Tuesday, April 17, 2012

CSA Newsletter

Greetings from the Garden!  This box has salad greens, braising greens, sorrel, mizuna, baby bok choy, green onions and or chives, yellow bulb onions, potatoes, parsnips, sunchokes, and a last few carrots from the root cellar.  See the prior blog entry greens for more photos and captions of the various greens in your box.

Field Notes.  Ken is back in the garden, field, and hoopettes and tunnels this week after a week focused on firing the kiln.  He took a couple breaks to plant and transplant and harvest.  This is a busy time as several major crops are planted now for use over the whole season - bulb onions and leeks for example.

We got very low temperatures last week.  One casualty of the extreme weather shifts was some rutabaga tops we have been adding to the  braising mix have started sending up a stiff seed stalk.  I will try them before sending them out.  Plants and animals are confused by these radical temperature shifts, and I do hope things moderate soon.  

Many plants just "give up" and go to seed if we get very cold and then very hot weather.  Plants grow with the purpose of growing seed.  Many can be picked over time - like spinach - until the hot weather means they set seed and become more bitter.  As people rejoice at the high temperatures we had earlier, I felt like a real damper  when I worried about apples blooming too early and getting frosted at just the wrong point in their development, or the greens bolting.  Asparagus also likes cool and damp weather.  I was so glad for the moisture we got over the last week.

From the Kitchen.  Two new items on the list this week: mizuna, a jagged leaf, mild mustard the I braise, but other people add to salads; and baby red bok choy that is great in soup, stir fry or braising mix.  Bok choy was the original ingredient in chop suey. 

I had a fun time cooking over the four day firing as I got so much positive feedback and questions about how I had cooked various vegetables.  We had lots of poultry with roasted root vegetables like potatoes, carrots, parsnips.  I had two friends who liked beets, so I left them a plate of buttered beets over the night shift.  

We had a breakfast of soup and rice on a cool morning and fried eggs with chives, venison, and toast on a warm morning.  Salads disappeared quickly.  I used a balsamic vinegar and olive oil dressing as we had a person who cannot eat dairy in the group. And the night crew used it for a bread dip.  Cornbread from our corn and beans rounded things out.  The parsnips parboiled and braised in butter led to an order of two pounds or parsnips this week.  The fried eggs led to another regular egg customer.  

It has been a good week.  My favorite remark from one of our firing friends was, "I haven't eaten this many vegetables since I was here for the last firing!"  Enjoy your vegetables!


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