Summer CSA Share #13

Welcome to the 13th share of the Pitchfork & Crow 2026 Summer CSA! Here’s what’s in the share this week:

Iceberg & Red Butter Lettuce
Basil
Broccoli
Bunching Onions
Garlic
Sweet Corn – Too much corn to keep up with? Get some in the freezer for winter meals! Also, we’re into the third succession of corn and we’ve found more earworms than we’d like. Just an FYI to keep an eye out.
Mixed Snap Beans – Green, yellow, and purple snap beans.
Summer Squash & Zucchini
Mixed Cucumbers – Mixed green and silver slicers and some lemons too.
Mixed Sweet Peppers – We’ve got some more purple bells and some Italian frying peppers that are beginning to turn red. Italian frying peppers can be used like bell peppers. Also, purple is the immature coloring for this variety of bell pepper, so treat them like green peppers.
Poblano Peppers – The classic stuffing pepper, also good for flavoring any dish that is asking for a mild chile kick.
Jalapeno Peppers – Hot tip from CSA member Scott G. (I think?) last week: pickle some jalapenos and then get them into some cornbread. We give this one two thumbs up!
Tomatillos – A little like green tomatoes, tomatillos make excellent salsa verde and enchilada sauce. Check out the recipes down below for a salsa verde recipe shared by a CSA member.
Mixed Tomatoes – We’ve got tomatoes! Pints of cherries plus lots of slicers of all sizes this week.
Melons – So many melons! Including: Tirreno Tuscan cantaloupes, Honey Orange honeydews, and Lambkin piel de sapo melons.

^{Another week, more photos of the flowers up front. In addition to the black-eyed susans (top and bottom left) we’ve got an appearance from an interesting solitary wasp known for hunting grasshoppers enjoying the yarrow (top right) and the first bee balm bloom (bottom right).}

And just like that, we’ve made it to the halfway mark of the 2026 Summer CSA season! The height of summer produce is rolling in and it’s time to be gettin’ while the gettin’s good. Getting good things to eat that is. This is the time of year we dream of in December when we’re looking through seed catalogs and planning for the growing season ahead. The memories we’re making now of tasting melons in the field and eating sweet corn raw and hauling in all the tomatoes will fuel us through the winter months, through the planning, to the next season in hopes of re-creating the summer produce magic that is happening right now. The extra corn in our freezer and canned tomatoes in the pantry will help get us through the winter too.

^{We got the chicories plus some lettuce, spinach, and cilantro in the ground on Saturday.}

Last Thursday we split up and while I tackled some propagation (spinach, bunching onions, and lettuce) Jeff got to tractor cultivating and was able to get at some weeds threatening to become a problem. Then Thursday afternoon we’d arranged for a local mobile tractor mechanic to come out and take a look at our tractor that hadn’t wanted to start since a series of unfortunate events starting with running out of fuel a while back and ending with a fuel filter change. The problem seemed to be beyond our skills and we thought it might need to get into a shop sooner than later. After an hour and a half of blowing out the fuel lines the mechanic got the thing to start! It’s running a little rough and it’s very smoky as it was before but it’s running! At least we can use it to prep greenhouses before we decide on the next mechanic appointment to address a myriad of issues that have been piling up for that machine.

Friday was more cultivating and mowing for Jeff and carrot weeding for me. Saturday we transplanted the chicories plus some spinach, lettuce, and cilantro. And Sunday we were back to harvesting zucchini, tomatoes, melons, and snap beans.

^{A sunset shot from last week (left) and a boat progress photo (right).}

This time of year a collision of things that need to happen sneaks up on us. Just as we’re seeing the amount of transplanting decrease it’s suddenly time to add some big bulk harvests to list. That’s to say the pears are ripening, the potatoes are ready to harvest for storage, the dry beans aren’t far off, the onions need to be undercut and then transported to the prop house for drying down. No time for dilly dallying.

In the week ahead we’ll be transplanting a late round of fall kale, kohlarabi, and a fall snow pea experiment. The planting goes on! Then there are those pears to harvest, onions to wrangle, and the perpetual mowing and cultivating, and weeding, and irrigating etc. And it’s time to get greenhouses prepped for fall planting. And we need to get the Winter CSA details finalized so we can get everyone who wants to join us signed-up for the next season. Go, go, go!

Enjoy the vegetables and we’ll see you here next week!

