the Fourth of July and that you plan to shop the market for the ingredients!! Bill will have so much delicious food this week. And many items are just perfect for the grill or a potluck party. Here are some ideas …

1. Green bean salad
2. New potato salad
3. A fresh veggie tray with young carrots, sliced green peppers, kohlrabi matchsticks, and broccoli
4. Grilled summer squash (just slice it lengthwise in half, cut slits into the inside face, stuff with garlic slices and grill face up with a light coating of balsamic and olive oil)
5. Roasted beets on the grill – easily turned into a beet salad after grilling. And why not add some of the goat cheese that I mention below?

So that’s right, we have GREEN BEANS! Do you remember last year’s beans? Bill grows truly amazing beans. This week he’ll have French Filet (tiny, thin and very fancy) and traditional green beans. He will have dragon tongue beans later. Hand-picked green beans are one of life’s pure joys (especially when YOU have not been picking them!). We like to blanch them and then add a vinaigrette with some chopped SHALLOTS and GARLIC. I also found this good-looking recipe on the 101 Cookbooks website (check out http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/vibrant-tasty-green-beans-recipe.html).

Vibrant Tasty Green Bean Recipe

The following recipe is best made just before serving time. But as I mentioned in the main post you can make/prep this ahead of time by cooking the leeks and dill first and setting them aside. Instead of cooking the green beans in the skillet, blanch them in a pot of boiling, well-salted water for about a minute. Drain the beans and dunk them in a large bowl of ice water to stop the cooking. Drain and place the beans in a bag or bowl in the refrigerator until ready to use. When ready, combine the components - you can do it at room temperature, or heated quickly in a skillet or pan.

4 leeks, well washed, root end and tops trimmed, sliced lengthwise into quarters and then chopped into 1/2-inch segments
1/3 cup fresh dill, well chopped
3/4 pound green beans, tops and tails trimmed and cut into 1-inch segments
extra-virgin olive oil
fine-grain sea salt

In a large thick-bottomed skillet of medium-high heat add a generous splash of olive oil, a generous pinch of salt and the leeks. Stir until the leeks are coated and glossy. Cook, stirring regularly until a lot of the leeks are golden and crispy. I stir every minute or two in the beginning, and more often as they brown using a metal spatula. All in all it takes me roughly 7 - 10 minutes to brown the leeks. At this point stir in the dill, and then stir in the green beans. Cook for a couple more minutes - just until the the beans brighten up and lose that raw bite. Turn out into a bowl or onto a platter and serve immediately. Serves about 6.

New Potatoes

The new potatoes are also just unbelievably delicious right now. We prefer to eat them simply – just boil in salted water, drain, and then add melted butter, salt, and pepper. Throw in some rosemary if you’re feeling adventurous. The new potatoes have a very creamy texture, even without butter. Or try this awesome sounding recipe from 101 Cookbooks at http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/grilled-potato-salad-recipe.html.

Grilled Potato Salad Recipe

When I went to grill the potatoes and squash I set each piece on the grill, I suspect you could also use one of those grill baskets with success as well. I also thought about finishing this version with chopped jalapeno, cilantro and toasted sesame seeds - you can make it as simple or embellished as you like, depending on your individual tastes. I used a red-leafed lettuce here.

10 medium-sized new potatoes, unpeeled and quartered
3-4 small yellow summer pattypan squash, cut in half
1 bunch of green onions or spring onions
a big splash of olive oil
2 lemons, cut in half
1/4 cup rice vinegar
1/4 cup olive oil
clove of garlic, mashed and chopped
a couple drops of toasted sesame oil
salt
1/2 a head of lettuce, washed and cut into bite-sized pieces

Toss the potato wedges, squash, and green onions with a bit of olive oil and a pinch of salt. Place them on a medium-hot grill. Place the lemons on the grill as well, cut side down. Grill for 10-20 minutes or until golden and cooked through - moving around the grill if needed and flipping to get color on all sides. The squash will likely cook faster than the potatoes, remove pieces and place on a platter when they are done grilling.

