CSA Organic Produce Share - WINTER SEASON 2012 - Week 3

A Village of Eating
Slow is Fast in the Food World

I remember just 10 years ago you'd be hard pressed to find a cucumber or carrot on St. Croix that wasn't shipped from 2000 miles away or grown locally but sprayed with anything that would keep the worms at bay. Thankfully, times are changing fast. 

The food desert I remember is slowly being replaced day by day by more and more ways to get local and sustainably grown food, but it's not only the farmers who deserve credit for this fertile ground. Enlightened restaurants, markets, chefs, transporters, and home consumers are the links in the chain that make it flow, to name a few.

Here at Ridge to Reef Farm we transformed the former "Creque Slow Down Dinner Experience" into a guest chef series, which we now affectionally call Guest Chef Slow Down Dinners. Originally inspired by the global Slow Food movement, the evolution of this dinner series now includes appearances from the top chefs in the region, such as Brian Wisbauer, Tahirah Abubakr, and Theo Gumbs, as they meet our seasonal selections of organic food. The monthly dinner series here was listed as a top 25 thing to do in the Caribbean by ISLANDS Magazine. Our local food partner Grow VI with Barefoot Bhudda has made an annual event with their own version.

No other place that I know of routinely has as many chefs, farmers, home consumers, and other key players all together to honor and celebrate food to such a peak. Ever since R2R opened the farm gate to all these special people at once, I have learned more about food than I ever expected. It's sort of like our laboratory to see just how far we can take a pumpkin or a lamb or a miracle fruit into a realm beyond words, where texture, taste, and spirits can take us to new places.

Whether it be the next R2R Farm Guest Chef Slow Down Dinner on April 7th, a restaurant that serves local food, or around your own table at home, please join me in raising your glass for the people who make up the supply chain of slow food in the USVI. 

When you embrace the slowness of food, the Founder of Slow Food International Carlo Petrini said, "You reassess the elements of consumer culture, and in rural knowledge, you discover surprisingly simple solutions to problems which speed has made complex and apparently insoluble." It sounds like something we all need to me. What do you think?

In good, slow medicine, 

Nate Olive, Farm Director

source: http://www.miracletrees.org/

WTF (What's That Food)? 

This week's strange food item: Moringa

"Moringa: a supermarket on a tree
Imagine a tree in your backyard that will meet most of your 
nutritional needs, purify your water and take care of you 
medicinally?"

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Moringa Flowers: A source of vitamin A, vitamin C, calcium and iron.

How to use Moringa flowers:

Moringa oleifera flowers are considered a delicacy in many places.They are often mixed into other foods. You can mix the Moringa flowers in salads or fry the flowers in Moringa oil and eat the fried Moringa oleifera flowers as a snack. Especially popular is Moringa oleifera tea. The flowers sit in hot water for at least five minutes to let the distinctive flavor brew. The Moringa flowers tea is considered to have nutritional benefits and to be a powerful medicine.



















For more info on Moringa check out the following video:

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Nadja with our cute little friend Sugar

Meet the Farmer...

Nadja Hofmann, farm apprentice

My days at Ridge to Reef Farm as an apprentice are numbered. During the last six months I have been receiving insights into all the different parts that the farm is involved in. I have been out in the fields, represented the farm at locally grown market, served at Guest Chef Slow Down Dinners and looked behind the scene of managing such a creative farm business.

I have seen the slow season where only three people lived on the farm and am still experiencing the season full of programs with a growing number of staff. Most of all, I had the chance to experience a community the whole six months, no matter how many people shared this valley at a time. I experienced how supportive, understanding and loving my new home is. The fact that money is not the most important matter at the farm but the well-being of the people that work here and live around us has been proven to me several times. I cannot tell how happy I am that such a place exists in a world where materialistic point of views seem to prevail and how glad I am that I have found a home and a family here.

I hope everyone of you can feel the love that goes into the produce you are receiving every week, and I hope you will have the opportunity to come and meet your farmers one day to get a glimpse of the world that we are living in.

You might be able to sign up for language classes with the sheep, goats, chickens or if you are really lucky with our donkey Pipen. I took all of their classes :-)

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Slow Time before the dinner

From the field...

Hold up! Wait a second! Come on over here! And slooow dowwwn! What am I talking about? Ridge to Reef farm’s Guest Chef ‘Slow Down Dinners’ of course. Usually twice monthly we invite the community to our farm for a 5 course chef-prepared meal using primarily produce from our land. The different backgrounds of the chefs are as diversified as their cooking styles and are an attraction in themselves.
 
On a typical Slow Down Dinner day the chefs arrive early in the day to scope out what ingredients they can use. With ease and flow, chefs set to work around noon chopping, dicing, soaking, and preparing the many colorful ingredients on the kitchen counter. When finally, the evening rolls into the valley, 20 to 50 guests make their way to the majestic mahogany community center for a twilight candle-lit setting.

Last week was my third slowdown dinner and though the tastes were dramatically different from the previous ones, the ambiance was similar. After the plates are set and the flowers arranged on the tables, it is time to relax and socialize. I really enjoy the conversations over good food with people I have never met before and I've really come to appreciate the community that the farm draws around itself. What a merry time it is!

~ Julia Meurice, former R2R student


PO Box 2903 - Frederiksted USVI 00841 - www.visfi.org - info@visfi.org - 340 220 0466
Ridge to Reef Farm @ the Virgin Islands Sustainable Farm Institute

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First CSA delivery to St. Thomas, picture by Sarah Haynes

The Week's Harvest

Cucumbers
Ovation Greens*
Pink Lady Radishes
Arugula
Lettuce Mix
Green Bananas
Purple Top Turnips
Basil
Moringa Flowers
Eggs


*Ovation Greens:
This week's CSA box contains a bag of greens: a great combination of both mild and spicy ingredients. It includes Red Mustard, Mizuna, Tatsoi, Kale, and Arugula.

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Farm Recipes
Pickled Cucumbers & Turnips

by Jakob

You need:
Cucumbers & Radishes
Onion & Garlic
Vinegar & Water
Black Pepper

Directions:
1. Wash and cut cucumbers, turnips, onion(s) and garlic.
2. Fill a closeable jar with water and vinegar (half/half).
3. Add chopped up veggies and black pepper into jar.

Let closed jar sit in the fridge for at least a few hours. Then enjoy.

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THANK YOU HOSTS!

Pick-up times

Polly's at the Pier Frederiksted, St. Croix 
Wed 3:30-5:30pm

Barefoot Buddha Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas 
Thurs 11:30am-1:30 pm 

Miriam's Restaurant Christiansted, St. Croix 
Sun 4 -5:30pm


M2M (member to member)

We invite you to take part in the creation of our weekly newsletters.

Share your recipes and pictures, your experiences with the R2R Farm or your thoughts on sustainable farming matters.

We then will do our best to fit it in and share it in one of our upcoming newsletters.

We look forward to your responses!





Wishlist 

Got some things laying around we can re-use in the CSA

• egg cartons
  
• shallow, sturdy plastic trays for upcoming tomato harvest
  
• milk crates
  
• coolers
  
• zip-locks
  
• popsicle sticks
  
• tarps
  
• any working garden tools
  
• generator, chainsaw, weed-eater
  
• carpentry
  
• sign-making
  
• massages :)
  
• your CSA bags
  
• feedback