In Your Share This Week
- Asian Radish Greens
- Beets, red
- Cabbage, red
- Kohlrabi
- Mizuna
- Onions, red
- Radish, daikon
- Rutabaga
- Salsify
- Winter Squash, Acorn
We are feeling the full excitement of Spring here on the farm- with all this warm and occasionally sunny weather, we have made progress on several fronts to get ready for the 2016 season. We have completed our crop and rotation plans and are ordering seeds, we have tilled in some of our overwintering cover crops in our lighter, sandy soils, we sowed fava beans in the field, we refurbished our propagation greenhouse, have developed a new potting soil recipe, and have begun seeding onions, shallots, parsley, fennel, chard, and lettuces in the greenhouse!
Most of the items in the share this week are ones that you are familiar with already. Its a very red and white share…which feels very appropriate for this time of year as we see the Snowbell and Indian Plum with their elegant white blossoms and the pinks/reds of the Red-Twig Dogwood, Wild Ginger blossoms, and Flowering Red Currant on their way…a sure harbinger of Spring!
We have posted sign-up options on our website for the main-season CSA, so make sure to go have a look! We have a new payment plan, are accepting SNAP, and have made some exciting changes to our delivery schedule!
Crop Notes
Cabbage, red: This variety is a little less densely packed than the other red cabbage that has been in the share before. It has great flavor, but we noticed that the color has faded over time in storage…so its more like a lavender colored cabbage than a deep royal purple. I’ve made kraut with this variety and watched it turn a very electric fuchsia color.
Greens, bunched: For fresh greens this week we selected Mizuna from the outside fields and a radish green from the greenhouse with lovely pink stems. Some of the Mizuna bunches have ruby mustards mixed in as well, which is a fairly mild and lacy mustard green. The bunched radish greens are an Asian variety that has been bred and selected for its tops and stems rather than the root. They are grown for micro-greens, baby leaves for salad mix, and mature greens like the ones in your share. Some of the undersides of the leaves are ever-so-slightly hairy in texture- so I would consider these a cooking green. But be gentle with them- their thin, delicate texture will wilt very quickly so add them at the very last second as you take the pan off the heat.
Kohlrabi: This is a large German storage variety that was bred to be harvested and kept in a root cellar for use throughout the winter. You can do the same in your refrigerator- just keep it in a plastic bag and cut off however much you need at a time and put the rest back into the bag for later. These certainly have a tougher skin that should be trimmed off.
Salsify: This is the last installment of this funky looking root with the best flavor around! We were really happy with the size, quality, and ease of harvest for these roots that were planted in our most silty field. As you can imagine, pulling these hairy roots out of a wet clay soil is no fun…but harvesting them from a field of powdery loam was a breeze. It also meant that we had very few instances of forked or deformed roots, which happens when the taproot encounters an obstacle such as a rock, clod of clay, or bits of cover crop that have not yet decomposed in the soil. CookWithWhatYouHave has some great salsify tips and recipes or just cook them with lots of butter and prepare to be amazed.