THE BEET: VOLUME 17; WEEK 2

 

FULL SHARE & GREEN HALF SHARE PICK UP TONIGHT

 

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

This Week's Share

  • Arugula
  • Salad mix
  • Baby spinach
  • Lettuce
  • Kohlrabi
  • Radishes
  • Scallions
  • Cooking greens or Happy Rich
  • Potted purple + Genovese basil or Thai basil + cilantro
  • Fruit: organic strawberries

Reminders

If you want to make changes to your share or add extra shares (but not flowers) make sure you do so by this Friday, June 15th, by emailing our treasurers: treasurer@clintonhillcsa.org

Letter from Windflower Farm

 

This week’s share contents.

Your second share of the season will be arriving tomorrow. You’ll get arugula and a salad mix, along with baby spinach and lettuce. This might be greens enough for salads all week long! You’ll also get kohlrabi, radishes, scallions and cooking greens or Happy Rich. And you’ll get your choice of potted purple and Genovese basil or Thai basil and cilantro. Our own organic strawberries will fill out your fruit share. Flowers started for everyone last week and it’s Jan’s hope that she can deliver flowers every week for the next nine weeks. Next week, you can expect more salad crops. Sweet Japanese turnips, cucumbers and zucchinis are getting started and, depending on the weather, one or more should be in next week’s share.

What’s new on the farm.

It’s Sunday. Nate is painting a piece of farm equipment he has built, Jan is working in her flower garden and the Medinas are harvesting strawberries.

I’ve just come in from planting green beans with the John Deere and Multiflex seeder I purchased last year. It’s become dry and my tractor kicked up a cloud of dust as it pulled the seeder along. I sprinkled black bacterial spores on the white bean seeds. Once the spores awaken from their slumber, they’ll colonize the bean roots and provide them with nitrogen they have “fixed” from the air. I’ll irrigate these tomorrow as part of a block that includes a new carrot seeding. Three 350’ beds of beans, each bed with two rows, or just over 2000 row-feet. I will repeat this every ten days or so through early August. It is part of a regular seeding I’ll do that includes radishes and greens.

On my way back to the barn, I peeked under the row cover where arugula, a salad mix and radishes have been growing for the past 30 days or so. All three of these will be in your shares this week. We’ll pull them root and all and then bunch and wash them. Bunched, we’ll be able to send them without a plastic bag. For your part, all you’ll have to do is cut them midway up the stem, rinse, dry, and serve.

The locusts finished blooming here a week ago. They grow in groves and produce a powerfully sweet fragrance. The wood is famous for long lived fences, but they are also valuable to farmers as an indicator plant: old timers will tell you that it’s safe to plant your garden once the locusts have bloomed. Last week, believing the threat of frost to be behind us, we planted sweet potato slips, the last of our field peppers, chiles and eggplants and uncovered our cucumbers and squashes.

Have a great week, Ted

Windflower Farm Open House Weekend

 

Dear Clinton Hill CSA members, 

Summer's not even begun, but we wanted to be sure you put theWindflower Farm open house on your calendar. This year, it takes place the weekend of August 25—26 (coinciding with the county fair and best weather for camping and Battenkill River swimming). 

The farm is about four hours north of here, close to the Massachusetts and Vermont borders. On Saturday afternoon, Ted gives tours, so we can all get a look at the baby greens waiting to be transplanted into theground, the long tunnels of ripening heirloom tomatoes, and the mounds that hold potatoes and squash. You can pitch a tent anywhere on thegrounds and take advantage of the most civilized outhouses we've ever seen—they smell like the Plaza Hotel, contain copious reading material, and are larger than our first New York City apartment! (There are also, I think, nearby B&B options.) On Saturday night, bring a dish for a potluck. End the evening around the bonfire, and wake up Sunday morning to a delicious farm breakfast cooked by the Windflower Farm folks. Take a tour of the Davis farm, where you get your eggs and (for winter share members) maple syrup. Then Ted will give you directions to a nearby swimming hole. Best of all, you can spend time with other CSA members from our own and from Ted's other CSAs. Kids especially love theweekend on the farm and find plenty to do. 

If you're inclined to stay away for more than a weekend, there are lovely state parks in nearby Vermont, and we have successfully combined thefarm weekend with a subsequent trip to the Williamstown Theater Festivaland the Norman Rockwell Museum! The New York State Fair is that weekend, too. 

Hope you can make it!

 

sauteed greens.jpg

How to Cook Greens

 

It's the first GREEN pick-up week, so to mark the occasion, here are some ideas for how to cook greens! 

Blanching greens means to dunk them quickly in salted boiling water and then cool them down just as quickly with a dive into ice water or a bit of time under cold running water.

Braising means to cook something slowly in a bit of liquid. Tougher, heartier greens like kale and collard greens respond extremely well to some long slow heat in an enclosed environment. 

Sauteeing greens in a frying pan over medium-high to high heat with a bit of butter or oil (and perhaps garlic!) is a quick and tasty way to serve them.

Check out this article for more ideas...

Veronica