Red Fire Farm

Now that we have passed almost an entire month since the Spring equinox, the farm has been buzzing with activity! We are beginning to get many of our seasonal vegetables transplanted into the fields for the major harvest season, preparing for the opening of Red Fire farmstands in Granby and Montague on Saturday April 27, and spreading news of Red Fire’s various CSA share plan offerings.

A new greenhouse is being built, spring harvests continue, seeding flies along in the greenhouse and field, and the first flowers are beginning to bloom. Read on to see pictures. We can’t wait for the summer months while we keep you all updated on what we’re planting, growing, and sharing here!

Sign up for a Red Fire Farm CSA Share today!

1) Did you know that when you sign up for our Farm Stand Membership, you receive an immediate 10% discount on all our products & all our local friends’ products?

Now you do! Whether you want to stop in Granby, Montague, or visit us at a local farmer’s market- a Farm Stand Membership is a great way to choose your own seasonal fresh veggies and fruit or various other local provisions we sell at the stands – on your schedule.

2) True or False: there are over 15 Red Fire Farm CSA pick-up location options throughout the week for our Farm Share members?

True, of course! From downtown Boston to Springfield, MA and cities in between- enjoy Red Fire Farm’s organic vegetables and fruit on a weekly basis. If you can’t pick it up, inquire within [info@redfirefarm.com] about our home delivery options. Not only do you receive a weekly batch of our locally-grown goodies but you’re also able to have a Pick-Your-Own adventure at either farm and a weekly newsletter with farm news & updates.

3) Is it possible to brighten up your kitchen with the many beautiful flowers grown at Red Fire Farm? Want a CSA fruit share with strawberries, blueberries, apples, plums, etc? Maybe you want to eat eggs from a local certified organic farm in a weekly CSA offering?

Yes- to all of these options! We have various CSA plans for interested folks and are deeply invested in making healthy and nutritious eating options available to as wide an audience as possible. You can review all of these offerings at our main site here.

Evan shows off the wares at market.

Spring Crop highlights

Kale

A rip in the row cover lets us see the over-wintered kale growing inside.

A growing favorite amongst our CSA members, this brassica is growing in our overwintered tunnels and will continue to grow in abundance throughout the approaching seasons.

This time of year you can find kale in our Braising Mix of cooking greens. Later in the summer, as bunches that come by variety, Red Curly, Lacinato, Red Russian and more.

Kale is high in Vitamins C and K, rich in calcium, and has many nutrients which are connected to fighting cancer. There are tons of ways to produce this flavorful- sometimes bitter, sometimes sweet- leafy green but one favorite would be a massaged kale and avocado salad.

Strawberries

Who’s excited about the first strawberries of the season?

The strawberry plants are now uncovered, and Wally can play in them! He doesn’t know yet about the delicious berries to come. The suspense.

Whether you want to make preserves or the family’s strawberry shortcake recipe, this crop first bears fruit beginning in late May or early June. This year, Red Fire Farm’s Strawberry Soiree will be on June 22nd when our strawberries are in peak abundance.

Lettuce

Mark drives the transplanting tractor with Joanna and Max on the back planting the rows.

Lettuce will soon be ready! Red Fire grows different lettuce varieties such as green and red butterhead, romaine, oak leaf, and green leaf. The lettuce is currently maturing in the greenhouse before being transplanted into our field where it is then harvested for your table. Our organic lettuce is a great local alternative to the lettuce you can buy in the big-box grocers.

Asparagus

The asparagus field in April.

A little later on in May, we shall see the stalks of asparagus rising from the rows in this field above. Then we pick them quick as can be to sell in the farmstands and markets.

Tomatoes – Plants for Your Garden!

Tomatoes! Even though our annual Tomato Festival is at the end of August (the 24th), nearly 100 different types are grown on our farm starting in the Spring and continuing throughout the Summer. Find our favorite varieties for sale as plants at the farmstands this spring for your garden!

Whether you enjoy them with fresh mozzarella and basil or mixed among some lettuce, tomatoes are a delicious treat that we love sharing. Learn more about growing tomatoes in our earlier blog post.

Farmstands Opening in Montague and Granby

Here are a selection of tasty recipes with winter produce that you can try for your winter feasts, or other meals this time of year.  Great for Thanksgiving dishes!

You can get ingredients for these recipes, for your celebrations and storage, from our farm at our Bulk Ordering page!

Roasted Watermelon Radishes – Surprisingly sweet, tasty, and so pretty.
Kohlrabi and Potato Gratin – Rich and creamy
Raw Parsnip Winter Salad - Sarah makes this for fall and winter feasts. Parsnips are amazing raw.
Mashed Potatoes with Shallots – Shallots give a really nice flavor to the potatoes.
Daikon-Apple Salad – Refreshing and light.
Caramelized Leeks and Apples – A sweet and savory side dish.
Turnip Puff – A really fun way to serve turnips.
Maple-Glazed Sesame Sweet Potatoes - yum.
Rosemary Vinaigrette – A nice way to use this aromatic herb.
Warm Maple Dressing with Shallots – Great flavor to warm up a salad, or for slightly wilting spinach or other greens.

