EverGreen Farm

CSA Newsletter, Week #16

In your share this week:

• Cucumbers
• Zucchini
• Squash
• Sweet Onions
• Broccoli*
• Cabbage
• Cilantro
• Basil
• Dill
• Snap Peas

Yes, there WILL BE a CSA delivery next week, Tuesday, September 6th.  We are taking off work on Monday (Labor Day) to spend the day with family, but will have a crew of Workshares here on Tuesday morning to harvest and prepare produce.  It's going to be interesting to see how much we can get together for the CSA in one day.  Next week's share will most likely consist of basic crops that would otherwise go to waste if we took too many days off in a row.  I can't even imagine what the zucchini, squash and cucumbers would look like if we skipped harvesting them for a week.  (The pigs would be in heaven.)

*At our home, we are especially enjoying this season's wonderful crop of broccoli.  It's the best we've grown in years.  However, we are finding a LOT of caterpillars hiding inside the heads.  At harvest time, we spend a good amount of time taking every precaution we can to soak, wash, inspect, re-wash, re-soak, re-inspect (over and over again) to try to get all the buggers out, but they have an incredible ability to latch on inside and not let go.  Doesn't help that they are the same color as the broccoli stems.  Please take some extra care as you prepare the broccoli for your meals.  That's just the way it is sometimes with organic produce. 

I mentioned a few weeks ago that we are on a quest to find the perfect restaurant style cabbage salsa recipe.  One of our good friends has been kind enough to share a recipe he tracked down from a local restaurant.  We don't have the exact proportions of each ingredient, but this is a good start.  Here's the "work in progress" recipe - Restaurant Style Cabbage Slaw Salsa.

For people who pick up your shares in AFTON - please be aware that starting next week, Tuesday, September 6th, your produce will not be delivered to the pick up site until 4:00 pm.  This will be a permanent change now that school is back in session and I am working other responsibilities back into my schedule.

Have a great week and ENJOY your veggies!

Tara

CSA Newsletter, Week #15

In your share this week:

• Carrots
• Cucumbers
• Zucchini
• Squash
• Romaine Lettuce (last of the season)
• Snap Peas
• Cilantro
• Basil
• Sweet Onions
• Broccoli

It's just about every day I get asked how the tomatoes are coming along and when we think they will be ready.  It's still hard to say.  I can tell you the plants have grown quite a bit in the past week or two.  I think they are really enjoying the warmer weather.  The plants are also setting a lot of fruit.  Last week we harvested a small handfull of red tomatoes.  Today we picked two handfulls.  That's progress. 

This is a picture I took today from inside greenhouse 5, the "big tomato greenhouse".  I've noticed that in the past week or two the tomato plants on the far left have grown over the tops of their cages.  The other rows (from left to right) are peppers, tomatoes, Ida Gold tomatoes (a determinate variety that stays short and sets a lot of fruit all at once) and then the cucumbers.  The rows of basil are hiding to the right of the cucumbers.  Right now this greenhouse is a forest of greenery up and down every row, with scatterings of yellow blossoms.  It is pretty and smells wonderful, but it will be even better to start seeing hundreds of red tomatoes on all those plants.

A few words about the basil.  Due to the popularity of this herb, we decided to plant twice as much basil this season.  And now we have a LOT of basil.  To harvest it for the CSA, we cut down entire plants which will grow back again over time.  Due to our limited time lately, this basil is not sorted through as thoroughly as I'd like.  You will notice some of the leaves are brownish.  This is a type of sunburn on the leaves despite us growing it under a shade cloth.  You will also notice the bugs are starting to enjoy this favorite crop too.  If it bothers you to eat the leaves with holes, just discard them.  We usually chop up the "ugly" leaves or turn them into pesto.  Oh, PESTO.  A heavenly dish indeed!

I added two new recipes for Zucchini Bites and Zucchini Soup to the recipe section of this blog.  Please let me know if you have any other favorites.

One last matter of importance.  Please be aware that we will be taking a little time off from farm work around Labor Day weekend.  There is a possibility we will deliver only a small share of produce that following Tuesday, or none at all.  We still haven't decided.  I will let you know for sure next week.

Have a great week and ENJOY your veggies!

Tara

CSA Newsletter, Week #14

In your share this week:

• Carrots
• Radishes, they are getting pretty ugly so these will probably be the last of them for the season
• Romaine Lettuce
• Cabbage
• Broccoli (for everyone else who missed it last week)
• Sweet Onion
• Dill
• Basil
• Cucumbers
• Zucchini

It's a good thing we started growing Romaine and cabbage plants back in May.  They are again filling in for our lack of salad mix this week.  Personally, I am enjoying the change for a few weeks.  Unfortunately, the smaller salad greens I mentioned last week, the ones we thought looked pretty good and would be OK to harvest, they aren't so good afterall.  The amount of time it takes to sort through and wash these greens is considerably longer than usual and so once again we are choosing to harvest a bigger a variety of crops for the CSA rather than devoting our limited harvest time to salad mix.  On Monday, 3 helpers were able to harvest, prepare, wash and bag the radishes, cabbage, Romaine lettuce, and broccoli in the same amount of time it took me to cut and wash 9 lbs. of salad mix for my restaurant and grocery store accounts.  (We usually do 25 lbs. of salad mix on Monday mornings.)  Right now, salad mix just doesn't make sense when there are so many other great crops available. 

