Henkimaa » Glacier Valley Farm CSA

Partial locavore

Mel Green — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 05:24:21 +0000

Yesterday I picked up my third box of produce from Glacier Valley Farm CSA. When I got home & unpacked them, I decided to array them on my stove (best lighting) for a little photoshoot. Above, you can see displayed:

From Alaska’s Glacier Valley Farm, VanderWeele Farm:

10 carrots
10 red potatoes
5 yellow onions
1 celery root

From Outside (all certified organic):

2 Bosc pears
kiwi
celery
lacinato kale
green chard
fennel

And also:

a really big squash. I don’t know whether it came from Alaska or from the Lower 48.

The squash, of course, goes to my friend Sylvia, because she still likes squash & still don’t. Some of this other stuff — hmmmm…. what am I gonna do with celery root or a full fennel plant, having never cooked either before? Lucky for me that this week’s issue of the newsletter that Glacier Valley Farm CSA sends out with its boxes, Glacier Grist #59, has some suggestions: I’ll use the celery root & some of the chard, kale, carrots, onions , & potato to make the seasonal soup (probably adding some bison or grassfed beef); & the quinoa salad with apples, pears, fennel, and walnuts suggests a great use for some of the fennel as well as the pear. But tonight I’ll make my own adaptation of an oven potatoes with fennel recipe I found online.

I didn’t order a box for two weeks from now because first I need to play catch-up & use all the stuff I’ve got now. In particular, I’m finding it hard to use the potatoes very quickly. I love potatoes, but I have to be cautious about eating too much of them because they’re a starchy vegetable &, being insulin resistant, I need to moderate my carb intake. But aren’t these potatoes beautiful?

Living in Alaska, it’s hard to be a complete locavore — that is, someone who eats only food that is grown or produced locally. Even this produce box is only partially local. But I’m glad to be able to be at least a partial locavore. I’m reducing my carbon footprint because trucking stuff in from the Valley costs a lot less fuel than shipping it up from the Lower 48; I’m supporting Alaska famers; & wow — such great food! Just $35 for the box.

Time to go cook.

The Daily Tweets, 2010-02-24: Local produce is better than government by corporation

Mel Green — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 06:45:00 +0000

No more payphones: ACS pay phones across the state will be gone by April 30 http://bit.ly/coFN3f #
@feliciaday Make sure you’re getting enough magnesium & other minerals! Important to look out for on low-carb diets. in reply to feliciaday #
@megancarriker @feliciaday Here is a better & more accurate account on carbs as “necessary.” They’re not. http://bit.ly/apfvjj #
RT: @bioneers: People’s Constitutional Convention Campaign launched in PA — http://bit.ly/d8rsCu // Govt by the people not by corporations! #
@nethenekhthon So you still have a villain? But a charming rascally villain? in reply to nethenekhthon #
Off to pick up my fresh produce from Glacier Valley Farm CSA. http://www.glaciervalleycsa.com/ #

A box of produce, & homemade sauerkraut

Mel Green — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 08:59:53 +0000

Lucy Cuddy Hall on the UAA campus, one of a number of Glacier Valley Farm CSA's dropoff locations in Anchorage

Yesterday I picked up my second order of produce from Glacier Valley Farm CSA. CSA, again, stands for community supported agriculture; I wrote a long post about it when I picked up my first produce order a couple of weeks ago. I didn’t take as many photos of it this time, but up there you can see it was a pretty good sampling of fresh yummy produce.

This week’s goodies included:

From Alaska’s Glacier Valley Farm, VanderWeele Farm:

Alaska-grown onions
Alaskan-grown potatoes, a whole bunch of ‘em
A big pile of Alaska-grown carrots, which are the best kind of carrots I’ve ever eaten.

This week 13 boxes were delivered by Glacier Valley Farm CSA to the Lucy Cuddy Hall pickup point.

From Outside (all certified organic)

3 Fancy Fuji apples
3 large navel oranges
2 bunches of Rainbow chard. I think one of these was supposed to be romaine lettuce, but that’s okay, I like chard well enough I won’t have problems eating it all.
sunchokes. I don’t have a clue what to do with these, but I’m sure Google will have an answer.
broccoli

And also:

a really big squash. I don’t know whether it came from Alaska or from the Lower 48.

