Thank you to all the folks who made it out to help harvest the garlic. We had over ten people show up which was enough to get it all done by 2:30. Yay! I hope everyone had as much fun as they appeared to have.
I’ve had some interest from people who want to add FruitShare so I updated the product page to have prorated prices. If you’d like to add FruitShare please order it by Tuesday the week prior to your requested start date. This week I need the order by Wednesday since this isn’t going out until Tuesday.
Speaking of FruitShare, I meant to let everyone know — and most of you old timers already know this — we’ll take the pint-size clam shells to use for our cherry tomatoes. Leave them in the pick-up tent or your pick-up tote. We only want the pint size containers please. And if they are dirty please wash them out before returning them.
What will we have this week?
It seems we have a random allotment of a wide variety of stuff this week. It includes but is not limited to onions, fresh garlic, some cucumbers, some zucchini, some kale, some tomatillos, a few kohlrabi, some cabbages, some fennel, a few cauliflower, a couple of broccoli, some green peppers, some cherry tomatoes, eggplants, jalapenos, a very few tomatoes and maybe some other things.
It is a ‘ShroomShare and FlowerShare week. Shrooms this week are beech mushrooms.
We were able to clean some of the garlic. This garlic has not been cured so it may not last as long as cured garlic. Then again, if you leave it laying around it could cure and store longer. Who knows?
Farm News
A few newsletters back I spoke about the transition in vegetable farming where we switch from harvesting mostly cool season crops to harvesting more warm season crops. An additional transition we see that is unique to CSA farming is going from having a lot to say in the “Farm News” section to being too exhausted to remember what you were going to say in the “Farm News” section. We are now at this inflection point.
As always, do not hesitate to send in questions, comments, suggestions, jokes, brain teasers or anything else you think might jog my memory.
Recipe of the Week
For those new to fennel I thought you would be interested in these couple of paragraph from a previous newsletter. I know I could just link to the other newsletter but if you’re like me you are just too exhausted (lazy?) to click on the link. So here you go!
What the heck is this strange, alien looking vegetable in my share this week? Well, you’ll have to be a bit more specific since it could be either fennel or kohlrabi. Fennel is the vegetable that smells delicious — if you like the smell of licorice. Kohlrabi doesn’t smell like licorice so it should be easy to tell it apart. Most people are familiar with fennel seeds used as a spice. The fennel we grow is bulbing fennel. This fennel grows a “bulb” at its base that is used as a vegetable. You can also use the fronds — the frilly things attached to the fennel bulb.
Fennel bulb has a texture similar to celery. To use it cut it up like Martha Stewart does in this video. (It will only take 47 second of your life to learn this valuable life lesson!) Then cook it up with a bunch of other veggies, put it over pasta and call it dinner. You can use the fennel fronds to make a deliciously sweet pesto. Or use some of each in a salad, or a salad, or a salad with or without oranges. There are so many uses! Be brave and give it a try!
Jokes of the Week
A physicist sees a young man about to jump off of the Empire State Building.
He yells “Don’t do it! You have so much potential!”
Ok, here is a farm joke:
Why do cows wear bells?
Because their horns don’t work.