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Some of my favorite long-stored winter foods: shallots and carrots frying in butter!

The ingredients we put into the farm are seemingly simple and finite: fertility, water, seeds, time and labor … One might think that, as with many industries, you could look at such inputs and predict the “outputs.” Certainly, to some degree, it’s possible to “estimate yields,” which is how farms like ours and others can plan at all how much to plant for existing markets, etc. In the winter, Casey and I spend many hours pouring over lists, doing what we call “ag math” — calculating how many row feet of carrot we need to satisfy the CSA and how much that would cost to produce, etc.

However, unlike retail sales or such (where there is a clear price for procuring and then selling the good), our ability to project is squishy at best. We joke about how rich a farm can look in the winter when doing “ag math” — because of course “ag math” doesn’t account for any negative variables such as pest problems, droughts, or poor sales. Consequently, when we plan and make budgets, we like to use the most conservative numbers in both directions — we underestimate yields/sales and overestimate problems/expenses.

But, more often, we’re amazed at how our “ag math” doesn’t add up accurately in the other positive direction. Our farm can be broken down into units — rows of carrots, number of strawberry plants — which is the only way we can really tackle our work (any complex task is only surmountable by breaking it down into parts). These units are what make “ag math” possible. But the farm still is a whole complex entity, and now more than ever before, and somehow it never ceases to amaze us that our farm as a whole is more productive and profitable than we can anticipate based on those units.

We had a bit of a mini crisis this last week — perhaps periodic angst as such is inevitable when operating a small business. It started because, well, we were a bit exhausted by the year so far. Right now we have three big enterprises: the Full Diet CSA, the veggie CSA, and restaurant sales. While production overlaps, these each require individual attention too, and we had been feeling stretched a bit thin by the extra work required to launch the Full Diet (now that we’re in our 19th week of this project, many aspects are more routine, thank goodness!). Also, much to our delight, the Full Diet has been more successful so far than we anticipated. As has been the trend for our farm since day one, we are already exceeding our set goals for what we’d have to offer at this point. We’ve loved watching folks leave the pick-up here on the farm loaded with various food items, but we started to worry if we’d outpaced ourselves in a way. How could we possibly be affording to produce all this food based on what we charged (which was a conservative estimate set last summer when we weren’t sure how this would all work out)??? Adding up the market value for each item in our head, we were realizing that indeed the market value of the food exceeded what we had charged. Oh goodness, what now?

We spent a week scratching our brows and agonizing over this sense that our farm was stretched too thin in time and money, and oh no oh no oh no … much hand wringing. Spring is always a time when we feel “tight,” because it’s also when we spend the most money on seeds and supplies. Plus, the last two years have been tight because we were doing big things like buying new land and gearing up for the Full Diet (which wasn’t happening yet, so we were investing in a future income sources). In our minds, we were still working in that financial space.

But then Friday night, I realized: we hadn’t sat down recently to do an up-to-date budget comparing our accounts receivable (money left to come in this year) with our projected expenses for the year. I felt ridiculously silly about this (had to forgive myself later, realizing that Casey and I are only de facto business people because the farm has forced us to be!). I ran to the computer with a pad of paper and a calculator and started working it all out: what’s coming in, what do we have in the bank, what do we still need to spend money on this season (payroll, mortgages, utilities, etc.). Casey watched as I added it all up, and then we both sighed huge sighs of relief.

We’re fine. Not only are we fine, we’ve been working under our old ideas of income and actually have enough money to add a few more projects and employees (a new one started today and another is lined up for next Monday). Knowing we will have more hands in the fields changes everything — our mini crisis is ended and once again we are taking great joy in all the work of the farm. Why we didn’t just stop and work these numbers weeks ago is a bit of a mystery, but life is distracting and constantly moving, so we just have to take this knowledge and move forward happily now.

The alchemy of the farm is working its magic again, just as we have come to understand with our seven prior years of the CSA. Because, this “magic” — where the total adds up to more on each side than expected — isn’t new. I don’t really understand exactly how it works (because otherwise it wouldn’t be magic), but somehow it works to provide more food than people have “technically” paid for based on market values (the veggie CSA has always worked on this model — we are consistently bump up the volume of produce because of the abundance in the field) and still make the profits we need to keep our farm in a constant state of improvement (and pay our own modest household bills).

