1) In Your Box This Week

2) Farm News

• JBG Now Accepting New CSA Members
• Holiday Schedule Changes and Other Housekeeping Details
• Come Help Us Harvest Potatoes
• Looking for a New Host at Brodie/Slaughter Location
• JBG at the Austin Farmers Market this Wednesday!
• Donate Your Box Over the Holidays
• Holiday Gift Certificates
• JBG Shirts and Totes!
• Back to the Land
• A Look at Texas Citrus Farm South Tex Organics

3) Events

• Edible Austin Eat Local Week, December 5-12
• Edible Austin Eat Local Week Finale Event – Media Celebrity Local Food Cook-off
• How to Start a Community Garden Workshop
• Austin Farmers’ Market Cookbook

4) Quotable Food

5) Recipes

• Apple and Carrot Shortbread Recipe
• Pasta with Roasted Cauliflower and Prosciutto Recipe

6) Produce Storage Tips

7) Johnson’s Backyard Garden Contact Info

1) In Your Box This Week

Fennel
Tomatoes
Carrots
Lettuce
Kale
Cauliflower or Broccoli
Beets or Turnips
Bok choy
Eggplant
Sweet and hot peppers

Coming Soon:

Snow Peas
New Potatoes

At the Market:

Arugula
Broccoli
Cauliflower
Collards
Kale
Swiss chard
Mixed head lettuce (romaine, butterhead, oakleaf)
Salad mix
Spinach
Cilantro
Dill
Carrots
Beets
Pac choy
Turnips
New potatoes
Winter squash
Sweet potatoes
Sweet and hot peppers
Tomatoes
Fennel
Radish

2) Farm News

• JBG Now Accepting New CSA Members

JBG seeks to grow a diverse assortment of high-quality produce while working to help minimize the distance from farm to consumer. We are currently expanding in an attempt to increase the impact we have on Austin’s local food scene and to help do our part in meeting Austin’s demand for locally grown, organic produce. As such, we are accepting new CSA members and are asking you to share the word so together we can continue to spread the values of the local organic farms and expand our community of mindful Austin consumers. One way for you to do that would be to print the flyer off the link below, in color or black and white, and put it up on any bulletin board: work, church, coffee shop, bagel shop, children’s school, etc. Word of Mouth is our best advertising. Thanks for your help.

http://jbgorganic.com/PDFs/JBG%20Flyer.pdf

• Attention New CSA Members: Eggs are Back!

We have recently connected with new local egg suppliers in order to meet the demand, therefore we are no longer putting a hold on egg orders for new costumers. If you are interested in receiving eggs with your box please email us at farm@jbgorganic.com

• Holiday Schedule Changes and Other Housekeeping Details

1. Holiday schedule change – Christmas falls on a Friday this year so in order to keep everyone home with their families we are switching that Friday drop-off day to Monday, December 21st. Therefore, pick-ups at East Austin, Hyde Park, Zilker, Bouldin, and Brodie/Slaughter will be on Monday, December 21, during the week of Christmas. There will be no pick-up that Friday, December 25th.

2. Its important that we have accurate contact information for all of you, particularly at this time of flux on the farm. We want to be able to contact you as we shift schedules to ensure everyone is able to pick up their boxes. You can log in to your account in order to update your phone number and email address yourself.

• Come Help Us Harvest Potatoes!

We are ready to start harvesting all those fall potatoes and we could definitely use some help! Workshare opportunities are Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 8am to 1pm. All workshare volunteers get a share of freshly harvested vegetables in exchange for their help. If you are interested in participating on a Tuesday, Wednesday, or Friday, please email us at farm@jbgorganic.com or call Carrie in the office at 512-386-5273.

• Looking for a New Host at Brodie/Slaughter Location

We are currently looking to fill the host position at the Brodie/Slaughter pick-up location. In a hosting site, we are looking for a cool place for the vegetables (either air-conditioning or lots of shade) and easy access for CSA members (ample parking and pickup availability from 3:30pm until 7pm on Fridays). Most hosts use either shaded front porches or garages/carports for the vegetables.

Hosts are given a free box every quarter in exchange for the work they do. This includes keeping the empty wax boxes for us until we drop vegetables off again the following week, setting out a table for the CSA boxes, and giving away any leftover vegetables to friends, neighbors, or
families in need. If you have any questions, or are interested in becoming a host for this location please email us at farm@jbgorganic.com or call the office at 512-386-5273.

• JBG at the Austin Farmers Market this Wednesday!

