What’s in the Box: Chioggia (kee-oh-jah) Beets with greens, kohlrabi, radish, red Russian kale, butter crunch lettuce head, fennel, cilantro, seedless english cucumber, summer squash and/or zucchini, savoy cabbage.
What’s going on at the farm: My favorite item this week is a toss up between the chioggia beets with their sweet bulbs and rich greens and the fennel with its refreshingly crisp texture and light licorice or anise flavor. Some other favorites of mine right now include the fresh cilantro, and the crisp seedless english cucumbers. The cukes are super sweet with a thin peel, no spines, and a burp less quality. They are awesome sliced with some salt on them or as an addition to your salad with the butter crunch lettuce. The lettuce heads this week are from a second planting which came out much more perfectly then the first crop. I think you will all be pleased with the lettuce this week. Savoy cabbage is in too and is a perfect compliment to the crisp fennel bulbs for a coleslaw. You can eat the whole plant when it comes to fennel but the best part is the crisp bulb minus the small section where the tap root comes in. Kohlrabi would also be very good with the fennel or cabbage for a trifecta slaw with shredded cabbage, kohlrabi, and fennel. I like to make a dressing out of mayo and balsamic vinegar whisked together and mixed into the grated veggies with salt and pepper. Kohlrabi is going out for the last time this week and the bulbs are topped as we harvested them all late last week to clear the field for mowing and prepping for planting of winter squash, brussel sprouts, and fall cauliflower. Heavy rains have been soaking our fields lately which i’m sure you are all aware of as the rain has been wide spread. the good news is our soil is draining well and the crops are flourishing right along with the weeds. It is going to take a lot of extra manpower to catch up on them this week. We escaped the incoming summer winds without any major storms or damage this last week thankfully, although it did cause quite a bit of trouble with the proper ripening of our strawberries in their final week of production. Strawberrries just can’t handle intense amounts of rain while ripening, the result is many bad rotten berries especially adding on the heat and humidity to the mix. Its safe to say we are pretty much done with our berry crop for this season with the exception of a few pints scavenged from the field this week. It was an older field with small berries anyways and next years crop is looking very healthy and spreading rapidly right now sending out runners and bushing out after we pinched the flowers back not them several times over the last couple weeks. The sugar snap pea crop is coming soon. We are waiting for them to fatten up and become just right for picking but the plants are loaded and healthy so it looks like next week for an inpouring of this popular crop. Our broccoli crop has finished along with some other spring crops so we mowed those areas in between rain this week and will be plowing as soon as possible to plant winter squash and brussel sprouts this week which are patiently awaiting to be transplanted. As you probably noticed we decided to distribute all the spring broccoli last week instead of bi-weekly members only as was listed on the weekly crop list. Until next week, enjoy the veggies!