Like I said, I still don’t totally understand how it works — the equations seem to be tipped in both directions — but I imagine it’s all about the power of natural forces: the sun, the soil, the soil life … we have consistently felt since we moved to Grand Island that the land here works with us to produce food. The first year, the sensation was especially striking, since the land we had been farming the year before felt like more of a daily struggle. What a difference it makes to be farming on prime farmland. We and the land are partners in this venture, and we are amazed over and over again by how productive this ground can be. That translates to abundant food, and yes also a viable profitable farm (especially when we’re not buying new land or investing in new ventures!).

A researcher called us recently to ask about “farm success,” and whether or not we feel our farm has been successful (and what that means to us). I told her that Casey and I haven’t had any off-farm income since we started the farm in 2006 — for us this is the ultimate success. And, what a blessing to make our living from work that we so deeply love and that so profoundly benefits our customers. Every day brings joys, and we say thank you thank you thank you to the magic of good work and good ground.

Enjoy this week’s vegetables!

Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla

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Meet this week’s vegetables:

• Cauliflower — It’s hard for me to remember that I used to not like cauliflower very much (ok, at all). I used to associate it with hard tasteless items on the ubiquitous “veggie platter” at random social events. Now I know that (for me) cauliflower is for cooking, and OH how many ways there are to cook it! Just this week, we have: roasted cauliflower, cooked it in broth and veggies, cooked it in coconut milk with curry spices, and made “cauliflower rice.” This last item is new to us. Take cauliflower florets and put them in a food processor and chop until fine (don’t mush! it helps to do this in batches). The resulting cauliflower will have a confetti shape/size. Put this in a large pan with liberal amounts of fat (butter, coconut oil, lard, etc.) and saute until cooked. It will turn darker tan and some bits will even be brown, looking quite a lot like wild rice or rice pilaf. It makes a great “bed” for any kind of dish that would normally go on rice or pasta — match the seasonings between the topping and the cauliflower and it’s delicious!
• Peas — Oh yeah!
• Kale
• Radishes
• Mustard greens
• Carrots — Seriously, folks — I know that these winter carrots aren’t the prettiest thing in the world, but they are so delicious! I’ve been adding them to almost every dish lately, enjoying their incredibly sweet flavor (made so by long time in storage — the cold of the cooler keeps them fresh and also slowly converts starch into sugar). I’m amazed at the transformation they make just from simple peeling — the interior flesh is vibrant and bright orange. Spring carrots will arrive soon enough, but I am grateful for these, especially since they’ve made our winter and spring sweeter.
• Sunchokes — Another delicious winter storage vegetable that is still rocking it (same starch to sugar situation). Unlike the carrots, I do not recommend peeling these (just too much trouble, and the skin is mild flavored and thin). Instead, trim off any thing needing it, and then chop and wash (I like to wash after chopping so I can get into the little crevices). Those slightly pink bits you are trimming off? That’s the sunchoke’s response to losing its weird shaped appendages during digging (inevitable — it is so weird pulling these ginger-shaped objects out of the ground). The break points turn a little pink and get a little slimy, but I’m always amazed at how the rest of the sunchoke stays awesome. Once prepped, you can roast or saute for deliciousness. We ate roasted sunchokes for dinner tonight — I put them in a pan with liberal amounts of coconut oil and roasted at 425° until they were very well browned and soft inside. The outside slightly caramelizes — seriously drool-worthy. Even Rusty ate lots.
• Green garlic — A spring treat! These are garlic plants that we harvest early, before they have fully bulbed and begun drying down. They are the garlic equivalent of green onions and boast a strong flavor without being at all “hot.” You can chop and add to sauteed dishes or roast them whole with chicken or other veggies.

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Rusty found his "happy place" in the peas this weekend.

Wow — this weekend. Wow — this week. Wow — this spring!!!

