Archive for the ‘Ajo CSA’ Category

Please check out the great new website that Nina has put together for her members in Ajo:

ajocsa.com

She writes the best newsletters and has the yummiest recipes.  Please check it out! Even if you aren’t a member of their CSA…it’s great!

Excerpt from the Ajo CSA Newsletter:

By Peter Altschul

There’s plenty of food available in Ajo and elsewhere – why should anyone bother buying their produce from a CSA?

There are a lot of choices nowadays, but most commercial options lead you to one or more of the four major problems with modern foods. Those problems are 1) processing 2) pesticides, particularly petroleum-based 3) monoculture and 4) transportation. There is plenty of information available about why all of these are things we should avoid when making our food choices, but briefly, processing in general lowers the nutritional value of the foods, and most processed foods contain sweeteners, salts, artificial flavors, factory-created fats, colorings, texture-altering chemicals and preservatives, none of which (except perhaps natural salts) are part of a healthy diet. Petroleum-based pesticides are simply biodetrimental poisons, and no matter what the chemical companies might tell you, they are not good for you. In addition, according to a recent edition of the journal Science, food and energy production are causing reactive nitrogen to accumulate in soil, water, the atmosphere and coastal waters, contributing to the greenhouse effect, smog, haze, acid rain, coastal “dead zones” and ozone depletion. So – bad for you, bad for the planet. Monoculture is a modern agricultural practice where only a single type of plant is raised on a large area. This agribusiness-driven concept promotes loss of plant diversity, which in turn leads to loss of dietetic diversity. As a result, your immune system has to rely on fewer naturally-occurring compounds as its building-blocks, and is therefore less capable of reacting to a wide variety of inputs. Transportation gives us strawberries in January, but at what cost? Together with petroleum-based pesticides and fertilizers, our rate carbon of carbon consumption for food production and transport alone is threatening to make the concept of sustainable anything a lost cause.

So what can we do? Perhaps not that much, but you’ve got to start somewhere, and CSAs provide an alternative to a large part of the problems listed above. First of all, you do all of your own processing – you know where your food comes from, who grew it, and what’s in it. Putting a face on your food is important – if you can’t, you simply don’t know where it’s been. Second, most CSA farms are either organic or “beyond organic” – Crooked Sky Farms for example uses no pesticides, and only organic fertilizers and compost. Monoculture is simply not effective for CSA farms, since they have to supply a wide variety of produce throughout the growing season. And finally, with the average food product in the US travelling 1500 miles from source to shelf, our 200 mile weekly round trip to Phoenix, while not ideal, amounts to a fraction of the transportation footprint that most store-bought items have.

There are other important reasons as well. Farming is an important skill that is being lost through mechanization and technology. Anybody who has ever tried to grow an organic vegetable garden will know how difficult it is to deal with the various kinds of pests and blights that can affect your crop. So your farmer is a significant source of knowledge about how to maintain soil, flora and fauna so that it will continue to produce sustainably. Technology alone is no substitute for this. For that matter, many people believe that we rely exclusively on technology at our peril. On top of that, real vegetables have real tastes, not the kind that McDonald’s has programmed into us. And speaking of McDonald’s, CSA food is never wrapped in disposable packaging. Furthermore, CSAs are a way for small and medium-size farms to be sustainable – farmers markets are great, but it is very hard to keep a farm going without a distribution network, and CSAs allow farmers to put their profits back into the farm instead of losing them to wholesalers.
These are just some of the reasons that make the CSA model a good one. Real food produced by people in the community makes for healthier people and healthier communities. – Peter Altshul

Hello!  Frank mentioned that he loved this newsletter and wanted to post it on our blog.  So, here it is, the newsletter story about their visit back at the end of February.  Sounds like they had tons of fun!

Ajo Newsletter Editor: Nina Altshul, Ajo CSA Coordinator

Crooked Sky Farms Picnic, February 22
Farmer Frank and his crew threw a picnic for their CSA members at his central farm on 19th Ave. in south Phoenix, and a fine time was had by all! About 40 people gathered on the cloudy Sunday, coming from Phoenix, Tucson and Ajo, and after the welcome, Frank said that he really appreciates his members and that they are currently feeding about a thousand families, including about 20 in Ajo! He talked about what he has growing on his fields and invited us to harvest anything we wanted and then come back for a spread of food. Even though the sun was covered by clouds most of the day, after being out in the fields some cold and refreshing grapefruit and regular sodas really hit the spot. Tania and Claudia from the farm prepared roasted potatoes, roasted eggplants, and an assortment of raw veggies, including broccoli, kale, carrots and turnips. Tania also prepared her favorite cabbage slaw, while Claudia prepared sautéed Peruvian beans with greens. Chef Elizabeth (Milburn) (www.Leave-It-To-Elizabeth.com), who you can often see creating culinary delicacies at the Downtown Phoenix Public Market on Saturdays using local ingredients such as Queens Creek olive oils, was keeping up very well, cooking omelets to order stuffed with scallions, cilantro, spinach and cheese, and showing us other ways to use the produce. Eating and resting for a while on hay bales while talking to other CSA members was a lot of fun, as were the train rides for the kids. A lot of people kept on wandering back to the fields to enjoy the splendorous abundance of healthy vegetables, take in the colors of the yellow-flowering fennel and dill contrasted with purple kale, feed pea flowers to the kids or ask Frank some more questions. It was difficult to leave but despite the heat and some hard and dirty work, the people’s faces were lit up with smiles as they left with bags full of freshly harvested produce.