While everything is grilling, whisk together the rice vinegar, olive oil, garlic, sesame oil, and a couple pinches of salt. When the onions come off the grill, let them cool for a couple minutes and then cut into 1/2-inch segments. Set aside.
Toss the lettuce with a splash of the dressing, and turn it out onto a large platter. Now toss the vegetables (but not the lemons) with a big splash of the dressing and arrange it on top of the lettuce sprinkled with the reserved grilled green onion segments. Garnish with the lemon (which I like to squeeze over my salad just before eating for an added layer of extra mellow tang that goes great with the potatoes. Serves 6 (or so) as a side.

Garlic



We have been harvesting this year’s garlic crop for the past several days, and we have many more days to go. That said, NOW IS THE TIME to start buying some garlic! It’s absolutely perfect right now. It may be our best garlic year ever. The heads sized up really well, and the cloves are nice and big. Bill will be bringing hard-neck and soft-neck varieties. The flavors are almost indistinguishable, but those with a serious garlic sensor could tell that the hard neck is better. Hard neck also has fewer, large cloves than the soft-neck. What you see in the stores is invariably soft-neck because it stores much longer (many months as opposed to several months). Braided garlic is also a soft-neck variety.

New Cheese Vendor!!

Did you notice the newest vendor at the Bloomington Farmers Market? We are very fortunate that Leslie Cooperband of Prairie Fruits (Urbana, IL) has decided to make our market one of her newest outlets for fabulous goat and sheep cheeses. I visited her website at http://www.prairiefruits.com/ and saw that she’ll have some cheeses on sale this week because the hot weather impacted some of the cheese varieties. I DEFINITELY plan to stop by her stand to pick some up!! We brought some home last week, and the boys loved it. (They have a pretty refined palate for being so young, although they have a hard time describing flavors. When we asked Noah, age 6.5, to use some words to describe Leslie’s cheese, he said, “It’s a foot away from awesome.” High praise!)

For the next market, here’s what you can expect:

Green beans
Summer squash
New potatoes
Cabbage
Carrots
Shallots
Green Peppers
Fennel
Kohlrabi
Sugar Snap Peas (maybe)
Swiss chard
Head Lettuce
Spinach (very little)
Beets
Onions
Garlic
Salad Mix
Kale
Collard Greens
Arugula
Basil
Parsley
Broccoli

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to call us at 309-467-9228. You can also email us at blueschoolhouse@yahoo.com, although during the farm season we can’t guarantee that we’ll be checking the email as often as usual.

Best,
Mercy

Could it be Abe Lincoln?

Hello!

And hello summer! It’s been one of those weeks when I’ve really appreciated the air conditioning at city hall while Bill has been toiling in the sun. We finally broke down and put in the window A/C units – it gets to be unbearably hot upstairs in the boys’ room, and Bill just deserves a little comfort in the living room after a hard day’s work. I hope you have managed to keep cool.



This week’s picture gallery is completely unrelated to our market stand (big shock!). I just had to put up this cool snail picture. Noah found him hanging out on the mushroom logs.





And these are the boys in Uncle Aaron’s motorcycle helmet. They looked completely nuts. Like upside down exclamation points. In addition to bringing the highly forbidden motorcycle to our house, Uncle Aaron was also kind enough to bring the boys wooden swords from Japan. Just what they needed.

This week was a big one at the farm – Ben turned 5 and Bill turned 38! It just so happens that Ben’s birthday (June 25) falls on the same day as the Harry Potter party at the Children’s Museum in Normal, so I am off the hook for one more year. I have yet to throw a kid-oriented birthday party. My parents always come up, and my mom makes a cake. We have our friends over (no kids!) and keep it simple. I hear about the more elaborate kid parties being thrown in other households and feel guilty for about a nanosecond. Some day my kids will really resent my poor parenting!

Movie endorsement: We saw Up this past weekend – the new Pixar film about the old guy who flies away in a house with a wayward boy scout. It’s very charming, but the 3-D doesn’t add much. And I was amazed that a kid-targeted 3-D movie would include 3-D glasses that are too big for a kid’s head (unless you have a big noggin’ like Noah).

