New workers?

We start them young at Patchwork Green! Cousins walk up the path to the garden last weekend...

Did you see our ad?

Patchwork Green was part of the recent Inspired Magazine (http://theinspiredmedia.com/):

2011 Updates Made

Hello all,

The website has been updated with new dates, veggies and more. We are also working on a new brochure:

New in 2011

We are enjoying, battling and waiting out another long, snowy winter in Winneshiek county. And, although we are eating plenty of veggies from our freezer and basement storage, the photos of fresh green beans and cherry tomatoes in the seed catalogues have us all dreaming of warmer weather!

Immediately following the last Farmers’ Market in November and the pre-snowfall mulching of the garlic, we began reviewing and analyzing our notes from the 2010 season, perusing the catalogues for new varieties and planning for improvements and upgrades for the coming growing season. Things we are looking forward to:

• We will double our production of Sun Gold cherry tomatoes this summer and continue to trial new tomato varieties, as well as improve our growing techniques in the unheated hoop house.

• We have hired a great, experienced garden crew for the summer, and we look forward to learning from them as much as sharing our knowledge with these future farmers.

•We will increase the quantity of our offerings at the Market so there will be broccoli, cherry tomatoes, carrots and other favorites available until the end of each market day.

• We are developing plans for better curing and storage of our fall and winter crops, from garlic and onions to potatoes and carrots, including building a big root cellar.

• Most importantly, we are making plans to grow even tastier, more beautiful vegetables and herbs for our friends and customers in and around Decorah.

It is a very exciting time to be involved in growing and vending fresh produce close to home. Thank you for participating in this healthy movement, and for challenging your friends to lead healthier lives, starting by supporting their neighboring farms!
We are fine-tuning our CSA offerings for 2011, and memberships are now available! We will once again have both traditional shares and market shares available, and we encourage you to check out the details online at patchworkgreen.com.

Winter Tacos from Patchwork Green Farm

This recipe is endlessly modified at our house, depending on the season and what is in our refrigerator or garden 15 minutes before dinner. The basic idea is to cram an entire dinner into a tortilla shell, from the complete protein pairing of beans and rice to the inclusion of some super-nutritious veggies mixed with the classic Latin American flavors of cilantro, lime and cumin. If you can do all the prep in under half an hour, and if you can fine tune it so that your kids love it and if you make enough for tomorrow’s leftovers (try the bean mixture over corn chips, topped with cheese and salsa and baked for 10 minutes) then you have created a great new healthy dinner option for a hectic weeknight!

Winter Tacos from Patchwork Green Farm
2 T. cumin seeds
1 medium onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped or pressed
½ pepper (sweet or green, fresh, frozen or roasted)
2 cups black beans, drained and rinsed if from a can
1 cup frozen sweet corn
1-2 leaves kale, chopped
2 cups cubed, steamed or roasted sweet potato or winter squash

Season with lime juice, salt, pepper, hot sauce of your choice, dry oregano, basil and parsley
Optional toppings: chopped cilantro, lettuce and scallions, salsa, sour cream, grated cheese
Fried corn tortillas or toasted flour tortillas
1-2 cups cooked brown or white rice

Start the rice cooking, and survey the available vegetables in your refrigerator. In a medium (12” works well) cast iron skillet, toast the whole cumin seeds until they just start to smoke (2-3 minutes on medium). Dump them into a mortar and grind them to a coarse powder. Add a tablespoon of oil to the skillet and sauté onions until translucent. Add garlic and cook for another minute, then add chopped peppers, beans, corn, kale and any other veggies you have on hand. We also add leftover cubed beef and chicken when available. Add seasonings and simmer for 5-10 minutes. Meanwhile, grate the cheese and heat or fry the tortillas. Serve the tacos family-style, with a bowl of rice, cheese and tortilla shells and your choice of toppings passed at the table, and watch them disappear!

In the Garden Mid-July and a Pasta Recipe

In the Garden...

It’s critter season. There are baby animals and their hungry mothers everywhere we look on our farm this month. A mom raccoon has a batch of five unruly babies that we see scavenging near our house almost every day. One evening I found them all in an apple tree, eating and dropping green apples. Young coons are fairly clumsy on small branches, and, with all of their slipping and

wobbling, I was amazed they didn’t fall right out. There is another family of raccoons that wanders through the gardens every night. I see their tracks, but rarely find much damage to the plants except melons and tomatoes which they love.

The girls hiked up to the garden one evening last week and discovered a skunk in the tomato hoop house. I had noticed a few half-eaten cherry tomatoes on the ground some mornings and had assumed it was the raccoon family. Luckily, the girls were very calm about their striped find, and all parties were able to calmly go their way without incident. Now the skunk has really got a taste for the sweet sungold cherry tomatoes, and I’ll find evidence of nighttime gorging regularly. Luckily, the tomatoes are ripening higher on the vines now and the skunk can’t reach most of them anymore! I was not quite sure how to evict that particular visitor!

