Farmyard Fun, Cooking with Fire, and a video for you

Happy Summer Shareholders!

Our Education team has been thoroughly impressed with the amazing selection of veggies being grown by our talented CSA team and can't wait to show off a little of what we have been producing for programs and events lately.  You can't eat what we produce, but you CAN create family memories that you won't forget, get the inside scoop on how we grow and raise your food, and discover what else Appleton has to offer beyond your CSA share.  

So farm dinners, culinary workshops, kids programs, and cheese making tours are offered every week. What else you ask?  Yesterday, a group of 40 children from Chelsea got a special surprise.  During their visit to the farm, a new calf was born.  Meeting a one-hour old calf prompted them to sing her a spontaneous Happy Birthday! That was a new one for us here and we wish that had been captured on video.  It wasn't, but our last farm dinner was and we can't wait to share it with you.  

Check it out on vimeo at: https://vimeo.com/132889856 

Lots of amazing things just like that happen each day at our programs, fields trips and events.  Here are some upcoming programs for you to try.  Sign up on our website: www.thetrustees.org
Hope to see you there!  

Beth, Caroline, Ashley, Kathryn, and Caitlin

Fun in the Farmyard- NEW*

Sundays through October 25th│ 10 AM-2PM

Free

Experience the Appleton anytime of day with Fun in the Farmyard!  Drop in anytime between 10am-2pm to learn something new! Activities change every half hour and can include meeting a goat, patting a chicken, planting seeds, butter making, farm story time, crafts and more.  No need to pre-register, just drop-in.

Families in the Farm Kitchen: July: Homemade Ice Cream
Saturdays in July | 1-2PM (except July 4^th)
Member Family: $20. Nonmember Family: $30 

Cooking together and having fun in the kitchen makes our farm family happy and we want to share that enthusiasm for cooking with you. 

Join us to make homemade ice cream with the rich milk from our Jersey cows. We will learn about how our cows turn green grass to creamy, nutritious milk, then enjoy the sweet fruits of our labor together. 

This program is designed for families with children ages 5-15.  Pre-registration is required as we can not accommodate a large group with drop-ins for this program. 

Fresh Crop Farm Culinary Workshop

Thursday, July 16, 2015 | 6-9PM
$75 member $90 nonmember

Our "Fresh Crop" workshops offer a truly unique farm-based culinary experience in the heart of the summer season. When our fields are bursting with fresh produce, we invite you to get a closer look at our vegetable production on a guided field walk where you take part in harvesting ingredients for your cooking class.

 After a stroll through the fields we will head back to the farm kitchen where our professional farm chef will lead a hands-on culinary class celebrating our day's harvest.

From the Fields: Greens and Dressings
Thursday, July 30, 2015 | 2:30-4PM & 4:40-6PM
Members: $35. Nonmembers: $50

Can't get enough tender greens and fragrant herbs or are you secretly composting all the greens that you picked up two weeks ago in your share?

Get inspired and find new "green thrills" at our Greens and Dressings Workshop.  Start with a field walk where you will taste baby greens of all types, some of our tastiest and unusual herbs then head to the kitchen for a demonstration by our farm chef Carolyn Grieco on storing your greens, tips for mixing greens for the best salads, and a handful of our favorite dressings.

Guaranteed to be delicious!

Cooking with Fire and Local Brews
Thursday, August 13, 2015 & Thursday, August 27, 2015 | 6-9PM
$85 members $100 nonmembers

Looking for a perfect date night? Looking to show your summer guests a great time?  Join us for an amazing evening at Appleton Farms.

Here at the farm, we know that outdoor cookery is one of summer’s greatest pleasures.  Let our Earth Oven inspire you to fire up your backyard grills, barbecues, or fire pits.  Learn the art of cooking with a wood fired oven then learn grilling tips and techniques from our professional farm chef.

In order to fully appreciate those rich smoky flavors we will pair each dish with a tasty local brew.

Our menu will be filled with the freshest farm ingredients and flavors of the season, which may include recipes such as Earth Oven Flatbread with Farmstead Sausage, Grilled Field Caesar Salad, Individual Clambakes, and Grilled Orchard Stone Fruit for dessert.

Hands-on cooking, chef instruction, printed recipes, and a wonderful summer meal on our kitchen patio!

Week 4

What’s in the share:

• ·         Lettuce
• ·         Kale
• ·         Chard
• ·         Radishes
• ·         Salad Turnips
• ·         Garlic Scapes
• ·         Kohlrabi
• ·         Bok Choi
• ·         Broccoli
• ·         Summer Squash/Zucchini
• ·         Cabbage
• ·         PYO Parsley
• ·         PYO Bassil

New this week:

• ·         Fennel  
• ·         PYO Dill
• ·         PYO Cilantro
• ·         PYO Flowers

Week 3

I wish our spinach always looked this good

What’s in the share:

•   Lettuce
• Greens
• Kale
• Chard
• Radishes
• Salad Turnips
• Garlic Scapes
• Kohlrabi
• Bok Choi
• PYO peas
• PYO Parsley

New this week- Some combination of summer squash, broccoli and cabbage may be available this week depending on what’s ripe out there.  PYO Basil will also be available this week.  To keep basil health and productive for as long as possible remember to cut only the top 1/4^th to 1/3 of the plant and cut above leaf nodes where side shoots will develop.  If the mood strikes, feel free to pull out a few weeds.

