Coming Out of the Cooler

The "New" Moon Bear Cooler

Hello Moon Bears,

We purchased a well loved pastry cooler for the Art Farm. It's new home will be in the Club House (Also pretentiously known as The Studio)). We plan on harvesting fresh veggies and berries every Thursday morning starting July 19th and having them ready for your pickup from the cooler at any time on Thursdays and Friday morning.

I've been considering how food has become so functional and solitary in our world. We had an idea to combine part of the pick up time with a sharing or our community's food.

So, beginning July 19th we will have an ongoing voluntary potluck with the veggies available from the farm every Thursday night from 5:30 to 7. Stove and sink and salad dressings available. This will run through the season into October.

Also look for us in Association with our farm co-op Backyard Bounty at Legacy Salmon Creek Medical Center, 2200 NE 139th Street,on Tuesdays from 3 to 7 p.m., beginning July 17th.

We're in this together. 

Food security and vitality begin within the nucleus of local community.

CSA Members: We'll send an e-mail message to you about the pickup schedule and details of bringing the bounty out the cooler and into your LIFE.

Rick

Recipe: Weekend Glow Kale Salad from Angela Liddon

Greetings friends of Moon Bear!

It was delightful to see some of you out at the farm this weekend for our very first CSA harvest. After seeing all of the beautiful greens I thought I might share one of my favorite go-to recipes. I change this recipe every time I make it depending on what I have on hand. Almost anything goes. I especially love adding dried cranberries, quinoa, beans or apples. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

Recipe from: http://ohsheglows.com/2011/06/17/weekend-glow-kale-salad/

Yield: 4 servings

Ingredients:

·         1/2 large head of kale (about 4-6 cups)

·         1 cup finely chopped red onion

·         1/2 red bell pepper

·         1/2-3/4 cup chopped carrot (2 small carrots)

·         1 English cucumber (2 cups chopped halves)

·         1 avocado, chopped

·         1 & 1/4 cup chopped grape tomatoes (or other variety)

·         1/2 cup mixed raisins and Goji berries

·         1/4 cup hemp seed

·         1/3 cup chopped walnuts

·         Dressing: 1 batch of Lightened Up tahini-Lemon Dressing (recipe below)

·         Your desired fresh or dried herbs

 Directions:

1. Chop vegetables and mix in a large mixing bowl. Reserve hemp seed and walnuts for sprinkling on top.

2. Make your Lightened Up tahini-Lemon Dressing in a food processor and process until smooth.

3. Tear the leaves off of the kale and rip into bite-sized pieces. Wash and dry kale leaves.

4. Mix the vegetables, kale leaves, and full batch of dressing (3/4-1 cup) in large bowl until thoroughly combined.

5. Place in fridge to ‘marinate’ for 10-15 minutes. Serves 4. Keeps in fridge in a sealed container for 1 day.

Lightened Up Tahini-Lemon Dressing

Yield: Just under 1 cup of dressing

Ingredients:

·         1/4 cup Tahini

·         2 garlic cloves

·         1/2 cup fresh lemon juice (about 2 lemons)

·         1/4 cup Nutritional yeast or a bit more, to taste

·         2-4 tbsp Extra virgin olive oil, to taste

·         1 tsp kosher salt + freshly ground black pepper, or to taste

·         3 tbsp water, or as needed

Directions:

1. In a food processor, add all ingredients and process until smooth. Makes just under 1 cup.

Hail Life

Altar in the Sun. The Art Farm garden June 9, 2012

The garden is struggling to arise after two prolonged and powerful hail storms. Squashes are ripped through with stems mangled. Tomatoes bruised. More than half the seedlings have been pulverized. What the storms missed, the starlings picked over in wheeling flocks.

It's difficult to be still and be patient. It's hard not to melt with the sky into agitation. All the hard work and and tender emerging life thrashed. The hopes for service with a CSA and our farm co-op are lying limp on the ground.

But...

The garden doesn't need agitation. 

It doesn't even need feverish work. 

It wants presence and love, like all of us, after being hurt.

So I pause. I build a long neglected altar. Heather brings two statues, of Ganesh and Lakshmi. Seven keys, representing the seven chakras of the world, hang from the mantle. I place new seeds on the little niche. Then I leave the potential for new life and go, walk in the garden. Before I replant, I want to see what's really there, beyond my worries and responsibilities.

In the midst of a mangled squash plant, a new shoot pushes forward. Potatoes seem unphased. Many carrots are present and standing at attention. Life is here! Tenacious life. Remnants survive through the beatings and voracious hunger our world brings in chattering waves. Doing what life does.

Perhaps the sun that filters through the mist will delight the field soon.
Perhaps the storms have returned to their mountain home.
Perhaps I will sit here, with my wife, a while longer, not clinging to what could be or should be.
Perhaps I will continue to thank the survivors and the faithful of the garden clan,
and to contemplate the ruthless wonder of being present and still alive on earth.

-------

It's the next morning. The garden is replanted. All the rows that looked like missing teeth are filled in with seeds hungry to live, hungry to grow, hungry to feed the beauty of the world. The product may be two weeks late, but the vitality and healing are fully present.

-------

To Our Moon Bear CSA Menbers: 

Small boxes will be ready in early July. Specifics next week. It looks like the main harvests and abundance will be in full swing around July 20th. We're still set for a 12 week summer season for produce delivery. I'm waiting to see what the farm does now. All we can do is wait and see. The Earth will have Her way. Thanks for being in this process with us, this cycle of bring bounty to the table.

Rick

Copyright: Richard Sievers, Field of Seven Houses, June 2012

Moon Bear Rising

The West Garden and Orchard at the Art Farm June 2, 2012

Hello Moon Bear CSA Family and Friends,

This is your weekly newsletter about what's growing at the Art Farm. We'll include harvest reports, delivery dates, recipes, soulful events and glimmerings for the coming week. Feel free to contact me if you have feedback or want to contribute to this haphazard editorial endeavor.

We already have three baby golden zucchinis, cosmic purple tomatoes, adolescent sized beets and even a few new potatoes... and lots of young lettuce. I ordered half bushel boxes for our weekly delivery schedule beginning in July. I'm not sure of the dates for first delivery or distribution site yet. I will let you know more as we see your garden unfold.

Finally, the first wave of crops is in the ground and coming forward into the green wide world. I watch the garden from my window. A shiver runs up my back as rain shimmies down the window. Your garden is sown. The water lines set. The compost tilled. Rain and sun will come. The birds and moles and beetles may descend. The wind and hail may rise. Planting has become an act of faith. There is not much to fret over that is within my control now. The land will always be free and sacred on this small farm.

A poem from a man who seems to know that the Spirit of the farm and poetry and social justice are intimately interconnected.

A Standing Ground by Wendell Berry

From his book New Collected Poems, 2012, p.133

However just and anxious I have been
I will stop and step back
from the crowd of those who may agree
with what I say, and be apart.
There is no earthly promise of life or peace
but where the roots branch and weave
their patient silent passages in the dark;
uprooted, I have been furious without an aim.
I am not bound for any public place,
but for ground of my own
where I have planted vines and orchard trees,
and in the heat of the day climbed up
into the healing shadow of the woods.
Better than any argument is to rise at dawn
and pick dew-wet berries in a cup.

Peace

Rick and Heather