CSA Newsletter

Greetings from the Garden! This box has greens, onions, potato onions, potatoes, carrots, celery root, beets, and eggs.

Field Notes.  Ken has been busy with the transplant juggle.  With each succession of plantings - onions, celery and celery root, peppers, tomatoes, and the continuous plantings of greens - he is moving more things out to greenhouses and covering with fiber so they don't freeze.  This week the snow and ice receded enough so he could open up hoopettes and see how the fall plantings are doing.   First he weeds out the hoopette, and then he fills in where there is space with transplants.  He has planted some items out in the medium tunnel in the field and in the mobile high tunnel.

He was unable to fall plant in the mobile tunnel as the irrigation pond dried up and our well was sucking air!  Each morning when he opens the curtain by the bed, he looks out over to the dam that is filling with melted snow, and he comments on how good that feels!  We really noticed some of the plantings were small last season after we had to make hard decisions about what really needed water the most.  We are so happy to watch all this snow melt!  As Ken says. "Bring it on!"

We are also making maple syrup.  Ken does the bulk of the work - tapping trees, emptying buckets, boiling down the sap outside, and pouring it into large kettles.  I will do the finishing and bottling.  Ken balances his time between opening and closing greenhouses, making syrup, and working in the garden in areas under plastic.  The open soil is still covered in snow, and we await the time when we can dig the over wintered roots.  This is the latest we can remember; the previous record for late digging was April 7th.

From the Kitchen.  I am still lighting the cook stove each morning.  And most mornings I cook us a couple eggs.  Yesterday I poached them in soup broth.  We got in the habit in Japan of eating a hot breakfast.  It seems easier on one's digestion to start the day with warm food.  I am still cooking a lot of eggs as we have a lot!  

Last night we had some friends over for dinner and they really liked a beet salad I prepared.  I laid some wild mustard that Ken had brought me on the plate, Then placed sliced cooked beets, then some of our hazel nuts I had toasted in a skillet and chopped.  For dressing I used some blue cheese crumbled into some kefir I had made - yogurt would be a good substitute.  I then put a half a pickled egg on the side.  The color, flavor and texture contrasts were really nice.  For years I had read about arugula, beet, and blue cheese combinations.  It is good!

As we move into spring, the onions start sprouting.  I take the sprouters for us.  I saute the bulb and use the chopped green tops as a garnish - so much color,  flavor and energy in those small sprouts.

'Til Next Week, 
Judith