Parsnip “Fries” – A good appetizer

Beet and Winter Squash Strudel – Appetizer or main dish.
Kale ‘n’ Apples – Stellar fall/winter combo.
Butternut Squash and Rutabaga Puree – Smooth and creamy.
Butternut Apple Bisque
Curried Carrot Dip
German Sweet and Sour Red Cabbage - Tangy and sweet, and a gorgeous purple color.
Gilfeather Turnip Puree - Featuring Gilfeather turnips from the Slow Food Ark of Taste. They are so flavorful!
Stuffed Delicata Winter Squash – You can use this recipe with other types of winter squash too.
Coconut-Rutabaga-Carrot Mash
Baked Apples- Very easy, personal-sized, and delicious dessert.
Sweet Potato Pie – Sweet potatoes make a really amazing pie. Most say it’s better than pumpkin.

Visit our Bulk Orders page to see what is in season now. Happy cooking!

Eli Dibner-Dunlap — Vegetable Grower/Tractor Operator

Eli spends most of his days behind the wheel of a tractor, preparing fields for planting, annihilating 96% of the weed population, and grinning gleefully while hoeing, tomato staking or transplanting.  In his 2nd year at RFF, Eli is 24 years old and from Cleveland, OH.  He is tall enough to easily pick out in a crowd, and he can’t make up his mind: mustache or beard?  Eli is a recovering political junkie, a former french horn player of 9 years, and has never been confused for legendary chess player, Bobby Fischer.

How did you get into farming? It all started back in college when I asked myself, “what is the most basic function of a human?”  I thought about it and I realized, it’s eating!  So, I started to consider eating, and what people eat.  Eating seems like such a simple thing we do daily, but the reality of how that food gets to us is a much more complex process.  It’s complex because of the consolidation of land, of merging companies that operate such lands, of an increase in food processing…this all becomes a list of 20 ingredients.  I was totally confused by what was going on in our food industry the more I learned about it that I felt I needed to find a much simpler way of doing such a simple task as eating.  I decided I wanted to eat less ingredients.  Our food industry has become disturbed on so many levels — socially, ecologically and economically, that I felt like I wanted to take control of my relationship to those disturbances.  Learning how to farm has been an essential way for me to feel like I am taking part in a real movement away from our complicated, damaging food system.

What’s your favorite vegetable? How do you cook with it?  Poblano peppers. They add such a rich flavor to any dish and also a touch of heat.  I like to throw them in all soups, but a big hit is mixing them in a roasted corn chowder.  It’s a crowd pleaser.  Try it.

What role does farming play in the rest of your life?  Farming for me has become not just a job, but a way of life.  I now follow the rhythm of the farm season, including long summer days and winter spent in hibernation.  I look forward to growing food for the rest of my life, keeping a small garden for my family’s needs and to maintain my own land connection.  I recommend it to any and all.

What do you like to do when you’re not farming?  I’m currently taking an EMT class, which requires a lot of time and energy.  Health and medicine is a potential next step for me, which feels like another layer on top of my initial attraction to agriculture.  But to get real, what I love most is a well-crafted potluck, baking a crusty loaf of bread, a raucous square dance, and a sweet smelling autumn bike ride.

Max Jiusto — Trainer

Max pondering life with a Peace watermelon.

Max is responsible for teaching new employees harvest techniques and standards.  He shows newcomers what’s expected on the farm, and aims to have that the daily harvest happen efficiently and on time.  Max is 23 years old, from Worcester, MA and is in his second year at RFF.

How did you get into farming? I needed one more credit at UMASS, so I signed up for a gardening course called Garden Share.  Gardening was totally new to me, but I really liked it.  I was graduating that Spring of 2011, so I decided to give farming a shot.  I applied to Red Fire and got hired for the summer.  Since working here, my entire perception of eating food and where our food comes from has changed.  I think from now on, I will always be involved in growing my food in some way, whether volunteering or working on a farm.

What’s your favorite vegetable? How do you cook with it?  Onions.  I put them on everything.  I make what I call the “RFF Burrito” with black beans, onions, garlic, tomatoes, peppers and a green of some sort, usually spinach.  I prefer red onions best.

What role does farming play in the rest of your life?  For a while, I’ve had a growing interest in our country’s food system, as well as more generally, our world’s food system.  I thought that working on a farm seemed like a good place to start learning more about food production.  Red Fire represents the new wave of organic agriculture.  I hope we can get more and more people into this way of farming, and relying less on industrial farming.  This year I’m hoping to get into canning and preserving food.  It makes sense to put food away for the winter seeing that there is such bounty on the farm.  Tomato sauce is my goal this year.

