(CSA Newsletter: Early Season Week 12)
Meet this week’s vegetables:
Red Russian kale rapini — We think this might be our favorite spring rapini yet. Trim any tough stem ends before preparing.
Collard greens — Feeling overwhelmed by leafy greens? Try preserving some for use in summer — for some tips, check out our new occasional column from Lesley Woodruff, a CSA member & Master Preserver!
White Russian kale
Cooking carrots!!!!!!! — We found a patch of carrots we missed this winter. It was a pain to get them out of the ground, but we knew they’d be appreciated … and our next patch of carrots has germinated! It will be awhile still, but it’s good to be moving forward towards yummy, delicious, tender summer carrots. Since these are NOT tender summer carrots, we recommend cooking for best enjoyment.
Cauliflower — The over-wintered cauli have become GIANT, so we’re cutting them in half for each share.
Leeks
Onions
Garlic
… notice anything missing from this list? That’s right. We’re done with cabbage for the year. Spring must have officially arrived. Change is coming. Hoorah!
Spring has continued to be rough out here lately. We have nothing terrible or dramatic to report, just continued gray, cold, wet weather. Even if everything else is going well, it’s difficult to keep our spirits up when we feel powerless to impact the most important factor in our plant’s growth right now (temperature).
But many good things did happen this week, despite our off-and-on low mood, so we thought we’d share those in this newsletter rather than wallowing in self-pity. And, when I add up the highlights, it’s hard to really see why we’ve been feeling so low after all. So, here they are, the highlights of our week:
Watching three elk run across our field last Sunday — an unusual event down here in the ‘river bottom.’
Planting a small area of strawberries for ourselves, thanks to our neighbors’ gift of runners from their planting.
Observing our very first asparagus shoots emerge! (Of course, we won’t be able to harvest any still for two years.)
Harvesting our first radishes of the season, which are the first of our spring-sown veggies:
Participating in the Mac Reads Crescent discussion at Linfield’s college. We’re also looking forward to attending Diana Abu-Jaber’s talk this Thursday at the Linfield library.
Passing our recent electrical inspection on the new pole barn. Soon we’ll be energized, and then we’ll have more options for powering our greenhouse heat mats and our power tools.
Visiting with folks at my mom’s Friday fundraiser event at Currents Gallery. It was fun to see people we hadn’t seen since market ended last October, and the event was very successful for my mom’s campaign too!
Standing in line outside on a beautiful Saturday to wait for Bill Clinton’s talk at McMinnville High School. It was nice to just enjoy the weather for a change, rather than working.
Watching Bill Clinton’s speech at McMinnville High School. Despite most of the crowd being divided on whom they’ll vote for, everything was super up-beat and positive. And Bill’s talk was great — we really needed to hear what he had to say right now. Change seems inevitable this fall. What an exciting election year!
Casey & me waiting for Clinton’s arrival … it was hot & sweaty in that gym, but good fun too.
President Bill Clinton himself, just a few feet away from us! In case anyone forgets where this photo was taken, you can clearly read ‘McMinnville’ on the banner behind his head. And, yes, Bill was wearing an orange tie. How cool is that? (Sorry, this is very non-farm commentary — I can’t help myself though!)
Visiting with friends & family this weekend. We shared meals with many friends this weekend, which was the best possible cure for the ‘long winter blahs.’ Being with friends and talking about every aspect of our lives always provides Casey and me with much needed perspective on the farm, why we farm, and everything else.
Growing plants!!!!!!! This weekend’s warmer weather definitely kick started our transplants’ growth, finally. We pulled off some of the row cover Sunday evening to do our first cultivation and found some beautiful plants. Certainly, things are still growing slower than in another spring, but they’re growing. And overall, everything looks really healthy. There’s no better highlight than that.
And, a highlight for some of you out there might be the upcoming change in veggies. With our first small radish harvest, we’re hopefully beginning the important shift from over-wintered to spring-planted veggies. It’s later than we had hoped, but what can you do? This week’s share will probably be the last that consists solely of over-wintered vegetables. Think happy green growth thoughts as you enjoy this week’s end-of-winter vegetables!
Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla
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Moving for summer!
Our ‘early’ season is almost over and the ‘main’ CSA season is starting soon! Can you believe it? We can’t. Market starts on May 29, and our ‘main’ season begins the same week, on May 27. Some of you will be temporarily leaving us in favor of market at that point, and new folks will be joining us.
The switch to a different season should also mark a shift to reliably nice, dry weather. To celebrate, we’ll be taking the CSA pick-up back outside! While the YCAP Food Bank is warm and cozy on these rainy spring days, we’re looking forward to setting up our canopies again at our summer location: the First Baptist Church parking lot at the corner of 1st and Cowls Street.
To get to the FBC parking lot, just follow 1st Street west (towards (99W) from our current location. The parking lot will be on your left, between Davis and Cowls streets.
Our pick-up time (3:30 – 6:30) and routine will remain the same, but we’ll be outside! Glorious!
Of course, we still have three more weeks at our current location, but I wanted to give everyone a heads up so that we all remember to make this switch. Put it on your calendar!
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On-farm CSA event: May 17
Another date for your calendar — we’re hosting our first CSA event on Saturday, May 17. From 2 -5 pm, we’ll have a (voluntary!) work party for interested CSA members. And at 5-ish, we’ll end the day with a farm potluck! Feel free to join us for either part of the day’s events. I’ll include more details (directions, potluck ideas, etc.) in an upcoming newsletter, but I wanted to remind everyone of the date. We hope you can make it!
