- Purple sprouting broccoli
- Cauliflower or second bunch sprouting broccoli
- Arugula
- Radishes
- Chard or kale
- Spring onions (called Calcots in Catalan- recipe at the very end of this post)
- Parsley or thyme
- Walnuts
With the first harvest almost under our belts we are excited to be back in the regular season. We anticipate that you get your cooking skills sharpened and are ready to enjoy your greens. Spring is full of chard, spinach, kale, arugula and salad. Somehow the combination of hot weather and then very cold temperatures held the purple sprouting broccoli a bit better in the field. We are hoping for a couple of weeks of this spring delicacy. We planted cauliflower back in August inside one of our hoop houses and we are seeing some of the fruits of that labor. Unfortunately it does not appear to be enough for the entire CSA, so some people will get it this week and others will have to wait for subsequent weeks to enjoy this super sweet white vegetable.
Back in February we seeded an entire hoop house full of crops we hope to share with you this month and next. We have tried again to grow carrots, beets and turnips. We remain hopeful that you will get a chance to enjoy them in the upcoming month. We tried our hand at flaming the emerging weeds five days after we seeded the preferred crop. This does not seem to be quite the right timing in February when germination for even weeds takes longer and longer. We hope to master this technique over the course of the season and get you all some carrots.
We’ve been busy battling pests. There’s a colony of ground squirrels, gophers and voles that are attacking from below. Actually the squirrels attack from below and above, eating some of the seedlings we had planned to go into the ground or be sold at the farmers market. This dry spring has allowed us to get into the field earlier than usual. We have crops already under Reemay, (agricultural fabric) and hope to have the entire upper fields planted in the next week.
I managed to get two beds of onions in the ground. For those members who have had the pleasure of transplanting onions I know you will be impressed. I seed onions at the end of January. They germinate about 2 weeks later and then grow ever so slowly for months until they are slightly bigger than a blade of grass. Then Juve prepares beds in the field and I transplant each individual “blade of grass” into that bed. It takes a lot of time to get all the early onions, storage onions and shallots into the ground. We typically harvest them in August.
Last year’s heat dome drastically curbed our onion and shallot crop. We had weeded them just prior to the blast of heat that killed their greens (the growing part that helps them harness the sun. Thus, no shallots for you folks. We typically can hold them over for the winter and offer them these early weeks of the season. There are so many repercussions from the changing climate. I was listening to an interesting podcast yesterday which I highly recommend called The Real Organic Podcast. There was a discussion with a nutritionist about the nutritional content of crops, the importance of soil health for vegetable health and the human gut biome. It is amazing how all of nature is intertwined,but it should not be surprising. They talked about diversity and how important it was to have a diverse lineup of crops building resiliency into a system of uncontrollable climate challenges. Some crops will do better with the extreme heat than others and we saw this last year. We also learned that the weed cover during that extreme heat helps to retain moisture and protect the plants. Now we will have to pay even closer attention to extreme weather forecasts when weeding our crops.
As many of you know when you come to the farm you will find tomatoes both inside the hoop house and out in the field. We have done this with most of our crops where earlier varieties are put inside of the hoop house and we plant a succession crop out in the field. And the conversation yesterday also emphasized the importance of small farms and local production. We all saw how important that was in the pandemic and continues to be now with supply chain issues. It is not only important for the environment that you eat and locally grown food, but the nutritional value of that food is higher when you know how the soil is tended to.It is hard to overstate the importance of soil health on human health. The food produced in healthy soil is healthier for you to consume.
Check out the Episode with Melinda Hemmelgarn: Connecting Nutrition to Soil.
Recipes for the week (thanks Sue!) More on the website under the recipe tab
Great Greens recipe:
Farro with Greens, Tahini Sauce, and Toasted Pine Nuts Recipe
https://food52.com/recipes/71610-farro-with-greens-tahini-sauce-and-toasted-pine-nuts
Greens Soup
This is the same as the one in the NYTimes app but you can forward it. I do it with ANY GREENS—beet greens, kale, chard, bok choy, chicory ,etc. It calls for leeks but you can use scallions, onions, etc. It uses 2 eggs. We eat this almost every week.
How to eat those spring onions called Calcots
https://www.greatbritishchefs.com/recipes/calcots-romesco-recipe