News | Canalside Community Food - Part 2

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Full details about the event here and on the poster below.

We’re coming into the time of year for the earliest crops and, especially where they are roots, the young tender leaves can be as much an ingredient as the root veg. This is why we include them in the weight of the share – you will take the roots with any attached leaves in the weight for your size of share and get 2 share items in one!

Here are some insights about what might be coming in the share and ideas for how to make the most of all the edible parts. As a general rule, they all work well added to/as a basis for pesto, and in hummus, as well as like other greens in soups, stir fries and smoothies.

Radish tops:
As appeared in the share this week
The slightly rough/prickly texture on the surface of the leaves is lost with cooking
Try:
Chopped and used in stir fries, soups etc, as for any other green
One of the 5 ways suggested here

Carrot tops:
Will be in the share on the first baby carrots
Try:
Carrot top pesto
Roasted baby carrot and grain salad with carrot top dressing
More ideas and recipes here

Beet tops:
Similar to chard
Come with the first baby / early season beetroots
Try:
Braised beet tops with lemon juice
A number of ideas from Oddbox

Fennel tops/fronds:
Basically dill, and always plentiful on our fennel bulbs!
Try:
One of the 10 ways suggested here including in a pesto and salads, as a herby flavouring, in juices and curries

Celery tops:
Full of flavour and a great ingredient for a variety of uses
Try:
One of the 5 ways suggested here including in soups, to flavour salt and in a pesto

Ideas from Ali
 

Spring greens are a member of the brassica (cabbage) family of vegetables and are essentially the first cabbages of the year. As such they form an essential part of the Canalside veg share during early spring – as you will have seen from having them in your veg share for the past few weeks. Their leaves don’t form hard hearts like other cabbages, instead growing as loose leaves that are plucked from the plant. This allows more leaves to grow, meaning leaves can be harvested from the same plant over a period of weeks.

As a leafy green vegetable, spring greens are rich in iron, as well as a great source of vitamins C, E and K, and calcium, potassium and fibre too! They are delicious steamed / cooked as you would cook Savoy/white cabbage, brussels sprouts etc. and served generously seasoned with salt and pepper and a dollop of butter. Don’t discard the stems – just slice them a little more thinly than the leaves. As with all brassicas, it’s best to avoid overcooking to enjoy the best flavour.

Why not try other ways of cooking them:
As the star attraction with extra nuggets of deliciousness:
– Fry pieces of bacon or pancetta until browned and then add sliced spring greens and continue cooking until tender
– Stir fry with chopped garlic cloves and fresh chilli then add a dash of soy sauce before serving

Added near the end of cooking to your favourite recipes, as an addition or in place of cabbage, spinach or chard:
– Stir fries
– Risotto
– Stews and casseroles
– Pasta dishes
– Juices

More culinary inspiration here:
BBC Good Food
Olive Magazine
BBC website food section

Ideas from Ali

It’s been very heartening in the last couple of weeks to be harvesting an abundance of fresh greens again alongside seeing our polytunnels bursting to life. There’s nothing quite like the green of new growth to lift the spirits and we’re now into our spring glut which is always a welcome addition to the root vegetables that have seen us so well through the winter.

We bring you as many greens as are possible to grow locally and seasonally during the winter, thanks to a good crop rotation and our polytunnels. We overwinter certain plants like spring greens, kale, salads, spinach, spring onions, chard and more which means they get planted in the autumn, grow slowly over winter where we harvest occasionally but as soon as there is more light and heat we can get them in the share more abundantly. As we’ve been banging on about for months, there were crops that really suffered this year – brassica greens that would normally supplement the roots all winter like oriental salads, cauliflowers, purple sprouting broccoli and cabbages were massacred in the frosts so we have been working hard to eke out what we can. I don’t think we’ve actually had one week all winter where there’s been nothing green in the share which is to be celebrated more than ever this season. We were so happy to get some caulis and cabbages to everyone despite them being on the small size, and now our later variety of PSB is finally harvestable.

And in celebrating the greens, I also want to give a shout out to the roots that have seen us through the winter so well. I’ve noticed how easy it is to bemoan our root veg as we have become so accustomed in our culture to having whatever we want whenever we want. There would have been a time when the root veg was all that was available during the winter. For the winter share and beyond we always grow potatoes, carrots, parsnips, swedes, squash, celeriac, red and golden beetroot and jerusalem artichokes alongside a steady supply of alliums, which when you list it all together it’s actually quite diverse and nutritionally rich.  

So all that being said, we hope you enjoy the last weeks of these roots, alongside the abundance of the spring glut!

Eleanor, on behalf of the growers

Beetroot (both golden and purple/red) have been in a share regularly over recent weeks as we had a good harvest last year. They are a staple of our winter shares since we can store them well in damp sand ‘clamps’ through the winter and into the spring. Here are a few ideas for how to use them if you’re finding it difficult to get through the quantities in the share:

Beet kvass – fermented beets
Fermenting is a great way to increase the nutritional value of a food by introducing ‘friendly’ bacteria that help give a diverse microbiome in the gut when they are eaten. It also helps to extend the shelf life of food and spread useable period across a longer stretch of time, as you can be eating the food fresh while a batch is fermenting and then eat the fermented foods after that.

