~~~Summer Time and the living is easy~~~

Ah yes the long awaited summer is here, and we now are getting to reap all the benefits form veggies, flowers, to lush gardens, birds galore, camping, outdoor music, on and on. We sit inside all winter with ocassional outings waiting and anticipating the leisure of summer. For some of us that is true-children, some teachers maybe, but most of us are still plugging away. Summertime adds the very needed time for house and yard improvements since the temperatures and elements are right on. For farmers summer is the middle of what is the continual busy season. Sooooo when a farmer has an opportunity to host a dinner on the farm you bet we are all for it. Braise Restaurant (Dave Swanson) asked us to host a Dinner on our Farm in for 2013. The dinner proved delightful and delicious and we were all up to do more in the future. Dinners on the farm not only keep our garden goals in check but allow us to share our home space and work space with others who seemingly appreciate it. This year we were up for as many as Braise wanted to partake in. We settled on two 4 course dinners and a Pig Roast/Potluck in the fall October 8th (http://www.braiselocalfood.com/shop-1/pig-roast-pot-luck-bonfire). The Pig Roast still has tickets available. Braise uses ingredients from our farm we grow, Jacqui of Willoway Farm harvests flowers for the tables, and The Freques this year played music for both 4 course dinners with Braise. The Freques consist of a lady and 3 gentlemen playing so far 13 original homegrown tunes and some familiar folk and darn good covers of artist. The fine Lady Jamie Sue of the Freques has been a long time friend of WIloway Farm and over the years you may have seen her hosting our Farmer Market Stand. 

The Freques perform an original song while we wine and dine

We are about to host another Garden to Table Dinner this weekend on Saturday August 20th (tickets are still available-check our event page). This event is about community: The Fredonia Area Garden Club is putting on this event to raise money for various garden workshops which is free to our local community. This event is for 21 and over due to the amazing local beer being served from THE FERMENTORIUM BREWERY AND TASTING ROOM of Cedarburg, WI. The pig is an organic pig raised by a local organic dairy farm of Kewaskum -Kevin Thull. And the rest of the foods being served are form all these Fredonia Garden Club members gardens and farms form the surrounding area! Starting time is 5:30 pm. For Tickets-  Lisa 262-692-9650 or Nancy 262-692-6070 

Our Week 11 CSA share this week consist of Dill leaf, cilantro, edaname bean, green bean, heirloom tomatoes, heirloom cucumber Edmundson, lemon cucumber, Green finger cucumber and seedless Japanese cucumber, zuchini summer squash and Italian heirloom summer squash, heirloom onions, and garlic, sweet corn, chard, broccoli, beets or carrots and more. This week Thursday also receives sunflower sprouts. CSA members please note the Egg CSA share is ending. Those who receive weekly eggs this is the last week. If you have the half egg share your CSA share (every other week ) will end at the end of the month. 

Dinner in our Garden Setting flowers by and grown by Willoway Farm. (Braise Restaurant of Milwaukee brought all the lovely tables, chairs, linens , glasses and silverware)

While harvesting pulling weeds in the carrot garden bed I view the Cedar Waxwing eating the newly ripened elderberries. So for anyone interested in elderberries fresh picked please contact Jacqui at 262-692-9691 or email us. 

Floral arrangements consists of garden blooms such as: dahlias, forget me nots, elderberries, globe amaranth and other amaranths, zinnias, lisianthus, hops native lobelia, snapdragons, sweet peas , sunflowers, cosmos, and surely many other miscilaneous flowers.

For those partaking in the flower bouquet CSA  you have about 6 more weeks. Dahlias are starting to bloom. Changing water daily will help their vase life. Lemon juice and removal of all leaves can be good for stem life too. But some flowers do not like lemon juice. Zinnias do not like to be stored under 50 degrees. ...little flower notes.

The Freques, our son Sam "standing in", and a moon

Dan and I are ever so grateful to everyone who has attended and plans on attending an event at our farm, we also give thanks to Braise and their staff, our family who helps out alot and The Freques for serenading us this summer in our garden. Having this much talent visiting our farm with kind guest enhances our children's lives immensely and that is priceless, thank you and thank you again. We recently we able to see some of our CSA 2016 members at a dinner and hope to see more in the future. We are fortunate to live at the foothills of The North Kettle Moraine area & the woods of the North Branch Milwaukee River and we would recommend taking advantage of the trails at The North Kettle Moraine Trails and followed by  A Garden TO Table Dinner  with organic PIg Roast by The Fredonia Garden Club August 20th or A Pig Roast Potluck with Braise Restaurant MKE October 8th. Cheers and happy Salsa making.