Shain planted another batch of salad mix after the early August storms.  Hopefully, it will grow nicely and be ready for us in a few weeks.  He will also be planting our fall crop of spinach soon.  So there will be more greens later on in the season.

Last night we finished harvesting our small garlic crop.  The bulbs are big, beatiful and healthy.  We are taking extra precautions this year, even throwing the deformed, shrivelled, or otherwise sickly looking bulbs into a burn pile to ensure this crop stays disease free.  As I've mentioned before, this year's garlic is reserved entirely to be replanted this coming fall.  We think this one year of sacrifice (and I believe that word is not too much of an exageration when it comes to garlic) will be worth it.  We anticipate being back to being able to distribute garlic for the CSA next season. 

Shain reports that a few tomatoes have started to turn colors.  That's good news.  The plants are not as tall as usual, but they are filling up with oodles of tomatoes. Update:  Don't hate me. We picked the first 5 small ripe tomatoes off the vine today and enjoyed them with lunch (see below).  There have to be a few perkes with this job, right?

Lastly, I feel obligated to inform you that we are experiencing a bumper zucchini crop this year.  It's a nice change from the past two or three years when the zucchini and squash yields have been minimal.  However, this may be a year when all those zucchini jokes start coming into our minds again.  Time to get creative with our cooking and enjoy them while they are so plentiful. 

This is one recipe idea that will use up one larger sized zucchini (and I think it needed more!).  While I was outside bagging up the CSA shares, Shain came inside and made us this great lunch - fried zucchini and mushrooms in a light cream sauce served over bowtie pasta with a sprinkling of freshly grated Parmesan cheese.  Oh, and a few slices of fresh tomatoes too.  Heavely!

Have a great week and ENJOY your produce.

Tara

CSA Newsletter, Week #13

We get some strange looking carrots here. 

This one is in the running for "Ugliest Carrot of the Year" Award. 

In your share this week:

• Carrots
• Radishes
• Cucumbers
• Zucchini
• Cabbage
• Romaine Lettuce
• Cilantro
• Basil
• Spinach - it's just starting to grow and we only had enough for our members at one pick-up site, we will rotate giving spinach to different location groups to make sure everyone gets some. 

The cucumbers have really turned on this week and we were easily able to pick at least 2 for each share.  This is a Japanese variety of cucumber that we have been growing for several years now, similar to English cucumbers.  They are sweet, juicy and refreshing.  Eat them quickly because they will start to wilt (go soft) after a few days.  You can wrap them in plastic to preserve their moisture.  Or, if they do go a little flopsy, just add cucumber chunks to your smoothies.  It may sound weird, but I think it's really good.

As I mentioned last week, our salad greens were damaged in a severe rain storm.  The rows of greens that were ready to harvest from to make our wonderful salad mix were shredded.  It would be extremely time consuming for us to pick through it all so we are opting to let that planting go and wait for the next rows to grow just a little bigger.  These new rows of salad were small enough to survive the storm and we hope to be back to harvesting our regular salad mix in about a week.  Meanwhile, we also have a row of Romain lettuce growing.  The plan was to let these plants grow into bigger Romaine heads but unfortunately, this lettuce was also damaged in the storm.  Shain experimented with harvesting a few plants and pulling off the outside damaged leaves.  The small heads cleaned up nicely and that's what we went with for this week's share.  We used our Romaine this week to make a Chinese Chicken Salad that was wonderful (especially adding Mandaring oranges).

A recipe idea that keeps being suggested to me this week is using the cabbage and cilantro to make the type of cabbage slaw that is served at our local Mexican restaurant with tortilla chips.  Do you know what I'm talking about?  If you know how to make this, please share your recipe with the group.  The batch we made recently was a mixture of shredded cabbage, cilantro, jalapeno peppers, red and green peppers, a drizzling of oil, onions and something else I'm probably forgetting.  We are still trying to perfect a recipe (translation - I didn't like the first batch). 

My Mom called me recently with a recipe for chilled Zucchini soup.  The ingredients are over the top unhealthy, so I'm looking for a substitute.  But the idea sounds yummy.  A good way to use up the abundance of zucchini we will be giving in your shares in the coming weeks.  Did I mention the zucchini plants are thriving very well this year in our greenhouses.  There will be NO lack of zucchini this year.

If you have any other recipe ideas, please forward them to me.

Have a great week and ENJOY your veggies!

Tara

CSA Newsletter, Week #12

In your share this week:

• Sweet Onion
• Carrots
• Cabbage
• Swiss Chard
• Cilantro
• Cucumber
• Zucchini

This is not the list of vegetables we had originally planned on harvesting for the CSA shares this week.  Due to a torrential thunderstorm we experienced on Sunday evening (the kind of storm that topples full grown trees) and continued rain through most of Monday, it was impossible for us to harvest any crops that are growing outside.  Unfortunately, the tender salad greens and spinach have taken a beating.  The fields are a muddy, soggy mess.  Thank heavens again for the greenhouses.  Everything in this weeks share was grown in a greenhouse (except the cilantro).  And yes, Farmer Shain now wants another greenhouse.

Have a great week and ENJOY your veggies.

Tara