This is what you've been waiting for! The first week of your CSA veggie subscription starts now!
You'll receive a confirmation email on Wednesday with your final veggie box selections for the week as well as a reminder of your pickup address and times.
A cool spring
The extra cool and wet month of March has put all the outdoor crops behind schedule a bit. Which means we'll be relying upon our high tunnels to supply most of the first couple weeks of the CSA while we wait for things outside to start growing. It's amazing to see the difference in the speed of growth of crops seeded outdoors compared to those seeded in even unheated high tunnels. We're always glad to have the greenhouse and the 7 high tunnels that we have built, but this spring we're especially glad we have them!
If you are new to the CSA let me explain how seasonal eating really works. In early spring, the options are significantly limited. Although we do already have tomatoes and peppers in the ground in some of our high tunnels, they won't start producing for several weeks. The only crops we can have available now are those that enjoy cool weather and even some of those (like peas and broccolini) take time to get large enough to produce for us. So these first couple weeks, the options you'll have to choose from will be basically roots and greens. Lots of types and lots of them but not the entire gambit of vegetable offerings. As we work through the season, more items will become available and a few will drop off availability due to the season. By late summer there will be a huge variety of items to choose from, but right now coming out of winter, selection and overall quantity of produce is most limited.
This year, some of the summer crops may even come a little later because we are having to delay transplanting some peppers, cucumbers and tomatoes into our high tunnels because we need the greens and roots that are growing there. Normally we'd be able to rip them out and rely on outdoor greens by now, but like we said, this spring (March really) has been really cool, wet and cloudy so besides a few field overwintered crops, everything for the first couple weeks will be harvested from the high tunnels. So please bear with us as we wait for spring to fully arrive.
What do I do with THAT?
Some of you may have never even heard of, much less tasted, some of the greens you'll be seeing this week. Let not your hearts be troubled, they're all what we like to call "nutritious and delicious!!!!" But still, you might need to learn a thing or two about how to use them. First off, cooking greens, means you can consume far more of the nutritious and delicious goodness than if you left them raw. We don't normally cook lettuce (though a good wilted lettuce salad is amazing!) but nearly all the other greens are great cooked or raw. For roots, a quick and easy way to consume a large quantity is to make a sheet pan meal. Dice all the different kinds together on a sheet pan with some olive oil and salt and pepper and roast in the oven for a colorful side dish, or throw in some ground sausage and make it an easy main dish. (And yes, even radishes and turnips roast just fine). This is a great time to be checkin in at the Redfearn Farm Private Facebook Group for ideas on what to do with this early spring produce. Calling all you veterans out there, please post some of your meals and tips to help out the newbies especially these first few weeks!
The benefits of organic growing and even DIRT on your food!
While on the root topic, I want you to know that peeling vegetables doesn't have to be a thing. Carrots, beets, turnips....they don't HAVE to be peeled. Save yourself the trouble. We never peel them. I'm not sure where the peeling practice came from. Maybe from large oversized stored roots from the root cellar or maybe because we don't know what's been sprayed on the veggies and soil of most grocery store produce. But a quick wash and mild scrub is all you need to do. In fact, there have been studies that have shown that contact and ingestion of organic soil improves the human gut microbiome resulting in amazing health benefits including (believe it or not) reduced anxiety. You can learn a lot about microbial life, the impact of agricultural practices and why real organic produce will benefit your body here.
Just a bit of encouragement not to be too much of a hypochondriac when it comes to a tiny bit of organic soil clinging to your carrot stick:).
Bread and Cheese Shares
Farm to Market Italian Artisan Loaf
Hemme Brothers Garlic Dill Curds
Thanks so much for being part of our farmily this season!
We are blessed to serve you,
Dave and Sheri and the rest of the Redfearn farmers.
