Blog Posts

Recipes

9/27/2018

Roasted Lima Beans

Ingredients
1 cup giant lima beans
4 cups water
1/4 cup olive oil
1 teaspoon coarse salt
Juice of 1 lime
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Directions

Place the beans and water in a large saucepan over high heat and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to low, cover and cook until the beans are just soft, about 1 hour. Remove from the heat. Drain the beans and cool under running water. Drain thoroughly and spread on paper towels to dry.

Preheat an oven to 425 degrees F. Toss beans with the olive oil and sprinkle with salt, lime juice and cayenne. Spread beans out on a baking sheet and place in oven. Roast until beans begin to brown slightly. Serve warm or room temperature. Great as a snack!

0 Comments

Recipe

9/27/2018

0 Comments

Roasted Lima Beans

Ingredients
1 cup giant lima beans
4 cups water
1/4 cup olive oil
1 teaspoon coarse salt
Juice of 1 lime
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Directions

Place the beans and water in a large saucepan over high heat and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to low, cover and cook until the beans are just soft, about 1 hour. Remove from the heat. Drain the beans and cool under running water. Drain thoroughly and spread on paper towels to dry.

Preheat an oven to 425 degrees F. Toss beans with the olive oil and sprinkle with salt, lime juice and cayenne. Spread beans out on a baking sheet and place in oven. Roast until beans begin to brown slightly. Serve warm or room temperature. Great as a snack!

0 Comments

Stuffed Mini Snack Peppers

8-12 Mini snack peppers
1/2 Cup goat cheese, softened at room temperature, unflavored chevre is best
Herbs & spices of your choice
Black pepper
Salt
Olive oil

Preheat oven to 400 F. Cut peppers in half & pull of the membranes and seeds. They won't add any spice - they will just taste bitter
Pop them on a baking sheet & drizzle over a little olive oil and sprinkle with salt & pepper. Mix them so every single pepper is well coated.

I used several pinches of dried parsley & a couple pinches each of oregano & red pepper flakes. Also added a few grinds of black pepper. Mix until well combined.

Add a small amount of cheese to each pepper - press it down with your fingers as you fill them so it gets in all the nooks & crannies. It's best to use one hand to fill them & one hand to hold them.

Bake in oven for 15-20 minutes, or until the peppers start to soften & wrinkle. The cheese should be beginning to brown as well as the bottom of the peppers.

Eat them while hot! They're the best then.

0 Comments

Jim's Notes

9/20/2018

0 Comments

Hi folks,

So last week I described some frustrating marketing situations, but I did mention a plan that gives us some hope. And here’s the plan: we are happy to say that we’ve been invited to Chevy Chase, Maryland to open a brand new market!

Several of the neighbors there around Brookville Road have been looking for a farm or farmers to do a market, and they approached us just last month.

After some initial skepticism we realized that it’s just what we need to get back some market share. It’s far enough away from us at Sheridan, and far enough away from other farmers, that we think we will not be taking business from others.

It seems to be a neighborhood of many community-minded people who will value the kinds of foods that we specialize in.

So after lots of strenuous preparations (trying to duplicate all the equipment we use at Sheridan!) we think we’re ready for opening this weekend.

It’s a great location just off Brookville Rd, on Taylor Street, across from the Brookville Market (who’s owners like the idea).

So wish us luck. But if you’re a regular at Sheridan please stay with us there. We’re not sure we can handle the demand in the new spot!

Thanks for your support and helpful suggestions.

Jim.

0 Comments

September 13th, 2018

9/13/2018

0 Comments

Jim's Favorite Gazpacho

1-1/2 lbs tomatoes, peeled & coarsely chopped
1 cucumber, coarsely chopped
1/2 Cup chopped red pepper
1/2 Cup chopped onion
1 small jalapeno, seeded & chopped
1 garlic clove, minced
1/4 Cup olive oil
1 lime, juiced
2 teas balsamic vinegar
2 teas Worcestershire sauce
1/2 teas ground cumin
1 teas kosher salt
1/4 teas freshly ground black pepper
2 Tab fresh basil leaves
2 ears sweet corn, cut off the cob (raw)
1/4 Cup cilantro

Drop tomatoes into boiling water for 15 seconds, remove and hold under cold water. Peel & core tomatoes.

Place everything in the blender except basil & cilantro. Blend, but don't puree. Cover & chill for 2 hours or up to overnight. Serve with minced basil & cilantro, along with minced other ingredients sprinkled on top. Keeps several days in the refrigerator.

