Well the first week wasn’t too bad. Just a couple of glitches — at least as far as I know. If you know of any glitches I don’t please let me know!
One quick announcement: If you still owe money please pay as soon as you can. The next time it rains I’ll be going through the books!
Farm News
The most popular question asked this week in the pick-up tent was “What’s your last name?” That’s because I was checking people off the list and didn’t know everyone’s last name. The second most popular question was “Is this your first time joining a CSA?” Again, I seemed to be asking most of the questions. The third most popular question was, “How has the growing season been?” The correct answer to this question is, “It depends on what plant you are.” If you are a weed it has been a great growing season. If you are a vegetable plant, the growing season has been better this year than the last two — in some ways. The last two years spring took a long time to get here then didn’t last very long. This year we had an early spring followed quickly by a four day winter then a hot summer followed shortly by a regular spring followed by another hot, dry summer followed by a wet spring, which is where we are now despite the fact it is now summer.
These fluctuating temperatures are hard on some plants — especially cauliflower and broccoli. Both these plants like cool weather. The periodic hot spells make them want to bolt (go to seed) early. Also cold temps below freezing (we’ve had four of these since we planted the first succession of broccoli and cauliflower) cause them to bolt as well. This results in smaller than wanted plants and of course smaller than desired heads. It is still to be seen what the effect on this year’s broccoli and cauliflower crop will be but I’ve heard from other farmers that their cauliflowers has bolted.
Another crop that had a bit of a rough start was our first planting of cucumbers. The vast majority of plants survived but not all of them. When we transplanted the cukes it was 90+ degrees with a fierce wind. This lasted a few days. Sometimes you just have to plant them when they are ready despite the weather being uncooperative. And despite our watering them with drip tape some of the stems dehydrated and thus killed the plants. We should have enough survive for everyone to get cukes plus it was just our first planting. The second planting was done right before last week’s rain and they look like they are doing quite well. So fear not, there will be plenty of cucumbers.
One of the benefits of Community Supported Agriculture is we can take increased risk. One thing we tried this season was to plant the first planting of corn earlier than usual. Unfortunately the four day winter with the below freezing temps did it in. I am sure it would have survived the one cold night and probably two, but four? Wasn’t going to happen. Not to worry though, we planted another four successions so there should be plenty of sweet corn this summer, just not as early as we hoped.
However overall the weather has been favorable compared to the last two years and seems to be about average. I’m hoping the rest of the season has temps like this week — highs in the 70’s, lows in the 50’s.
What will we have this week? Before I tell you let me briefly explain this section to those new to the farm. For a more detailed explanation check out this newsletter and scroll to the “what will we have this week?” section. In this section I list all the items we harvested or plan to harvest this week. It will include items that may be in small quantities because the item is ramping up or ramping down. Since there isn’t enough of these veggies for everyone (at the moment) we combine them into a category that all together has enough items. Then from this category and the number of delivery shares we determine where it is best to give them out. We track what we give out so everyone has an opportunity for every item and everyone has approximately equal amounts of each item. Suffice it to say we put a lot of effort into making shares equitable.
With that said, here is what we have this week. We have lots of garlic scapes so everybody will get some; it is its own category. A second category is summer squash/zucchini. Everyone gets some of these. Another category is green onions and green garlic. Another category is snap peas, snow peas, broccoli (very few), and basil. Delivery/Prepacked shares and one on-farm pick-up day did not get peas last week so they will get first crack at them this week. Another category is chard, kale, and bok choi. We haven’t figured out how this category will be distributed yet. And the final category is lettuce and salad mix. We will most likely send some of each in the prepacked/delivery boxes.
We also have FruitShare and EggShare this week. No FlowerShare yet. CoffeeShare was last week.
Recipe of the Week
Over the many years I’ve explained numerous times what garlic scapes are. Might as well tell you again: they are the top part of a hardneck garlic plant. It is an ancient form of a flower. We remove the scapes from the garlic plants so the plant puts more energy into growing the garlic bulb. As a side benefit we get to eat the scapes! They are much like green garlic in that they are a bit milder than garlic bulbs. They can be used in place of garlic. We have a few recipes on our web site and I’m sure there are plenty of other ideas found using the google machine.
We use Swiss chard like we use spinach. If you have a favorite spinach recipe try using the chard instead. This newsletter has a good lemon Parmesan chard recipe.
A quick note on peas for those familiar with only canned peas. We grow two types of peas — snap and snow. Both of these are edible pod peas; you can eat the whole pod, no need to shell them. I prefer to eat the snap peas raw as a snack. The snow peas are great cooked. To remove the string (not necessary but some people prefer them this way) break the stem end of the pea pod and peel down. The string will come off with the stem.
That seems like more than enough words to satisfy our legal obligations for newsletter content. As always, do not hesitate if you have any questions, comments, suggestions, jokes, or other whimsy or folly.