Note: We will be posting our weekly CSA newsletters on our blog this season so that CSA members can refer back to them for recipes, news, etc., but also so that our customers at market can get some of the same information and suggestions. (Also, our friends and family might be interested too.) Here’s the first newsletter of the season, which we also gave out at our pick-up site:
Hello, new friends! We are so excited to usher in our first season as Oakhill Organics with you as a member. This first week of pick-up is the fulfillment of three months of our work out here on the farm—we are delighted to finally be sharing it with you. Welcome to the Community Supported Agriculture adventure!
In addition to the produce, each week we will be providing you with a newsletter. Even though we will be seeing you at the pick-up site, the newsletter is a handy way to communicate important and useful information, such as updates or reminders about workdays, farm events, lists of the week’s vegetables, recipes, cooking suggestions, and other random reflections on the season. We will still be maintaining our farm blog (www.oakhillorganics.org/blog.html) with regular farm updates and photos, but this farm ‘publication’ will be particularly tailored to the CSA. Since it’s the first week, the newsletter is particularly full, so please take a minute just to acquaint yourself with the news and information.
Meet this week’s vegetables
Diversity & the ‘swap’ box
As you can see from this week’s share, we’re growing a wide variety of vegetables, many of which are not common in mainstream grocery stores or recipes. Some of you might already be hard-core vegetables lovers who are familiar with all the items we’ll be providing this summer, but others might have joined in order to be exposed to new foods and experiment with cooking. Some of you might even be wondering, “What if I end up hating something?” We certainly realize that not every person will love every vegetable we give out this summer. Our diversity is partly a way to alleviate some of those problems—we will try to keep changing it up to allow you to try different things and not get bogged down with any one item (except for some of the classics, like tomatoes, onions and lettuce).
In our own experience, it takes time and experience to learn to like some things: both in terms of learning how to cook and enjoying them. We do hope that you will at least try every vegetable once or twice before deciding that you truly detest it (even ones you think you already hate!). If, however, you find that you cannot stand something, we’ll be providing a ‘swap’ box at all future pick-ups. That’s a box where you can put things you definitely don’t want. If there are things in the ‘swap box’ that you want more of, you can take them, but whatever is left at the end of the day will go to the St. Barnabas soup kitchen.
But, again, we hope that everyone will at least try things once or twice before resorting to the box—part of the fun of a CSA is being challenged to cook new things and eat new ways. Since we began farming two years ago, we have discovered tons of new favorite vegetables and dishes. We now genuinely love things we weren’t too keen on at first (both kale and arugula, for example). We sincerely hope that the CSA eating adventure is a pleasurable one for you and your family as well.
Recipes & suggestions
To help guide you on that adventure, we will be publishing recipes and cooking suggestions for the less mainstream veggies each week. We also recommend the cookbook we’re selling, Asparagus to Zucchini: A Guide to Cooking Farm-Fresh Seasonal Produce. Written by CSA farmers with CSAs in mind, the book provides some fantastic ideas and simple suggestions for preparing a wide variety of vegetables. We’ve included two recipes from that book this week for you to try out, but we’ll also have copies at the stand that you can look at. We’re selling it at our cost: only $13.50 per copy.
Also, if anyone has favorite, well-tested recipes that they’d like to share, we’d love to publish them as well. Just email us (farm@oakhillorganics.org) and we’ll include them in a future newsletter.
Your voice too—contributing to the weekly newsletter
Speaking of which, we’d also love to get more of your voices in this newsletter in other ways too. We both enjoy writing and are more than willing to fill up space each week with updates, field notes, recipes, etc., but we imagine that you might have something to say too: about food, cooking, gardening, the seasons, or whatever. If you’d like to contribute in any way, just email us. We’d welcome poetry, first-hand accounts of being more personally involved with agriculture, thoughtful reflections on eating, political treatises on food choices, ideas for getting kids to eat veggies, etc etc etc.
That’s it for this week. Look to the next few newsletters for continued updates about workdays, farm events, more recipes and such. Thank you again for joining us this season. Working the fields with community in mind is a pleasure.
Your farmers,
Katie & Casey Kulla
Oakhill Organics
Well… when I got back from the farm last night with the freshest vegetables ever, my 6 year old wanted to sample everything. We started with the salad turnips sliced thin. He said, “yum…it tastes like good fresh water with a crunch”. From a six year old that is a compliment! The salad I took for lunch today was fabulous. Good work Casey and Katie! McMinnville is lucky to have you both! Wish me luck as I attempt to saute Kale tonight. I haven’t had it before, but my Southern born husband is looking forward to some “greens”. See you next week!