One last non-farm tidbit – I took the boys to a Catholic wedding recently, which included a full mass. They were fascinated. They’d never seen a crucified Jesus before (we Protestants tend to just stick with the empty cross). Noah thought Jesus looked a bit like Abe Lincoln. Ben wanted to know why the priest put the golden chalice away in the “secret compartment” – he figured it was so that no one would steal it. And the bell ringing during the preparation of the communion was a real treat.

But let’s get down to the business of VEGETABLES! Here’s what you need to know …

1. It’s the LAST WEEK for garlic scapes. That’s right, no more scapes until 2010. Sniff, sniff. If you haven’t yet tried them, this is your chance.

2. It’s the FIRST WEEK for CARROTS, SHALLOTS, and GREEN PEPPERS (although the peppers will be in short supply).

I’m not going to tell you what to do with carrots, as that seems to be obvious. But let’s talk about shallots. They are totally essential for a high-falootin’ dinner, according to Uncle Aaron, who is a dynamite chef. Shallots have a pinkish flesh. Roasted until tender, the bulbs are meaty, sweet, mild and tender. According to Deborah Schneider (Vegetables A to Z), shallots are best known for their roles in sauces, raw and cooked. Throw them into a vinaigrette for salad, julienne them onto greens, or cook gently like a baby onion.

**NEWS FLASH**
There’s a cool CONTEST out there called “Love Your Farmers Market”. If you go to , you can vote for the Bloomington Farmers Market. The market with the most votes wins $5,000! And every vote helps promote local food, family farms and sustainable agriculture.

For the next market, here’s what you can expect:

Carrots
Shallots
Green Peppers (not many!)
Fennel
Kohlrabi
Sugar Snap Peas
Swiss chard
Head Lettuce
Spinach
Garlic Scapes (LAST WEEK!)
Beets
Onions
Garlic
Salad Mix
Kale
Collard Greens
Arugula
Basil
Parsley
Broccoli

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to call us at 309-467-9228. You can also email us at blueschoolhouse@yahoo.com, although during the farm season we can’t guarantee that we’ll be checking the email as often as usual.

Best,
Mercy

The Lights Are Out, But We're Still Home

Hello!

As I write this there’s a nice thunderstorm happening outside and the power went out. Not that we needed the rain, but what can you do?! And I’m not sure how long the battery on the laptop will hold out, so I need to get this blog posting DONE!

I hope that you all enjoyed the fantastic lettuces this past week! We will be bringing more gorgeous heads along with salad mix and spinach this week. We also have a few new items:



Fennel – Crunchy and fibrous raw, fennel is a great addition sliced into salads. It’s like crunching on celery but with a light anise flavor. You can also roast it, which adds a hint of pine nutty flavor. Just slice the bulbs into thick pieces, rub with olive oil, sprinkle with balsamic vinegar (and salt/pepper to taste), and cook in an aluminum foil-lined baking dish at 400 degrees for 15-20 minutes until the fennel is cooked through and ready to carmelize. Delicious and easy!

If you want to try something a bit more complex (but still pretty easy), see below for a lentil salad with fennel.

Sugar Snap Peas – Last week I thought he was bringing them. This week, I know he is bringing them. Our kids are completely crazy about the peas. It’s hard to get them to pick ‘em without eating ‘em! These peas are best eaten raw either on their own or tossed into a salad. It’s a great snack a work, too! When your co-workers are bringing out the cookies and chips, you can reach for your bag-o-peas.

Kohlrabi – Looks like a root, but it’s really a swollen stem of a brassica (broccoli family). We prefer to just lightly peel it and then cut it into matchsticks and eat in a tahini dip (tahini, a dash of fresh lemon juice, a dash of soy sauce or Bragg’s, and water to get it to the preferred consistency). It’s a wonderful snack. You can also julienne it into a salad – it has a great apple-like texture. Be sure to cook the greens as well – simply sauté in sesame oil and soy sauce for a nice Asian-tinged side dish.



Swiss chard – There are lots of Swiss chard devotees out there, and for good reason. Swiss chard is just fantastic. We typically ribbon it up and then lightly sauté it with other greens. Basically, it can be treated like spinach for cooking purposes. I’d say more, but I’m afraid the computer battery is ready to die.