Warm. That is the word of the day, week, season. And dry. Oh, how the island buzzed with activity all weekend long — tractors running all hours because the soil was ready, and it is time. In some cases, it is past time, and people have long ago planted and are now weeding or irrigating. Our neighbors across the street pulled out their big reel irrigation gun this weekend, much to the kids’ delight (there is something hypnotic and lovely about the slow rhythm of those big sprinklers: sploosh … sploosh … sploosh … ).

Casey began irrigating our own fields over a week ago now. He gave himself plenty of time to get it all set up the first time, because this is one of those moments when we could find out that something has gone awry over the winter of rest with any of the pieces — the pipes, sprinklers, pump, panel … fortunately, it went well, with just the usual (and quite fixable) start-of-the-season clogs. Irrigating has continued since then, as the weather has continued to be dry.

This weekend, it was not just dry, but windy. We were visited by a very unseasonal north wind, usually reserved for mid-winter (when it brings the coldest temperatures of the year) or mid-summer (when it brings the hottest temps). These north winds can be very drying and damaging, so we were glad to already be in the irrigating routine. All our newly planted starts are still so small and young that a few hours of hot wind without soil moisture could be the end of them! A good thing to avoid!

We keep talking about the weather (because how can we not?) and wondering how the season will play out. It felt so much like summer this weekend, and yet we are still at the beginning of May. We find it challenging sometimes to keep perspective about what is “normal,” when the previous season(s) still loom so large in our memories. The last two years brought record-setting wetness, making this year seem highly anomalous in a different direction. But then we reach back further in our memory and recall planting tomatoes on the weekend of Alien Daze (not quite the end of May) in 2008 — and then regretting it because it was too hot (over 100° I believe!). So, May has been warm in the our farm’s past too, but maybe not so consistently so quite this early? Hard to tell.

And, what does this weather now say about the summer itself? We wonder, what will it be like in August? There do seem to be over-arching trends to seasons (2006 was a scorcher from start to finish; 2012 was cold and wet). In which case, we are planning to stay ahead of the game on irrigation, because we may need it more than ever. Often we receive some significant rainfall in May (and sometimes even in June), giving us a cushion for the start of the summer. But if it just stays more or less dry from now on out, then it is on, and we will be working almost daily to keep our vegetable and fruit crops irrigated.

Casey and I were also talking this weekend about adjusting parts of our planting schedule. We’ve already been picking peas as a family for over a week now, and the first real picking for the CSA is right around the corner — over a month earlier than many other years. Everything is getting shifted, which takes some pressure off in some places, but we also don’t want certain crops ready too early. We’ve found that there’s really a “sweet spot” for things like winter squash and other fall harvest crops — done too early and they have to be in storage too long (and sometimes get “over” ripe before we pick them, which seems to cause premature spoilage too). We’re keeping on eye on the weather trends as we move forward into the really hot and heavy period of May work.

We also celebrated May Day last week, the midpoint between the start of spring and the start of summer. We are now in the half of the year with the maximum photosynthetic potential! Otherwise known as The Main Growing Season! The world is awake and working hard to “make hay” before the fall rains and darkness return (on some farms, literally make hay — we saw a baler in action this Saturday!). Robins are doing their mating dance; trees are leafing out in earnest; grass is growing; and us people are busy as ever. The next two months are some of our fullest on the farm — planting, irrigating, mowing, harvesting, weeding, etc. It seems to all happen at once in this season, and so we are preparing our minds and bodies to jump into it with great eagerness and joy. Here we go!

Enjoy this week’s vegetables!

Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla

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We are still taking new members for our “Main Season” vegetable CSA! We’re looking to add more new CSA members, beginning later this month (May 28). If you know of anyone who is interested (or have just been dragging your own feet), now is the time to send in the form! You can find it here.