I’ve never liked squash, so I took mine over to my friend Sylvia, who really loves it. I like everything else. Had one of those oranges in my lunch today.

GVFCSA includes stuff from the Lower 48 during the wintertime because, hey, it’s winter in Alaska so a lot of that stuff is out of season up here. The Alaska-grown stuff they include in their produce boxes in the wintertime are storage veggies. Thus, GVFCSA can claim to be the only year-round CSA in Alaska. But there are some other really good CSAs in the Anchorage/Mat-Su area, too, including Arctic Organics, which is the oldest CSA in Alaska & serves about 150 families with its CSA program; and Spring Creek Farm, which belongs to Alaska Pacific University & began a CSA program in 2007. They also have an Environmental Learning Center. Like Glacier Valley Farm, these two farms are located in the Palmer area of the Mat-Su Valley.

If you live in another part of Alaska, you might be able to find another CSA through the Community Supported Agriculture page on the Last Frontier Locavores website (though I don’t know how up-to-date it is). There’s a lot of them in the Fairbanks area! Also check out the website of the Alaska Community Agriculture Association. This is an organization of small Alaska farms which grow food crops for direct sale to the public, whose members are — per their mission statement — “committed to promoting, supporting, and working towards sustainable and regional local food systems. We want to encourage agricultural practices that benefit our environment, our communities, and our customers.” They’ve got a good page of links to CSAs, farmers’ markets, & other community agriculture resources.

My first order of produce from Glacier Valley Farm CSA included a humongous Alaska-grown cabbage. Somehow I didn’t get a photo of it when it was still whole, but take my word for it: it was big & beautiful.

I used it last week to make sauerkraut. I also had some red cabbage that I’d bought at the Natural Pantry, my usual grocery store.

Making sauerkraut is easy, but it can take awhile. Took a long time to chop all that cabbage up, mixed in a bit of salt & caraway seed, then kinda pound it down to bring out the brine. (For lack of anything better, I used my metal Kaladi Brothers car cup: worked great.)

Here’s my sauerkraut the night I made it.

There’s no water added other than about four or five tablespoons of lactic-acid rich “water” from some fruit kimchi my ex-partner Ptery (then named Rozz) made three years ago, that’s still in the fridge (& still good!). All the rest of the fluid is simply the brine from the cabbage itself, which I guess the salt helps to draw out. That kimchi fluid had the stuff to begin the process of fermentation that makes cabbage, salt, & good guy bacteria into really tasty sauerkraut.

I took a bunch of other pictures of the sauerkraut that night because macros of it made some really nice abstract sauerkraut art.

Here’s the same batch of sauerkraut two days later. See all those bubbles? Fermenting nicely.

Fermentation had also caused the cabbage to rise up in the jar (an Italian-made jar with a lid that provides a hermetic seal).

You might also notice how much more purple the lower region of the sauerkraut is than the upper region. That’s because when I first cut up the cabbage, I didn’t think all of it would fit, so I kept about a third of the light green Alaska-grown cabbage out. Then looked like it’d fit after all, so I put in the rest of the light cabbage.

I first tried out some of my cabbage last Friday while I was watching “Caprica” (hence my Daily Tweets post that day, “Caprica w/ sauerkraut”). That was about three days after it was made, & it was pretty good! But sauerkraut is even better after you’ve let it age a bit. Here’s what it looked like tonight, when I had a small bowlful with my dinner. See how the dark purple pigments from the “red” cabbage have mixed all up to make my sauerkraut pink?

Yummy good. And good for you too. Sauerkraut has tons of Vitamin C, & the fermentation process means there’s also lots of good guy bacteria to keep your internal flora all nice & happy.

Please enjoy my Sauerkraut Slide Show:

Local farmers, local food

Mel Green — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 02:06:57 +0000

In the wake of my mother’s death in late 2005 from complications of diabetes, I completely overhauled my diet in early 2006. My growing consciousness food extended not only to what kind of food I was eating, but also how food is produced and marketed — & interestingly enough, turns out that there’s a lot of overlap between crap food that leads to chronic lifestyle diseases like Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, etc. & crap ways of producing foods — for example, the megaindustrialization of food production that has led to the Standard American Diet (SAD indeed) & the preponderance of vending machines, fast foods, & the carbs in a box that fill out our grocery store shelves.

