We are excited to officially offer the first-ever Cookie Share! Comrade Cookies are the creations of Emma Hyche, local baker at Devil's Food in Denver and cookie aficionado. The share will run from August to the first week of October and will feature a dozen cookies each week. Ten weeks of delicious, creative cookies for $100. The first week will feature a duo of shortbread cookies: half salted butter-chocolate and half chai-spiced. Think playful spins on familiar classics: a snickerdoodle with graham cracker crumbs, a jam sandwich cookie with homemade jam, a chocolate chip cookie with salty potato chip bits.... and so on. Cookies can be picked up along with your veggies on Mondays and Wednesdays. Gluten-free options are available too! You can click below to buy a share, or bring cash or check to next distribution.
Harvest List: Beets Arugula Garlic Fennel Summer squash Chard Please note this list is dependent on weather and crop conditions, not guaranteed or comprehensive.
This is our irrigation ditch, appropriately named the Agricultural Ditch, although we are one of the last farms (and possibly the only one) using the water for growing crops. We irrigate with living water. We wash our produce with treated, sanitized municipal water but we want to remind everyone to wash your produce again before consuming. We make every effort to keep harvested produce in the best condition possible, which often means handling it as little as possible after it is cut or picked. As the life in our water is not killed chemically or filtered, it brings another source of nutrients to our fields. The water we use comes directly from the mountains, from snowmelt and runoff through a series of canals which are open to the elements. The amount of water which flows to each user varies each year with the amount of snowpack, so we are directly tied to the climate in a way that one is not when irrigating with well or city water. One of the great and occasionally frustrating things about irrigating this way is that it forces us to slow down, and walk. Every time we irrigate, we open up a gate from the ditch pictured above into a holding pond, from which the water flows through a series of pipes set in concrete basins, which allows most of the sediment and debris to settle and not flow through our system. Then we walk the pipes which carry our water to the fields, opening up valves to release air from the line every so often. Our system ends in drip tape, which is the most efficient means of delivering water right to the crop, not flinging it all up in the hot dry air to be evaporated, and also not irrigating walkways. The ditch system has a long history in Colorado, with prehistoric water infrastructure visible at Mesa Verde, and the Spanish settlers brought the acequia system, which was itself was brought to Spain from the Arab world. This system treats water as a shared resource and not as a commodity to be bought or sold. Widely in the past, and still in a few small towns the entire community would spend a day walking the ditch in spring and cleaning it up. Still today if your property borders an irrigation ditch you are responsible to maintain it so that others downstream can still use it. In this way it does retain some of the original, animating communal spirit.
Recipe: MOROCCAN BEET SALAD There are endless debates to be had over cooking beets, whether to boil, roast or steam ... but if you roast, please cover them and put a little water in with them so you don't wind up with shriveled-up beet chips. INGREDIENTS 1/3 c olive oil 1/4 c balsamic or red wine vinegar 1 T honey 1 T mustard 1 t cumin 1 t coriander 1 t turmeric 1/2 t cardamom 1/2 t cinnammon salt PREPARATION Cook beets, until just tender. Place in ice bath and slip off the skins (I only do this for big beets, you can use the small ones without peeling). Mix with above ingredients. You can use the beet greens steamed and chopped finely if desired. There are a few variations on this basic recipe which are delicious, for example you can throw in some golden raisins and nuts such as chopped almonds.