Meet this week’s vegetables:
- Bok choy — Bok choy is one of our favorite spring greens — it really isn’t as good grown in any other season, so we try to get our fill now. Chop and sauté bok choy with Asian-inspired flavors or ingredients and serve over rice or noodles. Goes great with broccoli and rapini too! Also tender enough to chop and add to salad!
- Red leaf lettuce heads — More yummy lettuce heads for your salads this week!
- Purple sprouting broccoli — We’ve been eating broccoli almost every day lately — sautéed, roasted, raw … we just can’t get enough!
- Cabbage rapini
- Brussels sprouts rapini
- Yellow Finn potatoes — Last year was the first time we’ve grown this variety of potatoes, and we’re hooked! They have a great smooth texture and rich flavor, similar to Yukon Golds but with much more reliable production and yields.
- Parsnips
- Leeks
- Garlic
This last week proved to be everything we’d hoped it would be here on the farm: we had almost a week of dry weather, allowing us to plant into perfectly worked ground (even better for the fact that Casey has been patient all spring and resisted working it too early).
Of course, with only a finite amount of nice dry days, we didn’t get everything done – the onion planting (a big one!) will have to wait for the next round. But Casey and the crew did get in thousands of plants (and many more direct-sown seeds), including some spring favorites: cauliflower, broccoli, carrots. Soon enough we’ll be harvesting from the west field rather than just from the over-wintered east field and the greenhouses.
In addition to planting, Casey had time to do some much needed ground prep for future plantings (especially blocks for the potatoes and onions). We’ll have to wait for the cover crop to break down more before they are ready, but the combination of sun and wind helped speed along that process. Now, when we look out our window, we see rows of plants and freshly turned blocks of brown earth amidst the expanse of red clover and Sudan grass stubble!
Before the ground was dry for planting and working, we also managed to mostly finish the household project, which provided another source of inspiration for this week’s newsletter title. Not only has the view out our window changed, but the window itself has changed!
We’ve been doing some re-organizing and moving of things in our home (hence the work), and now as I sit at the dining room table to write the newsletter, I am literally looking out a different window than before! The changes are most welcome, as our life has obviously changed in recent months/years (i.e. we have a third person in our family). We’re excited to have a space that’s laid out better now for our new life and activities.
So, a productive week. We ended it with some celebration and fun with friends and family over the Easter weekend. Rusty got to participate in two Easter egg hunts (his first!).
Now that Easter is behind us and we have starts and seeds in the ground, we feel more sure of spring’s reality.
Of course, as soon as the kids finished their outdoor egg hunt on Saturday afternoon, a cold breeze starting blowing, sending everyone to their cars for sweaters and jackets.
We’re clearly not our of the woods of this La Niña year yet … the wind is blowing stiffly from the west at the moment and the temperatures have once again dropped below what feels like good “growing” weather (the temperatures that feel good to us feel good to the plants too, but this weather is less exciting for all of us).
Even though the long-term forecasts right now aren’t entirely optimistic, we’re keeping our fingers crossed for enough warmth and sun that all our transplants in the field will flourish over the next few weeks!!!!!!
Enjoy this week’s vegetables!
Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla
