(CSA Newsletter: Main Season Week 1)
Meet this week’s vegetables:
Welcome everyone, to the 2008 CSA Main Season … many of you have been with us since the beginning of February this year; others are rejoining us after a winter away; and some of you are new to the CSA this week! Welcome to all of you!
Our Main season runs the same 20 weeks as the McMinnville Farmers Market and represents what is generally thought of as the ‘main’ growing period. Since it is so long, you’ll taste a bit of almost every season. We’re beginning with some of spring’s staples: fresh eating and cooking greens, radishes, baby turnips, and stored and fresh alliums (onion family). Soon we’ll move into later spring vegetables — beets, peas, fava beans, broccoli, kohlrabi, carrots — followed closely by early summer fruits — summer squash, cucumbers, green beans. Eventually, after many weeks of warm weather, we’ll enjoy the hot season favorites: melons, tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants. We’ll finish by tasting a few of fall’s flavors: winter squash, potatoes, onions, cooking greens, and roots. (The ‘late season,’ which begins in mid-October will dive deeper into fall’s delights.)
Despite the time of year, each week we strive to provide you with a diverse offering of seasonal vegetables. The variety will change from week to week, to keep things interesting and fun. This year we’re growing about 200 varieties of vegetables, and you’ll get to taste many of them in the next 20 weeks.
Each week we will also provide you with cooking and preparation suggestions to help you best enjoy your CSA share. Past recipes can also be found on our farm ‘blog’ at www.oakhillorganics.org/blog.html. You can also find up-to-date photos, farm stories and the CSA newsletter on our blog. (In fact, if you’re web savvy and want to save paper, you’re welcome to forgo a paper copy of the newsletter and just read each week’s newsletter online.)
As we begin this next CSA season, we’re feeling pretty good about the outlook. Folks who have been with us since February have shared some of our trials this year as we worked through a very cold spring. March and April were especially stressful months, as we didn’t get planting until several weeks later than our original goal. We worried that we would experience a gap in production, which fortunately never materialized.
And, today, our spring planted crops are finally looking good. They were slow to start (thanks to the cold), but we’ve got some beautiful vegetables growing in the field. However, we are a few weeks behind last year — you can expect lots of tasty things, but they might all be a few weeks later than in another year. For example, our peas are only just now setting fruit. So, we’ll enjoy spring vegetables a few weeks longer … and maybe summer will hang on longer this fall????? We can hope!
We’re also feeling good because we spent the last three weeks pushing to get some of our big spring plantings in the ground: onions, tomatoes and peppers, potatoes, leeks, melons, sweet potatoes, and many rounds of succession vegetables (items we plant all year, such as lettuce). It’s been intense — the period was compressed by the spring delays — but as of today (Monday), we direct sowed our winter squash, which marks the end of our big plantings for the spring. To give you an idea of the work we’ve done, in the last 19 days, we’ve planted 115 200’ beds. Busy busy busy.
The push is mostly over now, thank goodness, and we’re excited to begin our summer routine this week with market’s start. If the last two years’ patterns continue this year, June and July should actually be more relaxed here on the farm than May (August will start our big fall planting and harvesting projects).
We’ll provide more news, stories, and recipes in next week’s newsletter. We hope that everyone enjoys this first round of main season vegetables!
Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla
P.S. A big thanks to First Baptist Church for hosting us for a second year of summer CSA pick-ups!
McMinnville Farmer’s Market starts on Thursday!
Farmer’s market opens this Thursday, May 29, and we will be there with a great first display of delicious spring produce! If you need any additional produce, or just want to check out the market, stop by anytime during the open hours 1:30 – 6:30. Market is on Cowls Street between 2nd and 3rd downtown McMinnville. See you there!
Veggie storage & other tips
Keeping your veggies fresh is crucial to enjoying their full nutritional & taste potential. Since we harvest all of our CSA vegetables less than 24 hours before the pick-up, they should keep longer than their grocery equivalent — if stored properly immediately after pick-up.
We recommend storing all green vegetables (leafy greens, broccoli, cabbage) in the fridge, stored loosely (not packed tight) in a sealed plastic bag. Fresh root crops—such as radishes, beets and turnips—also keep best in a sealed bag in the fridge.
Colored fruits—such as summer squash, tomatoes, & eggplant—prefer a cool room temperature, out of direct sunlight. Dry storage veggies—winter squash, potatoes, dry onions—also like a dry, cool place with good air circulation, such as an open paper bag or box in a cool pantry.
Also, we thoroughly rinse all veggies after harvest by immersing them in cold water. We aim to remove 99% of the field soil, but we recommend that you also clean your veggies again before prepping — sometimes clods of dirt pass us by, along with the more tenacious bugs (especially slugs this time of year).
Some vegetables, such as thin-skinned fruits (tomatoes, peppers), do not need to be washed before eating. We will provide continually updated tips for different veggies as we go through the season.
Important note re: this week’s lettuce — in our quest to cut eight mini heads for every share, we underestimated the quick wilting power of the sun. We’ve done our best to re-hydrate here at the farm, but we recommend getting your lettuce home and into the fridge ASAP. For best results, remove twist tie and store lettuce in large plastic grocery bag, tied closed loosely at top.