I did cut-and-paste the following recipe from www.culinate.com for fennel, if you’re interested.

Lentil Salad with Herbs and Fennel
From the Matthew Card collection at www.culinate.com

Introduction
While this salad can be served on its own or as accompaniment to grilled chicken or seafood, it also serves as a base for all manner of additional ingredients — sliced radishes, tomatoes, feta cheese, walnuts, pickled onions, etc. The salad should be tasted before serving and adjusted for salt and acidity, which will mellow as the salad sits.

Ingredients
3 qt. water
8 garlic cloves, peeled
3 bay leaves
½ onion, peeled but intact
~ Kosher salt
2 cups du Puy (French) lentils
2 Tbsp. white-wine vinegar
3 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice
~ Large pinch of sugar
½ cup extra-virgin olive oil
~ Salt and freshly ground pepper
1 Tbsp. minced fresh thyme or savory
½ cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
1 large fennel bulb, diced

Steps

1. Combine the water, garlic, bay leaves, onion, and 1 tablespoon salt in a large pot and bring to a boil. Add the lentils, return to a simmer, and reduce the heat to medium, or just enough to maintain a slow but steady simmer. Cook until the lentils are tender, 25 to 35 minutes. Drain, discard the onion and bay leaves, transfer the garlic cloves to a small bowl, and spread the lentils onto a baking sheet to cool.
2. With a fork, mash the garlic cloves to a paste. Add the vinegar, lemon juice, and sugar and whisk together; whisk in the olive oil until emulsified. Adjust seasoning with salt and pepper.
3. In a large mixing bowl, combine the cooled lentils, thyme, parsley, and fennel. Drizzle the vinaigrette over the lentils and fold the mixture with a large rubber spatula until well blended. Adjust the seasoning to taste (the lentils should taste fairly salty; the seasonings will mellow as the salad sits).
4. Refrigerate until ready to serve.

You can also check out www.culinate.com for a new posting from chef Deborah Madison. She’s a great cook and writer.

I’ll leave you with a final few notes and then the list of what we’re bringing. I’ve recently fallen in love with the podcasts from www.slate.com. They’re politically progressive, but not ugly and mean like you’d find on most talk radio. We’re going to the upcoming Ralph’s World show at the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts on June 28. It’s only $5! If you haven’t heard them, let me assure you that Ralph’s World is a GREAT children’s band. Bill and I have been known to listen to him without the kids being at home!

I heard there’s a new documentary out called Food, Inc. Michael Pollan is involved, so it must be good.

For the next market, here’s what you can expect:

Fennel
Kohlrabi
Sugar Snap Peas
Swiss chard
Head Lettuce
Spinach
Garlic Scapes
Beets
Green Onions
Garlic
Salad Mix
Kale
Collard Greens
Arugula
Ruby Streaks
Radishes
Parsley

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to call us at 309-467-9228. You can also email us at blueschoolhouse@yahoo.com, although during the farm season we can’t guarantee that we’ll be checking the email as often as usual.

Best,
Mercy

Lettuce Lovers' Market

Hello!

Thanks for coming out in force last week to grab your portion of the biggest harvest we’ve had this season! I hope you enjoyed all of the food. This Saturday will be another big one!

We’ve been eating mixed greens and head lettuce like rabbits in our house. Speaking of head lettuce, that’s this week’s featured vegetable. It is in perfect condition right now and it’s abundantly producing. This week would be the time to sample different varieties to get an idea of how diverse the world of lettuce is. Here’s what we’ll be bringing on the lettuce front …

Rouge D’hiver – First described in 1840, this “Red Winter” Romaine lettuce was traditionally grown by Parisian market gardeners to supply Paris with winter lettuce. This beautiful dark red and green romaine has crunchy sweet pink ribs. This is Bill’s favorite lettuce – it has an amazing buttery texture and sweet flavor. It confirms his belief that the French are always right when it comes to vegetables (and most other things!). Savor some Red Winter Romaine and nourish your inner French self.

Forellenschuss – An Austrian heirloom translated as “trout self-enclosing”, forrellenschuss is a beautiful speckled romaine with superior flavor.

