Happy Summer Solstice!

We hope you spent the evening munching on veggies while enjoying the beautiful sunset today.  The hakurei turnips have especially been enjoying the rain and long days of sunlight this week — they are huge!  The chickens too have grown a lot, and while they still look like awkward teenagers, they have quite a few of their adult feathers now, and some of them are even learning how to use the ramp from the coop down to the “grazing” area.  The excitement of the weekend was discovering the first broccoli heads ready to pick, the first couple pea pods ready to eat, and the first tomato plants setting fruit with green tomatoes about the size of grapes.  And so we are officially starting to move out of the “spring greens” stage of the CSA season, and the boxes will (hopefully) get progressively heavier as we can start harvesting fruits and more roots in addition to leaves.

In your box this week:

  1. BROCCOLI!  Just a little taste, but it’s a start!
  2. Radishes:  Probably the last you’ll see of these.  When asked most members said they think radishes are OK, but not amazing.  So we will most likely not plant another section of these.
  3. Bok Choy:  Another beautiful harvest of Bok Choy this week.  Have you tried Amy’s asian salad recipe from last year yet? YUM!
  4. Garlic Chives and Garlic Scapes:  The chives look a lot like grass but taste like garlic, use them raw or cooked.  The scape is the hard curly stem; it is the flower of the garlic plant, and we cut it off so that the plant will continue to focus energy on those lovely bulbs down below the mulch.  Chop up the scape and sauté it just like you would with garlic.
  5. Hakurei Turnips:  They look like white radishes.  But they are sweeter, and have a creamier texture.  They are so good!  Eat them like an apple, slice them into a salad, or grill them with olive oil, salt, and pepper.  The turnip greens are also very good (and nutritious) to eat raw or cooked.  Cut them up raw into the salad mix, or sauté them with butter or bacon, or cut them up small to hide them in spaghetti sauce or quiche or hotdish.  So many options!
  6. Salad Mix:  Already washed once, this week’s mix contains many colors and varieties of lettuce, plus the peppery arugula, the mustardy mizuna, and the new this week spinach.  There may be some spinach flowers mixed in too– don’t worry, they won’t hurt you.
  7. Kale:  A mix of Red Russian and Dino/Lacinato varieties.  Steam it, saute it, put it in hotdish, but be sure to enjoy this the most nutritious of vegetables.
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