In this week’s newsletter I discuss yet one more most difficult part of CSA farming — there are a lot of most difficult parts in farming. But first an announcement.
We plan to harvest the garlic on Friday July 26th. We could use all the help we can get. So if you are interested in taking a mental health day from work and need something to help with the mental health, may I suggest coming out and lending a hand? We will start harvesting around 10:00 and go until it is done or 3:30, which is when I need to get the pick-up tent ready for Friday pick-up. I’ll send out a newsletter on Thursday confirming we are going forward with this plan. As with everything farming, it is weather dependent and we can’t count on the weather forecast. Let me know if you can make it!
What will we have this week?
Potatoes! We have new red potatoes this week. Why are they called “new” potatoes? Because they haven’t been used yet of course. And who wants used potatoes? Actually “new” means the potatoes weren’t fully mature when harvested. This results in thinner skins that can fall off or be rubbed off fairly easily. When we wash them we sometimes accidentally rub off some of the skin. We try not to scrub too hard so they may be a little dirty. Potatoes without skins won’t last as long as mature potatoes so don’t plan on storing them for months. Weeks? Probably, but not months. And seriously, who could wait weeks to eat these delicious, freshly dug potatoes?
We’ll also have zucchini, some eggplants, some snow peas, onions — both green and red, some kohlrabi, some cabbages, some chard, some kale, a few cherry tomatoes, very few okra, and maybe some other things.
It is a Fruit, Flower and Egg week. Fruit this week is strawberries, blueberries, white nectarines, cherries and pluots. Eggs this week like every egg week are chicken eggs.
Farm News
One of the trickiest issues with running a CSA farm is how to distribute the produce. The goal each week is to give everyone exactly what they want without anything left over. Of course this is an impossible goal but is the goal nonetheless. One of the major difficulties in not really knowing what you are going to get each week — even as late as Monday when we are making the week’s distribution decisions. Nature could give you great zucchini growing weather for the first half of the week then cool off and slow them down for the last half of the week. You might think you are going to get 100 more cucumber this week but instead you only got 50. You thought the kohlrabi wouldn’t be ready until next week but looky here, it is ready now!
One approach to solving this problem is to “hold back” some produce so that you always have something in the cooler in case Nature throws you a curve. But then what if Nature throws the curve the other way and the items you held in reserve were suddenly quite plentiful? Now not only are you overwhelmed with the items you harvest today but you also have all the same items harvested two days ago still sitting in your cooler. So this approach can work some times and can fail miserably other times.
Another approach is to give out the produce as soon as you harvest it. So everything you picked on Monday goes out to the Tuesday members. Everything picked on Tuesday goes to the Wednesday members, and so on. Wait, who gets the Saturday zucchinis? Oh, and we have far more Tuesday members than Friday members. Does that mean Friday members get more? It sounds like the Electoral College approach to CSA produce distribution. Those members picking up on less popular days get more than those who like being with the in crowd. So this approach doesn’t work either.
Another problem is that the amount of each item may not be enough for all the shares. You don’t want to grow enough kohlrabi so every share gets one every week. More importantly eggplant. Since eggplant keep producing and typically follows a hump shaped curve — or more usually if it is a warm fall a dromedary shaped curve with two humps — you don’t want to grow enough eggplants so that everyone gets eggplants one week because then they would get eggplants every week for many weeks and possibly too many eggplants in any given week. So we have to track where we give out the various items so that they are spread out among the days and delivery points — everyone gets approximately the same items over the course of the season but not necessarily in the same week. So this week the broccoli might go to the delivery share and next week it will be in the pick-up tent.
Anyway, the point of this newsletter — and I do have one — is that we spend more time than you’d expect trying to figure out what produce goes where so that it is distributed evenly and doesn’t spend a lot of time in the cooler. I think this is the big difference between a true CSA farm and a farm that sells “CSA shares” as one of their many sales channels. We’ve gotten better at figuring out the distribution over the years and now even use a white board! That is some mid-late 20th century tech! I think a spreadsheet would help except for all the data entry using wet, dirty fingers.
Recipe of the Week
Though most people do not need a recipe for using potatoes I thought I would throw this one into the newsletter since we also have parsley this week.
Parsley New Potatoes
Ingredients
- 1 lb new potatoes
- 4 Tbs butter
- 1 small bunch parsley chopped
- 1-3 Tbs lemon juice to taste
Instructions
- Wash potatoes. Leave whole.
- Place washed potatoes in pan. Cover with water.
- Bring to boil. Cook until soft — approximately 20 minutes
- In another pan, melt butter.
- Add chopped parsley and lemon juice to melted butter. Mix.
- Once potatoes are soft, drain and put into bowl.
- Slightly smash potatoes.
- Add butter mixture to potatoes and mix.
Joke of the Week
Why did the potato cross the road?
He saw a fork up ahead.
As always, do not hesitate to send in questions, comments, suggestions, and reservation for this year’s garlic harvesting event. Seats are limited (there are no seats) but we have plenty of standing room spots available!!