We hope you had a fantastic Christmas! Our time off allowed us some essential rest and family time. Hopefully, your vegetable drawer is empty and you are excited about a great farm share to kick off 2022! Considering the holiday, I'm going to give everyone a few extra days to customize shares. If this is your first farm share from us, thank you for joining and welcome to our farm community!
This week, we harvested all of the cauliflower. The warm temperatures have been problematic on this crop, especially our first succession. I consulted some other local farmers, and they too are having a problem with their cauliflower developing fungus. Due to the 80 degree days approaching, we decided it best to harvest them early. The heads grew to mostly medium sized, and are absolute stunners! Don't be surprised if you get two, some are on the smaller side! Because we had to unexpectedly harvest this crop, I feel like I must include them in everyone's shares, since I expected to harvest them over the next three weeks. You always have the option to swap them for another vegetable. Speaking of swaps, I included red slicing tomatoes, dill, basil, and blueberry peach jam as extra options for this week. There were lots of extra free-range eggs left after the Christmas shares. To ensure none go to waste, the eggs will be customized into the shares, instead of being offered exclusively as an extra. 1/11 eggs are back as extra/swap options only.
Your salad mix will feature lettuce, pea shoots, arugula, frilly mustard greens, tatsoi, and a few handfuls of spinach. Due to the time off during the holiday, we will not have microgreens in the mix this week. Microgreens will be back in the salad on 1/11. Also available is our mesclun mix-a traditional French salad mix comprised of lettuce, endive (frisee), frilly mustard greens, and arugula.
*** All of our greens that are consumed raw are triple washed, water cooled, dried, and stored in our walk-in cooler. Starting this farm share season, we will no longer wash certain vegetables. When you receive bok choy, kale bundles (or bags), carrot tops, cabbages, or broccolini they will be unwashed. Pests are relatively few this time of year, and those crops have proved too time-consuming to wash to the equivalence of a salad green.
Shares for 1/11-1/15, expect nearly the same selection of vegetable options, plus a magnificent bunch of purple broccolini! During my field walk yesterday, I counted 25 heads of harvestable cabbage, and some sizable bok choys. Good news! We have enough carrots for every week of farm shares until the end of the season. Soon, we will crop out the rest of the yellow carrots, so the bundles will be yellow/orange mixed starting 1-11.
In our home kitchen, we are loving the carrots. Whether they are shredded on a salad, roasted, or sautéed I can't get enough of their sweet flavor. One of my favorite quick sides is butter-braised carrots and radishes, served with a side of sour cream and garnished with fresh dill. Y'all, I'm spoiled on these new year tomatoes! I have been eating a bacon, tomato, and pea shoot sandwich a few times a week for lunch. Often, I get home late from the farm, and unless I have meal prepped for the week, Emi and I's go to meal is a big salad with eggs and hummus. The salad mix, mesclun mix, and microgreens are some of my favorite crops to grow and eat. On social media, I have seen other farm share members getting in on the sandwich action. Ron's air-fried broccolini and cauliflower, tossed in olive oil and spices, looks like a delicious, simple, and fast side! Thank you all for sharing what you cook with us! We love to see it!
I have to express my gratitude for you supporting our farm through a farm share membership. We had an amazing year of sales in 2021. Our gross revenue increased 330% from 2020, largely based on successful farm share seasons. They were made successful because of prior feedback from our members. Key features like customization, crop selection, and pick-up locations have been based on past requests made by our members. Last week, I emailed out a survey for the Fall 2021 season. If you have not had a chance to complete it, please consider taking a few minutes to help us make your experience better. Thank you to those who have participated thus far. Already the shares have improved based on your answers. For instance, you will notice on the vegetable inventory the exact weight (in ounces) of all the crops that we portion by weight. A member asked for this change so they can have a more accurate expectation the share size. It was a simple fix that took a few minutes to accommodate. Any comment, positive or negative, we appreciate!
Have a great week and cook something tasty!
Sincerely,
Conrad Cable