Garlic Scapes : 

- Just Like the garlic clove, garlic scares have great detoxification, anti inflammatory, and nutritional value. 

-They are high in vitamin C, calcium, and help strengthen the immune system

PREVENTION- Garlic Scapes help prevent heart disease, cancer, and high blood pressure.

-try it in story fry , hummus or chopped salad

Garlic Scape Pesto:

1 cup of basil, 1 cup garlic scape(or substitute with two full cups of basil), 1/2tsp sea salt and black pepper, 1/4 cup pine nuts, 1/4 cup parmesan cheese, 1/2 cup of extra virgin olive oil, juice of 1/2 lemon (optional)

Place the ingredients in a food processor. Add salt, pepper, pine nuts and cheese.

Snow Peas: 

-PACKED with Vitamin C

-Great source of vitamin A and fiber

-May even help with fertility!

-These are a must try for stir fry. 

Also in your basket- Chard, Kale, Lettuce mix with edible Nasturtium Flowers, Lettuce head, cabbage or golden beets

With Chard and Kale we cut the leaf from the stems. The stems are edible but take longer to sauté then the greens. Chard takes about 3-5 minutes and kale takes 5-8 minutes to salute and be ready for eating. The stems can be sauce longer with your other choice veggies. Kale is great in a salad using vinegars to wilt it -google balsamic vinegar,kale, parmesan, walnuts -or some nuts and you will find variety of choices for kale vinegar salad. Greens can be stored in plastic bags or your favorite tupperware to prolong shelf life. We give all crops harvested (except tomatoes, some herbs, and a few misc others) a cool down bath in water to help hold the shelf life of the greens. Kale and chard often goes in our egg breakfasts with many other ingredients.

**PLEASE REMEMBER TO RETURN YOUR BASKETS WHEN RETURING TO PICK UP LOCATION**

####Tickets are still available for the  Dinners on the Farm with Braise Restaurant July 30th and August 13th with musical guest The Freques! ####

Intro to the CSA 2016

Willoway Farm Giant Garlic

Good Day Everybody,

This is Jacqueline to give you some notes about our CSA and what was in our basket. We will do podcasts in the future but for now Dan and I thought sending some photos with text would help get people acclimated to receiving their first seasonal local produce basket. It is Week 1 of our 20 week CSA and you can smell and taste the goods of early June. This spring has been ever interesting with the variant temperatures.  The occasional rains have been plentiful to aid in growth for the crops. We are seeing our typical June activity take hold, plants are growing and the weeds are as well. Our activities include more to be planted, more seeding to occur, harvest and the continuous maintaining of the weeds via hoeing or hand weeding. June is another critical months to stick to the garden which will reflect on the growing season. We have noticed perennial and crops planted in the fall such as garlic seem to be at least a week at last ahead at this time of  year. Asparagus for instance started production early and is slowing down in production so the weeks ahead with asparagus are numbered. 

In your baskets this week we were a  short of one item -many of you received it but some did not -Baby White Turnips. The Baby white turnips can be eaten raw or cooked. Grating the turnips is a nice method of using them whether you add to a salad or sauté for a sauté dish.You also can glaze them or roast them too! Removing the edible greens will help the turnip keep fresh. I have also cut off tops and stored in water in the refrigerator to help keep them firm and fresh longer. We seem to have an ever present maggot worm that loves to munch on baby turnips and radishes. Therefore we have been composting and feeding parts of the undesired pieces to our rabbits-(they eat the greens). We have had the maggot issue before but this year they are hitting lots of our radish/turnip successions. 

Other then that this is what you would have gotten- 

HERBS: most herbs you can dry for a later use or slip into vinegars for extra flavors

 Oregano- larger fuzzy leaf bunch

Lemon Thyme

Lemon Thyme- This has small leaves great with poultry or fish dishes, or homemade salad dressings.

Red Russian Kale- Eat this fresh allowing it to sit in some vinegar of choice (we have used balsamic with  fresh grated parmesan. Or you can sauté and add to dishes with your green onions, or add to omelettes etc. Red Russian Kale is known to be one of the sweetest varieties of the kale varieties.

Bellesque Frisee

 Frisee (a little bitter in flavor, can be added to salads , or cooked(wilted) in a pan. There're many recipes for Frisee if you google it.

Lettuce Head- most were tensional butterhead, there were a few Red romaine and then some green volunteers that reseeded from last year which got huge in our High Tunnel.