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Meet this week’s vegetables:

• Fennel bulb — For some reason, fennel is one of the most mysterious of all vegetables to folks. I guess it doesn’t seem to fall into any existing culinary category (root, fresh eating green, cooking green), but really it’s quite wonderfully easy once you get to know it. The aim here is to eat the bulb itself, which has a texture similar to celery when raw and a flavor reminiscent of anise. Some people enjoy grating it raw and adding it to a slaw (perhaps with some of this week’s cabbage?). Or, you can chop into large chunks and roast with other vegetables (it will caramelize slightly like onions). Our favorite method though is to chop into small pieces and saute in butter or oil as the start of a dish — we might then cook greens in the pan, or add tomatoes and make a sauce to serve over meat, or any other number of directions. We find the flavor to be mild and love it in the background with other vegetables.
• Radishes & salad turnips
  
• Lettuce — What is this tender beautiful green? Oh my, it’s lettuce! As you know, we keep making what we call “salad mix” all year, but in the winter we shift it to include fields greens that appear to be a learned preference. Honestly, we love these winter greens, but when spring brings the first lettuce, it is quite a treat. We made Big Green Salads for lunch this weekend, topped with egg salad and salmon. It was a wonderful way to eat on a hot day when we didn’t want to turn on the stove! Hoorah for a shift in seasonal eating!
• Collard greens — We have been eating tons of collard greens lately (I think we ate them three times in one day last week!), and I thought I’d share a tip (to add to my “how to eat heaps of greens” description) — the stems of collards are sweet but take a very long time to cook to softness. I tend to strip the leaves from the ribs/stems for quicker cooking. Collards still take the longest to cook of any green (mustards and chard seem to be the fastest, followed by kale, then collards), so give yourself a little extra time regardless of cooking method or “doneness” preference.
• Chard — On the hand, I love chard stems and ribs — they are so sweet right now! For chard I just trim the bottom couple of inches, depending on how long they have been in storage (this part can dry out and be less tender). Then I chop the rest and put it into pan just ahead of the leaves (the stem takes slightly longer to cook). I especially love how the chopped chard stems look in soups.
• Cabbage
• Carrots
• Sunchokes

A moment from the week: onion planting!

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A (shedding) Dorper ewe and her two very young lambs.

If you had to guess, what would you say is the most critical ingredient in farm success? Fertility? Appropriate tractor use? Pest control? Irrigation?

This is a trick question, because the answer probably falls into a slightly different category of “input.” In our experience, the most critical ingredient is being present. Paying attention. Walking the land. Engaging the brain and the body with the complexity of it all. Without being present, all the other inputs are pointless, because we wouldn’t even know how to best apply them. It is the understanding (gained through the senses over time) that matters most of all.

We’ve noticed a trend lately as we go on our family weekend field walks. It never fails that we come across something needing immediate attention — an irrigation sprinkler that has popped off or a door that has fallen open on the chicken wagon. On a farm with so many components, unexpected blips are inevitable. Being present to catch them is critical.

Just this weekend, Casey went out with the kids to move the fencing for our Dorper sheep, who are in the midst of lambing. Sure enough, as he approached the fence he saw a ewe lying on the ground with some legs hanging out. She appeared to be in pain but not making any progress, so Casey (with Dottie on his back still) approached her and made sure it was indeed a breech baby. He calmed the ewe a bit and waited for another contraction. As she pushed, he simply held on to the feet, providing some traction. A few pushes later, the lamb was out and the new mama was licking it off. Being present

This is not a new phenomenon on our farm. We’ve witnessed the importance of being present again and again over the years. Even our first year, when we were just farming vegetables and flowers on one acre of land, the more time we spent on the farm, the smoother the farm ran. It isn’t just about doing the work; it’s about understanding what is going on and being able to redirect mistakes immediately or even preemptively. It’s about watching all the plantings — even ones that aren’t seemingly in need of weeding or harvesting — to see if there are pests in the spinach or if the lettuce is heading up quicker than we expected or if the broccoli needs another round of irrigation.

We’ve found that just doing the work of the farm isn’t sufficient. Managing the farm as a whole requires us to be present at times when we are not focused on the next task. Always being “task oriented” creates a sort of tunnel vision that doesn’t allow one to take in everything If weeds are on the mind, then it’s easy to miss pests or wilting lettuce. Which is why we have always valued field walks of all kinds. Sometimes it’s just a matter of keeping all the senses on alert while walking to and from the field for another task, but Casey takes intentional field walks as well, updating his mental map of the farm as he goes.