We will be selling our fresh produce at the Austin Farmers Market at the Triangle again this Wednesday, December 9, from 3-7 PM. Last week was quite cold, but there were still a good number of people out supporting their local farmers. Keep in mind that the cold temperatures are far less troublesome when you drink some of that wonderful hot chocolate sold at the market!

• Donate Your Box Over the Holidays

We recognize that many people go out of town over the holidays to visit family and friends, and you may be considering canceling your box for the week of Christmas.  If you need to cancel your Christmas CSA pickup, we understand.  However, to save the farm a big financial hit over the holidays and to help provide food for those in need, please consider donating your share to the Salvation Army, or having a friend pick up your share for you.  This way, you can keep supporting the farm, while sharing fresh, organic vegetables with others.

• Holiday Gift Certificates

We have a glorious idea for a holiday gifts…yes indeed…CSA gift certificates! Buy a four or ten week subscription for your friends and family and help spread the beauty of local organic produce this season. Gift certificates are regular price.  If you’d like to order, call us at 512-386-5273 or email at farm@jbgorganic.com.

• JBG Shirts and Bags!

We are working feverishly here to get out shirts and bags with our new logo on them. Friend of the farm, Ryan from McGarrah Jessee, has been the master mind behind the logo. He worked for the poor trade of vegetables and has provided us with high dollar designs! We are so excited about the new logos that he has put together for us and will soon have them on our trucks, as well as on those bags and shirts that are soon to come! Shirts will be $12 and bags are going for$15. If you are interested in making a purchase email us for details or check our website later this week.

• And the Pursuit of Happiness, by Maira Kalman
  

Below you will find the link to Maira Kalman’s blog And the Pursuit of Happiness, sent to us by longtime CSA subscriber Marian Schwartz. Kalman is an illustrator, author and designer living in New York City. This particular piece of work, Back to the Land, is a montage of photographs and other images inspired by a trip to California, during which she was invited to visit Alice Waters’ Edible Schoolyard Program and her restaurant Chez Panisse. Kalman also visited local farms and took a walk with Michael Pollan. While reading her blog I had the feeling that her messages about the food industry, and the direction many hope to see it travel, have all been said before, but she does provide a beautiful and creative display that is both evocative and inspiring. We can only hope that it pushes more people to get involved and help work toward change.

http://kalman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/26/back-to-the-land/

• A Look at Texas Citrus Farm South Tex Organics, by Krystin Bowcutt

Dennis Holbrook has spent the majority of his lifetime on a citrus farm. He is a fifth generation farmer who considers his career part of how he classifies himself as a being on this planet. He has witnessed many of the high and low times throughout the history of citrus in Texas and by the early 1980’s, as his experiences on the farm accumulated, he began to witness a pattern of unhealthy practices. The heavy use of chemicals and the massive amounts of fertilizer, water, and other inputs necessary to maintain their citrus groves inspired a major sense of dissatisfaction with conventional agriculture. Believing that their practices were not sustainable for the future of their groves, Dennis began the shift toward organic farming. They worked for several years toward creating the appropriate environment and providing the right nutrients to cultivate a more natural grove. By 1988 his company, South Tex Organics, became one of the first to be certified organic when the Texas Department of Agriculture initiated the program that same year. In 1989 they had about 100 acres, now, over twenty years later, South Tex Organics has about 500 certified organic acres. It is now the largest organic citrus and vegetable grower in Texas and ships all over the country, as well as to Canada. Southern Texas provides a wonderful citrus growing environment for two main reasons, ideal temperatures and deep, fertile, river delta soil, a gift of the Rio Grande River. Dennis has managed to take advantage of these characteristics and has expanded his company into a highly successful business, providing a beautiful model for others and acting as a mentor to Brenton as he too works to enlarge and further develop his own business.

Dennis’ practical approach to the necessity for organic farming is refreshing in the swirl of ideological arguments that buzz about today. He holds a strong sense of dedication to his crops, as well as to his customers, and practicing organic agriculture was the most effective way to provide sustainability for the future of his groves and health to the soil and crops. His goals are centered on working in harmony with nature, as opposed to dictating to the environment. While growing up Dennis was able to witness his father’s agricultural methods during the 1960’s when there was no chemical weed control and irrigation was only necessary four to five times a year. This gave him an invaluable tool for comparison. By the 1980’s they were irrigating as frequently as eight to nine times a year, flushing out the nitrogen and leaving salt in its path, furthermore, he found their highest amount of organic matter in the soil to be only .4%, their lowest at the time was .225%. Today, they apply compost twice a year and have about 1% of organic matter in their soil. While continually striving for a higher percentage, there are various characteristics in South Texas that make it incredibly difficult for organic farmers. For instance, as a result of the intense heat in that area during the summer the microbial content in the soil eats up the organic matter very rapidly. Their compost is a blend of two major components. One is a wonderful mixture obtained from a nearby USDA facility for cultivating sterile fruit flies that are released into the citrus area, This mixture is far more nutritious than any manure compost that they were using before the shift to organic. The second is made out of gas and other products from a sugarcane mill. Both have unique environmental properties and have shown to be quite successful in the groves when combined and applied as compost.

