Welcome to the 5th share of the Pitchfork & Crow 2020/2021 Winter CSA!  Here’s what’s in the share this week:

• Kalettes – This new-to-us brassica is a cross between kale and Brussels sprouts. Instead of a sprout small kale flowers develop along the stalk. We ate some for the first time this week and found them to be delicious and sweet! You can eat the leaves and stems of the sprouts and they can be prepared just like kale.
• Rainbow Chard
• Purple Sprouting Broccoli – a seasonal treat, this PSB was planted back in August and only starts forming florets now. Like broccoli heads you can eat the stems and leaves too.
• Semi-Savoy Green Cabbage
• Rutabaga – less turnipy than turnips, these rutabaga (aka Swedes) are especially sweet after sweetening up in the winter field. We like them roasted with other roots and ate some mashed up with potatoes this week, which made for a tasty soup the next night.
• Banana Fingerling Potatoes – Classic yellow fingerlings.
• Garlic
• Yellow Onions – We ask a lot of our storage crops. We harvest them in early fall and then let them sit and wait and wait until they make an appearance in the share. We’re getting better at selecting long storing varieties but there’s just only so long an onion wants to store sometimes. That’s to say, eat your onions before they sprout because spring is just around the corner.
• Leeks
• Kabocha Winter Squash – Mostly pale blue Winter Sweet, but some dark green Sweet Mama too. These squash bother have dry, flaky flesh and make for tasty pies, curries, soups, and are excellent roasted. Looking for more squash inspiration? Check out the Eat Winter Squash site for lots of great ideas.
• Dried Apples – We had a sad apple crop this year but we’ve made up for it by buying in some no-spray apples from another orchard. We did all the slicing and drying here at the farm.

Summer CSA sign-up time has arrived! We’ve opened up memberships to the 2021 Summer CSA and we hope you’ll join us for a summer and fall of local, seasonal, and organic vegetables. It looks like we’ll fill up sooner than in years past, so get on the list early to reserve your share. Find all the details and a sign-up form over on the Summer CSA page.

This week we’re passing the halfway mark of the Winter CSA. With snow in the forecast again later this week, I think we’ve got plenty of winter left, but each time the sun peeks out we’re reminded spring isn’t so far off. The vegetables in the field are showing signs of spring too. The kale and some cabbages are ready to ring in rapini season and we were also able to eek out the first of the purple sprouting broccoli this week. It’s a special, and very tasty, time of year that we look forward to for months.

Now that we’ve shared the many, many stalks of Brussels sprouts with you (man it was a good year for Brussels!) we’re excited to share a new crop. Kalettes! This cross between Brussels sprouts and kale made an appearance in seed catalogs a few years ago. After disregarding them as a gimmick we were finally convinced by our friend at Working Hands Farm up in Hillsboro that we should indeed add them to the winter line-up. Sometimes it takes us a while to catch on, but I’m sure glad we finally listened. Our first meal of kale sprouts this week was delicious and we hope you agree that these are keepers.

Most of our focus this past week between CSA harvests was on the new propagation house. We’d finished the basic structure and end walls when we last met. We managed to pull the plastic, dig trenches for irrigation, lay irrigation lines, and move in tables before it was time to harvest again.

We’re just about ready to get the seed-starting underway. We’ve got some new heat mats headed our way and we’ll be installing a hanging hose system too. Our seeding schedule was set to start last week with some direct sown radishes, but this week we’ll really get things going with tomatoes! They’ll spend some time in the germination chamber (a room that can be heated to help seeds germinate faster) and hopefully we’ll have the new heat tables in place once they’re ready to be transferred to the propagation house.

In the week ahead we’ll be putting the finishing touches on the new prop. house and then getting back to the epic orchard pruning project. Fingers crossed that snow in the forecast doesn’t make an appearance, or if it does, that it doesn’t stick around too long.

Enjoy the vegetables and we’ll see you in two weeks!

Your farmers,
Carri Heisler & Jeff Bramlett

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Here are a few recipes to get you inspired:

Rutabagas with Caramelized Onions

• 8 tablespoons (1 stick) butter
• 1 3/4 pounds onions, halved, thinly sliced
• 2 1/4 pounds rutabagas, peeled, cut into 1/2- to 3/4-inch pieces
• 2 tablespoons honey

Melt 5 tablespoons butter in heavy large skillet over medium-low heat. Add onions and sauté until brown, 40 minutes.