Jane Canon’s impressions of the picnic: Being the idealist that I am, I was taken by the beautiful farm in the center of the city! I truly forgot that I was in Phoenix. How amazing that all that produce grows organically! And the ground looks dry until you see where a plow has made a deep furrow and the deep moisture is there and it is muddy. It is a lot different than the Ajo soil. Farmer Frank was very informative as was his staff. They were truly at home. The picnic was scrumptious. It was a very generous spread of almost everything growing on the farm. They were just the best hosts, allowing us to pick anything we wanted and go anywhere on the farm and even supplying transportation. The flavor of the purple carrots is hard to describe. Imagine eating a bright orange center surrounded by a purple ring. Sweet to taste and glorious to view. How about a 5-pound sweet potato that is perfectly edible. Broccoli as far as you can see. The smell of scallions as you draw near. Little children munching on broccoli. Next year, I will plan to stay longer.

Recipes

Chef Elizabeth at work Chef Elizabeth’s Dip Mix sautéed spinach (or other greens), chopped pecans, I’itois and cream cheese, a bit of garlic, and a squeeze of lemon. Serve with an array of raw (or blanched and shocked) vegetables such as carrots, kohlrabi and broccoli.

Tonia’s Cabbage Slaw Slice a head of cabbage, some radishes, and add a bunch of chopped cilantro. Mix and add sliced pickled jalapenos to taste. Serve with tortilla chips or use it to top your burrito or a bowl of chili.

Roasted Broccoli with Shrimp (submitted by Laura Altshul, from the New York Times) 2 pounds broccoli, cut into bite-size florets 4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil 1 teaspoon whole coriander seeds 1 teaspoon whole cumin seeds 1½ teaspoons kosher salt 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper 1/8 teaspoon hot chili powder 1 pound large shrimp, shelled and deveined 1¼ teaspoons lemon zest [from 1 large lemon] lemon wedges for serving Preheat oven to 425 degrees. In a large bowl, toss broccoli with 2 tablespoons oil, coriander, cumin, 1 teaspoon salt, ½ teaspoon pepper and chili powder. In a separate bowl combine shrimp, remaining 2 tablespoons oil, lemon zest, remaining ½ teaspoon salt and remaining ½ teaspoon pepper.  Spread broccoli in a single layer on a baking sheet and toss with broccoli. Roast for 10 minutes. Add shrimp to baking sheet and toss with broccoli. Roast, tossing once halfway through, until shrimp are just opaque and broccoli is tender and golden around edges, about 10 minutes more. Serve with lemon wedges, or squeeze lemon juice all over shrimp and broccoli just before serving. Laura served this over linguine and said it was delicious! It would also be good over rice or any other available carb that would sop up the juices.

Joni’s Spinach (submitted by Joni Britton) Sauté several coarsely chopped garlic cloves, 1/2 large diced red bell pepper, 1/2 thickly sliced and quartered red onion, in extra virgin olive oil, adding salt & pepper to taste. Add spinach with water clinging to leaves, cover to wilt spinach, then add salt & pepper and stir. If you wish you can add several sprigs of fresh, tender Rosemary to the sauté which give a nice flavor. Cook covered, on medium, stirring occasionally, until spinach is tender and water is absorbed. Top with freshly grated Parmesan cheese and serve. Picking carrots

Recipe for Kohlrabi (submitted by Karen Johnson, taken from the Joy of Cooking, 1979 edition) Make sure you use young knobs – too large and they become fibrous and inedible. Cut off the tops, trim and wash the leaves, and pare the knobs. Slice knobs and drop both knobs and leaves into boiling water. Cook uncovered until tender, about 20 minutes. Drain. Chop the cooked tops and puree them. While the kohlrabi is cooking, make a white sauce (béchamel) as follows. In a frying pan, stir a couple of forks full of flour into 2 tbs. butter. Cook until bubbly, adding milk to a smooth consistency. Add an onion studded with whole cloves and cook slowly for 20 minutes, stirring as needed. Remove the onion when done. Add the Kohlrabi puree and a dash of nutmeg. Serve the sauce over the kohlrabi and whatever else you are serving. It is VERY bright green!!