To my mind, the industrialization of the food system is not only just as antidemocratic as the rest of the corporate way of doing things, but is unhealthy to boot. So thank goodness for the farms of the Mat-Su Valley, whose in recent years have been bringing fresh, Alaska-grown produce into Anchorage grocery stores and farmer’s markets. What’s more, now there’s a Mat-Su based community supported agriculture program that weekly (except the first week of each month) delivers boxes of fresh Mat-Su produce to Anchorage subscribers (as well as subscribers in Eagle River, the Mat-Su, Girdwood, & Homer).

I learned about Glacier Valley Farm CSA a couple of weeks ago, & immediately made my first order. Yesterday I went to pick it up.

What’s community supported agriculture? Glacier Valley Farm CSA’s website explains it very well:

A Community Supported Agriculture program is a community of people who pledge support to a farm operation so that the community feels a sense of ownership of and responsibility for the farm. The growers and consumers support each other and share the risks and benefits of food production. Subscribers to the CSA program pledge some amount in advance to cover some of the anticipated costs of the farm’s operation. In return, they receive shares in the farm’s bounty throughout the growing season, as well as satisfaction gained from connecting with the land and participating directly in food production. Members also share in the risks of farming, including poor harvests due to unfavorable weather or pests. By selling directly to community members rather than selling their produce wholesale, the growers receive better prices for their crops and gain financial security, because they have a guaranteed market for their vegetables.

Glacier Valley Farm CSA is operated by Arthur Keyes of Glacier Valley Farm in Palmer — who also started the South Anchorage Farmer’s Market in 2006 with his father-in-law Ben VanderWeele — and Alison Arians, a farmer’s market customer who now runs the CSA’s website (as well as the South Anchorage Farmer’s Market website) and writes the CSA’s weekly newsletter. She’s also has a blog, Alison’s Lunch, about cooking & eating local food, & is the author of the South Anchorage Farmers’ Market Cookbook, which one can buy at the CSA website. Or, I learned last Saturday, from my favorite writing venue, Side Street Espresso, which gets its bread — good stuff! — from the Rise & Shine Bakery owned by Alison & her husband Dan. GVFCSA fills its boxes with produce not only from Glacier Valley Farm, but also from other Mat-Su farms including VanderWeele Farms, Three Bears Farm, Stockwell Farms, Bush’s Bunches, Lewis Family Farm, and (next summer) Kenley’s Alaskan Vegetables. During the winter, when the Mat-Su is under snow, local Alaska produce is mainly of storage vegetables like potatoes, beets, carrots, & cabbage, with greens & other fresh veggies & fruits shipped up from organic producers in the Lower 48.

I was very glad when I checked the CSA’s website to learn that one of its pick-up locations was Lucy Cuddy Hall on the UAA campus — just across campus from where I work. So a couple of weeks ago I placed my first order, & yesterday walked across campus to pick it up.

As I arrived, three other women were had just finished transferring their produce from boxes to their own bags:

Here’s what my box looked like when I opened it:

The lettuce & arugula were hiding some of the other goodies in the box, so I lifted them out of the way to get another photo:

I transferred the whole works to my pack, using a plastic bag as an inner liner.

Glacier Valley Farm CSA resuses the boxes, so before I left Cuddy Hall I did as as people before me had done — broke down my box to make it easier for the CSA to pick them up. There were still a number of boxes that hadn’t yet been picked up. I counted a total of 13 boxes, both broken down & still full. It’s possible that some people had taken the full boxes, to be returned later — but basically looks like about 13 people in the UAA community (faculty/staff/students) or who live/work in the university area are getting fine quality produce through community supported agriculture. Glacier Valley Farm CSA has another 18 or so pick-up locations for its produce in Anchorage, Eagle River, Girdwood, the Mat-Su, & the Kenai (in Homer).

I take the bus to & from work, so it was important to me that my boxload of produce be something I could carry. No problem! — though I got quite a bit sweatier humping it on my back across campus to my office (since I still had another hour at hour at work). Not so bad going home — the cold outside more than took care of the heat I generated from carrying it. Good exercise, I reckon. Once I got home with it, I put my pack on the scale & found I’d carried 25.2 pounds — of which probably about 22 pounds was the produce.

