Autumn Vege Bag - Week 5

Fairly big news! George is stepping back from her role co-ordinating Ōtaki Vege Bags, so she can focus more of her energy on farming at Crooked Vege. Rachel has started working with us part time, and will be ‘shadowing’ George a bit this week during the pick up so she can learn the ropes. We’re really stoked to have Rachel on-board.

We were extremely fortunate to receive some funding for Rachel’s role late last year, and a lot of her job will be focusing on exploring how we can deepen the collaboration between these two market gardens and potentially other growers, exploring how we deepen community connection through this kaupapa, and simply streamlining the complex logistics of what we do.

Jack, the sole market gardener at Ahoaho māra kai is away all week with his whānau. So ngā mihi nui to everyone who stepped in to ensure Ahoaho has been able to harvest enough kai for this weeks vege bags! Rosa & the students have been harvesting zucchini every day. Rachel will be harvesting carrots & salad in the morning (4 days into the new co-ordination/system design role and she’s already expected to get into the field..) with Bella, Crooked Vege’s farm-hand-and-1000-other-jobs-outside-her-job-description-superstar. Jack has already harvested and cured the onions for this weeks bags a month or two ago.

As summer continues to slow down, we’ll start to see a big changeover in vege soon. We’re likely in the last week-or-3 of Tomato shares, and this weeks tomato shares reflect that we’re past the peak season! You’ll have noticed shares of certain vege fluctuate depending on the time of year - Tomato shares have ranged from 170g-350g for cherry tomatos, and 400-900g for larger tomatoes. This is part of eating seasonally - personally I find it makes the first tomatoes of summer (we only start harvesting tomatoes in December) so much tastier. Of course, you can find tomatoes year-round in the supermarket. But they taste particularly, well, tasteless, when grown out of season and take a stupendous amount of fossil fuel (coal, in most heated greenhouses in Te Wai Pounamu).

This week we have

1. Salad (from Ahoaho māra kai)

2. Zucchini (Ahoaho māra kai)

3. Carrots (Ahoaho māra kai)

4. Red Onions (Ahoaho māra kai)

5. Lebanese cucumbers and/or Shishito Chilli (Ahoaho māra kai & Crooked Vege)

6. Beetroot or Fennel (Crooked Vege Ōtaki)

7. Spinach, Snake beans or herbs (parsley, basil or garlic chives) (Crooked Vege Ōtaki)

8. Cherry or Heirloom Tomatoes

Vege highlights, tips & recipes

Fennel

Fennel seems to be something people either love or hate. It does grow really well here through most of the year, so we continue to grow it despite it’s polarising nature. It shines in the base of a soup or roasted in large chunks with a bit of lemon and olive oil. But we also use it in sauerkraut, or tossed in any vege-based stirfry or curry.

Garlic Chives

We wrote about garlic chives last week, but another quick tip from George: if you’re using these to flavour a cooked dish, toss them in right at the end for a stronger flavour. If you add them at the start, the flavour blends in a lot more.

This rule applies in general for many spices and especially fresh herbs! Added earlier in cooking, herbs and spices “blend” into a dish and are less pronounced. If you add them toward the end or when serving, the aroma and taste of each herb/spice is a lot stronger.

For one of our farm lunches this week, George simply sauted snake beans and served with garlic chives and salt. Delicious.

Basil & Chilli - preserving for winter

Basil doesn’t grow through the winter here. If you want to ‘preserve’ it for winter, the easiest way I’ve learned is to blend it with Olive Oil, freeze in ice cube trays, and then transfer to a freezer bag once frozen. An easy way to jazz up a winter pasta.

Similarly, chillies freeze really well!

What to do with those root vege tops?
You’ll notice that we often leave the leaves on beetroot, kohlrabi carrots, radishes, turnips etc. Partially we do this because its quicker - removing the tops from approx 700 carrots every week isn’t a cost we think should passed on to vege eaters. The tops are removed in industrial agriculture because:

1. It improves storage life.
   This isn’t a problem for us - we’re harvesting within 24 hours of vege bag pick up!

2. It takes less space in storage warehouse, logistics trucks, packing centers and on the supermarket shelves.
   Not a major issue here either - the furthest the vege bag kai travels is from the 3.5km from Crooked Vege to Ahoaho on Saturday morning

3. Seemingly these edible parts of vegetables are considered waste by the vast majority of us.
   Yet In some other cultures the leaves we throw away are considered the main vegetable. A 1980s Indian cookbook I have at home has multiple recipes asking for Kohlrabi leaves - but none with the kohlrabi bulbs, and I used to work with polish grower who grew beetroot for the leaves - he wasn’t much interested in the beetroot themselves!

We generally use these leaves the same way we would spinach or silverbeet. Granted, when silverbeet and spinach are in abundance, we do prefer those - so don’t feel too guilty if you compost them instead. But once cooked, these “waste” leaves are very similar to more common cooking greens.

Here’s a palak curry recipe that I’ve substituted beetroot tops into - if you don’t have all the spices, don’t stress, it’ll still taste good!

Ka kite ano,
Jon