Looks like a wet week ahead. How does that affect the farm? Find out after these brief announcements.
Announcements
I have received notice that our road will be repaved this summer starting the first week of August with completion in one to two weeks — weather permitting. The contractor is required to provide access throughout the construction. So, though it may be more challenging to get here in August you should be able to get here. I will keep you updated with any new information I receive. Sorry for the inconvenience but two weeks over the last 17 years isn’t too bad (oh, plus the one day when the madman with the gun was running amok in the neighborhood).
Thursday is July 4th. We will be delivering the boxes as usual with the exception of St. Paul’s Monastery, which will be delivered Wednesday July 3rd. This is the last chance to tell us not to deliver your share. On-farm pick-up will not change this week.
Farm News
Quite the weather roller coaster. At the start of the season we had lots of rain. Then last month hardly any until the last day of the month. And now a couple more days of rain plus a forecast of potentially more rain the rest of the week. On the positive side the rain was quite welcome. It is a lot easier to use rain to irrigate than artificial means. This rain along with the nitrogen fertilizer added by the lightning will help the plants achieve their highest potential. And isn’t that all we really want from our plants?
On the downside with all this rain, and more importantly the lack of a long dry period, the weeds have a chance to get a good foothold before we have dry enough soil to eradicate them. The insect pests also quickly multiply. I guess insects are like humans. Who doesn’t like cozying up to the one they love on a stormy night? But these pests seem to cozy up all day and night no matter the weather! Time for a “Just Say No!” campaign for bug sex! Frankly I think they need to get a room somewhere else, especially when there are children present.
Anyway, all-in-all the rain was a positive thing. Now we just need a week of dry days in the 70’s with low humidity. I don’t see it in the forecast but a farmer can dream can’t he?
On a completely different subject, one concern I have for people who join a CSA farm is that they get discouraged because they don’t know what to do with the produce they get. I’ve heard from some members in the past that the first year they participated was far harder than subsequent years. In follow-on years they had favorite recipes and knew what to expect. I figure that if most people could get past the first year they would likely stick around for years to come. So my goal is to help make that successful (and help other members who are successful with additional ideas).
To accomplish this goal I would highly recommend new members (and really anyone else) join our Facebook group and our Pinterest page. Both of these are great resources for produce usage. The Facebook group is great for sharing ideas contemporaneously (this word seems to have enjoyed a renaissance in the last couple of years). The Pinterest page is great as a repository of recipes people have enjoyed in the past. Whether you are new to the farm or a seasoned veteran please consider taking advantage of these two resources.
Another idea I have is to let everyone know some of the things we’ve done with the produce this past week. It might give people inspiration for ways to use theirs. So here are some of this past week’s produce uses:
Produce Ideas
We made a delicious “Greek” kale salad. I’m not great at measuring ingredients but here is a pretty close approximation:
1-2 bunches of kale — stems removed, leaves coarsely chopped,
4-5 green onions chopped,
some garlic chives chopped (could use this week’s garlic scapes),
1 block feta cheese crumbled
Mix above ingredients all together in a large salad bowl.
1/2 c olive oil,
1/4 c lemon juice,
1/2 tsp oregano.
Mix these three ingredients together pour over the kale/onion/feta salad. That’s it. Pretty simple. We ate some immediately then had the rest the next day after it sat in the fridge where the kale softened further. Either way was wonderful to me but Susan preferred it sitting in the fridge overnight.
Sunday morning we had omelettes with green onions, Swiss chard, garlic chives, mushrooms from the store and cheese from CheeseShare. It was delicious! (I’m going to have to get the thesaurus out and find alternative words for delicious). For dinner we had grilled pork chops with roasted red pepper compote. We used red peppers we roasted and froze from last season (I highly recommend this if you find yourself with a bunch of extra peppers). I used a couple of garlic scapes instead of garlic and fresh parsley from the farm (we haven’t given this out yet and probably don’t yet have enough for everyone yet).
Of course a lot of our meals this time of year include fresh salad. We grew a new variety that I found both delicious and that grew quite well. It is a dense green leaf lettuce that some of you got last week and many of you will get this week. We’re going to try growing it this summer as head lettuce. Growing lettuce in the summer is quite challenging but this lettuce showed no signs of bolting whereas all our other lettuces did. We’re hoping this could finally gives us lettuce and tomatoes at the same time!
Finally we stir-fried the bok choi with some onions, garlic chives and soy sauce. A simple, easy recipe anyone can make.
What will we have this week?
One thing that shows that this season is on the later side is that this will be the first week of garlic scapes! We typically have scapes the first week of the season. This year our garlic didn’t come up until April where it was then buried under six inches of snow. Makes sense that the scapes would be delayed as well. We will also have lettuce, kale, chard, a few snap peas, some broccoli, some radishes, green onions, a few summer squash (they are just getting going), and some radishes. We are going to have to ration the peas this year (see last week’s newsletter for why the dearth of peas this season) so we will spread them out and limit the amounts you can have so that everyone has a chance to get some. On the positive side there should be plenty of venison shares this fall though!
FlowerShare starts this week! There are no other add-on shares.
Ok, I think this is long enough. Some people measure the value of their CSA share by the volume of the produce. Others measure the value of their CSA share by the number of words in the newsletter. I think the latter group of people are getting their money’s worth this year!