CSA Box Contents Week of Feb 29th

Montana waters a trailer full of transplants - order yours today! Photo by Scott David Gordon

We put in some heavy duty posts to support these grapes! Photo by Scott David Gordon

We've got spring fever here at JBG! This warm weather has the farm bustling with projects for 2016, and lots of chances for you and your family to get in on the fun.

Our first big project of the week is sprucing up the acre of grapes we planted last year with a trellis system! In just another year or two, we hope these plants will be loaded with fruit, so we've designed heavy duty supports to hold up all that bounty! It's a huge project to get this installed, but with juicy grapes as a reward, we're happy to put in the labor.

The whole crew is also excited to see the farm's newest tenants hard at work - bees! Through a partnership with our good friends at St. David's church, the farm is now the home of three hives of honeybees. The bees have been enjoying the flowering crops we've left as pollinator habitat - these girls sure can carry a lot of pollen.

Jason and Bob loosen the strap around the beehive. Photo by Kathy Cramer

Want to get in on the Spring buzz? JBG wants you to plant your best garden ever in 2016!

We've got four great opportunities to pick up your certified-organic transplants from JBG, and right now is the time to plant! Here's how we can help:

1. Let Brenton help you design the ultimate backyard garden

On Saturday, March 12, farmer Brenton is hosting an Organic Gardening Workshop at our Garfield Farm! Not only will he cover gardening topics from site selection, to varieties, to soil health, but you'll have the chance to consult with him on your own garden and how to optimize it for serious backyard production. The workshop is designed for new and seasoned gardeners alike.

Workshop participants receive special discounts on their transplants and on our CSA program (consider it your "crop insurance" for the year!) Snag your ticket ASAP to ensure a spot!

2. Visit the farm for our Transplant Sale - and maybe a picnic!

The Garfield Farm greenhouses are bursting at the seams with transplants for the farm AND for your garden right now. For the next two Saturdays - March 5th and March 12th - we're inviting you and your family to come out and shop the farm's After you stock up for your garden, stay and wander the farm - our bees and grapes would love to see you. Better yet - bring a picnic to enjoy with the family!

Our Garfield Farm is located at 4008 River Road, Garfield, TX 78612. See you next weekend!

Photo by Scott David Gordon

3. Pop-Up Transplant Sale at Salt + Time - March 23rd

Our good neighbors and friends at Salt and Time are letting us dirty up their front porch, and on Wednesday, March 23rd from 3-7 pm, we're showing up with a truck load of transplants for this last-chance transplant sale!

You can pre-order here or by emailing the farm - Drink specials run from 4-7, and free of SPUN ice cream will be scooped for some selected shoppers. Your happy hour just got happier.

4. Pre-Order your transplants today - we'll deliver!

Deliveries start this Tuesday, March 1st for online transplant orders from JBG. Choose your favorite heirloom tomatoes, summer herbs, and maybe even throw in a fig tree or two. We'll deliver the makings for your spring plot straight to your nearest farmer's market! It doesn't get much easier than that.

Check out our great varieties and place your order on our Transplants Page.

Happy gardening from JBG!

Photo by Scott David Gordon

 

Washing carrots. Photo by Scott David Gordon

Planting trees, building trellises and harvest trailers, keeping bees, harvesting lots and lots of greens. Week 8 was as busy as ever on the farm and we've got some great pictures to share with you this week. In addition to our usual farm activities, we had a blast hosting a Meet the Farmer event at Travis Heights Elementary School. Students had the chance to ask us all kinds of great questions about the veggies we grew for their lunchrooms (did you check out the carrot recipe we scored from AISD's Chef Louis Ortiz?). Enjoy!

Chard looking vibrant in the fields. Photo by Scott David Gordon

Harvesting chard. Photo by Scott David Gordon

A sign of spring? Photo by Scott David Gordon

Montana gets some transplants ready for the field. Photo by Scott David Gordon

Building a double curtain trellis system for our acre of table grapes. Photo by Scott David Gordon

Grape trellises going in. Photo by Scott David Gordon

Spring fields are looking great! Photo by Scott David Gordon

A field of lettuce with flowering brassicas in the background. Photo by Scott David Gordon

Our three new bee hives, thanks to a partnership with St. David's Church. Photo by Scott David Gordon

We're leaving lots of flowering crops in the field for our new pollinators. Photo by Scott David Gordon

Brenton and Roxy enjoying the sunshine in our cover crops. Photo by Scott David Gordon

Transplants are ready for delivery starting next Tuesday! Photo by Scott David Gordon

