New Folks at the Farm (Week 2)

May 26,2007

Another beautiful CSA morning. We welcomed a few new folks, like Catherine and Dave Earp and their three sweet girls. Above, Teacher Toni Mae Thurow from Friends School shares one of our sweet hens with the Earp family. Toni Mae was raised on a farm in Kansas and comes to the farm often for her " chicken therapy". She loves our girls!

Tanya Banks's son Merrick uses last year's dried broom corn to clean up the CSA Welcome Space.

We still don't have an actual name for this part of the farm. Any Ideas?

Norfolk Member Ann Redding brought her South Korean exchange student, Jue Young Lee for a farm visit. We chatted about Kim Chee and Bee Bim Bop, a favorite dish in Korean households- translated as Mix-Mix Rice. Each person has a bowl of rice at the table and then mixes it up with egg, vegetables, etc. Stir like crazy!

More photos can be found on the web site

Water is flowing fine..

Hi y'all,

We very nearly had a problem this afternoon. After several days of planting out many crops, our water shut down. Phht. No watering, no flushing.

The good guys from Guildersleeve Geo-Thermal got here at 2:30 p.m. and had to dig down to the well and make some adjustments. By 5 p.m., John was watering the lettuces in the " kitchen garden" close to the house, and made it out to the greenhouse to water all the young plants there.

In the meantime, we pondered about what the CSA produce would be like -going home without a shower- goodness! As for ourselves, I filled up a couple of buckets to flush the toilet, watered my geraniums and didn't worry at all.

I sure did have some thoughts about folks who have to walk up and down mountainsides to get water, in so many countries in the world. I know that we were very lucky to be able to a) call for help and b) pay a professional to do the job.
Yes, water is an important resource!

See ya'll tomorrow

New Planting May 22nd and 24th

Tuesday and Thursday: basil, tomatoes, peppers, pole beans, kale, squash and marigolds being planted.

	We thought you was a toad...

How's it going with the Greens?

Hi, Friends of the farm

There's been a little buzz about greens the past few days. Some of our CSA members are already finished with their lettuce, tatsoi, spinach and kale, while others are trying to figure out what to do with all of it.

I hope you take the advice in the newsletter about adding chopped greens to vegetable soup, scrambled eggs, mixing them into hamburgers and even mashed potatoes! Greens don't need to be served in a lump on the side of a plate. They enliven many meals.

Tonight a few of us ate dinner at Pasha, a wonderful Turkish restaurant on the corner of Military Highway and Greenbrier Parkway. They served us a shredded kale salad that was drenched in fresh lemon juice and mixed with grated carrots. Delicious! I think the kale was partially steamed, but definitely not limp.

Give greens a chance! Let's hear from some others about what you did with your greens!

Kathleen

Week 1 (May 19th)

The veg in this week's box are ...

• arugula
  
• broccoli
  
• kale
  
• lettuce
  
• mizuna
  
• radishes
  
• spinach
  
• tatsoi
  

Enjoy! There's a recipe involving greens (kale) in the newsletter, and there are two more from last year on the
recipe page of the web site.


Here are some pics from the first day ...













Here are our three farmers, Craig Daly, Jonathan Arp and John Wilson, with the completed boxes.
What a handsome bunch of ... lettuce.




Some folks visited with the hens ...

Welcome to the New Earth Farm Blog!

New Earth Farm & Compost Company is located in Virginia Beach, VA. As well as selling compost, soil and amdendments, we run a community supported agriculture (CSA) program, in which local residents buy a share in the farm for the year and receive a box of vegetable each week throughout the season (20 weeks, from late May to late September). We hope to use this blog to keep our members up to date about goings-on at the farm, and to allow members to share ideas. For more information about the Farm and the Compost Company, check out our web site.