0 Comments

Jim's Notes

9/13/2018

0 Comments

Dear loyal readers and customers,

For the past couple of weeks I’ve been describing our recent difficulties challenging our ability to make a living growing vegetables organically. Several of these problems are new to us after 46 years in this business!

The freakish weather (continuous, excessive rain) has been the most destructive, but new pests and diseases, and unprecedented ravages by deer and other animals have all hurt. And now there’s yet another relatively new problem, unrelated to farming but also difficult.

The past 8 or 10 years have seen a huge surge in new farmers markets in DC. Our share of the market has been grabbed at by every little group of retail stores hoping to use a farmers market to attract customers.

As long as these markets were far enough away from us it was fine. We thought, there’s plenty of room for more farmers markets, as long as they are far enough apart.

But then, about 6 years ago, the “Van Ness Main Street” group convinced UDC to put up a market only 2 blocks from us at Connecticut and Yuma. This seemed unfairly intrusive (so close!) and I wrote a long email to the UDC person responsible, explaining how long we had been at Sheridan School (over 20 years) and how many farmers depended on our market and how good it would be if we could avoid this dog-eat-dog competition. No response from UDC.

Over the next few years the competition resulted in some minor decreases in our sales, ( the first decreases ever), but we gradually concluded that our great customers (you!) were so satisfied with us and so loyal to us that we could hold our own.

Then last summer came the “Cleveland Park Farmers Market”, another effort of the merchants, this time at Connecticut and Ordway, to take advantage of farmers to attract shoppers. But, we thought, WE are ALREADY a Cleveland Park farmers market. And we’re only a few blocks away!

So the obvious problem is that if there are to be farmers markets every few blocks NONE of the farmers can have a big enough market share to make a living. As the above listings of our farming challenges indicate, it’s already a nearly impossible way to make a living. If you add excessive marketing competition, that could easily be the last straw. Market placements need to reasonable, or at some point many farmers will fold.

Well, I just wanted to make that point. Thanks for reading, and if you have any ideas in response, or suggestions for solutions, please let me know.

The (sporadic) secret word for this week is “competition”. Welcome to your 5% discount!

See you Saturday,
Jim.

0 Comments

September 06th, 2018

9/6/2018

1 Comment

Dear readers,
Thaknow I’ve been delinquent (lazy?) lately in my blogging, and to compensate I’m going to do a secret word this week, for your five percent discount! Wow! It’s “freestone”. Don’t tell anyone.

I’m not done ranting about corn, but this week I feel the need to talk about peaches. (“Freestone”peaches.). Partly that’s because we are at the peak of the peach season, (about three weeks left), and partly because there’s a lot about peaches that many consumers don’t know.

Forty years ago, when I started looking for peach orchards in our area, I learned about the peach “industry“. Turns out that because of large scale handling demands, most of the larger orchards pick peaches hard and green, so they can be run over machines to grade and clean them and then held for days or weeks in refrigeration or on trucks. That’s convenient for the handling system but it severely degrades eating quality, as you’ve probably noticed if you’ve tried a supermarket peach.

Back then, it was a huge frustration that we could not get local peach growers to leave the peaches on the tree long enough to get ripe. Tree-ripe is the only way that they taste best, but shipping and handling in the large scale supermarket system cannot tolerate the fragility and perishability of a ripe peach.

However, luckily for us, several years of looking resulted in finding a family orchard near us who were small enough and cared enough about quality that they agreed to leave peaches on the trees just for us. That was 35 years ago, the family name is Andrews, and since then we have become good friends and good customers of three generations of the family.

The current operators are Chad and Amy Andrews, near Chambersburg, PA. We appreciate their peaches so much! Typically, they pick on a Thursday, we hold the peaches at outdoor temperature for a few hours, then we put them in the cooler and bring them to you on Saturday morning.

So that’s how we get those tree-ripe peaches you see at our market. It’s risky for us and for Chad, but we really try to bring you peaches that are ready to eat, and there’s no supermarket I know of that will take the risk, or that care about the quality as much as we and the Andrews family care.

On a normal Saturday we bring 40 or 50 boxes, and we know that if they’re ripe enough we certainly will have some percentage of overripe ones, which we either have to just discard, or offer to you at half price.

We hope you enjoy these rare, sweet, delicious, juicy treats!

See you Saturday with lots of peaches.

Jim.

1 Comment

Jim's Notes

9/6/2018

0 Comments

Hi folks,

So if you read me last week, you’re certainly dying to know—what else is on that chart of problems? What other horrors confront our heroic, beleaguered organic vegetable farmer? So far, on the chart we’ve got weather, new pests, and new diseases.