Throughout our time as farmers, we’ve had moments when the work just seems to pile up and we find ourselves completely daunted by what to do next. We’ve found that the reality of these panic moments isn’t that there’s too much work; it’s usually that we don’t have enough information. Crazy as it may sound, these are the best moments to not work at all but to instead stop and assess the farm. Take a walk.

The other benefit of being present and walking on the farm is that it almost always provides  a morale boost. In moments when we feel overwhelmed, we’ve often been too focused on the farm’s needs or mistakes or momentary failures. Walking the farm expands our perspective to include the current successes too — oh, look at how the orchard trees are growing; this is a truly beautiful planting of broccoli; these lambs are growing robustly; etc.

In the end, our work on the farm is a relationship. We are in a relationship with the farm and all its creatures, and like any relationship it requires an investment of time to maintain and enjoy.

I was interviewed last week for a sociological project about “farm success,” and one of the questions was how our farm business positively and/or negatively affects our lifestyle. Certainly, the downside of being present on the farm is that it is hard to create distance from stressful work. It is easy to always feel like we are working and not have enough fun or play as a family. We may set out to just take a walk and end up watching as Casey moves irrigation pipe or fixes some fences.

But, the positives continue to vastly outweigh the negatives. Just yesterday I was making a bed upstairs in our house and I stood up and looked out the window. “Wow,” I thought, as I gazed out over our home farm: rows of greens, many of them now flowering after over-wintering and bolting; a flock of sheep in the midst of lambing; vibrant green grass all around … “I live here.” What a joy to be immersed in this beauty and all this life. As when Casey went out to move a fence and found himself pulling a lamb (new life!), my mundane household moment was transformed into something truly profound.

Just walking this ground feels like a blessing, and we strive to be a blessing to everything growing here. These are the gifts of being present on the farm.

Enjoy this week’s vegetables!

Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla

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Meet this week’s vegetables:

• Chard
• Collard greens
• Asian greens
• Radishes
• Bok choy
• Carrots
• Sunchokes
• Celery root
  

A moment from the week: irrigation season has begun, earlier than ever!

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Apple blossoms!

There are certainly times of year when we have more sweet things in our fields — late summer is a cornucopia of sweet fruits: sweet corn, sweet peppers, apples, cherry tomatoes, melons, plums, blackberries. But, spring is sweet too, in its own way. As I noted last week, it is simply a gorgeous time of year. I love that we get these breathtaking glimpses of the warm season for a few days followed by rumbling days of chilly storms. The combination makes it hard to take anything for granted.

But there are literal sweet foods in our fields now too. As you have probably noticed in our vegetable selections of late, spring is the season for greens. Many of these greens will grow in our fields year-round but are at their peak of perfection right now.

Our little growing baby Dottie still has a rough hour before bed, when she is too tired to be settled but not tired enough to fall asleep. Being outside is very calming for her, so she and I have been making a nightly ritual of walking to an overwintered kale patch, where I pick us both tender stalks of kale rapini and we eat them as we walk around. Each time, I am amazed at the sweetness in the stem — and I remember so many springs before. I ate loads of kale rapini in the fields when I was newly pregnant with Rusty, because I discovered it was one of the only green foods I could stomach at the time. Every year is different.

Spring is, of course, often a challenging season here on the farm. So much change, growth, and unpredictability inevitably bring surprises. There are days when work just piles up, because calves are born, ground needs to be worked, etc. And, then we have days when the routine is simply routine. The quickly changing weather and landscape also means that we need to pay careful attention to what we are harvesting — a crop that was perfect last week may already have gone past that point this week. We are constantly recalibrating everything, especially with the knowledge that every subsequent day just speeds it all up — longer days equal more growth. Seeds sowed three weeks apart in March may produce plants that are ready to pick just two days apart in May. Weeds pick up their pace. Grass needs to be mowed or grazed. It is a fleeting, at times maddening, but beautiful season.

And, I can’t help but think of this season in our life as similar — the season of having these two very young kids in our family. At three, Rusty reminds me so much of spring weather — he can fluctuate between stormy and sunny “weather” in just a few minutes (or the opposite!), leaving me constantly adjusting my own responses. And Dottie is simply growing and changing so quickly. She is seven months old now, and already has seven teeth to show for her age! She has discovered the fun of games with Mama — repeatedly throwing an object off the table at dinner (the fun being watching Mama pick it up), knocking down towers as quickly as we can build them, and pulling up her shirt to play peek-a-boo. Where did this child come from?

