Farm News Week 4, 2017

June Twenty-Eighth

It always feels strange to have the longest days of the year at the beginning of the season. It doesn’t feel like the days should start getting shorter again already! But it does feel like a blessing in some ways. The darkness is sometimes the only thing that brings a farmer indoors. When it’s too dark to work, it must be time for the farmer to quit!

In recent years as we have had small children, a more structured routine has settled itself into our lives. The children demanded a firm dinner, work, family routine that simply was not present before kiddos. While it can be hard to come inside during good, quality afternoon daylight hours to start dinner, keeping small children fed and on a solid snack/nap/meal/bedtime routine takes precedence for one parent (most often the mom) while the other parent (usually dad) keeps at it in the fields until the crew is gone and then finally called in for supper. Eat at 6pm. Kids sleeping by 7:30. Parents catch up on admin work, straighten up the house, and even have un-interrupted conversations.

The girls usually wake us up around 6:30am. Coffee. Breakfast. Get dressed. Baby-sitters and field crew arrive at 8am. We work until noon. One hour lunch break. Back into the fields at 1pm and work with the crew and worker shares until 5, 5:30 or 6pm-depending on the day. Wednesdays we work until 7:30pm. Time passes quickly and in the long days of the summer like these, there never seems to be enough of it with so much to do. We have childcare lined up for the morning shifts each day, while one parent (usually me) watches the girls in the afternoons. In the afternoons with the girls I am able to do some simple chicken chores, laundry, make dinner and sometimes help the field crew for a bit or for as long as the children last.

Adam has been shouldering the brunt of the strict schedule. He needs to be prepared each morning to direct a crew, be on time, keep everyone on task and quality check work being done and harvesting. He has been managing the bulk of the tractor work as well including tillage, planting, seeding and cultivating. He is even responsible for taking advantage of little windows of opportunity between weather for getting things done such as being on the tractor all weekend cultivating-since that is when it was finally dry enough to catch up on such tasks.

It’s grueling at times, but we actually really love it. We might get bored otherwise. We’re accustomed to a pace that ticks a few notches faster than your usual family. We don’t sit around well and we don’t leave home well. We do eat well and we have a strong sense of family and home and a deep groundedness that keeps us sane. This is summer. The family and the farm and the lifestyle change in the off-season. We have a tide that we ride that ebbs and flows in a very natural and seasonal rhythm. While our lives in this moment make feel un-balanced and a little too busy, it is important for us to remember that we will re-claim our sanity and eventually slower pace in the off season. But for now….Summer has only just started!

Soooo….What’s in the Box????

Salad Turnips– These are the smaller white turnips bunched with their greens on. These are nice if sliced very thinly on top of a salad with a mandolin. The greens are also perfectly edible in any way that you might normally incorporate greens into your cooking. Omlet with turnip greens?

White and Purple Kohlrabi- Each member received one white kohlrabi and one purple kohlrabi. Cut the leaves off of the top of the kohlrabi and use them in your cooking like kale. Using a pearing knife or a small knife, peel the outer edge of the kohlrabi off before you eat it. These kohlrabis are so mild and tender and have a hint of sweetness to them! Once a kohlrabi has been cut open, the flavor is best if it is eaten within an few hours. Also wonderful if chopped into veggie sticks, sprinkled with salt and eaten raw and whole! Kohlrabi is also called the “ground apple” because its texture is so much like that of an apple.

Broccoli- Everyone’s favorite! A broccoli for everyone! For the sake of your broccoli and strawberries, arrive at your dropsite ASAP! Broccoli likes to be kept very cold to be stay fresh. It would also keep best in a plastic bag in the fridge.

Red Oakleaf or red Buttercup lettuce- The red buttercups were holding up nicely in the fields and it won’t be long before we aren’t abe to get these tender varieties of lettuce as the heat season is approaching.

Romaine Head Lettuce- This romaine is maybe some of the nicest romaine we have ever grown. Maybe soil improvement, maybe all the moisture, maybe the new variety, but we are happy with them! We thought the huge leaves would make nice wrappers for chicken lettuce wraps or a spicy beef wrap. Romaine is also great for making Ceaser salads with crutons, ranch dressing and chicken! Yum!

Strawberry Quarts- Hurry to your dropsite and save your strawberries from melting. Eat them up quickly, they are very perishable!

Sweet Peas– Whaaaaaaaa? Sweet peas? .43lbs per member! There isn’t much in life that gets better than fresh-picked sweet peas! And they have so much flavor! So sweet! We’re expecting an even bigger giving next week!

Dill- A super full herb for making fun salad dressings, creamy dips or even soups with. Dill is also nice dried if you can’t use the whole thing. We recommend laying the bunch out and dehydratig it. Dill is very alkalizing in the body, so very healthy to eat!

Swiss Chard- We couldn’t belive how thick, succultent and fresh the stems are on these babies! Very perfect and gorgeious looking early-season chard! Yes! Don’t let a leaf go to waste! Remember that you can use the stalks and stems as well in your cooking! See recipe below.

Zucchini and Summer Squash- The zucchini and Summer Squah are starting! The production on these goes up and up and keeps on going! So dust off your old zucchini recipes, here they come! Zucchini and summer squash are a very watery-soft squash that can be sauteed lightly into stir fries, marrinated and then grilled, or spiralized into a gluten-free pasta. Zucchini and Summer squash don’t have much flavor of their own, so they are great at absorbing the flavors of your home-made dressings. They can also be used inter-changably in recipes. The only thing really that differs about them is their color and shape.

Garlic Scapes- These are the long and skinney things that look a bit like a long string bean or something, but they should smell strongly of garlic. These scapes are the garlic plant’s effort at making a seed head. Each garlic plant makes one scape. If snapped off, the garlic plant will put more of it’s energy into making a nice big garlic bulb rather than putting it’s energy into making a seed head bulbous. Fortunately for us, these scapes are delicious to eat! Start chopping them up with your knife at the base of the bunch and use the little green chopped pieces like garlic in your soups, stir fries, pastas, eggs or wherever you might ordinarily cook with garlic! You can also make a garlic scape pesto which has become very popular. We like the chop up the garlic scapes beginning from the base of the bunch up until the little nodules on the scape- the rest of the scape is still edible but a little more chewy.

Green Onions/Scallions- The first giving of green onions. These bunches of green onions are smaller this week. This is the frist giving of them and the bunch size goes up as they onions grow and they get bigger over the next few weeks. You can use every part of these onions in your cooking, all th way up to the tips of the greens!

Next Weeks Best Guess: Romaine lettuce, green leaf lettuce, bunching onions, zucchini and summer squash, kohlrabi, garlic scapes, broccoli, salad turnips, kale.