Your farmers,
Carri Heisler & Jeff Bramlett

Here are a few recipes to get you inspired:

Spaghetti alla Nerano (Spaghetti with Zucchini)

1 clove garlic
1/2 cup (125 milliliters) olive oil
5 small zucchini, sliced into very thin rounds
Salt and pepper
11 ounce (320 grams) spaghetti
3 ounce (80 grams) grated Provolone del Monaco (or Parmesan)
1 knob of cold, unsalted butter
1 handful basil leaves

Put a large pot of water on to boil for the spaghetti.

In a wide skillet over medium-high heat, add the garlic clove and olive oil so the mixture sizzles and the oil gets infused by the garlic. When just golden, remove the garlic and add the zucchini rounds. Toss every now and then, letting the zucchini fry away until tender but not brown.

In the meantime, add a teaspoon of salt to the boiling water, then place spaghetti in the pot.

Drain the zucchini on paper towels and season with a pinch of salt and some freshly ground pepper. Keep warm. Blend together about a third of the zucchini and about 1/4 cup (60 milliliters) of water from the pot of pasta—I use a glass jar with a handheld blender for this. Pour this purée into a large serving bowl, where you will eventually add all the pasta.

When the spaghetti is al dente (take out about 1 minute before the suggested cooking time on the packet), drain, saving about 1/2 cup of the cooking water. Toss the spaghetti into the serving bowl with the purée, the grated cheese, the fried zucchini, and the cold butter. Quickly toss, using tongs or a spatula to help you. You want spaghetti to be silky and just coated with the purée, not dry but not watery either. If it’s too dry, add cooking water a little at a time. Top with the basil leaves and serve immediately.

From Food52.com by Emiko, https://food52.com/recipes/36700-spaghetti-alla-nerano-spaghetti-with-zucchini

This salsa recipe was shared last fall by Derk & Coral, longtime CSA members who suggest you could throw some poblanos in for a twist.

Roasted Tomatillo Salsa Verde

1 pound (450g) tomatillos, husked and rinsed (6 medium)
1 jalapeño pepper
1 serrano pepper
2 unpeeled garlic cloves
½ cup (118ml) chicken broth or vegetable broth
¼ medium onion, chopped
⅓ cup loosely packed cilantro leaves and tender stems
1 tablespoon lime juice, or more to taste
½ teaspoon salt, or more to taste

1 Set an oven rack about 4 inches from the broiler. Turn the broiler on.

2 Place the tomatillos, jalapeño, serrano pepper, and unpeeled garlic cloves in a baking dish.

3 Broil, turning occasionally, until the tomatillos are blackened in spots, 10 to 12 minutes.

4 Remove the baking dish and add broth, then use a wooden spoon to scrape any bits stuck to the bottom. Let tomatillos, peppers, and garlic cool.

5 When the peppers are cool enough to handle, peel most of the skins and remove the seeds. For a spicier salsa, leave in some or all of the seeds. Remove the softened garlic from the peel.

6 Add roasted tomatillos, peppers, garlic flesh, onion, cilantro, lime juice, and salt to a food processor.

7 Pour about half of the liquid from the baking dish into the processor, then pulse 3 to 4 times or until the salsa is mostly smooth and no big chunks of tomatillo remain, scraping down the sides as necessary.

8 Adjust with more liquid, lime juice, or salt based on consistency and taste.

From InspiredTaste.net, by Adam Gallagher, https://www.inspiredtaste.net/901/roasted-tomatillo-salsa-salsa-verde/

Grace Young’s Stir-Fried Iceberg Lettuce

1 teaspoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1 teaspoon rice wine or dry sherry
3/4 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground white or black pepper
1 1/2 tablespoon peanut oil or other neutral oil
4 scallions, cut on the diagonal into 1-inch pieces
3 cloves garlic, thinly sliced or smashed
1/2 medium head iceberg lettuce, cored, outermost leaves discarded, inner leaves torn into 4-inch wide pieces (or substitute 12 ounces of other greens — see headnote on recipe website)
Kosher salt, to taste

In a small bowl, combine soy sauce, sesame oil, rice wine or sherry, sugar, and pepper; set sauce aside.

Heat a wok or 12-inch skillet over high heat. Add peanut oil, half of the scallions (including all of the white and light green pieces), and garlic and cook until garlic is golden, about 5 seconds. Add lettuce and stir-fry until lettuce softens slightly, about 1 minute. Drizzle in sauce and cook until lettuce is just coated with the sauce, about 1 minute. Season with salt, divide between 4 bowls while lettuce is just tender and still bright green, and garnish with remaining scallions.

From Food52.com by Grace Young via Genius Recipes, https://food52.com/recipes/27723-grace-young-s-stir-fried-iceberg-lettuce