Harvest Newsletter

Greetings from The Garden!  This CSA box has salad and braising greens, potatoes, carrots, potato onions, sun chokes, burdock root, and parsnips

Field Notes.  We are actually excited to see this late season snow.  This moisture will all soak in and the peas and oats green manures should take off!  The cool weather will slow down the greens.  When we get those really warm days the greens have a tendency to want to set seed - bolt.  Greens like it cool and damp, and since everyone likes spring greens we are pleased when weather helps the greens flourish.

Ken has started preparation to move the mobile high tunnel so the greens will be cooler and also so the soil in the next area will warm up for the crops that like heat like tomatoes and peppers and eggplant.

Last week Ken moved the egg mobile from near the garden to near the mobile high tunnel.  He will renovate where they wintered, and the hens like their new grassy location.

He also taught the first of his monthly garden seminars.  They will be the third Saturday from April through  October.  The first class feed back was really positive

I have been wrapping up the weaving.  Our spring opener is the first weekend in May and the rugs will available then - as well as pottery, and produce.

From the Kitchen.  Greens!  In addition to salad, I have made some broth soup these cool mornings and added greens just before serving.  They shrink and we eat lots! If you find the braising greens a bit strong, a quick wilt in hot oil or soup stock will make them seem milder. 

I am also serving parsnips and they are so sweet we don't see much need for treats, so neither of us have been baking!  Although most years Ken makes a parsnip pie, and often at the end of the season I make some parsnip wine. The wine is very sweet and concentrated almost like a cordial.  I use it in place of sherry or mirin - Japanese rice wine -in cooking.  It adds a caramel sweetness and seals in flavors.

'Til next week, Judith