I know that in a blink of an eye, it will be summer here on the farm, and I have a feeling this summer will find us with a toddling baby racing as quickly as possible after her older brother. I know many mothers who want to hit a ‘pause’ button at stages of their children’s growth, and I sometimes appreciate this sentiment. But mostly I enjoy the growth, the constant surprise, the feeling that we are all working toward something both here on the farm and in our family.

There’s a paradox in all of this — I strive to enjoy each day and yet so love the motion and change too. I think this is why I deeply appreciate the cycles in life — spring is gorgeous while it lasts, but I’m happy for summer dryness to arrive so we can ride our bikes whenever we want and watch fruit ripen on the trees. But I embrace the arrival of each new season with the full knowledge that we’ll be back here again. This weekend, the four of us walked to the newest orchard to see the apple blossoms opening, and oh how perfect they were in that moment. There’s nothing quite so delicate as the pink of an apple blossom. I probably won’t have time to get over there again before they are finishing blooming, but if the universe is willing to give me more seasons, I look forward to seeing those blossoms again and again.

And, with the children, these stages may be passing for the older child, but the younger one will be there soon too (although I can’t say I’m excited about revisiting mercurial three, but we are surviving it now and will do so again). And perhaps our life will have more children in it in the future. And, if not, we are part of a larger community of family and friends, and beautiful babies and children will continue to be a part of our life.

Plus, if those apple blossoms never faded, we would never get to enjoy the sweetness of their fruit. And, as we finish the very last of last year’s crop (only a handful left!), Rusty and I are already looking forward to this year’s.

Enjoy this week’s vegetables!

Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla

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We’re not moving! You may have heard that the Public Market (where we currently host the pick-up) is closing shop temporarily, starting this next weekend. You may have wondered whether this affects our CSA pick-up — it does not! We are continuing our relationship with the Granary District but working directly with the manager now. He sees no reason why we cannot continue hosting veggie pick-up there for the foreseeable future — hoorah! No changes, for now!

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How we eat loads of greens: I can’t remember whether or not I’ve shared this bit of information this spring, but it certainly can’t hurt to repeat it. Casey and I have — amazingly — upped our greens consumption over the last six months. I say amazing, because I thought we ate a lot before. But we have a new favorite cooking method that works well for all kinds of greens, from cabbage to rapini, and it’s fast, easy, reliable, delicious and highly nutritious.

Start by chopping the greens and putting them in a large open pan with a bit of fat (butter, coconut oil, lard). Then add broth so that the bottom of the pan has about half to one inch of liquid. (We try to make some broth every time we eat meat with bones — you could do this with water too, but it would be much less tasty and nutritious. Leftover soup or tomato sauce work too.) Turn the heat up to high so that the broth starts to boil and simmer. Stir a few times to immerse the greens in the broth and then cover with a lid and let the greens steam and wilt (this usually takes just a few minutes). Remove the lid, and then let the pan continue to simmer until it is almost dry of liquid, stirring occasionally. Watch it at the end, because if all the liquid boils off, you could burn the greens. At this point, we also like to add a lot of fat (because we have enjoyed eating low carb high fat) — I will stir an entire stick of butter for Casey and me into a full pan of greens, and we will eat it at one meal. Cream is nice too. But if you are on a lower fat plan, the greens are tasty without (especially if good broth was used, the reduced liquid will be incredibly savory and nourishing). These easy cooked greens are the base of almost every meal we eat — we eat them at breakfast with scrambled eggs; at lunch with meat stirred in; or at dinner as a side dish. Using this method, we eat a lot of greens of every kind every week. When we go away for a day or two, greens are what I miss the most from our diet, because they are so rare to find elsewhere (especially cooked this way). If you’ve been at a loss with cooking greens, give this a try!

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Meet this week’s vegetables:

• Salad greens
• Asian greens
• Collards
• Kale rapini
• Potatoes
• Carrots
• Sunchokes
• Parsnips