Cherokee summer crisp lettuce – This summer crisp has a stunning dark red color with bright green hearts and a mild flavor. You can’t find anything like this at Meijer or Walmart.

Red Fire leaf lettuce – This is our bestselling lettuce, and for good reason. The shiny wavy red and green leaves are beautiful and they taste great. From a practical point of view, it is also one of the easiest lettuces to grow, tolerates heat and sizes up well.

We will also have Bibb and many other varieties of leaf lettuce. We have about two weeks left for spinach. (It depends on how hot it gets.) DON’T BE DETERRED by the large leaves! The variety that we grow has large leaves and still remains tender and sweet!

We have quite a few shiitake mushrooms growing on oak logs under our pine trees. We plan to bring some this week. It’s also possible that Bill will be bringing sugar snap peas!

Another exciting development – garlic scapes! Bill will be bringing the first scapes of the season. You may recall these tasty flowering stalks of the hard-necked garlic plants. We sell them in an Indiana Jones-esque curled-up whip-like bunch, which adds to the cool-ness of your overall farmers market shopping experience. We cook scapes like asparagus, cutting them into 1-inch lengths and steaming or sautéing until tender. They’re perfect alone with just olive oil, salt and pepper OR stirred into rice or an omelet.





On the farm, Bill is in the middle of his first cutting of hay, which provides material for mulching our vegetables. Bill recently purchased a 1960’s sickle mower so life is better. Bill found it online and had it shipped from Kentucky to a local farm implement dealer. They were not impressed, calling it a “piece of junk” in the nicest way. Bill replaced all of the blades and various other parts, and it’s working very well. He saved thousands of dollars going with a used mower, so I’m thrilled.

We have also been up to our eyeballs in strawberries. Do you grow strawberries? If no, you should reconsider. Strawberries are not that hard to deal with and they're great to eat (esp if you have kids). We canned 12 pints last night, which is also not that hard to do.



The weather is still a bit weird – I can’t recall ever wearing a light jacket in June before! But it’s great weather to have the boys out in the field. They’re not totally roasting in the heat. (Although Noah decided to farm without a shirt like one of the interns last week – against our advice – and got a nice little sunburn. I don’t think he’ll do that again!) We also had our first incident with the electric fence. Noah ran right into it – knocked him over into a full somersault. Probably won’t do that again either!

Bill's little brother just stopped in for an extended stay, so we will have his help on the farm. He's an amazingly hard worker. It's in the Davison genes. We'll bring him to the market some time so that you can meet him. In the meantime, I am just surrounded by guys. I feel like I'm living in a frat house (minus the heavy drinking).

For the next market, here’s what you can expect:

Head Lettuce
Spinach
Shiitake Mushrooms
Garlic Scapes
Sugar Snap Peas
Beets
Green Onions
Garlic
Salad Mix
Kale
Collard Greens
Arugula
Ruby Streaks
Radishes
Parsley

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to call us at 309-467-9228. You can also email us at blueschoolhouse@yahoo.com, although during the farm season we can’t guarantee that we’ll be checking the email as often as usual.

Best,
Mercy

Freshtables at the Market!

Bill's wall o' beets

Hello!

We hope you are as excited as we are about this week’s veggie harvest! Finally … and I mean finally … the plants are happy and GROWING! We should have lots of great “freshtables” for you on Saturday. (“Freshtables” is a hybrid word invented by our 2-year-old buddy Mallory, who cleverly combined “fresh” and “vegetable.” Last year, our little Ben came up with “hu-mazing” to describe something that was both huge and amazing – a particularly large Walla Walle onion that he harvested. Future marketing executives, perhaps?)

Yes, this week will bring lots of new vegetables and in greater quantities. Salad mix, spinach, green onions, green garlic, radishes and beets will be joined by more head lettuces, kale, collard greens, arugula, parsley, and ruby streaks. Be sure to come out and grab some of your favorites. And maybe this is the year that you try something new! Have you yet decided that your diet needs to include fresh parsley? It’s amazing to us how little parsley we can sell. It is such a treasure! The flavor of freshly harvested parsley is just so … fresh! It’s like eating a little piece of the farmers market. I swear that the fresh green flavor of parsley will conjure up your Saturday morning in the crisp morning air downtown Bloomington, coffee and scone in hand, dog on a leash, you get the idea. And all you have to do is mince it onto just about anything. No cooking required.