Here’s what was in my box:

From Glacier Valley Farm and VanderWeele Farm in the Mat-Su:

5 onions
10 potatoes
1 large head of cabbage
3 beets

From the Lower 48 (all certified organic):

3 Pink Lady apples
3 Cara Cara oranges
3 kiwi fruit
1 large head of green butter lettuce
1 big bunch of arugula
1 bunch of watermelon radishes
4 garnet yams
1 box of grape tomatoes

Not bad for $35 — & all of it of very high quality. Here’s some of it after I unpacked it at home onto my kitchen counter.

Here’s a closer look at the radishes. Big, plump, & gorgeous. Not only that, but attached to them are those great radish greens. It’s incredible to me that I used to just throw away radish green. It wasn’t until three or four years ago that it occurred to me that, hey, might they not be edible too? Well, of course they are! They can be used just like any other greens in salads, soups, etc. It’s a good idea, though, to separate them early from the radishes themselves — they’ll keep a bit longer that way, but will get slimy & yucky pretty quickly if you store them with the radishes still attached. (I also use carrot greens — not in salads, as their kind of ropy for that; but they go well in soups, as the heat makes them more tender.)

A closer look at the onions. These were grown right here in Alaska. Onions are a staple in my diet, so I’m very happy to have these.

The little plastic produce box of grape tomatoes from a organic farm in California were a nice surprise — they were an addition to what Glacier Valley told us would be in this order.

Here’s a couple of the Alaska-grown beets.

I’ve never been a big beet fan, but they’re so damn good for you (see what the World’s Healthiest Foods website has to say about them — which is a powerful motivator for me to learn to like them more), & I don’t actually hate them… so darned it I’m going to let them go to waste. I decided to include some grated beet in a salad.

Here’s the salad I made last night, making use of several items from my order: butter lettuce & arugula, radishes, grated beet, the entirety of a small onion, & a few of the grape tomatoes. I made enough for dinner last night & lunch today. For last night’s salad I added in some canned tuna & a small handful of mixed nuts & seeds (sunflower & pumpkin seeds, almonds, walnuts, brazil nuts). Today’s lunch has the mixed nuts & seeds, but the protein addition today was salmon.

Last night’s dessert: a kiwi fruit. Mmmmm was it good — I didn’t realize I liked kiwi fruit so much! Isn’t it nice they’re good for me too? — Issue #56 of the Glacier Grist (Glacier Valley Farm CSA’s weekly newsletter) informs me that kiwis “contain about as much potassium as bananas, and also contain 1.5 times the Daily Reference Intake for Vitamin C. It is also rich in Vitamins A and E. “

And then I couldn’t help myself, & also had one of the Pink Lady apples. Dessert for lunch today is one of the oranges.

What will I do with the rest of my order? Well, I’ll want to use the lettuce & arugula pretty fast, so they don’t go bad before I eat ‘em — so more salad for the next couple of days. I took two yams, two potatoes, & one of the beets over to my friend Sylvia last night, since she has a limited income & doesn’t often have opportunity to get good produce. The other two beets will go into salads, soups, whatever… I usually have to mix them with other stuff because I find them too sweet on their own. (Kiwi fruit are sweet — why do I have no problem with them on their own? Beats me.) I have to figure out how I’ll use the potatoes and yams — since overhauling my diet in early 2006, which included learning all about the glycemic index, I’ve tended to avoid starchy vegetables. But it shouldn’t be a big deal to just space out my consumption of them. The head of cabbage — which for some reason I didn’t get a picture of — I think I’ll make into a jar of homemade sauerkraut.

Glacier Valley Farm CSA delivers every week except the first week of the month, which works out fine for me because it’ll probably take a couple of weeks for me to eat all this stuff anyway (along with the produce I still had in my fridge from my last trip to Natural Pantry). But I only have to order anyway when I want to. Since I (mostly) live alone, a box every other week will probably suit me pretty well.