South Tex Organics is now in the process of developing a juicing plant so that they can help provide Texas, and perhaps beyond, with fresh organic orange juice. In a recent article in Acres USA (October 2009 issue) Alissa Hamilton, author of Sqeezed: What You Don’t Know About Orange Juice, discusses the orange juice industry. This article focuses largely on the process of making and storing the juice so that they can have a 365 day supply. While most advertise themselves as “not from concentrate” in an attempt to suggest a higher quality product, the juice is often put through a process that removes the oxygen from the product so that it can be stored in million-gallon aseptic tanks (about the size of a football field!) for periods over a year without oxidizing and going bad. The problem with this storage technique is the loss of flavor. When the juice is stripped of oxygen, flavor-providing chemicals are also removed. In order to bring a flavorful product to the customers the juice companies are forced to hire flavor and fragrance companies that engineer a flavor pack to put back into the juice. The juice companies fought hard to not be required to list these flavor packets on their labels. They argued that the flavor packets are derived from orange essence and oils, therefore nothing is being added, and they denied that these are attempts to mask bad juice. However, Hamilton found that the essential oils are all being broken down and reconstructed to make new mixtures. According to Hamilton it is now the storage process that is affecting the flavor and quality of the product, not the pasteurizing process. With the invention of flash pasteurization the juice retains the majority of its original flavor, contrary to popular belief.

Now that South Tex Organics is looking into their own juicing plant they will help provide consumers with options in fresh, low-processed juices. While they will not be doing retail packaging given the expenses involved, they will be bulk packaging for other retailers, such as Whole Foods or Central Market. In order to sell and ship the product, they plan to pasteurize the juice and then freeze it into 55 gallon drums. It will not be concentrated or reduced down, so flavor will not be lost in the process. Soon after being shipped most retailers will pasteurize the juice once more, as it will likely be added to other fruit products. South Tex Organics always strives for incredibly fresh products, whether in their juice, or with their other citrus products (they aim to pick, pack and ship on the same day whenever possible).

Dennis truly believes in the importance of providing a quality product to his customers. He aims to sell fresh citrus with great flavor and nutrients, while finding a balance with the environment. He seeks to take only that which he knows the earth can produce, while ensuring sustainability for the future. It is Dennis’ belief that farming is less a business and more a part of the individual’s nature, and acknowledges that in participating in this field he is contributing to something much larger. His commitment to the farming community has been significant and his love for what he does emanates from his business and his product.

We plan to include South Tex Organic citrus along with your CSA boxes during February. However until then, oranges and grapefruit will be offered in forty pound boxes and available for pickup at your regular pickup site beginning in the next week or two. Please email us if you are interested in ordering, or for details.

3) Events

• Edible Austin Eat Local Week

Edible Austin is hosting its 3rd Annual Eat Local Week, December 5-12. Come out and support Austin’s local businesses! Events that week include Alamo Drafthouse BENEFEAST, live entertainment and samples at Whole Foods, and a celebrity cook-off at the Austin Farmers Market! For updates and a full calendar, go to www.edibleaustin.com. Proceeds for this year’s Eat Local Week benefit Urban Roots: Cultivating Young Leaders to Nourish their Communities.

• Edible Austin’s Eat Local Week Finale Event – Media Celebrity Local Food Cook-off

Come to the downtown Austin Farmers’ Market this Saturday, December 12th, to witness Kate Weidaw (KXAN) and Bryan Beck (KGSR) duke it out preparing a dish using all local ingredients from the market. 10 Am – Noon. Our celebrity chefs will be assisted by students from the Culinary Academy of Austin. Judges will include other media personalities, farmers from the market and Urban Roots youth.

• How to Start a Community Garden Workshop (from sustainablefoodcenter.org)

Learn how to start more gardens at this workshop on Saturday December 12th. The workshop will cover

- How to Secure Land

- Finding Funding & Resources

- Organizing Friends & Neighbors to Create a Community Space

You will also take a tour of an established community garden. See the website for more details. http://www.sustainablefoodcenter.org/events.asp?ItemID=298

• Austin Farmers’ Market Cookbook

AFM is working on making a cookbook full of recipes based on fresh, local ingredients. Check out their website for more information on the book and how to submit  your recipes. http://austinfarmersmarketcookbook.com/

4) Quotable Food

The choices we make when we buy food are serious choices. More and more people understand this. We all know that when people choose organic foods and avoid mass-produced and fast foods, they are voting for a sustainable future and against a network of supply and demand that destroys human health, local communities, traditional ways of life, and the environment.

