I don’t think I’m the only one who is feeling it, but life feels a little like a boiling pot these days. Every day is a marathon. The to-do lists are long, longer than the daylight hours. The children run barefoot with wild hair and eyes and stay up much too late. I feel a loosening and a lengthening of the expectations I have for my self care, my housecleaning, my flower beds and all the spaces I dreamed of keeping mowed and maintained this summer. The perfectionist part of me is taking a nap while complacency sets in.
A CSA farmer makes sacrifices this time of year. We sacrifice the dinner dates, the canoe trips, the camping outings and plenty of sleep. A vegetable farm is very time-sensitive. The strawberries must be picked when they need to be picked, the zucchini, summer squash, cucumbers and broccoli must be harvested every two days and the weeds only get bigger with every day they go un-pulled. We are ‘making our hay while the sun shines” as my father always says. I submit to this very busy time of year and honor it as part of the seasonal rhythm. Our forest friends and the bees and birds are quite busy themselves ensuring their own procurement of food, family legacy and survival for the winter ahead. The monarch butterflies have found a haven of milkweed on our farm in the asparagus patch and in the ditches. Their fluttering wings remind me of fire, reminiscent of the heat and intensity of this time of year but in a fragile and delicate way.
This week on the farm we seeded our fall carrots and beets with anticipation of rain in the forecast. We will work on trying to catch up on some weeding projects before garlic harvest begins next week. The cucumber plants are beginning to pour forth all of their cucumber glory-ensuring that we visit them every two days for harvest. My body feels ready for the cooling, watery, alkalizing cucumber. The tomato plants stretch higher up their trellising and farm workers Kalyn and Ellena become master ‘Florida Weave’ tomato trellisers.
We are ready for rain again and eagerly watch the forecast for chances of precipitation. We welcome the cooler temperatures in the forecast for the later part of this week. We hope you are all are enjoying this bountiful season of summer and reveling in all the summer activity that July brings to our lives. Here’s to holding on to our hats!
(If Sweet Corn is “Knee High by the 4th of July” then you know you’ll get a good harvest. But what about when it’s “head high”?)
Soooo….What’s in the Box?
Green Cabbage- We grow a variety called Quickstart that brings these beautiful, large heads of cabbage. Quickstart isn’t as dense as a storage cabbage and won’t keep as long either. It is tender and crisp and works well in any of your favorite summer cabbage recipes that you love.
Kohlrabi x 2- Two kohlrabi per member this week. You may have received either a purple or a green kohlrabi. Just peel off the outer skin and enjoy the crunchy insides.
Broccoli or Cauliflower- You may have received either broccoli or cauliflower. We know that broccoli is a CSA member favorite, so we try to provide a long run of it! Did you know that broccoli and cauliflower leaves are edible like kale? You can sneak extra greens into your familie’s diet by saving your broccoli and cauliflower greens which are actually more nutritious than the flowers themselves!
Fennel- Fennel is a lovely addition to salads when shaved with the mandolin into salads. It has a lovely locorice flavor when eaten raw, but it can also be cooked and sautéed like an onion where it looses most of the licorice flavor and blends into whatever you’re preparing! The fennel frawns make a nice garnish, but my kids like to just chew on them raw!
Bunching Onions- Bunching onions are a wonderful replacement for onions until we have them in a few weeks. Green onions, scallion or bunching onions, whatever you like to call them can be eaten from root to tip. Use up the white part and the green part! They make a nice addition to egg salads, potato salads or any kind of summer salad!
Collard Greens- These are the bunches of large, flat greens in your box this week. Collards are a very close relative to Kale, so no need to feel intimidated. I have included two recipe ideas which I LOVE that will inspire you to us them up!
Lettuce- A nice head of either romaine lettuce or a red leaf lettuce. Sneak a small salad into every meal and stay feeling alive and hydrated!
Garlic Scapes- One more week of garlic scapes after this week. Another fun seasonal item that shows you’re a Rock Star CSA member for gobbling them all up!
Zucchini and/or Summer Squash- X2 We’re having a new and mysterious ‘problem’ with our zucchini this year that we have never seen before. We belong to a list serve with other farmers in the state and everyone seems to be talking about how their zucchini’s this year have a tapered end on the blossom side of the zucchini. It’s a bit of a phenomenon that none of us have seen before this early in the growing season when usually the plants are cranking out higher percentages of perfectly shaped zucchinis. So you may notice that your zucchini comes to a bit of a tapered end and they may not keep as long as a well-formed zucchini, so we’re asking folks to eat the up sooner rather than trying to keep them.
Next Week’s Best Guess: Green Cabbage, Broccoli, Cauliflower, Kohlrabi, Fennel, bunching onions, garlic scapes, Lettuce, Kale, Summer Squash/Zucchini, Maybe Celery?, Maybe Beets?
