The early spring CSA season has started! Week 1 Newsletter

April 10th

This Week’s Veggies:

Spring Raab                                                        Red Tinged Winter head lettuce

Parsley                                                                 New Zealand Spinach

French Fingerling Potatoes                          Green Onions

Broccoli Florets (green and purple)*       Salad Mix*

Komatsuna (young bunch greens for salad or stir-fry)*

Shallot and Garlic*          

*”Large” share items; not included in the “small” share.

Please Remember to Wash Your Vegetables Carefully and Thoroughly.

This Week’s Recipe:

Sauteed Raab with Sun-Dried Tomatoes and Pine Nuts

(Recipe adapted from Vegetables Every Day by Jack Bishop.)

Ingredients:
1 bunch raab
1 T olive oil (or more, depending on your pan)
3-4 large cloves garlic, cut into thin slices
1/4 cup sun-dried tomatoes
1 T toasted pine nuts
pinch of Aleppo Pepper or your favorite hot pepper flakes
sea salt to season if desired

Rinse raab. Slice garlic cloves into thin slices. With stove on medium-high, heat olive oil in large wok or frying pan with deep sides. Add garlic slices and saute about 30 seconds (just long enough to get the garlic flavor in the olive oil, don't let the garlic brown at this point or it will get bitter.) Add raab, sun-dried tomatoes and hot pepper flakes and saute 2-5 minutes, until tomatoes are hot and slightly softened and raab is bright green and tender.

While raab is cooking, heat pine nuts for 1-2 minutes in dry pan over high heat. They should be barely starting to brown.
Arrange raab on serving dish and sprinkle with pine nuts. Season with sea salt if desired and serve hot.

News from the Farmers:

            Here we are again at the beginning of another spring growing season.  Thanks and welcome to those folks who are joining us again, and thanks and welcome to the newcomers as well.  We are excited about the start of the new season and are glad to see everyone after the long winter.

It certainly does feel like spring is here these last few days.  After all of that rain, it is great to have a sunny spell.  Things in the greenhouses are growing like crazy and we have been planting out lots of seeds and transplants in the fields.  We have also been busy establishing a hedgerow of native plants along the eastern edge of the farm; we are hoping that they will someday be able to out complete the blackberry incursion over there. 

The compost truck arrived from Cedar Grove yesterday, so we now have 30 cu yards of compost to help grow beautiful veggies for you (our soil is sandy, so it is great to have more organic matter to help hold water and nourish the plants). 

In other farm news, our friends from Blue Feather Farm over on Maxwelton Road have agreed to graze some steers on our pasture for a part of the upcoming season.  We will be happy to host them; there is a lot of land here that just doesn’t grow veggies very well, but we don’t have the time to raise animals ourselves since we are so busy growing veggies.  It will be nice to see our pasture being put to better use.