What’s coming up this year

(CSA Newsletter: Week 11)

Meet this week’s vegetables:

The spring vegetables have arrived! This week’s share marks an important milestone in the year: it’s the first harvest from our spring-sown vegetables! Up until now, all the vegetables you’ve eaten were sown or planted in 2009 and over-wintered in the fields or harvested and stored inside.

But, of course, as we progress through the year, we must move on to eat vegetables actually planted this year, beginning with this week’s arugula, bok choy and radishes. You’ll notice how much more tender and mild these crops are, the result of their rapid spring growth and shelter in our one field hoop house. We always welcome the return of tender greens, but we also love the stronger flavor of the over-wintered greens too. Fortunately, we get to enjoy both throughout the year!

We’ll continue to harvest a mix of over-wintered crops and spring crops over the next few weeks, until early summer when we transition entirely to 2010’s crops.

This week, I thought I’d use this seasonal milestone as an opportunity to remind all of you of what else is coming this year. This is our eleventh CSA share of 2010 — 34 more shares to go, featuring a diverse range of seasonal vegetables! There is much to look forward to still in the year.

So, find in this week’s newsletter, an estimated harvest calendar of our different crops, a reminder schedule of important CSA dates (including payment dates and farm events), and some suggestions on what might be good to plant in your own home garden to avoid too much over-lap with our crops. We hope this information is helpful to you at this time in the season!

Enjoy this week’s fresh, tender vegetables!

Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla

Readers of the blog-version of our newsletter, can find the estimated harvest schedule on our website here. Remember: this is just an approximation, and the actual vegetables in each week’s CSA share will fluctuate as veggies mature in the fields!

Here at Oakhill Organics, we grow over 50 different types of organic vegetables (and several varieties of each!). However, there are a few crops that we have chosen to not grow for the CSA this year for various reasons. We know that many of our CSA members also have home gardens, so we thought we’d suggest some tasty things you can grow to supplement your CSA shares:

* All dates subject to possible change throughout season. To stay current, please read the weekly CSA newsletters.
** After the first payment, subsequent $80 monthly payments are due by the end of each month, with the final payment due by Dec 20.