What a week! We started CSA season with what might normally be the hottest airmass of the season. It's early June - come on! It looks like, after a slight reprieve Saturday, Monday, and Tuesday, the intense heat will come back later next week. That means another sweltering delivery day. While we keep the shares continuously refrigerated up until they leave our delivery truck, our residential pickup sites are not climate controlled. If you can pick up your share earlier rather than later in the pickup window, that would be preferable!
This newsletter will be brief, as it's 6pm Friday evening as I start this, having just come in from the field. We are still operating with a skeleton crew and everyone is pushing hard to stay relatively on schedule. Yesterday, sweet potato slips (think stems grown from sprouted eyes of sweet potatoes) were delivered from North Carolina. This is the planting material for growing sweet potatoes. It's a slow hand planting job and got 2/3 of them planted this afternoon, but the last chunk will have to wait until early next week.
We did get a couple of somewhat unexpected rains Thursday and Friday - sudden thunderstorms that each gave us about 0.25". Not the soaker we needed, but welcome moisture in any case. Today's storm did have a bit of hail mixed in. Nothing too serious, but I noticed a few holes in lettuce and spinach leaves and a few dings in zucchini. So be aware of that as you unpack your shares next week.
This weeks brings lots of new items. Some are just starting out and so are limited in availability; many we have in very good supply (note 1-lb bags available of spinach and salad mix). We also have several items we are listing as "swap-in," meaning you need to customize your share if you want to swap it into your box or purchase it as an extra.
Notes on items in this week's shares:
- Carrots: A small amount of bunched grade A carrots will go to a lucky few, but we do have a good amount of seconds available bagged as a swap-in item or an extra. These are mostly shorter/stubbier carrots (many actually look just like "baby" carrots you buy in the store!) but others may have some forking or a shallow split. These are good eating carrots but will just require a tad more prep work.
- Red Beets: We are excited about these high tunnel grown beets! The greens are as nice as we'll have all year - so sauté those up and put 'em to use.
- Turnips, Salad: This will likely be our only planting of salad turnips of the year, so we encourage you to try them. We have many salad turnip enthusiasts here on the crew. They're great for raw eating, as a snack or on a salad, but also delish roasted or sautéed in some butter.
- Zucchini (1 reg or 2 sm): An early entry for zucchini this year! The plants grew nicely under a protective row cover from the day of transplant onward. The first few harvests will be modest, so not all shareholders will receive them this week. The first round of fruits didn't get ideal pollination, so aren't quite as shapely as we like. And the aforementioned dings in the skin from hail on Friday. I don't think this will substantially affect shelf life, but better to eat sooner than later.
- Broccoli, small head: Like zucchini, only a small percentage of the planting will be ready to harvest by share packing next week, so not everyone will get it and the volumes will be modest.
- Garlic Scapes: The warm spring launched our garlic crop out of dormancy early, and it's been trucking along ever since. These scapes are a week or so earlier than average and looking lovely. Scapes (the immature, developing flower stalk of hardneck garlic plants) have milder flavor than cloves, but can be use similarly. We also like tossing them in a food processor and making a pesto, or just having chopped scapes on hand for easy addition to dishes.
- Spring garlic: Similar to last week, these young garlic plants have mild garlic flavor and can be used like scallions.
- Salad Mix: We have a couple plantings ready to harvest, so it's full-on salad season! Despite the heat, we've found the flavor still great and not yet developing bitterness.
- Mixed Kale, bunched: This is a blend we sometimes grow as a baby kale mix, but we let it grow up and will bunch it for shares. The leaves are a bit smaller and more tender than our standard curly kale - generally better for cooking but a good candidate for a massaged kale salad, if you're into that sort of thing :)
- Lettuce, red butterhead: This variety has a soft texture and a slight sweetness to it, and it's gorgeous, to boot. This used to be minor lettuce variety in our crop plan, but in our years selling at the farmers' market, it was consistently our most popular head lettuce. So now it's our standard.
- Pea Shoots: These are produced like our other microgreens, grown for 10-12 days in the greenhouse. They're tender with mild pea flavor, a nice appetizer to snap peas (which are just around the corner!). Also see recipe below.
- Spinach: This week, we'll be pulling from both our first and second plantings. Medium-large leaf size, good for both raw and cooked consumption. We have bulk bags available for purchase this week, so now's the time to indulge it you're a spinachhead! This heat isn't kind to cool-season crops like spinach and lettuce, so let's enjoy them while we can.
- Mint: I've been drinking astounding amounts of water the last couple of weeks, and have really been enjoying mint-infused water and iced teas. Or make up a mojito or try one of the recipes listed below. Our mint variety is incredibly fragrant and flavorful.
A couple of recipes that draw on items available this week:
Moroccan Grated Carrot and Beet Salad
Pea Shoot, Mint, Carrot Salad with Creamy Lemon Vinaigrette
Add-on Share Notes:
The first mushroom shares will be included with this week's shares!
For hot sauce/salsa add-on subscribers, don't forget to log in to check out all the options. The sauce/salsa assigned by Harvie should be thought of as a placeholder - there are many more options available when you customize.
Have a great week!
Dana and the crew
