Celeriac, carrots, potatoes, turnips if they're good (mine went pithy), and parsnips, peeled, cut in 1-inch dice, and tossed in olive oil, salt, pepper and dried rosemary, then roasted until tender.
I am thankful for the farm's good food.
Member James Donald samples his first green bean of the season, also his first with Heirloom Harvest CSA. He pronounced it sweet.
Don't forget the kale recipes we've got; they're gonna come in handy (thanks, commenting member!). Also, check elsewhere. Kale's just dang healthy.
They look like radish seedlings to your uneducated editor, but Farmer John cleared it up: They're Chinese Cabbage. Wait for them. Your editor is happy to report that on making Grilled Asian Pork Chops and Baby Bok Choy recently, his five-year-old son actually requested additional Bok Choy. (It was provided and consumed. If it takes a little Black Bean Garlic Sauce to get the game up, well, that's just the price of admission.)
The editor would like to admit that food photography is an art, and no one has accused him of being an artist, including the time that he wiped up black oil paint with his new turquoise shirt, when he was 9, and spent the rest of the day in the backyard. Nevertheless, this is what the above recipe looks like while it is cooking. 
Sunday
brought a soaking rain to pickup time. Mimi Cronyn lugged
share support stuff around the watery pickup area. 
There were two strategies that members used to deal
with the rain. They either wore ordinary clothes and got soaked, or sought to
defend themselves, as did these two (click the pic to see them -- artsy blogger alert!) on the way to collect their you-pick
items.
Farmer John stopped a moment from crawling around the eggplant fields where black plastic is set to keep the weeds down to discuss the rain (Farmers like rain, at least when it’s not falling on their heads).
Heirloom Harvest celebrated Earthday 2006 from 1 to 4 pm on Sunday, April 23. The rain forced a change in our plans to walk the farm and pick up trash. Instead, those present filled peat pots and seeded in the barn in between education events that included a discussion of Oxfam's campaign to reform farm policy in the US, and a demonstration of how pollution affects groundwater.
Volunteer Chris Wright and Oxfam representative Stephanie Demmons work to fill peat pots and plant summer squash seeds. 
Barb Harrington (left) from the Crystal Spring Center for Earth Learning gives a demonstration of how pollution from various sources—including a golf course, a factory, a housing development, a clearcut hillside, and a conventional farm—affects ground water.
Audience members participated in the pollution demonstration by playing the roles of the various facility owners on the model. Here, the "factory owner" is pouring effluent into his factory which flows out into a stream, which leads to a river and eventually to a lake and the wetlands where the water changes color from the pollution.
[We are indebted to
Mark Fisette for the next three photos.]
Hopkinton resident and CSA member Kathy Mosher (left) came in with her daughter to help seed start Black Krim heirloom tomatoes, while Trish Stephanko transplants hot pepper seedlings at right.
Kathy is taking an organizational role in the effort in Hopkinton to establish a community farm on the 600 acres of Weston Nurseries land that is coming up for sale in that town. If you'd like more information about how to become involved in helping to preserve a significant portion of the 600 acre parcel for farming, contact Kathy at jkmosher@comcast.net.
Please note: Town water will not be turned on at the farmsite until around last frost in May, so please be sure to bring your own water bottles for drinking water, as the greenhouse can be as hot as 90-plus degrees even when it's only in the 50s outside.
At the Fall Equinox, Renée Moelders captured images of her son, Moritz, and a leopard frog among the leeks. As she points out, the leeks look like a jungle when seen from Moritz's perspective. The frog might well feel the same way, on the damp earth under lots of leeks to keep him moist. 
Madeline and Haley Dorazio picking beans on a recent Sunday.
Joshua Fecteau helps bring in the irrigation pipe for winter storage at the Fall Equinox celebration.
At the Fall equinox, members sang, drummed and played various instruments along to renditions of John Denver's "Country Road" and Woody Guthrie's "This Land is your Land..."