Here’s a link to the recipe I’ve been using for several years. It produces tangy cubes of beet and a thick liquid you can drink as a tonic or use in a number of other ways suggested in the recipe. If it develops a white scum on the surface, just mix it in. Use something to keep the beets below the surface, eg. a jam jar that fits exactly inside your fermenting container (a larger jar in my case), and this will prevent lumps of mould forming.

Beet soup aka borscht (this is an adaptation of the recipe in my old and well used copy of the Cranks recipe book)
Chop an onion and fry it until it’s beginning to soften. Add c. 450g beetroot cubed, a medium potato also cubed, a stock cube or a teaspoonful or so of yeast extract, a bay leaf and water to cover. You can also increase the nutritional value by adding red lentils, maybe 100-150g and increasing the water. When everything is cooked (though the beets might still be quite firm), remove the bay leaf and blend until smooth. Add some ground nutmeg (not too much as it’s strong), freshly ground black pepper and cider vinegar (or whatever vinegar you’ve got would probably be fine) – c. 1-2tbsp, to taste – it gives the soup a little bit of a sour edge. If you’ve got liquid from your beet kvass to use, you could add this once it’s off the heat – cooking it will kill all those lovely bacteria I mentioned above. Serve with a dollop of sour cream/crème fraiche/natural yoghurt and a sprinkle of parsley if you have some. According to the toddler in the house, the yoghurt is the main feature and she will devour quite a bit from eating the thin layer yoghurt that sits above it! (Sneaky mama trick!)

Other ideas:
Juiced – you could use a blender, some water and a piece of muslin if you don’t have a fancy juicer
Grated into a winter slaw
Roasted in chunks, with olive oil (add slivers of orange zest and a squeeze of fresh orange juice for extra zazoom)
Thinly sliced and crisped in the oven to make beetroot crisps
In brownies/cakes

Ideas from Ali and the grower team

It’s been an eventful month on the farm and we wanted to keep our members in the loop. We were lucky that the ten days of heavy frosts thawed just in time to harvest the Christmas share but the jump from mild to prolonged sub zero and back again did wreak some havoc on the crops.

It’s been hard to tell the longer term effects but we did have some clear casualties: the broad beans, outdoor salad and chard were killed and other crops damaged like some brassicas and carrots. Even some of our storage crops were affected. They are not lost but the worry is they won’t last as long as normal and are now not as healthy.

We are closely monitoring all of this and will decide on a course of action if needed. It may be that our annual harvesting gap in May and early June is more pronounced than usual. Some things we don’t yet know and it depends on how well the plants recover – it is always surprising how much renewal is possible. The kale in the fields bounced back well from the heavy frosts in December and there are also over wintering greens coming on nicely in the tunnels and the remaining parsnips are coming off the field looking good.

We don’t want to worry members, but give an honest picture of where we’re at and why the veg is as it is. Some of the crops, like the potatoes haven’t been too good because of summer drought conditions, and it’s quite heartbreaking to know that other plants we tended through that drought then succumbed to frosts. It’s not just Canalside but also many other farms that have been affected. This is where our CSA model hopefully comes into its own – sharing the risks and the rewards together. We’re doing our very best to get you as much good veg as we possibly can!

Farmers managing weather is a story as old as time, and, some of these are new challenges facing us. There are lessons to be learnt and strategies to be put in place e.g. better irrigation for droughts, different storage or protection measures for ongoing heavy frosts.

We’re currently working hard to get the new growing season underway without a hitch so we can plant new crops from late January onwards, according to our crop plans. We’re re-skinning our damaged polytunnel, building new hotbeds ready for propagation and fixing fences. Our volunteers have been working hard and we are determined to meet the challenges. Here’s praying for a more stabilised season ahead!

In hope,
Eleanor, Stephen and Lena
The growing team.

This year’s summer party – the first since the pandemic – will take place on Saturday 16th June 2022 from 6pm. For full details, including ticket sales, click here!

Canalside community food, a pioneering CSA based outside of Leamington Spa is looking for a part-time grower. We are seeking a grower with experience to join our team producing organic veg and fruit all year round for our community of 170 households.

The successful candidate will work as part of a small growing team alongside the admin team and other volunteers and will be expected to play a key role in crop production and farm upkeep. We are establishing a collaborative approach; the role initially being under supervision with a view to developing skills and experience for all aspects of farm management at Canalside. The role is 2 days per week, annual salary: £9,360 with statutory holiday allowance and a pension offered.

More details and full job description here

Applications by CV and covering letter to mail@canalsidecommunityfood.org.uk: deadline – noon on Friday 21st January 2022

Selection will be based on an interview, to take place in the weeks following the application deadline.

We’ve now weighed in our onion and garlic harvests which have been a great success. Over 100kilos of cured garlic bulbs and 1.7 tonnes of onions which will see us through the coming months. This is a much better yield than last year and on par with the year before that. A lot of work went into making sure the onions were irrigated well during the drought earlier in the year so we are pleased this paid off in the end.

The highlight of the week was being visited by artist Robin Wang who spent a day doing reportage illustration around the farm as part of her MA project. Check her out on Instagram to see her amazing work. It’s really special to have creative documentation of what we do on the farm and to know that as we were cultivating the food crops she was cultivating these drawings which she plans to use to spread the word about local sustainable food production.

Update 31st August: to view Robin’s finished ‘zine, click here.