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