What’s in the Box: Salad mix (red and green lettuce mix of varied types), savoy spinach, easter egg radishes, rhubarb, joi-choi, butter crunch lettuce heads, red russian kale.
What’s going on at the farm: We made it to the first week of shares so first I would like to welcome everyone back or to their first season with us! As usual our first box of the year includes many fresh and tender greens. Here is the run down on some of them. Red Russian kale is a purple veined kale which is very tender and balanced flavor, I had it this week sautéed lightly in butter with sliced radishes, garlic, and a salmon patty and it was awesome. Of course kale is also a super food and rich with nutrients and vitamins your body needs. It is generally a sauté green but also great for smoothies, juicing, and raw massaged with oil as a dark salad green. Choi is best used as a saute green or side dish but is also good with rice or in a stir fry with onions. Radishes are in and go well with the salad greens but are also good sautéed. They also store better with the tops off so remove the tops if you will not be using them right away to keep them crisper. The tops on the radishes are edible too and can be used as a sauté green. Plenty of large savoy fresh crunchy spinach this week and salad mix this week as well so enjoy your salads, and maybe try some quiche or spinach pie (spanakopita). Its only the third season for our rhubard which was grown from seed here on the farm and is ready for your crisps, pies, and other desserts. Lastly the butter crunch lettuce heads feature a dense and blanched head in the center which is both creamy and crunchy and large outer bib leaves which can also be used along with the center for wraps or rolls. There has been and will be a lot of weed pulling, seeding, transplanting, pruning, and trellising work going on here through the late spring and summer. It was a cold spring this year but we have managed to stay ahead of our planting schedule and are all caught up despite the cool spring. In May so far we have planted many tomatoes, cucumbers, summer squash, zucchini, celery, eggplant, leeks, collard greens, cauliflower, green beans, radishes, arugula, lettuce, beets, peppers, carrots, fennel and more. It’s been go, go, go, every day all day and we have been working very hard. Our fields are looking wonderful and showing the results of all this effort and it looks like a beautiful and tasty season ahead of us. Being a small farm We do everything by hand so it takes longer to do each job than if we had mechanization but I feel we are also more efficient with space and even more focused on quality resulting in some very tasty produce coming your way. We are getting strawberries developing and slowly ripening so there should be a nice crop of organic strawberries coming along very soon in June. Some other crops coming next week or two to look forward to include kohlrabi, broccoli, lettuce heads, kale, swiss chard, beets, and garlic scapes. Weekly box photo’s will be updated by a photographer for each newsletter every Tuesday to help you identify your produce and promote shares. We are still taking signups too for those who have friends or family interested in signing up. Remember Charlie’s on Main in Oregon will be serving up our CSA items fresh every Thursday evening as well for those of you who would like a fresh and tasty dinner experience and some guidance in cooking up some of these fresh greens! I Hope everyone enjoys the first week and i’ll be seeing some of you at the drop sites.
