Forgotten are the floods, tornadoes, and hurricanes of 2011, the disappointments (remember the entire crop of carrot seed being washed down into the Chesapeake Bay?), the heat, the bugs,  the sore muscles, the struggles to repair equipment that picks the most inopportune time to break down.  I miss picking peas and popping open the fresh pods.  I miss inhaling the fragrant, vibrant scent of the greenhouse.  I miss sitting on the tailgate of my pickup truck watching the faces of the little kids, and big ones too, as you look into your bags to see what goodies are there.  I miss falling into bed at night with every muscle aching and then realizing oh wait….my boots are still on.

There’s only one conclusion to draw from this:  your Cool Beans farmers are crazy women.  Many of you may have suspected this for sometime now, and frankly it’s not news to us either.  To be honest, we’re happy to be so.  To paraphrase Don Quixote:  when the whole world seems crazy, who knows where madness lies?  To us, driving to a grocery store to buy processed food that may or may not be labeled accurately and completely, that may or may not be fresh, that may or may not have been grown safely, that may or may not have been grown by fairly treated workers who might live thousands of miles away…..well, that doesn’t make sense to us.

Your Cool Beans food is grown organically and sustainably, with respect for the earth and our helpers, and love for our customers.

And we’re ready to accept 2012 memberships!  The tabs at the top of the page are updated now, and you can read information there about the CSA, read and print the contact, or contact us if you need more information.  Quick version for ‘old’ Beans:  same cost, same delivery times.  Quite a lot of improvements behind the scenes, with additional greenhouse spaces and some new fields, and we’ll be expanding from 55 to 75 shares, with the help of some interns and part time help.  And two quixotic farmers who truly believe that this year will be the best year ever!

You have some picture-perfect peppers and some not-so-perfect, but still yummy, tomatoes.  This crazy rain makes the tomatoes crack easily; we’re picking them a bit ahead of dead ripe to try to avoid this, but it’s hard to prevent.  You’ve got some homegrown celery, which you’ll find has a much stronger celery taste than the store kind.  and you’ve got an onion or two – might be a good week for peach salsa!

There is NO DELIVERY NEXT WEEK (AUGUST 23).  Judi’s children will be exhibiting animals at the Perry County Fair, and since we are between interns we couldn’t work out the logistics for packing and delivery.  We’ll resume regular deliveries the following week, August 30.

I’m not even going to try to write a list in this week’s paper newsletter – Judi has a morning dentist appointment so that last phone check, when we compare what we’ve picked at each site, isn’t going to happen.  I know everyone will have stevia, and beans, and potatoes, but beyond that, I’m not sure.  It’s going to be like this next week, too – you’ll have a nice bag, but I’m not going to know ahead of time what’s in it.  Once the iris are all shipped, I’ll start seeding a lot of flats of fall lettuces and other crops, so we’ll be back in the salads again pretty soon.

There are three openings in the Radels’ meat CSA, if you’re interested, and if you’re already a Cool Beans member, you’ll get the discount that applies to members of both CSA’s, even if you join the meat CSA now.  Feedback from the meat CSA has been very positive, and those folks who’d initially signed up for a six month trial have all renewed.  AFter these three spots fill, I don’t think they’ll have openings until the end of this year.

Your bag has new potatoes this week – while they’re useful in many ways, boiling them is a great way to appreciate the tender flavor of the first potatoes of the season.  They were dug last night, and if you’ve never had really fresh potatoes you’re in for a real treat.

You have the last of the spring lettuce, it’s not a lot, but still pretty good.  If you have a half share, you have the arugula that we couldn’t pick in time for you last week.

The weird curly thing is a garlic scape.  This is the top part of the plant, which forms about a month or so before the bulbs can be harvested.  Some farmers think that removing the scapes helps the bulbs get bigger, but whether that’s true or not, the scapes themselves are a a real treasure.  They have a wonderful garlic taste, pretty strong, and you can use every single bit of it.  You can also chop it and freeze it for later.  Depending on which garlic variety your scape came from, you might have one with a slight curve, or one that’s corkscrewed like a pig’s tail.

You might have peas – I’m writing this before I head over to Judi’s, and we’re not sure if the irrigating last week at Yeehaw Farm moved them along fact enough.  So I’m not sure yet if they’ll be in this week’s bags or not.

In your small herb bag, you have fresh stevia.  This is amazing stuff – 30 times sweeter than sugar, does not spike blood sugars, raised, of course, completely organically!  If you’re unfamiliar with it, start by nibbling the tiniest bit of leaf to get the sense of it.

I’ve shamelessly pilfered someone else’s words here to describe how to best use it.  You won’t see stevia again for a few weeks, but we hope to have a good bit of it through the season.

quoting:

The sweetness of the stevia plant lies in its leaves, and you can use it in a variety of ways. I’ve used a fresh leaf right off of the plant in a glass of tea, and it provided just a bit of earthy sweetness. However, the best way to get the most out of your plant is to dry the leaves and make your own powder.

