Paul, the farmer we apprenticed for, called this month around the solstice the magic time. There is so much sunshine, if the weather is good, everything will grow like crazy. And everything is growing like crazy! Corn is picking up and might hit knee-high by the Fourth of July. Potatoes are sizing up and we anticipate having new potatoes in the next few weeks. In the greenhouse, the eggplants are getting near harvest and the tomato plants are taller than Jeremy, thinking about turning their tomatoes red. Our early zucchini are nearly ready to start picking, and the late zucchini are close behind. Fennel and kohlrabi are also sizing up nicely. The next several weeks should see a lot of new veggies coming on.

Not everything loves the sun and heat, though - the peas are wrapping up in this hot weather, and one planting of lettuce went to seed. It can also be hard on the crew, but our new pond is helping a bit with that. (More on the pond next week!)

Peas are one of spring's great joys - sweet, green, and so easy to eat! There are three kinds of common peas, and each one has its particular best uses. All peas are sweetest soon after they're picked, so don't hang on to them too long, and all peas should have their stems and strings removed before eating.

Snap peas (top left in the photo) can be eaten whole, except for the stem, and do not need to be peeled. Their shells are thick and juicy and the peas inside should be plump. They can be eaten raw, chopped for salads or stir-fries, or sauteed lightly. They don't benefit from long cooking.

Shell peas (top right) have tough, inedible pods and delicious little peas inside. These are the peas you find frozen in bags at the supermarket. We find the best way to open the shells is to pull the stem backward, down the side of the pea that curves inward with a slight indentation. This unzips the pod, which you should be able to easily open to scoop out the peas. These can then be eaten raw, or steamed for 5-10 minutes, depending on how you like them. Topped with butter, salt, and pepper, they're pretty amazing just like that! You can blanch them in boiling water for about 2 minutes and freeze.

Snow peas (bottom) are also edible-podded peas. In fact, the pod is most of the action in a snow pea; the peas inside are usually quite small. Like snap peas, they are good eaten raw, but are probably most well-known in stir fries and other Chinese dishes. They can be sauteed or steamed, just briefly, or added to salads. A quick, tasty side dish can be made by sauteing snow peas in sesame oil for just a minute or two, then tossing with lemon juice, salt and pepper.

Because fresh peas are so good, and the season so short, we tend to prepare them in simple ways that really highlight their own flavor (ie, sauee for a minute and add butter). But, of course, there are lots of options to incorporate peas into many other dishes - here are some ideas for snap, shell, and snow peas.

The season is upon us!

We're excited about some new infrastructure this year, including the addition of two new tractors and an irrigation pond. Jeremy picked up a pair of Allis Chalmers G cultivating tractors, which you can see in the photo - they look a bit like dune buggies, very stripped-down so that the driver can have a good view of what the cultivating equipment is doing. We got them from a farm in western New York, and they've been getting tuned up over the past few weeks. These are sturdy old machines - they were built in 1949! They'll each be outfitted with a different weeding implement, and should be a big help in keeping the weeds in check - always one of the major challenges in organic agriculture. We're hoping to have them ready in time for a stretch of sun predicted for next week, so that we can get ahead of the weeds.

The sunshine will also be good for getting the potatoes hilled, which is when we push a bunch of dirt up against the plants. Potatoes get planted into a furrow in the ground, then buried with several inches of soil. The plants grow up through the soil, and new potatoes grow off the stem - they don't grow below the level of the original seed potato. To enable the plant to grow more potatoes, we bury more and more of the stem as it grows. Usually we hill two or three times during the season, and they are due for the first round. We are looking forward to the first new potatoes, which are one of our favorite treats!

Before it gets buried in the rest of what I want to say, here's the core: We have community members who would like to take part in our CSA but can't afford to -– but you can change that! If you are able, please donate to the NOFA Vermont Farm Share program and help us make our food available to everyone. Enter any amount, choose Farm Share Program, and designate Gildrien Farm. It's a tax-deductable donation and it will make a huge difference in the life of a local family this summer. (Read on or click here to learn more about Farm Share.)

If five people donate $25 each, a family that otherwise couldn't afford our CSA will be able to join. Can you help?

Now, the rest:

One of the major complaints leveled against the local & organic foods movement is that those foods are expensive. The truth of that charge varies depending on exactly what products one compares: organic processed food (cookies, cereal, etc) is often more expensive than conventional counterparts, but organic produce in season at the farmers' market is often cheaper than conventional in the grocery store. (It's true.)

Buying through a CSA, like ours, is generally an even better deal, since most CSAs, like ours, give a 10-15% discount on the product as a "thank you" for the early investment.

That early investment itself can be a challenge for many families, however. Even if you know you'll be saving money in the long run (and eating well, and, perhaps, getting to know a local farmer personally), coming up with a season's worth of grocery money in one lump might be out of reach. We do offer a payment plan, to help mitigate that burden.

But we also want good food - fresh, healthy, local, organic food - the food we raise - to be accessible to everyone in our community. A payment plan doesn't help if you simply can't afford the cost at all. As a family who have ourselves been on food stamps, we get it. Calorie for calorie, junk food is usually cheaper. The fact that cheap food is artificially cheap (and, for that matter, usually artificially food) doesn't change the fact that it is more affordable, especially when time is as tight as money. (If you counting nutrients instead of calories, or if you are able to prepare most of your meals from scratch, the equation changes – but it also gets a lot more complicated.)

All of that is why we believe and participate in NOFA Vermont's Farm Share Program. Farm Share works by gathering community donations - raised by the farm (like this right here) and by NOFA during the annual Share the Harvest fundraiser. Limited-income Vermonters apply and are matched with a local farm. They pay half the cost of the CSA, the farm-raised donations pay one quarter, and the NOFA-raised donations pay the other. It's really a phenomenal solution - people in need get access to good food, local farms get new customers. At times, we've had up to a third of our membership participating through Farm Share, but we need the community's support to make it work. Can you donate $25 and make a season of local, organic food possible for a local family?