Week 9 | Spring 3 CSA Newsletter Tues | Apr 30
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Call or text Robin at 708-370-8017 if you have any questions about your delivery tonight. |
Mid spring has arrived with warmer temperatures and a dry spell long enough for us to begin our outdoor plantings. We were getting a little nervous with all the rain we kept getting--so much so that we had already begun planting the edges of our tomato hoop houses with a few extra rows of greens. The last thing we want is to run out of hoop house crops before the field crops begin producing. In the end, we finally got a week straight of dry weather and had a fantastic round of planting with onions, spinach, lettuce, kale, and chard getting transplanted in the field. We were able to direct seed peas, mesclun (salad mix), and spinach (we both transplant and direct seed spinach) as well. As mentioned in passing above, we've even been able to transplant one hoop of tomatoes. All in all, we're doing very well, with lots of crops planted in the hoops and the field-- more than enough for our nearly 400 CSA customers.
FYI, our goal as a farm is to serve around 1,000 customers via our CSA. Though we currently have enough produce to do just that, we're allowing our membership to grow organically (pun intended), not in a large spike that would outstrip our capabilities on both the growing and delivering fronts. In my dreams, every CSA customer would recruit one other customer, and we could essentially stop taking produce to farmers' markets, focusing all our energy on taking care of CSA customers. We spend lots of time and energy switching in and out of farmers' market mode, hoping we'll sell all we take, rarely doing so. The time, energy, and uncertainty of these markets create stress and cost money when we don't sell everything we take, so I look forward to the day we don't have to be a slave to them--much better to be a slave to our CSA customers :).
We've got a few new items in the box this week, with the sweet Hakurei salad turnips being the highlight. These turnips are a special treat, quite different from the purple top turnips you saw in the first box of the year. Their sugar content makes them one of the sweeter crops we grow on the farm. Eat them raw with a dip, like an apple, or sliced into salads. Additionally, they have some of the best turnip greens you'll ever eat--very tender and with great flavor. Next, bok choi was ready to go this week, and you're receiving it at an adolescent stage. Finally, we had a beautiful harvest of Tokyo Bekana, the Chinese cabbage relative. We grew this crop last year for the first time and really like how early, productive, and different it is from the other Asians greens we've been growing. It makes a nice little head with interesting flavor that works great in stir fries. Use it as you might bok choi or Chinese cabbage, or add its light, bright green leaves to a salad. Look at the sneak peak from last week to find more details about these crops.
Besides the new crops, we're packing a few crops you've seen this year. We've got another nice cutting of red rain; yukina savoy and tatsoi--quite similar to each other and a bit like spinach--are packed together in the box. With so many greens, we decided to hold off on chives until next week. By now everyone is acquainted with our carrots from last fall. I must say that these are some of the best carrots I've ever had and that I can't eat grocery carrots any more. It feels good to have more than five things in the box now that spring is well underway and we can harvest more crops. Expect the number and variety to continue to grow throughout the rest of the spring, summer and fall.
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Questions?
Call Robin (in Chicago), 708-370-8017 | Chris (farmer/owner), 608-712-1585
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Click links below for info
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WHAT'S COOKIN'
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If you find yourself stymied about what to do with this week's wealth of diverse greens, try Robin's Mess o' Greens with Caramelized Onions. You can make this easy recipe even easier by caramelizing the onions for several hours in a crockpot and adding any mix of greens for up to an hour or so at the end. Barbara P from Lakeview tried this recipe last week and gave it a rave review! |
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Extra Produce | Maple Syrup | Sunflower Oil
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Stone-Ground Flours & Pancake Mix | Blue Corn Tortilla Chips | Our Salsas, Soups, Preserves & More Seasonal Cookbooks
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