Harvest all of the leaves from the plant and dry them. On a moderately warm fall day, your stevia crop can be quick dried in the full sun in about 12 hours. Just place the plants on a piece of newspaper in an area with good air circulation. A home dehydrator can also be used, although sun drying is the preferred method. I’ve even used the heat of my attic during the summer to speed up the job.

You can crush the dried leaves by hand using a mortar and pestle or using a coffee grinder. You can use the stevia in this powdered form, adjusting the amount you use to achieve the desired degree of sweetness. Keep in mind that stevia is 30 times more sweet than sugar and a general rule of thumb is 1 generous tablespoon is roughly equivalent to one cup of sugar in terms of the level of sweetness.

You can also make your own stevia simple syrup by adding a cup of warm water to 1/4 cup of fresh, finely-crushed stevia leaves. This mixture should set for 24 hours and then be refrigerated. It works perfectly for sweetening beverages.

She’ll be making ice cream from cow, sheep, and goat milk, so you can sample all three if you wish!

There won’t be full farm tours because the animals are all out on pasture at this time of the year, but you’d be able to see the two main fields we use for the CSA.  You might get an extra scoop of ice cream if you pull a few weeds…….

Your bag has lettuce, onions, pesto turnovers, lip balm, lemon mint (I know it as lemon balm, and Judi calls it lemon mint), and another herb.   If you have a full share, you also have arugula.  We’ll try to get the half shares some next week.

Peas were close, but not quite close enough for this week, and we’re looking forward to new potatoes very soon.  Just in time, as the lettuce will slow down during the hottest part of the summer (but will return in the fall.)

Or take Cool Bean Roger’s approach, which is to describe your growing conditions, and let me choose (there are actually a lot of other things available, but not enough of any of them to list).  I’ll  pick some things that are perfect for his backyard garden.

Judi has just planted nearly a thousand strawberry plants, but we won’t see the results of that until next year.  So we’ve arranged to barter for strawberries for you from another vendor at our Carlisle market, Farmers on the Square.  We trust Steven and Barbie Esh and their nine little girls – their baby boy is too young to be working in the field – to have raised the fruit organically, and handled it carefully.  They’re wonderful people, and we feel honored to be their friends.

From time to time we barter with other farmers when we think it’s on your best interest.  Sometimes we do a better job at raising one item than someone else, but they have something that fills a gap for us.  And this way we can avoid the eight consecutive weeks of chard that we had last year!

The Eshes are one of several Amish families who are vendors at the Carlisle market, which is on Wednesdays from 3-7 pm on the square.  We hope you’ll make the trip down some time to visit us there.  You can buy exquisite cheeses from two dairies, milk, homemade rootbeer, kombucha tea, edible flower, pastured beef, goat, pork, and chicken; order a Thanksgiving turkey; sample and purchase locally made hot (and mild) sauces, buy bread, fruit, vegetables, and gorgeous cut flowers.  There’s also pies, fudge, and all sorts of other goodies.

You have a few kinds of lettuce, some spinach, some purple mustard, some wondrous homemade bread, spring onions, and a few snips of basil.  We have another week or two of salad-centric bags before the other good stuff starts coming in, but there’s a nice variety of kinds, so no two salads should look or taste quite the same!

There is extensive damage from the heavy rains to some of our earlier plantings, and we will be replanting a lot of things as soon as the ground dried out a little.  This is why we plan for ten items in each bag, and only expect to be able to deliver five or six.  Those veg for which we planted seedlings, like broccoli and cabbage, are doing fine, as are the potatoes and peas. The carrots are in the Chesapeake Bay by now, and the radishes are at the bottom of the Radels’ pond.  The very expensive Hakurei turnip seed has floated down the Susquehanna with the carrot seed.  But we can replant.

Tomatoes and peppers and eggplant haven’t gone in yet, and the whole squash family is yet to be planted other than a few early varieties at Katie’s.  So those should be fine.

We’re starting pots of watercress this week which will be partially submerged along the creek at Yeehaw Farm, and there are plans in place to get some beautiful strawberries soon from our Amish friends, the Eshes.

Thanks to all of our Beans for making the deliveries go smoothly, and for being understanding when we messed up.  Now that we have Intern Susanna, we hope to have better accounting at our end on packing day!  We love being your farmers!

You have a newsletter in your bag, so much of this is redundant. But there’s a few additions:  if you have a full share, you have rhubarb.  There wasn’t enough this week for everyone, so we’ll catch up to the rest later.  The promised arugula looked even worse than I remembered and while there is in fact a small amount of it in your red produce beg, you’ll have to squint to see it.  We would like the red produce bags returned for re-use.

We’ll get a recipe up for whole wheat pancakes so you can use the wheat in your bag.  If you’re intimidated by rhubarb, no worries – it will keep a few days and we can get a recipe or two up for that as well.

The email list was a fail.  Only one actual typo, oddly – I expected more – but the email just cut off the last 15 people, and nothing at my end indicated that.  I think the website is the way to go for most communications this season, and we’ll only use your email if we need to contact you personally.

We’re happy with the first week’s bag, but just in case it looks sparse to you, this is normal or better than normal for a first week in the season – things will pick up quickly, and soon those bags will be bursting each week!