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~ In the Box ~
Week 11 ~ Monday, June 25
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Click item for more info
(med & lg only)
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~ A la Carte ~
Our a la carte store is well stocked with sunflower oil, eggs, maple syrup, honey, and our own salsas, preserves, soups, and more. Log in with your email and password to see what's being offered for delivery with your CSA. We'll update it as needed, so check back often.
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~ Value ~
Click here for this week's value.
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~ Recipes ~
Erin F brought a beautiful and surprising beet salad with crushed pineapple to the farm visit last weekend. I'm still tracking that down but in the meantime found this one with most of the ingredients she mentioned. As we walked the fields on tour, Kurt picked a beet from the ground and passed it around for nibbles and it was incredibly sweet. So consider just biting into your beets for a farm-fresh treat!
And be sure to check our website for more recipes.
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Questions?
Robin (in Chicago)
708-370-8017
or
Chris (farmer/owner)
608-712-1585
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Check out our
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The heat of summer is upon us now, with no rain in sight. I've always said it's better to be too dry than too wet because you can always irrigate, but you can't get excess water out of the ground. Hard to imagine too much water as we've not had much all month, and there is nothing significant in the forecast for at least a week, probably two. With all the 80 and 90+ degree temperatures forecast during this period, we'll be moving irrigation pipe every day.
We were apprehensive about this transition time between spring greens and summer crops, but we're quite pleased with how this week's box turned out. There are lots of firsts in the box this week: carrots, beets, and even the first sungold tomatoes of the season--though the latter only in the medium and large boxes as there just aren't that many yet; they're coming on early with the extra heat and early planting so there will be more soon. Both the beets and carrots have their greens attached. The beet greens are in pretty nice shape and work well in any dishes where you would use greens. Carrot tops are usually disposed of, but here are some ideas that will have you thinking twice, especially when they're as fresh as these. (NOTE: regardless of your plans with the beet greens and carrot tops, be sure to separate the greens from the roots for storage.)
The carrots would have been much larger and about a week earlier had our field not gotten so compacted back in March when we had compost applied to our field. The very large and heavy equipment used for spreading compost, and the not completely dry ground at the time, left our field severely compacted, effectively driving all the air/oxygen out of the soil. This is very bad for several reasons: plant roots need oxygen, and do much better when there's lots of it around. Soil life also depends on oxygen and suffers greatly in its absence. It is much more difficult to work, till, plant and weed/cultivate soil that becomes hard and rocklike after being compacted, especially as it gets drier. Finally, root crops like an open, airy soil to expand into rather than a hard compacted one. Onions and beets do better as they grow near the surface and encounter less resistance than carrots that grow at depth. The beets did nicely as you can see.
To round out the box, we still have nice lettuce and kale, a few more garlic scapes, and the large and medium shares are getting scallions. Next week, there will probably be onions and more tomatoes, hopefully enough for everyone with all the hot weather we're expecting between now and then. And though we might not have lots of it, we hope to have zucchini next week as well.
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Our huge "new" walk-in cooler
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We finally have our huge new (used) cooler and fancy new three-phase electricity installed and in place. We'll grow into our new cooler as we reach CSA member capacity in a year or two, and in the meantime it will make a nice winter storage space for all the carrots, beets, turnips, onions, and winter squash we can fit into it for our fall and winter CSA seasons. Eventually, we'll need to build a large root crop storage area for the big fall harvest that will last us through the coldest months of the winter. That will cost around $50,000 and we hope to make that happen next year.
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Chris Covelli and
The Tomato Mountain Team
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Keep it Coming!
One more week in the Early Season! To keep the veggies coming, go to Extend Your Season on our website. So we'll have time to adjust the routes and have our drivers hit the ground running, please do so by July 1st. Any questions or password issues, call or email Robin.
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