These basil transplants are dying to go into your garden! Photo by Scott David Gordon

Kale for days. Photo by Scott David Gordon

Travis Heights Elementary has JBG kale on the menu this week! Photo by Scott David Gordon

Fun with food. Photo by Scott David Gordon

Our CSA Manager, Ada, showing off a particularly silly sweet potato. Photo by Scott David Gordon

Photo by Scott David Gordon

Glazed carrots with Herbs de Provence - check our home page for the recipe from AISD! Photo by Scott David Gordon

We were so excited about the AISD and JBG partnership (if you don't know what we're talking about, check out last week's blog post!), and we wanted to share in the spirit with our community, whether or not you've got kiddos in AISD. So, we asked Chef Louis Ortiz if he would share his recipe for those yummy carrots that kids across the district got to eat last week. Enjoy!

 

Hello from Louis Ortiz! Thank you for your interest in the carrot recipe and I hope that there will more to follow as we keep working with Johnson's Backyard Garden

1. 1 lb of fresh raw carrots washed, rinsed and peeled. Remove tops and root end and cut carrots into round coins (approx. 1/4 " thick)

2. Steam cut carrots for approximately 10 minutes and then chill in refrigerator immediately to stop the cooking process. You can also blanch the cut carrots in water at a medium simmer for 4-6 minutes and then remove carrots and plunge them into an ice water bath to stop the cooking process. Both methods "tenderize" the carrots and bring out the vibrant orange color.

*While the carrots are chilling, prepare a simple syrup using 1 cup water and 1 cup sugar in a sauce pan and bring to a slow simmer. Whisk the sugar & water mixture thoroughly while it simmers so that ALL of the sugar is absorbed/dissolved, then remove from heat and set aside.

3. Heat a sautee pan to medium high and melt enough margarine or butter to coat the surface. When margarine/butter starts to bubble and froth, add chilled carrots and keep stirring/moving them in the pan. The pan and heat should be hot enough that the carrots sizzle audibly during the sautee process.

4. After sauteeing carrots for 2-3 minutes, add 1/4 tsp Salt (+) 2 tsp Herbs de Provence and stir.

5. Finish by adding 1/3 cup of the simple syrup mixture and mix thoroughly to coat and shine!

by Megan Winfrey

There are moments in all of our lives that mark a dramatic shift in our perspective worlds. Something so life changing that you refer to other life events as happening before or after said moment. Before the baby, before we moved to Austin, and now, before I had my first cabbage steak. You're laughing, but I'm not joking. I used to think that for my last meal on earth, I'd have the highest quality seafood feast possible but now, I think I'll be switching to this.

Cabbage Steak with Balsamic Glaze

• 1 head of cabbage
• 2 cloves of garlic, crushed and roughly chopped
• Salt and pepper
• Olive oil
• 1/2 c. Balsamic Vinegar

Heat oven to 400ºF

Slice the rounded edges off of either side of the cabbage, then slice the middle circle in half. One medium cabbage is good for 2 steaks. Line a baking sheet in foil. Generously cover both sides of the cabbage steak with olive oil, salt, and pepper and lay on the baking sheet. Divide the crushed garlic and top each steak with it.



Bake for 30 minutes, until the edges are a crispy, golden brown and the garlic is also golden. While the steaks bake, make the balsamic reduction. Heat a non-stick skillet over medium-high. Pour in the balsamic and bring to a boil. Reduce to low, stir frequently, and let the liquid reduce by half. It should be thick and syrupy. Plate the finished cabbage steaks and drizzle with the balsamic reduction. Steak knife recommended!

CSA Box Contents Week of Feb 22

Over 30 million students in our country rely on school meals every day, making the seemingly-humble school lunch an important meal - and an opportunity for us as farmers. With farm-to-school efforts taking off around the country, school lunches provide an important access point to these kids, not only nourishing future generations and fostering healthy diets, but also introducing students to food system, in general. Last week, JBG and AISD kicked off a HUGE project, one that has been in the works for months. We couldn't be prouder to announce that all 130 schools in the Austin Independent School District will be serving a healthy dose of JBG's organic carrots at school lunches for the next month (or longer!). We have so many people to thank for the successful launch of Farm Fresh Fridays and wanted to share the great news with you this week.

JBG Carrots glazed with Herbs de Provence - Chef Louis Ortiz did not disappoint!