Several CSA members helped move pipe from the field to the barn during the Fall Equinox celebration.
There have been a few changes around Heirloom Harvest recently as college students return to school. Stephanie Fletcher has been promoted from workshare to fulltime farmhand, so you will be seeing a lot more of her around the farm.
For those of you who pick up produce at the farm, Stephanie is the artist who created all of those attractive, helpful new signs that give information about the various crops. If you have a need for an artist to create some signage, she is taking on new projects.
Karen Masterson and her daughter visited Heirloom Harvest recently to pick up cases of collards for her Framingham restaurant, Big Fresh Cafe. We provide her collards all season long, as well as surplus salad greens and other vegetables--when we have a surplus.
Big Fresh is the only restaurant that Heirloom Harvest sells to. Karen is committed to locally sourcing as much of her organic produce for as much of the year as possible. She also is adamant that organic food should be reasonably affordable, and the prices at her restaurant reflect that.
Her commitment to organics and to helping to create a sane local food system manifest in other ways, such as her volunteer work as a board director at the Natick Community Organic Farm. Next time you are in Framingham stop by Big Fresh and spend your dining-out dollars enjoying great food and supporting her efforts.
Stephen Kurina and his son, John, picked cherry tomatoes today. Caught candidly, Stephen was gracious and posed. If you see your blog editor picking next to you some enchanted afternoon, don't you hesitate to vogue either. 
Farmhand Trish Stefanko was visited by her son Travis (center, with backpack) recently for a day of harvesting and tomato tying at the farm. Travis graduated from boot camp last winter and is now a soldier with the 101st Airborne. He was home on leave from where he is currently stationed in Kentucky. Travis will ship out for his first tour of duty in Iraq this September.
Also pictured, Trish's nephew, Ian Foertsch, who is a farmhand this summer. Ian will be starting college at Sterling College in northeastern Vermont this fall. Sterling has a large organic farm on campus, complete with solar and wind-powered barns.
Via member Jen Flaxman (thanks for the recipe! keep them coming!):
Following last Thursday's bounty of green beans and expecting a crowd of visitors over the weekend, I located this recipe, for Green bean Salad With Cilantro and Soy-Glazed Almonds that I thought other CSA members would enjoy. I discovered it on Epicurious.com and it was enjoyed by young and old alike.
I'll see you in the fields! (Editor's note: Below, pictured, are families in precisely those fields.)
Editor's Note: When I went out to pick peas Thursday, I heard:
Tree swallows
Hermit thrush (in the woods)
Red-winged blackbird
Song sparrow
Green frog (I think - sounds like a long thick rubber band being plucked)
I hear birds, because I'm a birder. Joe, my 4-year-old son, also hears insects -- he's got a shorter horizon. Maybe you listen differently -- to small engines, to people's voices, to songs or to stories. What do you hear at the farm?
Michael Franks, distribution co-coordinator for Sundays, relocates produce under stormy skies last Sunday.
Eric Baum recently visitied Heirloom Harvest to help get some tractor work done. Eric started in farming when he was 14 years old, mucking stalls at a Sudbury horse stable. He has dedicated most of his farming career to growing organic vegetables, and now works as a senior farmhand at Land's Sake farm in Weston.
CSA shareholders spread hay as an organic mulch between rows of eggplant planted in black plastic.
Afternoons and evenings around the farm you might see Graham and his remote control airplane looping above the fields. Graham is a former hot-air ballon enthusiast who says that he landed in the fields about 15 years ago at a time when there was no one farming the site.
If you're interested in what the little airplane might see from way up there, this satellite image (courtesy of Google) might give you some idea. To get your bearings: The cemetery one typically drives through is at lower left.
Eva Weiss started last week as one of our new farmhands, and she is pictured here on her first day of tractor training. She will be fulltime through the summer, and if you come to work at the farm, she may be in charge of the crew you work with. Eva has just finished her first year of college at the University of New Hampshire, though she has transferred to the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, for the fall.
