We have an amazing selection of vegetables for the farm shares this week! Thank you to everyone who joined the last few weeks. More farm shares are going out this week than ever before, and we are excited about growing food for you and your families!
This Week
The arugula has to be one of my favorite crops in the shares this week. The first harvest of an arugula succession is always the highest quality. I added lots of kohlrabi this week, but I am disappointed in the slow progress of our first broccolini planting. Hopefully in the next few weeks we will have bundles for every share. We have two pound bags of freshly dug red Irish potatoes, plus radishes, beets, and a few bundles of carrots and turnips as swaps. You can really put together an amazing root medley! Of course there are bountiful amounts of salad mixes and savory, leafy greens. We have a lot of bok choy, so I added those to everyone's shares. I hope that you will try cooking them, these boks are meaty, juicy, and perfect for sautéing.
Additionally, I added lots of jam and jelly flavors for anyone who wants to swap, or add them on to your share!
Next Week
Hopefully, I will be able to add more broccolini bundles. We will still have lots of leafy greens and salad, but right now we are a little short on lettuce. We just planted a new round, so I apologize for anyone who will miss the lettuce for the next few weeks. We have a large harvest of potatoes, so those will be around for a while. The carrots are sizing up great and I look forward to adding more each week. We will start with the yellow and deep purple, as we transition to the orange carrots next month. I also look forward to swinging by Thompson's Peaches and grabbing a few cases of the first peaches of the season! Those will be available as an add-on or swap. We have several more jam flavors planned for this week, like pear/honeysuckle jam, muscadine jelly, and strawberry/watermelon.
Farm Update
We built new irrigation manifolds this week, bought new timers, and finally have all of the irrigation automated. We spent a lot of money this week, and ordered 1000 jam jars, the paper pot transplanter, plus three new attachments for the BCS tractor. Our work is about to become so.much.easier! We planted a lot this week for our summer farm shares like okra, lima beans, cucumbers, and many types of squash. I found some seeds from a few years ago that are OG crookneck squash, the same variety developed and cultivated by Native Peoples.
We harvested over 40 gallons of mayhaws, plus purchased 40 gallons from another farm, so we will have a good stock of mayhaw jelly for the year!
The market in West Monroe was really successful! I never thought our jam would become so popular. I was inspired by Jamboree Jams in New Orleans, and Ayako Family Jams in Seattle to refine our jams, and create a more branded product. I'm really proud of our dedication to using fruit we grow, or source locally, and providing quality packaging that locally grown fruit deserves. We have struggled using the Square Space website to sell vegetables. However, I am working hard on getting everything set up to start selling our jams online and shipping them out.
Community
When you can't sign your friend, family, and neighbors up for farm shares, send them to Fiesta on Eighteenth! We started with just salad mixes, but we now stock an entire shelf of our vegetables! Years ago, it was only a dream to have our produce on store shelves.
You can also find our jam at Fiesta, as well as The Good Daze on Walnut St. in Monroe! Don't forget we are the house salad at Delta Biscuit Company! You can enjoy our vegetables in amazing dishes at Parish Restaurant and Standard Coffee Co, plus try our hot honey pepper jam on The Jammy burger at Enoch's Irish Pub!
I started growing food for myself, because I was dissatisfied with the quality and price food in the grocery stores. We started our first CSA in 2019, because I had always wished for a local vegetable subscription service that featured home delivery. When we started farming full time, we spent a lot of time trying to identify our place within the local food web. We grew crops not a lot of other farm grow around here, and wee realized that there was not a single local food subscription or delivery service. I think that through our farm shares, we are changing the way that people source locally grown food. Since food is a central pillar in every culture, our farm shares are changing culture right here in north Louisiana. Creating a new habit around whole foods is not easy, but this small change not only has a big impact in mine and Kaden's life, but catalyzes positive change through the entire community.
Members
For home delivery members, please consider setting a small cooler, or ice chest outside of your home. It's getting really hot, and even though the deliveries often occur after 4 PM, I would hate for any of your leafy greens to be wilty. A few members set a reminder for setting the cooler out on Thursday mornings. Those reusable ice packs work great and prevent a soggy bag.
Fiesta farm share members, we have more of you picking up than ever before! Thus, their walk-in cooler is going to be PACKED on Tuesday morning. Please do your best to pick up on Tuesday, because it makes things difficult for the staff if there are a lot of bins left in the cooler in Wednesday.
Thanks for tagging us in meals created using farm share ingredients! We have some really talented home chefs! I added some photo's of Ron's root medley, green bean casserole, squash and carrot bread, and lazy cabbage rolls. I'm working now on some cool farm share recipe collaborations with familiar faces from around town! Stay tuned!
