Hello Members,
We managed to get in our dry farmed tomatoes in early this year as the Spring was so dry and this week we get our first taste. Yay! Here comes tomato season..
Also a big thank you for your valiant and thus far pretty successful efforts to return our re-usable mesh bags. If you are new to the CSA then a quick introduction- in an effort to reduce single use plastic bags we have invested in re-usable mesh bags for portioning product for your boxes. Please return them when you come to pick up your next box. For the system to work we need to keep them reusing them (they need to be reused 50 times to equal the cost of one single us plastic bag). Mike and I will be gone next week with our kids on a family vacation. If you have urgent questions you can direct them to Barbara at csa@fifthcrowfarm.com Viva tomato season!!
Product Highlight: Ubileen Pears (in case you didn't see this last week)
Hailing from either Bulgaria or Yugoslavia depending on where you read, this extremely early pear tops the chart in taste tests. It has a buttery texture, is sweet, juicy, with just the right amount of tartness. The trick is picking it and eating it at the right time. For the first 3 or 4 years we had them we never tasted them. We would look at them and think.. ok time to pick tomorrow, and come back and they'd all be gone. It was so drastic we were convinced our employees were eating them, but no.. just all the farm critters. Then we picked them too early and ended up with blah fruit that never ripened properly. Then the next year we picked too late and they all turned brown inside. Sigh.. It is notoriously difficult to get right. They won’t hold more than a few days in the fridge, so please DO NOT PUT THEM IN THE FRIDGE. Leave on your counter and eat in 4-6 days. They will not become soft to the touch, so just forget that habit of checking to see if there's a little give ;) But... they should be ripe by Monday or Tuesday next week if you leave them out on your counter. I've let a number of beautiful pears go bad by waiting and waiting till they just rotted in the middle without ever getting soft to the touch. (They ripen from the inside out). May the gods of delicious fruit be with you and let us know how things turn out. We're crossing our finger and are knocking on wood that this year we got it right. There's a reason these aren't a common commercial variety.
