Heavy rain on the first pick-up day of the season. Must be good luck! Plenty of time to write the newsletter.
First and foremost I want to thank all of you who sent in donations for the food shelf fund. We received enough donations to fund seven FamilyShares. Not a ton but certainly worthwhile. If you want to donate you can still do so by ordering through our online store. You can donate any amount — it doesn’t have to be a full share. And just to reiterate from the last newsletter, for every CoupleShare amount of money raised we will donate a FamilyShare size portion to the local food shelf.
Second, and related to the first, we will be donating the shares to Friends in Need in St. Paul Park. The organization was founded in 1992 and serves the residents of Cottage Grove, St. Paul Park, Newport and Grey Cloud Island. We chose this organization for a couple of reasons. First, the Executive Director Crystal is a member of the farm. Second, it is on the way home for a couple of our workers so they can drop off the food without much additional effort. And third, the Executive Director is a member of the farm. Seems like three very good reasons for choosing this organization. We had a couple of other worthwhile organizations suggested to us which would work equally well but that third reason for choosing Friends in Need solidified our choice.
This is the first week of the harvest season. Please plan on picking up your share at your usual place and time. I suppose it isn’t the usual place and time yet if you never picked up there before but soon it will be your usual place and time. If you need pick-up instructions please let me know and I can forward them to you!
There are still shares available. Tell your friends, neighbors and all those social media contacts!
Don’t forget about the UpgradeShare if you’d like to upgrade your CoupleShare to a FamilyShare! Gives you extra stuff to share with your friends and neighbors!
Eggs and flowers are sold our but we still have coffee, cheese, fruit, ‘shrooms and winter shares. Feel free to order them but please do so soon!
What will we have this week?
In this section I try my best to describe what items will be available this coming week. It is surprising how challenging it is to guesstimate what we will have coming up but I try my best.
Since we are a farm and not a supermarket you will not necessarily get everything on this list. Some items will be in short supply — veggies tend to follow a bell-shaped curve. So I put a few keywords in the description to help you understand whether the item will be available for everyone or if it will be in limited supply. Here are a couple of examples. If I say there are “lots of cucumbers” you will most likely get cucumbers. If I say there are “lots and lots and lots of cucumbers”, you will definitely get cucumbers and most likely a lot of them. If I say we have “a few cucumbers”, most people won’t get them but someone will. If I say there are “some cucumbers” there are likely enough for either deliveries or on-farm but not both. We keep track so the next time we have a some cucumbers the on-farm members may get them and the deliveries may not. If I don’t add anything to the description, say “cucumbers”, it means there is a fair number of cucumbers but we just aren’t sure if there is enough for everyone the whole week so most likely you’ll get one but maybe not.
In any case, the purpose of this section is just to give you an idea of what is available, not to give you enough information for meal planning. Maybe I should just skip it and surprise everyone each week instead.
Anyway, this week we will have lettuce, zucchini, bok choy, green onions, green garlic, a bit of Swiss chard (the amount the deer left behind) and a bit of basl.
It is a CoffeeShare and CheeseShare week. No other shares.
This week’s CheeseShare cheese is Friesago — a semi-had aged sheep milk cheese with a mild grassy flavor and nutty finish, Shepherd’s Hope — a unique, fresh cheese that shows off the clean flavors of the sheep milk, and Sogn — a tommer style cheese that is mildly fruity and slightly crumbly.
This week’s CoffeeShare is whatever variety of coffee you ordered.
Farm News
This past Friday was the first “get to work outside” day of the season. Up until then it was all “have to work outside” days, whether it was due to being too cold, too hot or too rainy. But Friday was the Goldilocks of weather. High temp in the 70s. Low humidity. Plenty of sunshine. It was the kind of day that makes office workers jealous of us farm workers. Now we just need four more months of this type of weather.
Earlier in the week when it was raining or too wet to work in the field, we spent the time getting the washing and packing areas setup for this coming week. We power washed and sanitized all the delivery totes, harvest bins and storage crates. We also got all the delivery totes labeled — be sure to check your tote to ensure it is properly labeled with everything you ordered (though we don’t put the WinterShare on the totes since it isn’t something that goes out frequently). And did a bit of work in the hoop house getting the tomatoes wrangled.
On Thursday we setup the pick-up tent. It was a good day for it since with the rain we could determine if there were any holes in it. And unfortunately there were a couple. I tried to buy a replacement canopy that would include no holes but they are all sold out and the customer support person said they didn’t know when they would get more since they are made in China. I guess the tariffs haven’t forced them to manufacture here in America yet. Someday hopefully.
So we patched the holes with gorilla tape (made in Africa?) and hope no more holes arise — at least until the shipment arrives from China or the US based canopy factory gets up and running.
Overall it was a good week. Enough time to get stuff done outside and enough rain to force us to do the inside stuff we needed to do to get the season underway. Now if we could only get it to stop raining this week.
Recipes of the Week
First, a quick description for those who don’t know what green garlic is. Green garlic is immature regular garlic. The level of immaturity dictates how you can use it. If the bulb is forming but the cloves are not — basically toddler stage — you can use the whole thing. But as it gets more mature — say like a teenager — it becomes more stubborn and moody and the stalk becomes woody and hard to deal with. It also starts forming individual cloves. I think this is where our green garlic is at. You can certainly try to use the whole stalk but if it is too hard to cut it might be better to treat it like fresh garlic and separate and peel the cloves.
This recipe is garlic cream cheese but instead of garlic scapes you can use the green garlic and instead of cream cheese you can use the Shepherd’s Hope cheese from CheeseShare. You can use cream cheese if you prefer or save this recipe for a later week when we give out the garlic scapes. Or do both!
Garlic Scape Cream Cheese
Equipment
- 1 Food processor
Ingredients
- 2-4 each Garlic Scapes more for stronger flavor
- 1 block Cream Cheese
Instructions
- Wash garlic scapes
- Cut scapes into chunks for easier processing
- Place garlic scape chunks into food processor and pulse until well minced
- Add cream cheese block to processor and mix until well mixed
- Serve with crackers or use as garlic cheese spread
If you don’t know what to do with bok choy you can try this recipe!
Bok Choy Salad
Ingredients
- 1 or many depending on size head bok choy chopped
- 5 green onions sliced
- 1 pkt ramen noodles crumbled & toasted
- 1 T sesame seeds toasted
- 2 T olive oil
Salad Dressing Ingredients
- ¼ c brown sugar
- ¼ c olive oil
- 2 T rice wine vinegar Other vinegar could work as well
- 1 T soy sauce
Instructions
- Crumble raman into a pan with olive oil. Add sesame seeds. Saute until toasted and lightly browned. Cool and set aside.
- Wash and chop bok choy into bite size pieces. Put into salad bowl.
- Wash and slice green onions — including tops — into small pieces. Add to bowl.
- Add all dressing ingredients into a small mixing bowl and whisk together.
- Add cooled ramen/sesame seeds to bok choy.
- Pour dressing over bok choy. Toss.
Notes
Joke of the Week PG version
How does a garlic bulb cool down?
It takes off its cloves.
Joke of the Week R-rated Version
How does a garlic bulb turn you on?
It takes off its cloves.
As always, do not hesitate to contact me with questions, comments, suggestions, share orders, etc. I always love hearing from our readers!