I have a new favorite recipe website. It’s www.culinate.com. The website describes itself as providing simple, straightforward recipes using fresh, seasonal ingredients. They also believe “that eating well and living well are interconnected, and that the intentional act of preparing food with, and for, other people leads to both.” What’s not to like about that? They also have featured recipes. If this is any indication of how cool the site is, local food guru Deborah Madison posts a recipe and her commentary once a month!

And darn it if I haven’t forgotten another awesome recipe website recommended by customer Melissa Johnson. Melissa – you’ll have to email it to me. I can’t be trusted at the market to remember anything.

But back to www.culinate.com. Let’s see if it can’t get you pumped about kale and collards. And I’m not just saying this to get you to buy it – it’s really perfect right now! Early in the season, both kale and collards are particularly well-balanced in flavor and texture. Every year we tell you how we prepare our greens – sauté with garlic, onion, salt, pepper, and olive oil. But it’s just not that compelling. So go to culinate.com and read about Garlic Braised Kale for a tasty idea (http://www.culinate.com/search/q,ctype=recipe,q=kale,stype=/218157). You can swap out the bulb garlic for our green garlic, and you’re set. For collards (which are Ben’s FAVORITE green), try the same recipe and use collards rather than kale. Seriously – this stuff is tasty! And forget whatever you’ve previously been told about cooking kale and collards for hours to make them tender. Bill’s greens are tender already.

After all of the angst about how much rain we had been getting, you’d be surprised at how happy we were to get the most recent downpour. It’s perfect for germinating our most recent planting of seeds, including melons, winter squash, summer squash, beets, carrots, and basil. It also invigorated our early greens so the spinach and lettuce are perking right up. Potatoes are looking great due to our extreme potato maintenance regime – you can’t imagine how many thousand Colorado potato beetles that Bill, our little boys, and the interns have hand-picked and squished (technical term) in the past couple of weeks. It is seriously disgusting and makes me very happy to be in my office typing up Council Reports while they’re doing it.


The interns taking care of spinach

I’m not going to be at the market on Saturday – I have a wedding in Kansas City to attend. I’m so excited! It’s just great to get together with the extended family so that my kids can get to know my cousins’ kids. (We were a close family growing up.) We’ll be whooping it up at the Fairfield Inn while Bill enjoys the solitude of a kid- and Mercy-free house for the weekend. He enjoys the occasional quiet time to recharge his introvert batteries. (Do you ever wonder how on earth we ended up together? Chatty Cathy meets The Quiet Man.) So be sure to chat it up with Bill this Saturday to make sure he doesn’t miss us too much.

For the next market, here’s what you can expect:

Head Lettuce
Spinach
Beets
Green Onions
Green Garlic
Salad Mix
Kale
Collard Greens
Arugula
Ruby Streaks
Radishes
Parsley

This week was also Bill's first CSA pickup. Several of you are members of Henry's CSA in Bloomington. Did you know that we were members of Henry's before we started our own farm? Our CSA pickup is in Eureka behind our church (Eureka Christian). It's one of the most beautiful buildings and properties in central Illinois. The space is what I envision Europe looks like -- lots of brick and big old trees. Here are a couple of pictures. The two large trees are a burr oak and a chinquapin oak, the latter of which is pretty unusual in town.





Finally, some "boy notes" for those who like to hear about Ben and Noah. Ben "graduated" from preschool this past week. Is he not just the cutest little scholar that you've ever seen?



And the boys have been little harvesting machines this year. When they're not knee deep in the strawberry patch, they have been checking out the mushroom logs. They found some really big ones last week and were so proud.



If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to call us at 309-467-9228. You can also email us at blueschoolhouse@yahoo.com, although during the farm season we can’t guarantee that we’ll be checking the email as often as usual.
Best,
Mercy