(CSA Newsletter: Week 23)
Meet this week’s vegetables:
- Cauliflower — Before working on a farm, I’d only ever been exposed to raw cauliflower — usually in those ubiquitous veggie platters at parties. Yuck. Since then, I’ve experimented more with fresh cauliflower and discovered that it really comes to life (for me) when cooked. Our favorite way to prepare is to roast: chop and toss with olive oil, roast in a single layer on a baking sheet at 375° under tender. But I also love cauliflower in curry dishes. Cook on the stove at a low temperature in coconut milk (possibly with other veggies too: onions, cooking greens, etc.) and serve with lentils over quinoa or rice.
- Broccoli — Also delicious roasted, possibly even roasted with cauliflower. Yum.
- Fennel bulb — See the recipes in this newsletter for more info about this unique Italian vegetable.
- Beets — People seem to love ‘em or hate ‘em. We hope you’ll love this week’s delicious red beets. We’ve already been enjoying beets for weeks (that’s our privilege as farmers — veggie sneak peeks!). Not surprisingly, one of our favorite beet preparations is to … yes, roast them! Cut into quarters, toss with oil, and roast until tender all the way through. Plus, if you’ve been enjoying the chard, make sure you cook and eat your beet greens. You can prepare them the same way as chard, since they are the same species!
- Carrots
- Butter lettuce
- Sweet onions
The first heat wave of the year arrived later than usual — in mid-July rather than May or June. This was fine with me personally, since I always find those extra early heat spells to feel just plain mean and harsh.
Even though it was hot last week and this weekend, we enjoyed ourselves on the farm. The heat was great for the produce — many summer-loving crops grew literally overnight and are that much closer to producing. We even enjoyed our very first of this year’s tomatoes (sliced on fresh sourdough with olive oil, pepper and mozzarella — mmmmmmmmm!).
We humans survived the heat by starting work early, carefully scheduling tasks around the cool and hot parts of the day (work outside in morning, wash bins in afternoon), and making and eating berry ice cream.
After a cool spring, it seems like many crops were delayed and are now all coming on at once. In addition to vegetables, here on the farm, we’ve been enjoying strawberries, raspberries and cherries (unfortunately, none of which are available for the shares this year — sorry!). It’s been a virtual berry bonanza!
It was also time for the garlic harvest this week! Casey and Jeff dug and pulled it all in a fast day’s work, and Casey spent two days sorting for seed and bundling it. We save our own seed from year-to-year and have been selecting for consistently larger, well-shaped heads. This year’s harvest represents our most beautiful garlic crop yet! We’ll start giving some of it out after it’s had a chance to cure, but you’ll receive most of it this fall and winter.
Of course, bringing in the garlic harvest is always a surreal reminder that fall and winter will arrive eventually. Hard to believe when it feels like summer has only just begun! On a similar note, Casey finished sowing the cover crop in our fallow west field, which we will irrigate and let grow (with a few mowings) until we’re ready to plant there next spring! I’m still amazed at how far ahead we have to plan to make sure all our work gets done in the best manner possible! (In a similar surreal case of way future planning, the garlic Casey set aside for seed this weekend will be planted this fall, harvested in July 2011, and eaten in the fall and winter of 2011-12!)
Finally, this weekend also unofficially marked the beginning of our ‘field trip’ season. This is a new habit, begun last year when we finally had time to take more than one day off each week. Once the big planting push of May and June is over, we now make it a point to get off the farm at least once a week for a significant jaunt. Usually, we go hiking at some relatively nearby location — the last Friday we went to Silver Falls state park, which was the perfect place to be on a hot July day. Next weekend, we’ll head to visit Gathering Together Farm’s farm restaurant and hike on Mary’s Peak!
Getting off the farm is such a sanity saver for us during the hottest months of the year. By the time July rolls around, Casey (and previously me too) has put in so many extra hours of work on the weekends and evenings. Before the delicious summer harvests start but while it’s still hot, we can easily start to question why the heck we’re doing all this work of being farmers (especially when school gets out and all our CSA members start going on fun vacations!). But then, in July the weather dries out, giving us more flexibility in our work schedule, and the urgent work slows down … when we can finally get away regularly, our happiness level goes way back up, and the farm becomes a wonderful place to live and work again. And, then about that time, tomatoes start to ripen, and life is really good. (You’ll start seeing tomatoes in the shares in a few more weeks, so hopefully you can be patient!)
Enjoy this week’s vegetables!
Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla
