Week 1

This week’s basket – Rain Kissed Greens – WEEK 1!

First CSA basket of 2014

• Red Russian Kale
• Sugar Pod Snow Peas
• Ruby Streaks Mizuna – Mizuna is in the mustard family. These greens are lovely cooked (like spinach or chard) and also give a little zip (like arugula) when cut up fresh into salads.
• Baby Beet & Beet Greens – This is farm foreshadowing 🙂
• Red Coss Butterhead Lettuce – I must say that these lettuce heads are some of the most exquisite I’ve grown. They’ve been the jewel of this spring season and it saddens me that you didn’t get to see them in their full glowing glory. Monday afternoon we had aggressive Niagara Fallsesque rain showers. It was powerful, exciting, disconcerting and welcomed and it just kept coming! I’m not sure what adjectives the crops in the field would use, as they surly received the brunt of it.
• Florence Fennel – Eat the entirety of these sweet fennel bulbs and fronds.

** Find recipes below**

RAIN STORM!

Happy first CSA distribution week! Happy first week of June, first Mt. Shasta Farmers’ Market week,  the first crunch from spring peas, first week using the new ‘cool’ cob storage shed..ah, all these firsts, but definitely not lasts. This is just the beginning. It’s been an amazing week. I love seeing plants emerge and mature, and to glean the spring bounty.  It’s the time of year where you start seeing all those long worked days come to fruition. It’s these moments that fuel the fire that keeps me going, which is still needed, as there’s plenty still to get in the ground!!

Further farm news. A new greenhouse is up! With the increase in this year’s farm efforts, more space was crucially needed. The space will mainly be used for plant starts early in the season, but it has potential to be a structure for season extension for early spring and late fall as well. I have hopes to get a much larger High Tunnel structure as well. This would truly allow me to not only extend the season, but have higher success rates for crops, as it creates an environment that is much more stable than our inconsistent Siskiyou County spring months.

I hope you all enjoy this week’s feast. It’s the time of year to fully enjoy salads and raw greens! I find that my body craves these foods in the months when they’re not available, so it’s time to recharge the batterie! Through becoming more intimate with local food and seasonal foods, you start to realize how to enjoy and savor those items that are truly in season. At times this can even mean to the point of something ‘getting old’, but your body always bounces back and in a few months it will be asking for huge heads of spring fresh lettuce and crisp peas again. And in honoring the seasons you’ll have to stuff your self with that moment’s delight, and patiently wait for spring’s succulent salads and raw greens.

ENJOY!! And thanks for being supportive members with this year’s CSA program!

RECIPES —

Wilted Asian Greens – use Mizuna and Beet Greens

Fennel Recipes – #4 Kale and Fennel pasta with lemon looks amazing!

For salad dressing ideas, visit the blog post from last year titled, ‘Little Black Dressing.’

Sweet little Baby Beets!