Happy Solstice friends! Summer has finally arrived! It isn’t officially dark until about 9:30 and the days feel long. With temperatures popping their heads above 80 degrees now on a more regular basis our summer crops are beginning to take off. The tomato plants are getting trellised the zucchini harvest will begin next week and the strawberries (ah yes, the strawberries) have finally arrived!
Our Muddy-Monday Swiss Chard harvest crew in the pouring down rain.
Summer has a way of making me behave a little flighty. I’ll speak for myself here as this may not be the case for you. Not spacy or ditzy, but flighty like a bee or a bird or a very busy animal. It feels like a social season, but also a very engaged one composed of work, focus and fury. I buzz from flower to flower collecting and harvesting and storing and eating. Physically tired and tried, my body feels used again. Muscles feel worked and my mind feels full. It feels like the farm is buzzing like a hive with activity-worker bees coming and going.
There was a program on the Ted Radio hour on NPR this weekend on Shifting Time. Laura Carstensen was talking about how older people are usually happier than young people for a variety of reasons, but she talked about how older people have a better sense for the past and the future while remaining fully present. She spoke of th a grandparent feels when seeing the past, present and future all in the eyes of your own grandchild at play. An older person can have tears in their eye and feel sadness and a profound sense of happiness all at once. They have a whole lifetime of experiences under their belt that assure them that everything is going to be okay.
I think of a season almost like a little ‘lifetime’ in a way. Growing annual vegetables that come to life, fruit and die back all before your eyes in a few short months helps a person gain perspective so to say. The summer solstice, the blossoms on the strawberry plants or the fully turned under spinach beds can make you either joyful for the newness or longing for what has come and is now gone. It all happens so fast. Should we be sad that spinach and asparagus are over, longing for the tomatoes to come or entirely content with the strawberries right now? What to feel? Take flight or sit in the nest?
Salad Turnip- Hakurai salad turnips. These little white globes are so tender and mild you can eat them with almost anything! You could grate them onto salads, slice them into coins, add them to a stir fry or get creative. They’re very versatile! Will store best with their tops removed and kept in a plastic bag in the fridge. You can eat your turnip greens!
Kohlrabi- You may have received a white or a purple kohlrabi. The purple kohlrabis taste the same as the white and they are also white on the inside. Remember that you can cook with the greens on your kohlrabi like kale. 
That’s Amy very happy to be helping to pick Strawberries on Tuesday morning.
Fennel- If this is a new one to you, the Fennel is the white bulb-ish vegetble that wraps itself up like celery, smells like licorice and has the whispy green fern-like tops on it. Core the fennel and shave it very thinly onto salads, mix it into stir-fry and hide it a bit, or check out a couple of our favorit recipe selections below. While the greens on fennel are perfectly edible, they are more commonly used as a garnish. Get creative!
Peas- A very small giving of a quarter pound of peas per member. This was our first picking of peas and next week’s giving will be heavier. These are sugar snap peas so the whole pod is edible.
Garlic Scapes- Garlic scapes are actually the garlic plant’s effort at making a seed head. We snap these off so the garlic plant puts its energy into making a larger garlic bulb rather than putting energy into making a seed head. These delectible scapes can be chopped up and used like garlic. Use solid round part of the scape up until the little nodule that would become the seed head. Above the nodule it gets a little more chewy.
Swiss Chard- Very succulent Chard greens and stems this week. Chard is in the same family as spinach and beets. The flavor and textures is very similar to spinach with a slightly more earthy flavor. The stems are edible as well and add a nice texture and crunch to your dish. Hearty bunches this week. We use chard in place of klae in our favorite kale recipes at the farm.
Broccoli- A nice head of broccoli for everyone this week!
Green Onions- Another fine giving of green onions. Everything from the roots up to the tops of the green onions can be eaten or used like onion in your everyday cooking.
Lettuce- A nice head of either red leaf, green leaf, red oakleaf or romain lettuce.
Cilantro- A wonderful aromatic bunch of cilantro to add to your taco salads, thai food or any other favorite dish with cilantro.
Strawberries or Caulifllower– One of the hardest things we had to do this week was quit picking strawberries just 45 pints short of what we needed to give everyone a pint. This was our first picking of the season and the patch is just getting going! We’re sure everyone will get strawberries next week and we’re hoping quarts next time. A really nice head of cauliflower for everyone who didn’t get strawberries and we’re hoping to make it up to the members who did not get strawberries this week. Eat your strawberries up, they don’t keep well!
Garlic Scapes growing on the plant ripe for the plucking.
Lettuce, Green Onions, Garlic Scapes, Cabbage, Cauliflower, Lacinato Kale, Kohlrabi, Peas, Strawberries, Parsley and there will some some more broccoli but maybe not enough for all.
Cream of Broccoli and Fennel Soup
