csa share – week 4 {june 14}

Welcome to the 4th week of the Pitchfork & Crow CSA!

Here’s what’s in the share:

  • Red Iceburg Lettuce  – not your mom’s iceburg lettuce!
  • Garlic Scapes – the bolt from the hardneck garlic plants, mildly garlicky and tasty to use as a garlic substitute!  Check out the Garlic Scape Pesto recipe we’ve been eating this week.
  • Baby Carrots
  • Cooking Greens Mix – a mix of young chard, kale leaves
  • French Breakfast Radishes – mild and delicious!
  • Strawberries!
  • Rye Flour – grown and ground into flour at Open Oak Farm in Crawfordsville
  • Sunflower Sprouts – organic sprouts from Spectrum Light Farm in Lebanon, OR

We’ve made it through the first month of the CSA!  After three weeks of spring greens we’re excited to be able to include a bit more diversity this week.  Not only do we have the first of the season’s sweet baby carrots this week, but we were also able to harvest enough strawberries from the small strawberry patch at the farm.  That’s right, it’s officially strawberry season, and these weren’t even grown in a greenhouse!

Over the last few weeks we’ve been lucky to be able to include items from other nearby farms to round out the share.  Hopefully you enjoyed the pea sprouts from last week.  This week we’re bringing you sunflower sprouts, aka sunny greens, from the same farm in Lebanon.  We’ve been told they’re delicious raw or cooked lightly and we’re excited to give them a try along with you.

This week we’re also including a bag of rye flour from Open Oak Farm in Crawfordsville.  We visited this farm recently and got a peek at the diverse enterprises they’re engaged in.  They have a small CSA, including a winter program, a seed business, and they’re working to bring bean and grain production back to the Willamette Valley.  The rye flour you’re getting this week was both grown and ground at Open Oak.

As the weather cleared this past week we were able to mark a number of big plantings off our to-do list.  Basil, dill, fennel, cucumbers, corn, green beans, dry beans, and potatoes all got planted this week.  While we aren’t completely caught up planting-wise, we feel a lot better about things than we did a week ago.  But even as the propagation house is clearing out as the major crops get transplanted we’re already thinking ahead to fall and winter crops.

In a few weeks we’ll begin sowing seeds for overwintering cauliflower and spring onions.  It doesn’t quite seem right to be thinking about next winter when we’ve barely felt the beginning of the summer weather, but crops take time to grow.  We need to take inventory of the seeds and make seed orders for any special winter hardy varieties that we didn’t already purchase this past spring.  Of course we’ve already been planting some crops for winter storage.  Our potato, winter squash, and onion plantings all included extra beds so we’ll be able to keep crops in storage for winter and early spring sales.  It’s a never ending cycle of planning and follow-through that we’re learning to embrace.

Enjoy this week’s vegetables!

Your farmers,
Jeff Bramlett and Carri Heisler

 

Here are a few recipes to get you inspired:

Check out the myriad of fun garlic scape recipes at Not Without Salt!

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Sunny Greens Omelet

Pea Shoots or Sunflower Greens
Garlic to taste – minced
Ginger to taste – minced or sliced (optional)
Soy Sauce

Heat a wok or pan up nice and hot.
Toss in a bunch of garlic and ginger (optional) and then a whole mess of Pea Shoots or Sunflower Greens (see note).
Stir fry vigorously for a minute or two.
Add some soy sauce in the last 20-30 seconds. Keep stirring.

Over rice is nice – but as is is swell.

If doing this with Sunnys – cook ’em only barely – they wilt very fast.

From Sprout People, http://sproutpeople.org/recipes/saladsandsides/peashoot.stirfry.html

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Radish Sandwiches

6 radishes, breakfast radishes, or a mixture of red, purple, and pink radishes, tender greens attached
4 Tbsp. unsalted butter
1 tsp. finely grated lemon zest
~ Salt
~ Baguette slices, for serving

  1. Wash and trim the radishes and their leaves. Thinly slice the radishes into rounds, then crosswise into narrow strips. Each should be tipped with color. Chop the leaves. You should have about ½ cup.
  2. Mix the butter with the lemon zest until it’s soft, then stir in the chopped radishes, radish leaves, and a few pinches of sea salt. Spread on slices of crusty baguette and serve.

From Culinate via Local Flavors by Deborah Madison, http://www.culinate.com/books/collections/all_books/Local+Flavors/radish_sandwiches