CSA

CSA, Community Supported Agriculture is an AMAZING invention.

I wish that someone had told me what a CSA box was years ago, since I wasn't privy to this amazing information for most of my life I am making it a point to share this fabulous idea with everyone I know. Community Supported Agriculture (or CSA) is a way for consumers to buy local, seasonal food directly from the farmers growing it.  Instead of going to the grocery store and buying food that has been shipped from who knows where, and is who knows how old, fruits and veggies (and sometimes other natural farm products) are picked and then made available to you.

It is an amazing opportunity for consumers to get fresh food and meet the people who grow it. The farmers have an opportunity to meet the people buying their products and they earn money that will help support the farm.

Our family is lucky enough to live in an area that offers multiple CSA programs. We have had the opportunity to try out some amazing programs, we tried one that delivered a box of fresh fruits and veggies to our door every other week, one that had a pick up right at the farm, and our current favorite from Feeding Crain Farms offers buyers the chance to not only get fresh fruits and veggies but custom made products such as marinara, bbq, jellies and jams, and 100% organic household cleaning products!

It is amazing, my house is always full of fresh produce! I have the ability to request more or less of different items and I know that it is totally organic, completely fresh, and it tastes great!

So here is what I want you to do:

Visit http://www.localharvest.org/csa/  look for the map of the USA that is covered in green-those are the farms that offer CSA (there are a lot of them!) type in your zip code and see what is available in your neighborhood.

Look at your grocery bill, do the math and see how much you spend on produce. Wouldn’t you rather be spending that money on FRESH produce? Yeah I think you do! Visit the websites of the CSA’s in your neighborhood and see how much they charge-I bet it is less than you are spending monthly at the store.

Sign up! Even if you only do it for a month it is a great opportunity for your family to try produce straight from the farm. Many of the CSA farms will even allow you to visit to see where your food is coming from.  We have our own garden year round so we request food that we can’t get at home, we also only do it in the spring and summer, the great thing is you can adjust your box to your family’s needs!

Last but not least, enjoy!

-Amanda

If you live in the local Sacramento area check out some of our families favorite CSA programs:

Feeding Crane Farms

Soil Born Farms

Farm Fresh To You

Foothill Organic Growers

Our visit to Soil Born Farms, The Farm on Hurly Way

This morning our family had a chance to visit The Farm on Hurly Way. The Hurly Farm (as Farmer Eric calls it) is a small urban farm that belongs to Soil Born Farms. This particular farm is managed by our good friend Farmer Eric and his partner Farmer Sarah.  

Farmer Eric

As starting out urban farmers we are in LOVE with Soil Born Farms. Back in 2000 Sean Harrison and Marco Franciosa, two friends who were young and inexperienced organic farmers (reminds me of us Happy Green Lifers) decided to start an Urban Agriculture and Education Project. Today youth and adults can visit the farm and learn to grow, eat, and love farming!

Farmer Sarah

Last year Farmer Eric and Farmer Sarah joined Soil Born Farms for their Farming Apprenticeship program. They started with 40 other applicants and worked their butts off until there was just four farmers left, their prize was wining their current position as co-managers of the Farm on Hurly Way (or the Hurly Farm).

Since taking over the farm the two have planted lettuce, artichokes, and TONS of garlic! Farmer Eric showed us their experimental espalier fruit trees. This is the process of training fruit tree branches to grow in a specific way. The trees on the Hurly Farm are being trained to grow into a wall.

espalier fruit trees

Over the winter the fields that weren’t full of crops were planted with vetch and oat grass. Vetch is a legume that is planted to put nitrogen back into the field between harvests. Farmer Eric pulled up some Vetch for us and showed us how it had been affected by a bacteria called Rhizobium. The rhizobium creates nitrogen nodules to grow on the roots. These put nitrogen back into the soil so that the next group of plants that grow there will have the proper nutrients to grow.

Nitrogen nodules

Rows of different lettuce

After checking out the plants we got to meet the farm ducks and chickens. Indian Runner ducks were chosen for the eggs that they will produce. They do not fly and they run instead of waddle, we got to see this as the men were trying to catch them to show the kids. The farm has a large variety of chickens also chosen for their eggs. Rhode Island Red, buff orpington, barred rock, araucana, and australorp’s can be found throughout the farm eating bugs and helping fertilize the ground.

Lots of Garlic!

We had a wonderful time visiting the farm. They invited us back to help work, which we will be doing so we can learn to work on our own farm. They will also being making a visit out to our little farm to help us harvest and plant our spring veggies!!

