This week’s harvest
Mustard Greens
Garlic Scapes
Green Kale
Salad Mix
Red and Green Head Lettuce
Kohlrabi OR Radishes
Strawberries (grown chemical free by a neighbor)
Potted Herb (chose between Sage, Basil, Thyme, Oregano, Savory, and Mint)
Fruit Share
Strawberries from Downing Fruit Farm
Welcome to Week 1 of the 2013 CSA season! Before we fill you in on what has been going on the farm this week we are going to take minute to let our members know how to find information about their CSA box (don’t worry if you aren’t immediately familiar with everything in your box, we’ll tell you what everything is and give you ideas on cooking all of these great vegetables).
All CSA posts can be found in the CSA category link that you should see in the toolbar to your right. Simply click on the “CSA” link and you can find all posts related to the CSA.
If there is a vegetable that you are not familiar with or are looking for new ideas on using less familiar veggies try typing it into the search bar or click on the vegetable in the list of veggies in today’s box. Most unfamiliar vegetables have their own page with descriptions, cooking information, and some recipes. Veggie notes can also be found under the “food notes” category.
We will also be posting farm notes with updates and information on what we are working on and how the crops are doing. These notes can be found under the “farm notes” category.
Hopefully all this info will help you get the most out of your CSA boxes and will give you a look into what we do to grow your veggies. Please let us know, either via email or by commenting on a post if you have any questions.
Farm Notes:
The thing about the weather so far this year is that the forecasters have been way off! We are constantly trying to plan our work days around the weather to get everything done. We are so glued to weather websites that both our children learned the word “radar” before they turned 2! So, it has been frustrating to plan a raining day work day when the chance of rain has been 90% only to have it not rain and vis-versa. Last week we got caught in rain storms not once but 3 times! All three times Ben was on the tractor!
The picture above shows us side-dressing the crops with ReVita fertilizer — one of the tractor jobs Ben was doing when rain hit last week. Fortunately the rain hasn’t keep us out of the fields for long and all of the vegetables have since been side-dressed!
Another major task of the week was seeding the sweet corn. That morning the chance of rain had actually gone down, so we started in on other jobs first. Then at around 3 it became clear that some major weather was about to happen so Emily grabbed the seeder and corn and headed out to the fields. She got 3 and 1/2 beds seeded before she was tackled by pellet sized rain drops coming in hard and sideways. Needless to say, she was soaked in seconds along with all that sweet corn seed. If seed gets wet it’s ruined. Fortunately we had a couple flexible workers working that day, so we all shifted gears and seeded the wet corn seed into flats –just like we do with all transplanted crops. These flats are already happily sprouting corn in the greenhouse. So the first round of sweet corn will be a combination of transplants and direct seeded plants. We had wanted to trial these two methods of planting side by side anyway so it all worked out in the end!
This week’s recipes
Don’t forget to see even more recipes on the linked vegetable pages
Strata with greens and garlic scapes (use kale, mustard greens, kohlrabi greens or a combination)
Simple mustard green sauté (instead or garlic cloves, use 5 garlic scapes, chopped)