Dear Common Thread CSA Members,

The first veggies of 2016 are ready!  Thank you for joining Common Thread CSA, it's going to be a great season.

We've been busy on the farm this spring: seeding, prepping ground, planting, moving our caterpiller tunnels to new locations, improving our equipment, cultivating crops, and now finally harvesting.  Farm apprentices Packard, Ethan, Lauren, Alice and Serena have been doing a great job working and learning on the farm.  Their bios are on our website, except Serena's since she joined us more recently...we will post hers soon.  We also have several great part time helpers on the farm: Melissa, Hanns, Olivia and Tiernen.  Many thanks to John for volunteering on the farm this spring!

We have several salad greens this week, including head lettuce, lettuce mix, and mustard mix.  Radishes add flavor and color, as do chive blossoms.  The center of the chive cluster can be removed, resulting in lots of tiny chive flowers that are delicious and beautiful in a salad.  

Kale is a superfood packed with vitamins and minerals and tasty to boot.  It can be a salad green or a cooking green. It can be massaged with a bit of oil to make it more tender in a fresh salad.  It is great sauteed and then any leftovers can be cooked into an omelette.  Kale chips are a big favorite, which my kids and I both enjoy a lot. Kale pesto is also great.  From foodnetwork.com:

KALE PESTO

Directions
Toast the walnuts in a dry skillet until lightly browned; let cool. Pulse in a food processor until finely ground.
Add the kale and 1/4 teaspoon salt and pulse until finely chopped.
Add the parmesan and pulse to combine.
Slowly pour in the olive oil, pulsing to incorporate. Transfer the pesto to a bowl. You'll have about 1 cup pesto; use about 1/2 cup for 1 pound pasta.

Broccoli raab is a delicious cooking green and another very nutritious food.  If the bottom of the stems are a little tough you can trim that part off but otherwise you can cook the entire bunch: stems, leaves and buds.  The traditional Italian recipe is to sautee it with lots of garlic in olive oil and add red pepper flakes.  Raisins, pine nuts, and sausage are nice additions. The cooked greens are delicious as a side dish, on a pizza and in pasta.

We are pulling the last of the potatoes from 2015 out of storage for these first week or two of distribution.  Today, folks got Adirondack Red potatoes, which are an all red variety that turns pink when cooked.  We often make oven fries, but potato salad is nice this time of year as it goes well with the fresh greens.  The chives and lovage would be tasty additions to a potato salad, or to mashed potatoes.  

Yours in the field, 

Wendy and Asher