THE BEET: VOLUME 18; 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

  • Magenta lettuce, a crisphead variety

  • Toscano kale

  • Bright Lights chard

  • Arugula

  • Scallions

  • Red Rover or Pink Beauty radishes

  • Quickstar kohlrabi

  • Your choice of another potted herb

  • Maybe: Happy Rich, a kind of broccolini, or broccoli

  • Fruit: Ted's organically grown strawberries

  • Flowers: just getting started, may or may not be ready!

Welcome to Week 2 The Beet!

For those of you on weekly pick-ups, by now you know the drill. For our Green Week half-share members, picking up for the first time tonight, welcome!

This newsletter is your weekly guide to all things CHCSA-related: veggie updates, news from Ted and Jan Blomgren at Windflower Farm, storage tips, recipes, food articles, neighborhood news, and more. 

We'd love your contributions, so if you have any Beet submissions please send them to newsletter@clintonhillcsa.org.

Have a wonderful season! 

P.S. Don't forget to bring along your brand new Clinton Hill CSA tote bag, and if you haven't got yours yet, tonight is the night! $10 in cash is all you need.  

Letter from Windflower Farm

Delivery #2, Week of June 11th, 2019

This week’s share: Magenta lettuce, a crisphead variety, Toscano kale, Bright Lights chard, arugula, scallions, Red Rover or Pink Beauty radishes, Quickstar kohlrabi, and your choice of another potted herb. If we have it, we’ll also send Happy Rich, a kind of broccolini, or broccoli. Your fruit share will be our own organically grown strawberries. Flowers are just getting started and may or may not be ready by Thursday.

Why do we send potted herbs? To help fill out your light early shares. You can place them on a window sill or sunny front step, plant them in your community garden plot, give them as a gift, or eat them now. If you’d like to keep them for a while, you’ll have to water them almost daily. And to keep them beyond a couple of weeks, you’ll have to re-pot them into a larger pot with fresh soil.

Next week’s vegetable share will include sweet Japanese turnips, garlic scapes and spinach among other salad vegetables. Your fruit share will include more strawberries.

Today, we divided ourselves into three groups and spread out across our farm. One group built two new “caterpillar’ tunnels into which we’ll plant ginger, Asian cucumbers and sweet peppers later this week. A second group washed packing totes all morning using our new packing shed washer. In the afternoon, they transplanted zucchini squashes and then hooped and covered them with row covers to keep Striped Cucumber Beetles away. A third group harvested the kohlrabi, radishes and scallions that will go in your shares plus the radishes and bok choy that will go into ‘pantry shares’ destined for food pantries in Queens and Brooklyn. Tomorrow, it will be all hands on deck as we harvest salad greens and strawberries and then wash and pack shares for your Thursday delivery. It’s early in the season, but the well-worn routines of our farm week are already becoming reestablished.

We are looking for someone with a van to make a weekly produce delivery from Brooklyn to Manhattan on Thursday afternoons. If you know of anyone who might be interested, or know of a reliable delivery service, please contact me at this email address. Many thanks.

Have a great week, Ted

Work Shift  


Your CSA depends on YOU to help make it run smoothly. All Clinton Hill CSA members with full vegetable shares are required to complete two two-hour work shifts during the season. Members with half vegetable shares work one two-hour work shift. Sign up for your 2019 work shifts by click here!

For those who find volunteering on site to be a problem, we may have other opportunities for you; please email volunteer@clintonhillcsa.org for more information.

Extra Shares and Share Swaps 

If you want to add an extra share—fruit, or eggs—or make changes to one you already signed up for, you can do so until June 15 by emailing our treasurers: treasurer@clintonhillcsa.org

If you cannot pick up your share on a given week, a friend or family member can always pick it up in your absence. They just need to give your name at the desk when picking up. Or try posting on our social media pages to find a member willing to swap with you: we're onfacebook as well as Instagram and Twitter! @clintonhillcsa

Recipe: Herby Black Rice Salad with Radishes and Ricotta Salata


Here's a creative way to make those plump early-season radishes shine! For more radish recipes, look no further than this list from Bon Appétit. 
 

INGREDIENTS

Vinaigrette

  • ¼ cup olive oil

  • 2 tablespoons Sherry vinegar or red wine vinegar

  • Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

Salad and Assembly

  • 1 cup black rice

  • Kosher salt

  • 2 cups mixed radishes, sliced, quartered

  • Freshly ground black pepper

  • 2 ounces ricotta salata (salted dry ricotta), thinly sliced

  • ¼ cup chopped unsalted, roasted almonds

  • ¼ cup chopped fresh dill

  • 2 tablespoons chopped fresh chives

RECIPE PREPARATION

Vinaigrette

  • Combine oil and vinegar in a small airtight container; cover and shake well. Season with salt and pepper.

  • Do Ahead: Vinaigrette can be made 3 days ahead; chill.

Salad and assembly

  • Combine rice and 1¾ cups water in a medium saucepan; season with salt. Bring to a boil on stove over high. Reduce heat, cover saucepan, and simmer until rice is tender and liquid is absorbed, 45–50 minutes. Remove from heat, fluff rice, and let sit, covered, 10 minutes. Let cool.

  • Just before serving, toss rice and radishes with dressing in a large bowl; season with salt and pepper. Add ricotta salata, almonds, dill, and chives and toss.


If you give this a try, don't forget to share and tag us on social media! We're on Instagram and Twitter @ClintonHillCSA, as well as facebook, and you can find Windflower Farm on Instagram too (@windflowerfarm). 

Veronica