Updates from the field

Sorgum, oats and innoculated soybean seeds

Seed in the hoppers

We spent a lot of time last week on the tractors trying to stay on top of the weeds although with 60+ year old equipment it sometimes feels as if we spend as much time under the tractors as on them.  I did finally manage to seed cover crop in our fallow field using the Brillion seeder.  The Brillion is a tool I haven’t had much experience with yet so we’ll have to wait and see if I got the seeding rate right for a good strong stand of cover crop.  I put down a mix of sorgum sudan grass for weed suppression and high carbon yield, soybeans for a fast canopy and nitrogen fixing and oats because oat seed is cheap and it’s nice to have a diverse cover crop mix.  The sudan grass and the soybeans will die after the first hard frost and the oats will winter kill leaving a nice mulch on top of the soil over the winter which will (hopefully) be very easy to break down and incorporate into the soil next spring.

Now that most of our large transplanting pushes are out of the way (until fall broccoli, cabbage, brussel sprouts etc.) we need to focus on crop maintenance.  Last week we managed to lay landscape fabric down in the driving rows between our first succession of water melon.  This step really has been crucial to our success in growing melons for the last few seasons.  We also got a head start on tomato trellising by pounding in most of our tomato stakes.  Usually this doesn’t happen until the tomatoes are unmanageably leggy and tangled.  Hopefully we’ll be able to stay on top of the trellising this season.  At the beginning of last week we removed the insect barrier from our eggplant.  Many of you may remember the abysmal eggplant yields of last year caused by a near biblical level plague of potato bugs.  Using a light weight frost cloth we hoped to keep those nasty critters at bay.  The measure has been a modest success.  Although it has been fun to watch the potato beetles scuttling around confused and hungry, the frost cloth had the unintended consequence of providing a safe haven for a family of meadow mice who developed a taste for young eggplant stems and leaves.  Plenty of eggplant survived and it should be a better season for eggplant.  Now that the frost cloth is gone, Mergatroyd has been busy restoring the natural balance for which we are extremely grateful.  If you see him in the fields be sure to give him a salute and thank him for his service to the farm.

Week 2

What's in the share: lettuce, greens, chard, kale, turnips, radishes, beets, kohlrabi, PYO parsley, peas
New this week: scallions, garlic scapes, bokchoi

We may get another week of PYO strawberries but no guarantees

Updates from the fields
Traveling today. Look for updates later this week

Week 1

This week’s share:

•   Lettuce
• Greens
•  Kale
• Chard
•  Beets
•  Hakurei salad turnip
• Radishes
• Kohlrabi
• Parsnips
• PYO Strawberries
• PYO Parsley

 

If harvest time permits we may also include spinach and/or scallions in the share this week.  If you don’t see these items in the share this week there’s a good chance that we’ll have them for next week.

Updates from the field

Another few weeks for cabbage

I sometimes daydream about what farming would be like if we didn’t need to harvest any of the things we grow.  “What if our job stopped at filling our fields with beautify and bounty?”  I imagine a farm as a landscape rather than a place of production.  This scandalizing fantasy isn’t the result of any displeasure I take from the work of harvesting.  Bringing in our crops is both figuratively and literally the most rewarding part of the job.  Rather I lament the loss of so many precious daylight hours when there is yet so much work to be done.  Once CSA distribution begins around half of the field crew’s time is spent on harvest.   The other half of our time must be divided between greenhouse work, seeding, cultivating, field preparation, transplanting, irrigating, equipment and infrastructural maintenance, pest control and the rest of the less glamorous business of farming. 

Beets look ready now

This past week we have been feeling the pressure to accomplish as much as possible before harvest becomes the focus of our days.  I’m very proud of the way we have been managing the farm so far this season and I believe the rest of the crew feels the same.  It seems that many of our more labor intensive investments are paying off with good healthy crops and solid yields.  However it is now imperative to remember to not sacrifice the good in pursuit of the perfect.  What use are fields filled with beauty and bounty if we leave the fruit of our labor to spoil?

Farm mascot Murgatroyd watches over the PYO fields.  Better follow those limits!

On the top of our priority list this week is finishing our winter squash planting which is going in at Moraine farm.  This might be an all day kind of job and I’m very anxious to get it behind us before our transplants grow too large and tangled to work with.  If we can squeeze in some time for planting lettuce, watermelon, summer squash, scallions, basil and PYO flowers I would be thrilled.  Also on the agenda this week (albeit pretty far down on the list) is seeding a cover crop mix of soybeans, sorghum sudan grass, oats and buckwheat in our fallowed field.  I’m very excited to see how this cover crop does perhaps because we will never need to harvest it!