On a recent Sunday (from left to right) farmhand Eva Weiss, Stephanie Fletcher, workshare, CSA shareholders Teresa and Elaine, and farmhand Trish Stephanko transplanted brussel sprouts in the barn.
A young CSA member takes a turn in the seat of the cultivating tractor, which will soon be rumbling up and down the beds cutting down weeds. [Remember, no child is allowed to sit in the seat of a tractor without the permission and presence of a member of the farm staff.]
It’s not hot, humid, cold or wet. And best of all, it’s early enough yet that there are no mosquitoes. Now is the time to come to the farm to get your work commitment out of the way. And we need your hours now. To schedule your visit, call or email the member 
work coordinators Larry and Pat Bassett at 508-879-6768 or email us at padoo1-AT-rcn.com. (Please replace "-AT-" with "@" when you use this email address.) Or just stop by the farm on a Sunday, Tuesday or Thursday.
CSA member Beth Lewis carefully places broccoli seeds in a seeding tray on the first day of Spring, March 20th, 2005. In front of her are trays that have recently been seeded with peppers, collards, cabbage, celeriac, and other produce. In the foreground are celery seedlings.
Heirloom Harvest CSA members joined the community at Crystal Spring Ecological Education Center in Plainville on Saturday, March 19th, to celebrate the Spring Equinox, which occurs March 20. (In the definition of the spring, or vernal, equinox from the wikipedia, linked to above, it is described as "the moment when the sun appears to cross the celestial equator, heading northward." More at the link.) Children and community members participated in a play that highlighted the wonders of soil and all the organisms that live in the soil.
The play facetiously featured three planets that visit Earth to appreciate the diversity of life on this planet. (Planets on the right.) 
Other characters in the play included the farmhand (Josh Fecteau), the farmer (Heirloom Harvest farmer John Mitchell), and Crystal Spring, represented by Carole Rossi. The roots were played by the young children that were present, who wore stickers with drawing of worms and soil grubs and microbes to represent the life in the soil around the roots (at left).
The play, written and directed by Barbara Harrington, included the following passage:
ROOTS#1: Life down here (in the soil) is a community. We’ve got lots of creatures to feed, as you’ve heard. Each of these billions of creatures has a community job that draws their gifts from deep within themselves and their relationship with everything else. These days it takes millions of critters to heal and protect us from disease. Many more creatures give themselves to strengthen our great, diverse soil community so that we don’t get washed away.
CRYSTAL SPRING: Amazing, isn’t it! Soil is a cosmic event. It took 3 billion years for Earth to develop 6” of topsoil. Topsoil is an extremely advanced form of Earth life. It now takes a thousand years for Earth to create just one inch of topsoil. Imagine that! The next time you put your hands into the soil, cherish it. Earth is the only planet in our solar system with topsoil. There may have been water on Mars, but there’s never been topsoil there. In fact, there’s no topsoil within a trillion miles of our home planet. We humans know this because we’ve gone looking for it.
FARMER JOHN: When you use chemicals and inorganic fertilizers, you go to war against this precious soil, killing off all the diversity that Earth thrives on.
CRYSTAL SPRING: Worse and worse land and water and atmospheric conditions spread globally, infecting the way we take in the world: what we eat, what we love, how we think, how we act; all life is one.
Crystal Spring also presented a demonstration on how to make compost tea.
***
Afterward, all present went outside for cake, juice and tea. As pictured below, these snacks were thematically appropriate, bringing in worm candy to perpetuate the theme of earth-friendly gardening and farming.
In early March, Heirloom Harvest farmer John Mitchell and Stow farmer Michael Kirkpatrick (left) helped Lunenburg farmer Steve Parker (right) cover his greenhouse with plastic. Here, Kirkpatrick and Parker are readying the plastic to pull over the frame with ropes.