I’ll be making another order tonight, which will be delivered February 10. Per GVFCSA, that order should include:

From Alaska’s Glacier Valley Farm & VanderWeele Farm: Alaskan red or yellow onions – Farmer’s Choice | Alaskan Red or Yukon potatoes-Farmer’s Choice | Alaskan Spaghetti squash or from Outside certified organic butternut | Alaskan carrots |
From Outside: certified organic Fancy Fuji apples | certified organic large navel oranges | certified organic kumquats | certified organic romaine lettuce | certified organic Rainbow chard | certified organic sunchokes | certified organic broccoli | certified organic Butternut squash or Alaskan Spaghetti squash-Farmer’s Choice

Yum. Mat-Su carrots are the best. I’m not as thrilled about the squash — I’ve never liked squash — but Sylvia likes it, so it’s all good.

Already, having eaten just two meals from my first produce box, I feel that same sense of fulfillment that I get from farmer’s market food in the summertime. It’s partly because Alaska-grown food is so good. As Arthur Keyes writes:

Alaskan agriculture is the pinnacle of quality and cleanliness. Alaskan carrots have three times the sugar content of the carrots that are being shipped up here, and you can taste the difference! Alaska’s water is pure and our soils are clean. We lack the vast majority of pests that our southern neighbors deal with on a regular basis.

But it’s also that it feels good to support local business & local farmers — contributing to their success, just as their food is contributing to mine. It feels altogether different from buying & eating some kind of boxed food-like product manufactured by some megacorporation, or even getting from buying produce from Carrs or Fred Meyer or even the Natural Pantry, where I don’t have any real sense of connection with the people who grew it. When you buy & eat local, you really are forming a connection and a sort of gift exchange with other people in your community, which is good for our health politically, economically, & spiritually too.

And I’ve gotta say that after last summer’s import of people from Wasilla to testify against equal rights in Anchorage, it’s awfully nice to enjoy & celebrate the real goodness & bounty that is native to the Mat-Su.

Thank you, farmers of Mat-Su. You rock!

The Daily Tweets, 2010-01-27: Community supported agriculture

Mel Green — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 06:45:00 +0000

Brilliant blog: how to catch an iPhone thief. Wanna feel good about catching a bastard? here it is! http://bit.ly/asEu8P #
How to subscribe to the UAA Justice Center blog (my workplace) http://bit.ly/jcblog #fb #
Heading over to pick up my first box of produce from Glacier Valley Farm Community Supported Agriculture. Yum! http://tinyurl.com/7azone #fb #
@JanFlora49 @celticdiva All hail farmer’s markets & community supported agriculture! Just picked up my 1st CSA box-o’goodies- fresh veggies! in reply to JanFlora49 #
Sweaty hike back across campus w/ ~22 lbs. of fresh produce on my back. But well worth it! Mat-Su ‘taters, beets, cabbage, onions… #fb #
… & filled in w/ og greens, fruit, yams from Lower 48 (out of season here). Palin isn’t all there is to Mat-Su – Mat-Su farmers rock! #fb #

The Daily Tweets, 2010-01-12: Faux Palin, Prop 8, DADT, & fresh produce

Mel Green — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 08:45:00 +0000

RT: @shannynmoore: Palin is to journalism what Dahmer was to cooking. // She should fit in quite well with Faux News. #
Mainstream media coverage of Cheney & Palin: stenography & “regurgitating press releases.” http://tiny.cc/zDHkY (h/t @celticdiva) #fb #
Bent Alaska: Prop 8 opening arguments and testimony (Day 1). http://bit.ly/6XkeL9 #fb #
FiveThirtyEight: “Homosexual marriage is destroying the sanctity of heterosexual divorce.” http://bit.ly/5r32yH (h/t Tiffany) #fb #
Mr. Corruption Bill Allen finally starts his sentence at Federal Prison Lite ™ in California. http://bit.ly/6twMlC #fb #
RT: @nicolaz: RT @malindalo: AWESOME liveblogging of this morning’s #prop8 trial: http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/23603 #
RT: @celticdiva: White House Plans To Push For ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’ Repeal HuffPost – http://bit.ly/5MvU3A #
@miraclelaurie I’m v. glad to have “met” you via #Dollhouse, & hope to see you in other roles soon. Be sure to tweet about ‘em! in reply to miraclelaurie #
Community supported agriculture: just joined Glacier Valley Farm CSA, 1st delivery of fresh produce on 1/27. Yum! http://bit.ly/gvfcsa #fb #
RT: @907natalie: [re: Glacier Valley Farm CSA] @yksin love them! fantastic group and always happy with their products. // Thanks Natalie! #