– Alice Waters, “The Ethics of Eating,” Fatal Harvest

5) Recipes

• Apple and Carrot Shortbread Recipe (from 101cookbooks.com)

You’re going to want to use metal (or sharp-edged) cookie cutters here, it will help cut through the shreds of apple/carrot more easily. If you can’t track down whole wheat pastry flour, substitute unbleached all-purpose flour, or I suspect white whole wheat flour work just fine as well.

Ingredients:

1/4 cup semolina flour
1 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon fine grain sea salt
5 ounces unsalted butter, room temperature
2/3 cup light Muscovado sugar (or brown sugar)
2 ounces carrot, grated (about 1/4 cup)
1 ounce apple, grated (about 1/6 of a med. apple)
zest of one lemon
milk

Method:

Preheat your oven to 350F degrees, or 180C. Sift the semolina, flour, baking powder and salt into a medium bowl, and set aside. In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Stir the carrot, apple, and lemon zest into the flour mixture, and mix until well coated and evenly dispersed. Stir the flour mixture into the butter mixture until a dough forms, then knead a couple times to bring everything together. Split the dough in two, flatten each piece into an inch-thick patty, wrap in plastic, and refrigerate for at least thirty minutes.

When you’re ready to bake the shortbread, roll the dough out onto a lightly floured surface 1/2-inch thick/1cm. Use a metal cutters to stamp out cookies, then place them on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Brush lightly with a bit of milk and bake for about 10 minutes, or until the edges of the cookies start to brown just a bit.

Makes about 3 dozen cookies.

• Pasta with Roasted Cauliflower and Prosciutto Recipe (from simplerecipes.com)

If cherry tomatoes aren’t available, you can skip them and add a few chopped sun dried tomatoes to the dish at the end.
Ingredients

Ingredients:

* 1/2 medium cauliflower, cored and broken up into 3/4-inch florets (4+ cups)
* 1 pint cherry tomatoes
* Olive oil
* Salt
* Freshly ground black pepper
* 1 1/2 teaspoons dried sage
* 4 large cloves garlic
* 4 ounces of prosciutto
* 8 ounces orecchiette pasta
* 5 ounces baby arugula or spinach, cleaned and coarsely chopped
* 1 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Method

1 Preheat oven to 425°F. Lay out cauliflower and tomatoes in a roasting pan, coat with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Roast until just lightly browned and cooked through, about 15 minutes.

2 Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil (1 teaspoon salt for every quart of water).

3 While water is heating, pulse garlic, sage, and prosciutto together in a food processor until coarsely chopped. Once cauliflower has browned lightly, remove from oven, toss cauliflower with garlic prosciutto mixture, and return to oven to cook for 5-7 minutes more.

4 Boil pasta uncovered (rolling boil) for 9-10 minutes until firm, but done (al dente). Reserve one cup of pasta liquid. Drain water from pot. Add cauliflower, arugula (or spinach), and Parmesan to the pasta. Stir in enough cooking water to moisten. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Serves 4.

6) Produce Storage Tips

We aim to grow and package our vegetables to maintain the highest taste and nutritional quality possible. However, once they’ve left the farm it’s up to you to keep them fresh and nutritious. There’s no refrigeration at the CSA drop points so it’s best to pick up your box as early as possible. Here are some additional tips on how to store this week’s share:

Chard should be kept in a plastic bag in the crisper for 3-5 days. Any bunch greens can be freshened by cutting an inch of the bottom stalks and soaking the entire bunch in cold water for 10 minutes. Place in a plastic bag in the fridge for a few hours to revive.

Beets and Carrots should be stored in plastic bags. They’ll last two weeks in the fridge. Take tops off carrots before storing. Leave greens on radishes, turnips and beets, with both roots and tops in the bag.

Fennel can be stored in the vegetable crisper for about 4 days.

Peppers should be stored in the crisper, and washed before use.

7) Johnson’s Backyard Garden Contact Information

Johnson’s Backyard Garden

9515 Hergotz Lane, Box E

Austin, TX 78742

Office Phone: 512.386.5273

Office Hours: M-F 8am to 12:30pm

e-mail: farm@jbgorganic.com

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 9th, 2009 at 11:40 am and is filed under Newsletters. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.