THE BEET: Volume 16; Issue 1

THE BEET: Volume 16; Issue 1

June 8, 2017

FIRST PICK UP TONIGHT!

FULL SHARE & GREEN HALF SHARE

Pick up today: 5pm - 7:30pm at PS 56 on the corner of Gates and Downing

This Week's Share

  • Potted Herbs
  • Swiss Chard
  • Lacinato (dinosaur) or Red Russian Kale 
  • Scallions
  • Lettuce
  • Bok Choy
  • Arugula

Egg Share starts this week, Fruit Shares start next week, and Flower Shares start in the next two to three weeks!

From Windflower Farm

Spring greetings from all of us at Windflower Farm! Thank you for joining our CSA – we are very happy that you decided to be with us! It's been a hectic 45 days since our first field plantings, but I believe we are ready! Your first share of the season will be arriving on Thursday of this week.

Your first share will consist of potted herbs, which you can keep on a windowsill, plant in a garden, or use in a dish in the next week or two. There will be more of these during the next few weeks. You’ll get Swiss chard and your choice of lacinato (aka, dinosaur) or Red Russian kale. You’ll also get a bunch of scallions, heads of lettuce and bok choy and a bunch of arugula. Egg shares start this week, too, with fresh brown eggs from the Davis’s pasture-fed hens. Flower shares will start in another two or three weeks. Fruit shares will likely start next week. We would have started with our own strawberries this week, but the rainfall ruined the red-ripe fruit. Don’t worry - there are all kinds of green fruits that will be turning red in the coming heat.

We hope you enjoy your first share of the season. Next week, we’ll be sending more of these salad vegetables, along with broccoli rabe and radishes or kohlrabi. The unusually cold and grey May will keep us guessing about when crops will be maturing this spring and early summer, but we’ll do our best to keep you informed. (My solar panels actually produced more electricity in April than May!)

The first half dozen shares in our 22-week season generally consist of cool-season salad crops. Cucumbers, squashes and sweet turnips will begin to fill out your shares before June is out. Broccoli will be soon to follow. And by the end of July, sweet peppers, tomatoes, eggplants, cabbage and sweet corn should appear regularly in your weekly share. Good things are coming!

In the weeks ahead, I’ll use this space to introduce you to our excellent farm team, and I’ll tell you a good deal about the crops we grow and how we grow them. Every week, we’ll post an image or two from the farm on Instagram (here). You can also find us on Facebook (here), where you’ll find recipes and can exchange information with farm staff and fellow CSA members. You can reach the farm by sending an email to Andrea, our membership coordinator, at windflowercsa@gmail.com. Don’t hesitate to tell us what you are thinking

 

Save the Food!

The amount of produce in a weekly share is awesome but can occasionally feel overwhelming—here's a great website that outlines the environmental consequences of wasting food and helps you avoid doing so with all the bounty that's currently overflowing from your fridge. Check out the storage tips to keep your CSA booty kicking all week long. 

Recipes

Make the most of your kale with 32 delish kale-centric recipes from Bon Appetit. Personally I'm a big fan of lazy person's kale—thrown in a big bowl with whatever grain and cheese you have lying around and finished off with olive oil, lemon, and a little crushed red pepper. 

Enjoy Friday's Full Strawberry Moon!

http://www.bonappetit.com/recipes/slideshow/kale-recipes

Veronica