Meanwhile, cook rutabagas in large pot of boiling salted water until tender, about 20 minutes. Drain well.

Melt 3 tablespoons butter in large skillet over medium-low heat. Add rutabagas; sauté until heated through, about 10 minutes. Drizzle honey over. Gently stir in onions. Season with salt and pepper. (Can be made 3 hours ahead. Let stand at room temperature. Rewarm over medium-low heat.)

From Epicurious.com via Bon Appétit, https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/rutabagas-with-caramelized-onions-4677

Fingerling Potato Salad

• 3 1/2 pounds fingerling potatoes, unpeeled, cut into 3/4″-1″ pieces
• 1 tablespoon kosher salt plus more for seasoning
• 9 tablespoons (or more) extra-virgin olive oil, divided
• 2 tablespoons brown mustard seeds
• 3 medium leeks (white and palegreen parts only), halved lengthwise, cut crosswise into ¼” slices (about 5 cups)
• 1 tablespoon (or more) white wine vinegar
• 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
• Freshly ground black pepper

Place potatoes in a large pot. Add enough cold water to cover by 3″. Stir in 1 tablespoons salt and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium and simmer until potatoes are tender, about 10 minutes. Drain. Transfer to a large rimmed baking sheet and let cool slightly.

Heat 3 tablespoons oil in a small skillet over medium-high heat. Add mustard seeds to skillet and cook, stirring occasionally, until seeds start to pop, about 2 minutes. Pour oil with seeds into a large bowl.

Heat 2 tablespoons oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add leeks, season with salt, and cook, stirring occasionally, until just tender, 10-12 minutes.

Whisk remaining 4 tablespoons oil, vinegar, Dijon mustard, and 1 tablespoon water into mustard-seed oil. Add potatoes and leeks; toss to coat. Season with salt and pepper. DO AHEAD: Can be made 1 day ahead. Cover; chill. Return to room temperature before serving, adding more oil and vinegar if dry.

From Epicurious.com via Bon Appétit by Sara Dickerman, https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/fingerling-potato-salad-366411

Sea Scallops with Ham-Braised Cabbage and Kale

• 1 large onion, chopped (2 cups)
• 5 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 Turkish or 1/2 California bay leaf
• 1 tablespoon finely chopped garlic (2 cloves)
• 1 large head Savoy cabbage (2 to 2 1/2 pounds), quartered, cored, and coarsely chopped (12 cups loosely packed)
• Ham stock including meat
• 1 1/4 pounds tender green kale (1 large bunch), stems and center ribs cut out and discarded and leaves coarsely chopped (12 cups loosely packed) (or Kalettes!)
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
• 30 large sea scallops (2 to 2 1/2 pounds total), tough muscle removed from side of each if necessary
• 1 cup dry white wine
• 1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice, or to taste

Cook onion in 3 tablespoons oil with bay leaf in a 6- to 8-quart heavy pot over moderate heat, stirring occasionally, until beginning to soften, about 3 minutes. Add garlic and cook, stirring occasionally, 1 minute. Add cabbage and increase heat to moderately high, then sauté, stirring occasionally, until cabbage starts to wilt, about 5 minutes. Add stock (with meat from ham hocks) and simmer, partially covered, stirring occasionally, until cabbage is tender, about 30 minutes.

Stir in kale, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1/4 teaspoon pepper and simmer, partially covered, stirring occasionally, until kale is tender, about 15 minutes.

Preheat oven to 200°F.

Pat scallops dry and sprinkle both sides with remaining 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper (total). Heat remaining 2 tablespoons oil in a 12-inch heavy nonstick skillet over moderately high heat until hot but not smoking, then sauté scallops (without crowding), in 2 batches if necessary, turning over once, until golden and just cooked through, about 5 minutes total per batch. Transfer scallops to a shallow baking dish and keep warm in oven.

Add wine to skillet and deglaze by boiling, stirring and scraping up any brown bits from bottom of skillet, until liquid is reduced to about 2/3 cup. Stir in 1 teaspoon lemon juice, then add sauce to cabbage mixture. Season with salt, pepper, and additional lemon juice if desired. Pour any scallop juices accumulated in baking dish into cabbage mixture, then serve mixture spooned over grits and topped with scallops.

Cooks’ note:Cabbage mixture can be made 1 day ahead and cooled completely, uncovered, then chilled, covered. Reheat and add pan juices from scallops before serving.

From Epicurious.com via Gourmet, https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/sea-scallops-with-ham-braised-cabbage-and-kale-230758