News from the Farm, June 20
Apprenticeships on organic farms have been around for a long time. They fill a vital role in the organic farming community by giving people without farm experience hands-on work in the trade.
This is our fourth season of offering an apprenticeship at Featherstone. We do it because it expands our community and gives us interested and interesting working companions, and because it teaches us to improve our abilities to communicate. For Jack and myself, it also means carrying on the tradition by which we learned to farm.
The people who have apprenticed here have come for their own reasons. Mike Gamber, our first apprentice, wanted to work outdoors. Four years later, he's gotten his masters in education, but still comes out to the farm to help out.
Our second apprentice, Emily, came to us with an interest in sustainable living. She wanted to learn about growing her own food and living lightly on the land. Because we are a busy farm that relies upon tractors and fossil fuels to do much of the field work, we didn't exactly meet Emily's expectations. The season was a tough one for both sides, and we, as employers and teachers, learned that we can never be too clear about the kind of work we do. We're happy that in spite of our conflicts, Emily still visits the farm when she is in the area. She recently told us she's applying for an apprenticeship with one of the country's leading herbalists, Susun Weed.
Last year our friend, Josh, lived and worked with us. He came to the work from a computer programming background. He wanted to get away from it, and loved our little apprentice cabin, so became our apprentice. Again, it wasn't a perfect match, but we learned that weekly communication about how everybody is doing is critical in this type of relationship, and Josh learned that maybe computer work satisfies him more than the crazy life of a farmer. Now Josh lives down the road on some neighbors' property--in the peaceful part of the valley.
Now we have a whole family apprenticing with us. Wes Hamilton, Alison DeNio, and their two sons, Noah (3) and Oliver (1), joined us from North Carolina this spring. They think they want to have their own farm, and are here to learn what that's like. So far so good! They made a tremendous shift in uprooting their family to live and work with a bunch of folks they didn't know, and we're really glad they're here. As the season continues, we will have many opportunites to grow and learn with them, too.
We have done a lot of thinking about our goals with our apprentices. We have learned that clear, consistent communication (stating right away that this is hard, dirty work) can make a difference between a good experience for an apprentice or a mediocre one. We also have to challenge ourselves to provide the time for communication in the heart of the season. We have to listen to what our apprentices are telling us.
We demand a lot of hard work for the knowledge we share. How can we make sure both sides are getting what they need and above all, feeling like a member of a team?
Farming is not a job, it's a way of life. It calls on you to work where you live, think about ten things at once when your exhausted, learn about new things everyday and solve problems you don't know the answers to, put your family in second place without any notice, and appreciate the beauty of physical labor and monotonous tasks. The only way to understand the impact this type of work has on your life is to live it.
This is what I hope our apprentices gain an understanding of, along with the practical information about succession planting, cover cropping, marketing, and the rest.---Jenni

This Week's Vegetables
Snap Peas: We hope you liked these last week. Try them this time in salad or for snacking.

Broccoli: Broccoli is a cool weather crop that we grow in the spring and the fall. This is a variety called Emperor.

Bok Choi: This is the last of the season.

Green Butter Lettuce: Some folks could eat a salad every day, some would never miss it. For those of you who love salads, we are offering an extra head of Red Salad Bowl this week.

Arugula: This is a wonderful salad green, famous for its spicy bite. My mom used to serve it to me as a kid (along with broccoli rabe) and I used to wonder why nobody else had such a rough childhood. Now I know I was fed the healthiest green around. Arugula has more calcium per serving size than even kale or collards!
Add the leaves to your green, pasta, or potato salad. Put it on your sandwiches or quesadillas.
Storage: This green should be eaten earlier in the week. Store in plastic bag in fridge.

Chioggia Beets: Chioggia's have a wonderful bullseye pattern when you cut them open. This picking is sweet and tasty, too. And remember, you can eat the greens. See recipes below.

Recipes

Simple Beet Greens
Greens from bunch
1 Tablespoon olive oil
2-4 garlic cloves
Water
Salt to taste

Wash greens and chop stem below the leaves into ¼ to ½ inch sections.
Heat oil in skillet and add garlic, sauteing for about 30 seconds. Add stems and saute a minute more.
Add leaves and cook for 8 to 10 minutes, covered. Peek a couple of times to see if you need to add a little water to keep mixture from sticking.
When all is tender, but not mushy, remove from heat and season carefully with salt--the greens are already high in sodium.
Serve with a little lemon juice if you desire.

Shredded Beets and Greens with Sliced Oranges
This is a recipe from Greens, Glorious Greens that I've modified somewhat.
A lot of recipes for greens tell you to discard the stems, but we never do that--it seems wasteful. Instead, chop the greens and stems separately and when cooking, add the stems first to give the thicker part of the plant more cooking time.
When we apprenticed at Full Belly Farm in California, another apprentice always made beet salad with walnuts, so I added those to this recipe as well.

Greens from your bunch, washed
1tablespoon olive oil
1 medium onion, sliced into thin half moons
1-2 cups coarsely grated beets
1 orange
1/4-1/2 cup walnuts

Dressing:
Juice from one orange
1 teaspoon Dijon-type mustard
2 tablespoon olive oil
Salt to taste

Cut off the beets, then wash the leaves well and chop off the bottom part of the stems into ¼ inch sections. Cut remaining leaves into ½ inch strips. Set aside.
Heat oil in large skillet. Add onions until soft and translucent.
Meanwhile, peel and coarsely grate beets. Add to onions and saute about 2 minutes. Add stems at this time as well.
Stir in greens. Cover and cook on medium-low heat until greens are tender, about 8 to 10 minutes. Remove from heat.
Chop walnuts and add to skillet.
Mix orange juice, mustard, olive oil, and salt. Drizzle over cooked beets and greens, and walnuts.
Peel orange and section. Cut sections in half and add to skillet without mixing in. Serve.

Two week forecast:
summer squash, greens, kohlrabi

Nothing happens in living nature that is not in relation to the whole
--Goethe

Who's Who in the Crew
Patty Zanski has been working with plants for about five years now. She started out by planting a garden in her backyard and working for a greenhouse and landscaping service in Northern Wisconsin.
Now Patty works for Featherstone three days a week and continues to improve her garden. She uses the biointensive system which relies on healthy, organic soil and close plant spacing to produce abundant crops. As Patty wrote to us when looking to work on a farm two years ago, "I am excited about this work and feel a calling to being in the dirt."
Patty's "dirty work" this year includes managing the small greenhouse where all of our transplants are started and attending Rochester market every other week. As the senior crew member, she often finds that new crew members look to her for answers about daily tasks on the farm. Patty says this is somewhat stressful because she feels pretty new at farming herself, but also says it's good for her because it pushes her in new directions.
We are very grateful for Patty's presence at Featherstone. She has given the farm a great deal in her time here. She and her partner, John, have just bought a house in LaCrosse, so she may not be farming on her own anytime soon. But if she decides to walk that path, she'll do a great job.