The deer are a constant source of entertainment and concern. There are several young families around our farm, and the fawns really are beautiful. But, the larger animals browse and destroy an awful lot of plants and we expend much effort trying to keep them in check. The night we planted a new apple tree near the house they ate half of the leaves before we could erect a fence around it. Four of the five garden acres are fenced with a 10’ electric deer fence, which works quite well. The remaining acre gets a rotation of crops that are less tasty to the deer. This year, that includes tomatoes, cucumbers, melons and summer squash. They don’t touch the squash, and they will nibble a bit on the tomato vines and sometimes the fruit. I was surprised to find that they will eat the spiky vines of cukes and melons, and even more surprised to find that they seem to relish the fruit! After an initial 40-pound cucumber harvest, I went out to the patch a few days later hoping for 60-80 pounds, only to find lots of deer tracks and half-eaten fruit. I got about 10 pounds total and discovered that they had decimated the early melon crop. Argh! Luckily, the second planting of cukes and melons are inside the deer fence and are setting fruit well.

Best of luck with all of your critter adventures!

Recipes

Sara’s Pasta Dish

I made this up because I had bought Harrington sweet corn but had no idea what else to have and our frig was filled with random veggies and no meat and we have had all of my other quick meals this week. Best of all, it was actually pretty good!

Ingredients

olive oil

onion and garlic, diced

can of garbanzo beans, rinsed

handful of green beans, snapped into pieces

two medium summer squash, cut into rounds

4 leaves of chard, cut really small

basil (dried or fresh)

black pepper and salt

lemon juice (1 or 2 tbls.)

balsamic vinegar (1 or 2 tbls.)

bouillon (a friend turned us on to a kind called Better than Bouillon. It is a chicken base and comes in a jar so you can just add a tiny bit. You can buy it at the Coop.)

Parmesan cheese

pasta (Have you seen the Barilla mini noodles? The girls love them!)

• you can add any other veggies you choose to or need to use up

1. Start the water for the noodles.

2. Sauté onions and garlic in olive oil.

3. Add all veggies and the garbanzo beans. Season with the basil, pepper, lemon juice and vinegar (if you like it).

4. I probably added 1 tsp. of the bouillon base and a 1/4 cup of water to help the veggies cook.

5. Cook for about 10 minutes. Also cook the noodles.

6. Drain noodles.

7. Assemble how you would like to and sprinkle with cheese.

In the News

Patchwork Green Farm was recognized in June 2010, Edible Madison in an article entitled, “Edible Journey: Local Runs Deep in Decorah” by Jessica Luhning.

“If there is one name that is synonymous with local food in Decorah it is Erik Sessions. From La Rana Bistro, to the ambitious "farm to table" inspired Rubaiyat Restaurant and the Oneota Community Food Coop – which we will visit later – Erik Sessions and his Patchwork Green Farm is clearly a favorite source for nearly year-round, fresh vegetables... Erik is known for having the highest quality produce and the "prettiest" farmer's market stand.”

At Farmers Market this Saturday, June 26...

• Lots of sugar snap peas (Erik just said, "you bet.")
• Basil
• Lettuce
• Chard
• Kohlrabi
• Cabbage
• Summer Squash (the first of the season)
• Dill, Parsley

Erik has lots of everything except for the summer squash.

Have a good Friday and hope to see you at market.

Sara

Back at Farmers Market

Mid-June, and it is mighty wet. It's a bit too familiar, with the floods of 2008 still fresh in our minds.

With the ground saturated and light rains almost every day, machine and hoe work has been suspended in the gardens. We have run out of tilled ground to transplant new crops into, and I hate to pick crops like peas when the plants are wet, for fear of spreading disease.

On the bright side, we have pulled a lot of weeds by hand in the last week, getting the onion, potato and asparagus fields in fairly good shape. And all of the crops look great as they soak up these gentle rains and mild temperatures. With a bit of sunshine, they are going to take off!

It looks like we will be able to continue harvesting great peas several more weeks, the greens are gorgeous and the summer squash starting to set fruit.

As of June 12, Patchwork Green is officially attending the Winneshiek Farmers Market on Wednesday afternoons and Saturday mornings. We hope to be there every week through October!

Eat Well,

Your Patchwork Green Farmers

Erik Sessions and Sara Peterson

smitten kitchen...new food blog

I have recently been getting acquainted with Smitten Kitchen a blog about "fearless cooking from a tiny kitchen in New York City." The recipe of the day is a pancetta, asparagus and potato hash. Great base for many dishes I suspect.

Enjoy....http://smittenkitchen.com/