Harvest Newsletter

Greetings from the Garden!  This week's CSA box has greens and more greens - lettuce, spinach, beet thins, braising greens like brassica tops and mustard, sorrel, claytonia, herbs - either cilantro or dill, chives, salad turnips, parsnips and potatoes.

Field Notes.  The forecast for Monday (tonight) is 32 degrees.  Even though we see people anxious to set out tender and heat loving plants, we vividly remember eighteen degrees on May 18th - twice.  There are several crops in the ground - Ken got the onions planted, but tender crops are under plastic in warmed soil.  

Piglets arrived last Friday.  They are an integral part of our growing produce.  They dig out spots each year and they eat garden items people don't eat - broccoli plants, for example.

Ken has been planting - the onions was a big job.  Here they are after the first cultivation. This is the most onions he remembers planting.  He has also been experimenting with early potatoes. 

In addition to the regular spring push, Ken added a new project - mushrooms!  He has oak logs, and he took a few workshops, and now he has a spot in the woods with water.  It could be pretty exciting!

From the Kitchen.  With this cold weather we have gone back to lighting the cook stove in the morning.  And I have been serving either meat and eggs or soups with eggs poached in them and added to a bowl of chopped greens for a warming soup.

And I have been doing more cooked greens - I like to dip spinach in boiling water, remove and top with either cream or an Asian dressing of sesame and toasted sesame oil, a mild vinegar, a little sweet like honey and either tamari or miso topped with toasted sesame seeds.

And I have been braising greens with sliced ginger root as ginger is warming. I add the above Asian dressing or a light vinegar and oil.

'Til Next Week, Judith