Wednesday, May 29, 2013

First CSA box of 2013, May 29

We are at the beginning. The first vegetables harvested for you! Your boxes all contain: 1 bunch of swiss chard, 1 head of romaine lettuce, 1 head of red bibb lettuce, 1 bunch of spring onions, 1 bunch of green garlic, 1 pint of strawberries. (value $14.50) The regular shares also have: 1 bag of spinach, 2 baby fennel bulbs, 1 purple and 1 green kohlrabi. (value $23)

 The swiss chard needs to be stored in a bag in your fridge until eating it. The green garlic can be used just as the garlic you're used to seeing and using. It is not as strong and can be chopped like an onion as it hasn't started forming cloves yet. Chop up the stalk until it gets hard to cut thru to use in cooking. You can use the green tops to make a broth or stock, straining them out before using the liquid. Use all parts of the green onions except the roots. The kohlrabi needs to be peeled. It is delicious shredded and added to slaw or eaten by itself with a vinegar dressing. It is also great with the fennel. A simple olive oil, lemon juice, black pepper and salt dressing is best, I think.

 Chard salad
 lightly steam the chard; cool immediately in cold water. ring out excess water toast 2 T sesame seeds make a dressing: juice of 1/2 orange 1 tsp balsamic vinegar drizzle of olive oil pinch of salt make the dressing and pour over cooled chard; add toasted sesame seeds and toss.

Welcome to the 2013 season a little delayed. The boxes you get your produce in each week are coated in wax to prolong their lives. If left in hot sun, they will melt thus shortening their use. Please store them out of the sun and heat. Each week you need to return your empty box from the previous week. These boxes are not cheap or easily replaced. They have “hinges” so if you want to make them flat when you empty them, carefully unfold them from the bottom without tearing. If you are going to miss a week, you need to let us know by Monday of that week at 6pm. If you are going on vacation and will miss a box, you can let us know you don’t want one that week and either get 2 boxes on another week or have someone else pick it up for you. We need you to stick to the same pick up day each week. It is nearly impossible for us to keep up with the details if there is a lot of change. If the day you’ve chosen isn’t working well for you, please let us know and we can change it for the rest of the season. If you don’t let us know you’ll be missing your pick up and we’ve made you a box, we will bring it back to the farm after market and put it in our cooler. It is up to you to arrange to come get it or pick it up at one of our Saturday markets. WE WILL NOT MAKE YOU A NEW BOX IF YOU MISS PICK UP. The value of the boxes (in monetary terms) will vary from week to week. For the small share you made an investment of $15 a week; the regular share an investment of $24 a week. On some weeks you will get a lot more value than if you shopped at market. Some weeks it will be exactly the same value. Over the course of the season, you will see a significant savings over shopping at market. We will put a dollar value on your box each week so you can see that. We work hard to grow healthy and interesting vegetables as well as tried and true staples. We will provide recipes as much as we can. If you have recipes to share, please pass them our way and we’ll put them on the blog. We will update our blog every week with box contents and recipes. We’ll email a reminder every week as well. Please let us know if we need to add anyone to our list. Please feel free to contact us with questions or concerns any time throughout the season.

We will have an “open farm” day on June 29. It will be for the afternoon and you can come out and see the farm and share some food. We’ll give more details when the time nears. Thank you for joining us for the season! We are excited to begin!

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