Welcome to our summer CSA! I think you've all got an idea of how this works, now to give it a try. You'll get this customization e-mail each week specifying what we're thinking of packing for you based on your preferences. If there's something else on the list that you'd like, just log in to swap or add extras to your share. I always like to send stories from the farm, and teach you a bit about how we grow and why week by week. You'll also find notes about feasting with your veggies, how the gardens are producing, and what to expect. You'll only see a snippit here at the top of your e-mails, so you'll have to click on read more at the bottom if you'd like to learn a bit more each week!
This week I'll tell you about our field walks, garlic scapes, and the veggies on this week's list.
Today Stephanie and I (Heather) did our field walks together. I walk around once a week to gauge how many of each of the different veggies are available harvest for your bags the following week. Stephanie does field walks to see where the gardens are at, and make giant to-do lists. Then we'll sit down together to decide on the top priorities for the crew and plan out the week. Sometimes it's joyful celebrating the harvests coming in, sometimes it's frustrating when we are falling behind on our tasks and the garden is "getting away" from our control. I'd say this week, as for many, the tone was somewhere in between.
I'm so excited to be harvesting our first garlic scapes, to me they are the true start of summer! This year the patch is the most beautiful we've ever grown. We had great survival of the garlic over the winter (we plant it in November). We've had some volunteers help us to weed it, and the plants loved our spring rains. We gave them a sprinkle yesterday to help keep them happy as it's getting quite dry. We grow a patch big enough to feed our summer members but also store it for our winter members so there's lots planted. The scape is the flower stalk that comes up around this time every year. Once it curls around twice, it is ready to harvest. If we don't harvest the garlic scapes the plants will put their energy into producing a flower and then seeds - instead of focusing the energy on growing the cloves at the base of the stem. We don't just harvest the scapes to help the garlic heads grow... they're a favourite spring treat.
We use garlic scapes in many similar ways to garlic cloves. Instead of mincing, we just slice the stalks a couple millimetres thick into tiny disks and use a whole flower stalk in place of a clove in our cooking. We'll put a scape or two into a batch of mayonnaise (making garlic scape aioli). You can chop a couple scapes into a lovely pasta sauce, grill them whole to add to a burger, or sauté them in butter to put on a pizza. Garlic scape pesto is another popular treat... and really the opportunities are endless. Just keep in mind the rule of thumb, one flower stalk (yes we eat the whole thing) is akin to a clove of garlic in a dish. So if you like your spice put in a few, if you don't want them to overwhelm one or two will do.
This week's veggies are a mixture of storage and fresh veggies. We're all so eager to eat fresh foods as soon as the grass starts growing, but when we're eating veggies that are annuals (get planted every year) we have to wait for them to grow first. This week will be our first harvest of lettuce from the fields, we're bringing in radishes and cilantro for everyone. We have some bok choy which is delicious despite the little holes - we covered it with row cover after planting but the flea beetles have been voracious this spring. It passed Stephanie's taste test in the fields, flavourful and juicy fresh we pack these up by weight, but this week they're not the beauties we usually like to share.
Other fresh field treats like chard and parsley are in shorter supply, so they will get filled into your bags based on your preferences. We always store extra root veggies to help provide some solid crunch this time of year. Our carrots were frost sweetened last fall, and have stored beautifully in our humidified fridge. We've got red and yellow onions to share (store these in the fridge or they'll want to grow on you). Finally, we've got some kohlrabi and watermelon radishes to balance out your shares, both winter treats that are great as snacking sticks with hummus and those carrots.
(photo credit Ruth Gangbar and Mihal Zada)
