Morning Song Farm News

For most of my life, I've shrugged my shoulders when friends asked me non-edible growing questions. If ya couldn't eat it, I just wasn't that interested. Over the years, even my home's landscaping utilized mostly edibles...sometimes a less than ideal game plan when living under the restrictive guidelines of a HOA as I did in my early 30's. Just saying.... But in the last few years, I have enjoyed adding non edibles on the farm, and have in particular fallen in love with the humble morning glory. The photo left, features three varieties' seeds tossed among a row of rosemary. Morning Glories are as easy to grow as radishes, and are a great canary in the cave if planted next to edibles because they show drought stress sooner than the edible plants we have them growing with. I've noticed that they're reseeding each year, so at least here...we haven't had to plant new seeds each year. They are annuals, rather than perennials which really was among the...

Lots of our amazing farm supporters have said they'd like to see more sprouts, more often, in their CSA boxes, or alternately...they'd like to learn how to grow their own. It's taken a while to get our ducks in a row, but we now are ready to offer both the automatic sprouting system we recommend (and use a professional version of ourselves) as well as the certified organic, laboratory tested seeds we use. Here's the new link (it's not even up on our website yet...this goes directly to a secure URL just for this)  https://ww04.elbowspace.com/secure/20140909100050814493 and here's the mobile friendly version: https://ww04.elbowspace.com/secure/m20140909100050814493 Here's the thing about seeds that you intend to sprout and eat; the seeds you buy in bulk at some natural grocery stores are intended for using in soups...thus killing any lingering bacteria. The level of food safety practices that are required to keep seeds safe for boiling and eating, vs....

I've wrestled for years with how to get the word out to our CSA members and local food supporters, when we'd like to announce an event....and am excited about the prospects of our new Farm Meetup group. You don't have to be a member of the farm's CSA to join the Meetup, participate in events, volunteer days, announced tours, and potlucks. We haven't had much interest in advancing gatherings such as potlucks for our farm CSA members, but I think by making it easier to find out about, perhaps we can change that. Here's our Meetup link: http://www.meetup.com/Morning-Song-Farm-local-organic-farm-connection/ We have two upcoming events. Morning Song Farm offers tours to the wholesale tour industry, and occasionally a tour company allows us to offer tickets to an existing event. Date: this Friday, September 12, 2014; 10:00-1:00. We've scheduled our beginning Cheese Making class for this month for the last Sunday of September, which lands on September...

Eggplant at last! We're growing two kinds here this year: the striped one in the image is Gandia, and the solid purple ones without stripes are Black Beauty. This week all peppers in the boxes are sweet, next week we'll have our hot peppers.

Sweet Pepper We've included Purslane in this week's boxes, note the tasty, tiny black seeds are NOT bugs. Two kinds of peppers, the long, bigger peppers are sweet, and the jalapanos are, of course, hot. If you're new to the Reed Avocado, it ripens a little bit differently than your typical grocery store Hass avocado. It's still taking around a week after harvest to be ready to eat, but because as the fruit ripens the flesh contracts slightly, you might squeeze the fruit and think it's gone bad. That "squish" isn't fruit, it's airspace. I love the Reeds, I think they have the nuttiest, smoothest flavor of all the different varieties we grow. They're not favored by grocery store chains because of their size and weird ripening characteristic. Jalapanos

Come on out to Morning Song Farm for our beginning cheese making class. We'll focus August's class on a few of the fun and easy cheeses that will easily turn you into a cheese maker! Impress your friends with cheesey offerings and try out a fun and different hobby that brings dividends of appreciation. You may find that you'll discover a passion for cheese as we have here at Morning Song Farm. It's easier than you'd ever think! Follow along with handouts and easy to follow recipes so that your success is insured when you repeat the steps at home. We'll talk about which milk to use, cultures, and why certified organic milk isn't your best choice.  We'll make three different cheeses; Garlic Ricotta, Herbed Queso Fresco, Fromage Blanc, Paneer, Feta and Neufchatel cream cheese are among those we choose to make and sample during the class.  Class starts at 10:00. Arrive 15 minutes early if you'd like, to...