Scores of people have worked so incredibly hard to bring these carrots from our farm to the lunchroom table. It's hard to believe that the seeds for this project started way back in July! Our rock star wholesale manager Mike Mosley took on the project and has been guiding our farm through the process ever since. Though farm-to-school initiatives have been on the upswing for a number of years, we've learned over the past few months that getting local produce into school cafeterias can be quite a challenge! Why a challenge, you might wonder? Here's what AISD has to say about the hurdles: "The biggest challenges AISD has regarding farm-to-school are volume and delivery. Serving over 45,000 lunch meals each day at 130 campuses, most local farms are not able to accommodate the quantity and effectively distribute the products to each school. It is imperative that across the district, all students have access to the same healthy options."

Buying directly from local farms simply takes significantly more effort compared to usual district procurement processes. While some AISD distributors offer local options, the district went above and beyond when they decided to take us up on our offer to work directly with us - a local Austin farm. AISD Food Service Procurement worked with Mike Mosley, learning about seasonality, yields, and crop cycles along the way. After countless phone calls, emails, meetings, and visits, the team ultimately decided that carrots would be a great fit for Farm Fresh Fridays across the district - JBG loves to grow them, kids love to eat them, and they got the approval of AISD chefs and dietitians as well. Speaking of those chefs and dietitians: we were thrilled to learn about the meticulous process and forethought that goes into planning each school meal; AISD students are so lucky to have such a dedicated team making sure their meals are a power-punch of energy and nutrients to feed their growing minds and bodies.

Big thanks to the magnificent team who made Farm Fresh Fridays a reality! Celebrating with a healthy portion of school lunch at Govalle Elementary.

So, way back in July, we decided to plant a field of carrots in October, destined for lunchrooms around the city (in February!). When it came time for the carrots to be harvested just a few weeks ago, we nailed down the final number from the district - 3,000 lbs for each week of lunch service! Mike Mosely said he was floored. "When I saw the number, my jaw dropped. This has been such a huge effort for us, so I can't even begin to imagine how AISD is able to do this 5 days a week!" His coordination with the JBG crews was fantastic - we had to give our harvest crew a good warning, since each of these carrots (nearly 45,000) was pulled by hand at our farm! We also brought in two incredible volunteers to help wash and bag the carrots with our usual crew, working late on a Friday night to make it happen. The next challenge for us was getting the carrots to the lunchroom - 130 schools in a day is no easy feat for us. We're so thankful for our staff for rallying to make this happen; 4 JBG drivers came in on their day off in order to get these carrots delivered! Have we mentioned that this project is truly a labor of love for the farm?

Carrots fresh from our fields. Photo by Scott David Gordon

All of the work that went into this project culminated with a Meet the Farmer event at Govalle Elementary last week for the debut of Farm Fresh Fridays. As farmers, we don't usually have time to go and meet our customers, but we had to make an exception for this case. And we had a blast! Chef Louis Ortiz at AISD really knocked it out of the park with his recipe - Winter Harvest Carrots glazed with Herbs de Provence. Wow! It sure made us wish we were eating in this lunchroom every day. The kids at Govalle were so enthusiastic about the veggies and meeting the folks who grew them, and even sent us home with a sweet thank-you letter for our field crew. After months of work, being able to share in the fruits (and veggies) of our labor was really the cherry on the cake for us.

A note from the Govalle students to our field crew.

So, to any AISD parents, we hope that your kids are enjoying their local veggies for the next 4 weeks! JBG carrots will continue to make their appearance on the menu, while some schools will also feature JBG beets and radishes on a made-to-order salad bar. You are truly lucky to be able to send your kids to school where food services is committed to "positively impacting Austin’s food system by continually incorporating more local options into their school menus." We loved to hear that this project is "helping [students] learn the benefits of locally-sourced food and gain closer community connection." We can't thank AISD enough for this commitment and what it means to us as farmers in Austin. If your child doesn't currently get a school lunch, consider switching over! According to the folks at AISD, "The more students fed each day, the more funds are available to spend on higher quality food. AISD is committed to increasing the use of local products, but needs participation to help support these initiatives." Local kids eating local veggies - who doesn't want to get behind that?



There are so many people whose work went into this farm-to-school project. Since we're getting a little long-winded and haven't begun to thank them all, we wanted to share with you a little graphic of everyone who was involved in making Farm Fresh Friday's a success. It truly takes a village - and this is one community we're looking forward to being a part of for years to come.

For more information on Farm Fresh Fridays:

TDA Farm Fresh Fridays Website

Sustainable Food Center: A Legacy of Fresh Food

KXAN: Ag Commissioner Sid Miller on Farm Fresh Fridays