csa share – week 3 {june 5}

Welcome to the 3rd week of the Pitchfork & Crow CSA!

Here’s what’s in the share:

  • Salad Turnips –tasty turnips with bonus greens!
  • Garlic Scapes – use like green garlic as a mild substitute for garlic in recipes including pesto
  • Carrots
  • Head Lettuce – 1 head Romaine, 1 head Butterhead
  • Pink Beauty Radishes
  • Rutabaga
  • Popcorn – in the microwave or on the stove, this stuff is a fantastic treat!

As the start of the CSA season drew closer folks would ask if we were ready for it to begin.  I realized pretty quickly that we were indeed ready to get going and felt prepared for the first couple of shares.  It was week 3 that I wondered about.  What would week 3 look like?  What would be ready to go into the week 3 share?  Well, here we are at week 3 and I think it looks pretty good.

As I mentioned last week, we’ve been doing a lot of planting recently.  Sunday we planted out our beans including several types of fresh eating beans and various types of dry beans.  We also direct sowed flour corn, popcorn, and sweet corn.  As the weather forecast predicted rain and cooler temperatures for this coming week we found ourselves looking forward to eating roasted corn mid-summer and harvesting the dry beans that will show up in fall shares later this season.

Each time we sow seeds we’re reminded how long we have to wait until we reap the benefits of the harvest.  The carrots in this week’s share were sown in February!  The turnips and lettuce were both sown in late March!  We’ve already begun sowing seeds for fall broccoli and cauliflower and soon enough we’ll be finalizing our overwintering plan.  We’ve found it’s usually worth the wait though.  We appreciate spring radishes and mild green garlic this time of year because we’ve had to wait a while to enjoy them.

We’ve found that our style of diversified farming is an elaborate exercise in planning, patience, and flexibility.  We try to anticipate the season ahead during our late-December planning sessions but we seem to always run into seasonal weather issues or limitations on our own physical abilities.  I could probably name a dozen changes we’ve made in the past few months regarding planting times, planting locations, and varieties of seeds we’ve actually planted.  This week we did surprise ourselves when we sowed beans and corn on the date we’d actually planned for.  We’ll just have to wait and see if they’re ready to harvest when we’d projected as well.

Enjoy this week’s vegetables!

Your farmers,
Jeff Bramlett and Carri Heisler
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Here are a few recipes to get you inspired:

Hearty Rutabaga, Turnip, and Carrot Soup

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 1/2 cups chopped leek (white and pale green parts only)
1/2 cup chopped celery
1 garlic clove, minced (use garlic scapes)
2 cups 1/2-inch pieces peeled turnips
2 cups 1/2-inch pieces peeled rutabagas
2 cups 1/2-inch pieces peeled russet potatoes
2 cups sliced carrots
1 28-ounce can diced tomatoes in juice
4 14 1/2-ounce cans vegetable broth or low-salt chicken broth

Heat oil in heavy large pot over medium-low heat. Add leek, celery and garlic and sauté until vegetables begin to soften, about 5 minutes. Add turnips, rutabagas, potatoes, carrots, tomatoes with juices and 2 cans broth. Bring to boil. Reduce heat; cover and simmer until vegetables are very tender, about 45 minutes.

Transfer 4 cups soup to processor. Puree until almost smooth. Return puree to pot. Add remaining 2 cans broth; bring to simmer. Season with salt and pepper. Ladle soup into bowls and serve.

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Carrots and Rutabaga with Lemon and Honey

  • 1 1/4 pounds rutabagas, peeled, cut into matchstick-size strips
  • 1 pound carrots, peeled, cut into matchstick-size strips
  • 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter
  • 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
  • 3 tablespoons honey
  • 1 teaspoon grated lemon peel
  • 1/2 cup chopped fresh chives

Cook rutabagas in large pot of boiling salted water 2 minutes. Add carrots and cook until vegetables are tender, about 6 minutes. Drain.

Melt butter in large pot over medium-high heat. Add lemon juice, honey, and peel. Bring to boil. Add vegetables; cook until glazed, stirring occasionally, about 6 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Remove from heat. Mix in fresh chives.

From Epicurious.com via Bon Appétit, http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Carrots-and-Rutabagas-with-Lemon-and-Honey-105812

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Plain Popcorn

2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1/3 cup popcorn kernels

Heat oil with 3 popcorn kernels in a 3-quart heavy saucepan over moderate heat, covered, until 1 or 2 kernels pop. Quickly add remaining popcorn, then cook, covered, shaking pan frequently, until kernels stop popping, about 3 minutes.

From Epicurious.com via Gourmet Magazine, http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Plain-Popcorn-108511