We’ve had a lot of broccoli this season and there is still much more to come. I hope everyone has enjoyed it and has had as much as they wanted to date. The reason I bring this up is that one of the great challenges of CSA is providing just the right amount of food to each of our members. It is the goldilocks principle. Not too little, not too much but just right. We’ve found in the past we lose more members to “too much” than to “too little”. Ouch! But if we reduce the amount we provide to meet the needs of the “too much” crowd we risk alienating the “just right” bunch. Oh the humanity!
Anyway, as you can surmise this is an impossible task. So we are happy when we are close for most of our members. And we hope our members can figure out a use for the veggies we provide and if not, not feel guilty about sending them to the compost heap. The worms need to eat too.
This season, with some of our veggies, we run the risk of meeting papa bear’s needs. Why? Well, things like broccoli are planted in the greenhouse the first week of March. At that time we are still hopeful of selling out. This season we fell significantly short of selling all our shares – kind of a mama bear situation of too few members. So, since we planted for more shares than we sold we have an excess of broccoli. This will be the case for leeks, onions, Brussel sprouts and other early planted crops. What will we do with all this excess produce?
This season, like we’ve done in seasons past, we donated the excess produce to local food shelves. If we were not a true CSA operation – a farm that distributes only to its members – we could take the excess to the farmers market or sell it to a co-op. As I’ve mentioned in past newsletters, I find farms that claim to sell CSA shares and still maintain alternative sales channels to be duplicitous. We don’t do that. So we donate to food shelves. Not only does it maintain our CSA integrity, it also makes us feel good and on our deathbed we will receive total consciousness, which is nice.
So far this season we have donated a couple hundred pounds to three different places: Loaves & Fishes Minneapolis, Neighborhood House in St. Paul, and Christian Cupboard in Woodbury. One of our employees, Rachel, spends her non-farm hours working at Loaves and Fishes. The other two received donations due to the hard work of one of our members, Laurie Pellerite. Laurie came out to the farm one afternoon and spent an hour or two harvesting the broccoli and then delivered it to the food shelves. Without her effort the broccoli would have died a horrible death in the field – we just didn’t have the labor available to harvest the excess produce. So Laurie on her deathbed will also receive total consciousness. She’ll have that going for her, which is nice. Thank you Laurie!
In the future if we have excess produce but no excess labor we will put out a call on Facebook and Twitter. If you can lend a hand and help get it to a food shelf you too can receive on your deathbed total consciousness.
What will we have this week? Great question. New this week will be cabbage, eggplant and a few cucumbers. Returning will be cauliflower, summer squash/zucchini, green onions, garlic scapes, beets, Swiss chard, kale, fennel, some broccoli, some kohlrabi, lesser amounts of snow peas and snap peas. We’ll take a look at the lettuce. If it is big enough or it looks like it will be bolting soon we will harvest it. Be aware that as the days heat up it becomes more difficult to grow lettuce so if we can keep it going the heads will be much smaller than earlier in the year. It should still be quite tasty though!
By the way, as I was looking to see if I had published this week’s recipe somewhere on my web site I came across a previous newsletter about storing veggies. I thought this might interest some of our members.
The only add-on share this week is CoffeeShare. All other shares are on hiatus.
This week’s recipe. Fennel frond pesto!
Hey, I thought you needed basil to make pesto? Not true! You can use any green leafy plant to make pesto. You also don’t need pine nuts. So what do you need to make pesto? Well, follow along below:
A bunch of green leafy stuff, like 6 cups or so. We’ll use fennel fronds for this example.
Some nuts, about ½ cup. Walnuts, pine nuts, macadamia nuts, almonds, whatever you have on hand.
Some hard cheese around a ½ cup. Parmesan works great, which reminds me you need to grate it.
Some garlic. A couple cloves or even more fun is to use garlic scapes!
Some olive oil, like ¼ to ½ a cup or more. I don’t think you should substitute any other oil for the olive oil. Just doesn’t seem right.
Put all the ingredients except the oil into a food processor and grind away. Dividing it into two smaller amounts will make it easier. Scrape down the sides several times between grindings until everything is finely chopped.
With the food processor running, pour in the olive oil until the consistency desired. For dips and spreads use less oil for a thicker consistency. For pasta sauce use more oil. Scrape down the sides occasionally to ensure complete distribution.
Taste and adjust by adding additional amounts of any of the items. It is hard to over mix the pesto so keep on grinding!
That’s it. I find this pesto to be tastier than basil pesto. To me it is sweeter. Try it, you’ll like it!
As always, do not hesitate to contact me with questions, suggestions, jokes, stories, etc.