If you live in the Sacramento, CA area you need to check out Soil Born Farms. They have a lot of activates scheduled for families including a kids day and kids summer camp!! https://www.soilborn.org/

-Amanda

growing your veggie scraps



cut greens from your veggie roots

I love having plants in the house; they look great, fill the house with life (and oxygen). I recently started growing plants in my kitchen from clippings of our left over grocery’s (I got this idea on pinterest). The kids love this because it is super easy to get up, they can watch them grow and it is fast. We are currently growing celery and onions, next we are going to try potatoes avocado and lemons.

add roots to jar with some water

It is super easy; first take your left over veggies clippings, in this case scallions. Cut off the green and take your white bottoms with the roots attached and place them in a cup or bowl of water. We prefer to use mason jars because they are clear so that the kids can watch the entire growing process.

Place in a sunny location and make sure to keep your roots in water. When your new veggies sprout cut and add to your dinner!!!

Happy green growing (and eating)

-Amanda

Meatless Monday

Its Meatless Monday and we are hungry! Tonight we are having:

Twice-Baked Sweet Potatoes with Spinach and Coconut Milk

Serves 4

4 sweet potatoes

2 tablespoons canola oil

2 tablespoons minced gingerroot

2 teaspoons Thai red curry paste

1 ¼ pounds flat-leaf spinach (stems remove removed unless very thin, then chopped)

Salt

1/3 cup unsweetened coconut milk

2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro

1.      Move an oven rack to the middle position and heat the oven to 400. Lightly rub each potato with a little oil. Place the potatoes on foil liked baking sheet and bake until the skin is crisp and skewer slides easily through the flesh, about 1 hour and 10 min. Remove the baking sheet and set aside to cool. Increase oven to 450

2.      While the sweet potatoes are cooling, heat the 2 tablespoons oil in a large saucepan over medium heat until shimmering. Add the ginger and curry paste and cook until fragrant. Add the damp spinach, cover and cook, stirring once or twice until completely wilted, about 5 minutes. Add salt to taste, then set aside.

3.       Using a folded kitchen towel to hold the hot sweet potatoes, cut each one in half lengthwise. With a spoon, scoop the flesh from each half in to a bow, leaving ¼ inch of flesh and skin in each sell, place potatoes back on baking sheet.

4.      Mash the sweet potatoes in the bow with the coconut milk until smooth. Stir in the spinach mixture and cilantro Adjust seasonings to taste.

5.      Mound the sweet potato filling into each shell. Bake until the top is firm and crisp, about 15 min.
-Amanda

Farmers Almanac

According to the farmers almanac we can start planting this weekend! Before the Super Bowl we will be prepping our veggie garden! Check out the Farmers Almanac Gardening Calender to see when you can start planting in your area http://www.farmersalmanac.com/calendar/gardening/

The farm is ready!

Our farm is ready! Two weeks ago the Happy Green Life crew (and some other friends) got our garden ready for our fall crops! Like I mentioned before we started off by contacting our friend Farmer Eric and asking him what we should do. We were instructed to rototill the area that we wanted to plant, test our soil, add fertilizer if we needed it, then remove any large rocks and clumps of grass.

We had some options for how we wanted to plant the garden. My parents plant in raised box beds, they build boxes and then fill them with soil and fertilizer, this seems to be an easy way of doing it but we didn’t want to spend the money on boxes so we went a different route. The last three years I planted directly in the ground (I didn’t raise my beds), this works but I had a little trouble with flooding. So we decided to do raised soil beds. We marked out our beds, 3 feet by 18 feet, and 18 inches apart. We did this by hammering posts into the ground where the corners of the beds would be, then tying string to them, this way we had a perfect guide for our beds. Next we dug a walk way around each of the beds and threw the excess soil into the beds. By doing this we were able to raise our beds approximately 2 feet from the ground and create walkways that double as trenches for water so that our beds don’t flood.

Once we had enough soil in the beds we turned the soil with a fork and then flattened it out with the back of a rake-making sure that we didn’t pack the soil just smooth it flat. Once our beds were ready we measured out where we wanted to plant. For our brassicas (lettuce, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower and kale) we staggered our plants between three rows 8 inches apart. This leaves them enough room for a medium to large plant.

For our root plants, carrots, beets, radishes we planted in straight rows dropping our seed throughout. Once they have begun to sprout we will thin the rows out allowing the plants enough room to grow approximately 2 inches (some plants up to 8 inches, check the seed pack to see how much space they need).

We have seven beds left, five will be planted with wheat and peas and two will go to herbs (our tomatoes are currently in them). We will be “nicking” the sweat peas outer shell so that they can absorb more water and then planting them 2 inches apart. For our wheat we will be spreading it out across the beds (no rows for this stuff). We will have enough wheat to make approximately 40 loaves of bread!

After everything was planted it was time to water. Farmer Eric taught us to check our soil by taking a handful and clumping it together, if it clumps into a ball then it has moisture, if you are unable to break it up in your hand it has too much moisture and you should hold off on watering. We are to water our veggies once a week for about an hour.

Once our veggies are grown we will be rotating our plants around so that we can add nutrients back to the soil. It will take approximately 60 days to see some veggies. In the meantime we are growing some veggies from seed in the house so that they are ready to plant after the first harvest. We will keep you updated on our farm, wish us luck!