Heirloom Lettuce Mix tripled washed and spun out dry. The bags holding it are biodegradable and keep the lettuce mix fresh. We have been told it has kept for 10 days.

Asparagus

Rhubarb- can be frozen just as is no process, sometimes this is done to save for the ripening of strawberries since typically rhubarb is ready to harvest sooner then strawberries.

Green Onions (strong flavor)

spinach (we were a little short on spinach due to poor germination-Milwaukee delivery received spinach) (Tuesday members received pea shoots)

*Next Week we anticipate strawberries and succulent garlic scapes to be new items in the baskets. 

Flower Bouquets (somewhat varies but these are all the different materials I have growing on the farm that made it into bouquets.)included:

Peonies, Pasque seed heads, Solomon seal, anemones, ranunculus, chocolate mint, Motherwort, lupine, foxglove, siberian Iris-buds will open but not last very long, sorrel seed heads for filler. I might be forgetting one but that pretty much covers it. 

**Poppies are just beginning and I did have a loss in my poppy transplants this year so I may not have as many poppies as planned-they last maybe 2 days in a vase. Poppies sap from the cut stem polite the water for other flowers. Each stem is seared to seal it otherwise it could wilt and kill off other blooms. So when recutting stems take that poppy out and handle differently- you could recut it but sear it in boiling water first if you can.

Please note the bushel containers and mason jars can be taken home. We encourage to return the containers and mason jars when returning for the following week's basket or bouquet. If you have your own cloth bags or vases to minimize potential breakage of glass jars bring them and leave the bushel container at the pick-up location. It is necessary for us to have those containers to properly and efficiently package the goods for you so returning them is important to us.

Thank you all for having patience as we getting adjusted to the beginning of the season. We would be happy to receive questions that we could answer in a FARMCAST , because if you are wondering about something chances are someone could be wondering the same thing. Questions will help everyone communicate and have a greater understanding of Willoway Farm and what we grow~~Jacqueline

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Jacqui of Willoway Farm is interviewed by Jackie Beyer. Jacqui talks about her journey into organic gardening with adventures on the way up to  present day!

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Brief Podcast announcing Info for Urban Ecology Center Local Farmer Open House, whats available from farm & upcoming events

Dan of Willoway Farm has conversation with Kelly & Jeff of 3Sisters Community Farm.

December is here and Daniel and I (Jacqueline) at the farm turn inward to work on websites, brochures, seed inventory, seed want list, workshop to be. The high tunnel is still sporting greens and early seeding of flowers. The small greenhouses are about to get a once over with adding compost and yanking any unwanted brush and weeds left over from fall growth. The snow has come, gone yet snowfall potential is not nearly over.

Above is a picture of Daniel’s new project, one among many others. Some of you might had seen the bubble from last spring/summer 2014. Over the summer Dan completed the concrete floor and cantilever and now being winter he can take the time to further work on what will be his workshop. He again has wrapped his workspace. He also will be putting plastic on the first/bottom floor helping to keep the 2nd floor warmer. Dan will custom frame the windows for the workshop. Bit by bit walls will be added to it. Thinking ahead our house and even our wash/packing building will too be wrapped in plastic.  The plastic around the home will be our trial period for a future greenhouse attached to our house.

This fall more tulips, daffodils and Dutch iris were planted so hopefully spring show itself sooner then spring 2014. Then if I get it planted early we should have a nice batch of ranunculus blooms.  Our high tunnel is still housing kale, lettuce mix, some mustard greens, lemon thyme and cardoon; we are picking at for ourselves. We are excited for next spring when we plant tomatoes, peppers, dahlias and sweet peas in the high tunnel…excited to be in a space filled with fruit, herbs and flowers.

There will be much more we do this winter as we settle into the planning months. Please do check out our new website : www.willowayfarm.com

You can now pay online for your CSA –We have Vegetable, Flower and Egg CSA shares available. CSA programs can be gifted. Giving fresh and nutritious food and flowers to a friend plus supporting the local economy sounds win /win to me. Please do note we have new drop off locations:

Kelley’s Drive By Market in Cedarburg

Waxwing on Oakland in Shorewood

Company Brewing 735 E. Center in the Riverwest Area

A home residence on the eastside on Farwell just south of Locust.

Besides these other veteran pick up locations:

Slow Pokes Local Food in Grafton, Outpost in Mequon, Bavette La Boucherie in the Third Ward , The South Shore’s Farmer’s Market, Residence in the Village of Fredonia and on Farm.

Be sure to celebrate the Winter Solstice and stay tuned for our next "Farmcast"

https://soundcloud.com/willoway/tracks

Cheers!