Well the worst is yet to come. And it’s name is Bambi! Yes, that sweet little fawn and her mommy, daddy, aunts and uncles are the bane of us poor vegetable growers. A few deer here and there are fun to see and seem so benign. But when the state game commission allows the population to explode, as they have here in Pennsylvania, the deer become their own worst enemies and the worst enemy of agriculture.

It’s not unusual for us to go out at night with a light and see herds of 15 or 20 deer in the middle of our vegetable fields! These are big animals (adults can weigh hundreds of pounds!), so you can imagine how much they need to eat, and they love our crops. Two bites for a young head of lettuce. A nibble on a beet. Browsing vast stretches of young bean plants. Their smorgasbord is our nightmare and financial disaster.

We go to a lot of lengths to exclude them, measures that cost us lots of money and time, but sadly, as time passes the deer figure out ways to overcome our best barriers.

So we need to hunt! We should have realized this months ago, but we didn’t know how bad the problem was. So we’ve just started a program of aggressive hunting. The game commission doesn’t deter us. We’re allowed to hunt any deer any time, if they’re damaging our crops.

If we work at this hard enough and long enough (while eating lots of venison) we are fairly sure we can lessen the threat significantly, but it’s too late in many cases to save crops this year. Still, it should help in future.

Meanwhile, out there in our pristine, remote fields, the deer aren’t the only ones munching. Raccoons and birds love ripe, sweet corn as much as you and I do, groundhogs can make a quick lunch out of a few dozen broccoli transplants, and on and on...

Tune in next week for a surprising (maybe)and totally different kind of problem hurting our ability to make a living. And here’s a hint at what this problem is: it’s down the street in Washington! But we think we may have a solution!

See you Saturday.

0 Comments

September 06th, 2018

9/6/2018

0 Comments

Fresh Corn Salsa
Prep Time
10 Mins
Stand Time
15 Mins
Yield
Makes 6 servings (Serving size: 1/3 cup salsa)
GRETCHEN ROBERTS
July 2007
RECIPE BY HEALTH . This easy, fat-free summer salsa is great for serving with chips or on top of grilled chicken or fish.

Ingredients

1 cup cooked corn kernels (about 2 ears)
1 medium tomato, seeded and diced
1 jalapeño, finely chopped (include seeds for more heat)
2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
1 garlic clove, minced

1/2 teaspoon salt

Combine all ingredients in a medium bowl, and mix together. Cover and let stand about 15 minutes to allow flavors to develop.

0 Comments

Jim's Notes

8/30/2018

0 Comments

Hi loyal readers and customers,

I’m usually in an upbeat mood when I write these notes, but today I’m feeling a little down and sober. So I hope you’ll indulge me, and I think you will, since most of you are probably old friends and longtime customers.

It’s been a tough season here at the farm, and in fact the last couple years have been increasingly difficult for us. After 18 profitable years (which followed the first 25 lean years) we now find ourselves struggling to make a living. It’s ironic, considering that we were hoping to retire (gradually) one of these days.

Several new challenges have arisen in recent years, and the other day we put everything on a chart so we could evaluate the importance of each challenge. We listed eight of them and then we looked at each crop to see which problems hurt which crop.

Looking at this chart, right away it was obvious which problems are the worst. First, weather, as you might expect. 2018 has been our worst nightmare for weather. When it’s dry we can always put irrigation water on but when it rains all the time (over 11 inches in July!) there’s no protection from it. Constant wetness makes it hard to plant and transplant at the right times, which is crucial when you’re planting over 50 different crops, most of them many times through the year.

Constant wetness also damages the health of plants, causing diseases which weaken or even kill many crops. It causes seeds to rot and fruits to blemish. Then there's extreme heat and cold at freakish times of year, 80s is February, 20s in April, which messes up the natural sequences of plant development.

Next on the list is pests and diseases. In the past 6 or 8 years we’ve seen several entirely new pests and plant pathologies. Each of these harms specific crops and makes it much harder to grow them organically, not resorting to pesticides and fungicides. So risks have increased.

Enough complaints for now. But next week I want to tell you about a few other problems, and one bright spot. So stay tuned.

As a reward for your patience and sympathy, I’m gonna give you a secret word for your discount: it’s “pathology”! Isn’t that cheerful?

See you Saturday.

Jim

0 Comments

<<Previous

Forward>>

Recipes

Recipe

recipe

Jim's Notes

September 13th, 2018

Jim's Notes

September 06th, 2018

Jim's Notes

September 06th, 2018

Jim's Notes

NMF Apprentices

Archives

Categories

New Morning Farm

Visit Us

Follow Us