What do you like to do when you’re not farming? I love to play music.  I play guitar in a band called Adult Fiction and I also play saxophone.  I’m also a wild man on the dance floor.  Going out to dance parties is probably my favorite thing these days.

Max is an eligible bachelor who will charm you on the dance floor, and seranade you with his saxophone melodies.

Manning the Pick Your Own at the Tomato Festival.

Having some rough internal debates over the daily harvest list. Working hard or hardly working?

Written by Mary Nelen

Putting food by is the art of preserving the freshness of summer. Flavor as well as nutrition are benefits of taking the time to can summer food. According to the USDA, vegetables handled properly and canned promptly after harvest can be more nutritious than fresh produce sold in local stores.

In this recipe, plum tomatoes are cooked briefly to remove skins, cored, placed into jars and boiled in a canner creating a vacuum that removes air bubbles to prevent spoilage.

I use plum tomatoes, also known as “Roma” or “paste.”  They have less water than other tomatoes and make a great base for making everything from ketchup to tomato paste to various sauces all winter long.

RECIPE: Canned Plum Tomatoes: Yield: 1 dozen quarts. Time: 3 to 4 hours.

EQUIPMENT

12- 1-quart Ball Jars with lids and bands, cleaned and warm

1 canner (21-quart) with canning rack

1 set canning tongs

1 canning funnel

1 small saucepan for lid sterilization

1 stockpot for scalding tomatoes

1 large bowl or cooler for ice bath

1 small set of tongs for removing lids from saucepan

1 plastic spatula to remove air bubbles

1 cutting board

1 small paring knife

Clean Dish Rags

INGREDIENTS

36 lbs tomatoes, about 6 tomatoes per jar

24- tablespoons bottled lemon juice

12- teaspoons salt or 6 teaspoons of citric acid

DIRECTIONS

Create this assembly line in your kitchen:

1)    Fill your canner ¾ full of water. Bring to a simmer, put the lid on and keep on a back burner until ready for use.

2)    Fill a stockpot with water to scald tomatoes in batches. Bring to a strong simmer.

3)    Fill a small saucepan half way with water and keep water almost to a boil.

4)    Wash tomatoes in batches and set aside for scalding

5)    Prepare ice bath for scalded tomatoes by filling cooler or bowl with water and ice.

6)    Place cutting board next to ice bath for skinning and coring tomatoes.

7)    Next to that, have a bowl ready for the skins and cores and line up 6 jars and bands.

8)    Place lids with rubber lining in sauce pan to sterilize.

9)    At the end of the line, have lemon juice, salt, measuring spoons and dishrags ready.

Wash all of the plum tomatoes in cold water. In batches, place in boiling water to scald. When splits appear in skin, after around 3 minutes, remove several tomatoes at a time with a slotted spoon or small colander and place in the ice bath.

When the tomatoes are cool enough to touch, remove skins and cores with a paring knife. Try to keep them intact, if possible. Using the funnel, fill each jar with tomato flesh only, leaving about 1” of headroom in the top of the jar. Add 2 tablespoons of lemon juice and one teaspoon of salt or 1/2 teaspoon of citric acid (to lower the Ph value) to each jar.

Use rubber spatula to remove air bubbles in mixture by sliding it around the edges of the jar. Wipe the neck of the jar clean with a dishtowel. Use a small set of tongs to remove a lid from the saucepan. Place lid on top of jar with a tap of the tongs and screw the band around it, “finger tight,” but not too tight. That will make it possible to allow air to escape during processing. The goal in processing is to eliminate all air to prevent contamination.

Bring water in canner up to a strong simmer. When all of the jars in the canning rack are filled with tomatoes and the lids are screwed on, place entire rack in water, turn heat up to high and process for approximately 45 minutes. Jars should be fully submerged with 2 to 3 inches of water above the jars. Add boiling water to bath if necessary.

When the jars have been processed in boiling water for the recommended time, turn off the heat and remove the canner lid. Wait 5 minutes before removing jars.

Using jar tongs, remove the jars one at a time, being careful not to tilt the jars. Carefully place them directly onto a towel or cake cooling rack, leaving at least one inch of space between the jars during cooling. Avoid placing the jars on a cold surface or in a cold draft.

Remove each jar with tongs and place upside down on dishtowel. Repeat this process until all of the tomatoes have been processed. Leave jars undisturbed for 24 hours. You will hear a popping sound when the seal is made.

To check to see if a seal has been created in the jar, press on center of cooled lid. If jar is sealed, the lid will NOT flex up or down. If it does flex up or down, refrigerate and use within 2 weeks. Store sealed jars in cool, dark place for up to one year.

Congratulations! You have just put canned tomatoes. Enjoy this summer’s bounty all year long. See www.valleylocavore.com for additional tomato recipes.

*USDA GUIDELINES HOME CANNING: Tomatoes and more…

http://nchfp.uga.edu/publications/usda/GUIDE%201%20Home%20Can.pdf.