Greetings from Dancing Hen Farm!
The buying club IS open this week! Ordering began this morning and deliveries
will be Friday and Saturday. Look for
some beautiful fresh cut herbs and a bit of greens on the list, as well as lots
of protein. Our first harvests of
arugula and turnip greens made the list this week, as well as a tender young
braising mix consisting of Chinese cabbage, bok choy, kale and other early
spring cooking greens. We continue to
have a good supply of eggs, apple orchard pork and pastured chicken available
and our friends and neighbors at Stillwater Fields Farm are supplying us with
some delicious grass fed beef.
We have once again been dealing with summer like heat and
humidity, with a cool down later this week.
I am seeing predicted overnight lows in the upper 30's by the end of the
week! Looks like we will be watching the
weather closely and could be doing the row cover shuffle again this week. Last week most of our crops fared well under
their covers. We did get a bit of frost
damage on our early planting of beans, but we expect them to grow out of the
damage.
Last night we took a crop walk to get a good look at how our
earliest plantings are doing. We peaked
under the row covers and it was nice to see beautiful stands of arugula and
turnip greens . We also have bok choy,
Chinese cabbage, kale, chard and mustard growing nicely. Most plants are still small, but looking
healthy and well established. Our first
plantings of summer squash and beans are also small, but well established and
growing nicely. The early planted
potatoes are looking beautiful and our peas are moving along nicely.
This year Farmer Don is experimenting with a super early planting
of cucumbers in one of our unheated greenhouses and wow, those plants look
great! It is amazing how quickly they
seem to be growing. I walk through this
greenhouse daily and I can actually see them getting bigger every day. They will be trellised this week and
hopefully we will have our first cucumber harvest in the next several
weeks. Maybe by Week 2 of our CSA!
For the past few years we have been working to establish
some perennial herb beds on the farm and it is nice to see some vigorous early
growth on these plants. We have
beautifully established beds of oregano, sage, lemon thyme, and pineapple
mint. In addition, we have several huge
lovage plants. Lovage is sometime called cutting celery and makes a nice
substitute for celery. Here is an
article featuring lovage, including recipes, from the Wall Street Journal a few
years ago. http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324866904578515731301003910
As long as I am talking recipes and cooking. Turnip greens. Turnip greens are loaded with good
phytochemicals and vitamins, including calcium.
This variety of turnip we planted is known for its greens and we will
most likely not be harvesting turnips from this plot. The turnip greens we are harvesting right now
are very young and tender and will not require the long cooking times often
associated with cooked greens. Saute
them as you would any green, with a bit of olive oil and garlic. Watch your pan carefully, as they will cook
very quickly. These young turnip greens
are also good in any massaged kale salad recipe you have.
This Saturday Farmer Don will be at Forks Farm Market. He will have lots of cut herbs, some greens
and transplants for sale. The weather
looks beautiful for another great market day!
Stop by early for the best selection!
If you are placing a buying club order this week and would prefer to
pick up at market, send us an email and we will gladly have your box available
at our table. As always, if you are at
market, please stop by our table and say hello to Farmer Don.
We will be opening our farm to visitors on Sunday, May 31
from 1 to 3 pm. Everyone is
welcome! Come on by, see where your food
is being grown and meet the farmers.
Farmer Don will be conducting a farm tour at 1:30. We are hoping to open our nursery for
transplant sales that day as well. If
you plan to attend, be sure to wear comfortable clothes and shoes and be
prepared for the sun. We do have two
farm dogs who are very much a part of our farm family. Shady and Rosie are friendly, but will bark
when you arrive and have been known to jump on people.
We still have CSA memberships available for the 2015 season. CSA news includes the announcement of our
2015 start date and the addition of a new drop site. We are excited to announce that we are adding
a drop site in the Bear Creek area of Luzerne County. This site will be at the Bear Creek
Association Clubhouse, directly across from the Bear Creek Cafe. We will be adding this pick up site to our website in the next
day or so. As for our start date, Farmer
Don has been evaluating what we have planted and what we will have to harvest
in the coming weeks. This year, as was
the case last year, he has decided to delay the start of our CSA. Week one for the CSA will be the week of June
15 and our final week, week 22, will be the second week of November. Another long cold winter delayed our ability
get into our fields and therefore delayed our early spring plantings. Farmer Don believes strongly in having a nice
selection of vegetables for week one and he feels the week of June 15 will
allow for that. Please watch your email
for additional details.
We have a new addition to our farm. The rooster fairies visited over the weekend
and delivered, well most likely dropped,
a new rooster at the farm. Sunday
morning, while doing chores, Farmer Don discovered a small, mostly white, young
rooster hanging out with our newest flock of hens. He has been named Black Tail, or BT for
short. BT is bit shy and is still trying
to figure out his new surroundings. We
hope he blends well with our established flocks of chickens, including the two
roosters we already have! We will gladly
take care of him, but dropped animals are not often a welcomed at farms by
other farm animals or by farmers.
As always, thank you for your continued support of small
family farms and local agriculture. Have
a happy and safe holiday weekend.
Until next week.......
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