Do you ever feel like the world is rapidly collapsing into just a handful of enormous corporations and you’re left without many choices? I’ve had one of those weeks.
As CSA members you are making an important choice to support your community! The superstore across town or the app on your phone might be less expensive, more convenient, and offer endless choices. For now. We don’t know what they will do in the future. These faceless corporations buy up small businesses or put them out of business until the big corporations are the only ones left standing. You have fewer choices as a customer and if you are looking for a job you have fewer employers to choose from.
When you choose a small, local business you are supporting our community and our local economy. You get to know all of us at Red Wagon when we see you at our CSA pickups and at events on the farm. These are experiences that feel real. And a lot of the money you spend on your CSA share goes right back into our community in the form of paychecks and money we spend with other local businesses. On top of all of this you get to enjoy fresh, delicious food! We are so lucky to live in an area with a vibrant farming community made possible by a combination of people who love growing food and others who value what we do.
Owning a small farm is hard. Really hard. And recently it’s only gotten harder. Why do we keep doing it? Because of you! I feel an incredible amount of loyalty to our CSA members and other customers as well as our employees. It feels like we’re all working together for something we believe in. Despite the challenges I feel surprisingly upbeat right now. It’s because I got to go to the first few weeks of CSA pickups and connect with a lot of you. This is the 20th summer of our CSA. It’s amazing to look back and see what we’ve all built together!
With gratitude,
Amy
Mo and Audrey at the farm CSA pickup.
I spend most of my time in my little office on the farm.
Sauteed zucchini is a CSA basic recipe you need to have in your back pocket. You can take this simple vegetable prep almost anywhere. As is, it is a simple side dish. Add some noodles for a pasta meal, top with eggs for a filling lunch, add some grains and greens for a hearty dinner salad.
Today I topped my noodles with sauteed zucchini, goat cheese and roasted nuts. Yum.
Here is a ‘no recipe-photo recipe’.
Start with your zucchini cut into coins pretty much the same size and either garlic or onions.
Heat a pan with a slick of oil on medium heat. You want a big pan to cook this in, you don’t want to crowd the vegetables, they will sweat and not brown if they are crowded. Add the vegetables and some salt and pepper.
Don’t move the zucchini around too much or it will lose it’s shape and not brown, but do gently turn them a time or two. This happens pretty fast, maybe 5 minutes so don’t walk away. You can make a big batch and happily use leftovers as needed through the week.
Zucchini has entered the chat! How amazing is the story arch of seasonal vegetables? Last week we saw some (gorgeous!) zucchini blossoms at our pickups, and this week we are seeing beautifully matured zucchini. What a ride – thanks for joining us.
Tabbouleh is a simple salad using lots of chopped vegetables, lots and lots of parsley-usually mint and bulgur wheat. That is all tossed with lemon and or lime and olive oil for a bright salad that stays fresh for days and travels well.
Tabbouleh Salad
1 cup dry bulghur wheat
1 1/4 cup boiling water
1 1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup lemon and or lime juice
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 cup chopped onions or scallions
2 or 3 cloves of garlic chopped
1 cup chopped packed parsley
optional additions; mint, garbanzo beans, feta cheese, any fresh vegetables chopped bite sized like cucumber, carrots, tomatoes.
Combine the bulghur wheat with boiling water and salt and let that sit for a half hour or so then add the lemon juice, garlic and onions, oil and mint if you are using it. Refrigerate at least 2 or 3 hours or even overnight. It mellows and blends and rounds out all the sharp flavors. So letting it sit and mellow is important.
2. Just before serving add the parsley and whatever vegetables you like. Be really generous with the parsley and vegetables. You should have more vegetables than bulghur.
3. Toss it all up and add feta cheese if you like. I usually add more lemon juice and a little more salt and sometimes olive oil. Taste it-it should be bright and vibrant tasting.
Feel free to riff on the vegetables you add. This is a great salad for cleaning out the refrigerator and using what you like and not being tied to a rigid formula or recipe.
Keep doing your rain dances; it’s helping🙌. We have an exciting edition to the harvest this week – carrots! Hope you are looking forward to your fresh veggies this week.
We get lots of greens here at Red Wagon CSA, be it bagged, bunched or cut heads.
We weigh and bag lettuce or greens right before you pickup your CSA share. Everything is harvested then rinsed (aka rejuvenated) in the wash station. Next we spin it to dry it as best we can. Crops like arugula, spinach and cut lettuce get weighed and portioned into bags. Greens like kale, chard and collards are bunched.
You can store the greens in the sealed bag you get them in from us if you like, but remember; you still need to wash everything before you eat it. Greens will last at least 5 to 7 days stored in plastic bags. Kale and chard and collards all need to be stored in air tight containers and will last at least a week.
I like to have my greens ready to eat, so I wash and dry them right when I get home from pickup so they are ready to cook or eat for meals during the week. I find they last a little longer too, at least a week and maybe a little longer if I take this extra step. The greens in the top photo were washed, dried and stored in air tight containers and are all 8 days old!
Here is my routine; I carefully snip the little red tape that seals the bag so I can reuse the bags, then I wash and dry the greens and put them back in the bag I got them in. That is why I don’t just rip into the bags, I snip carefully! If you have a salad spinner and room in your refrigerator, the spinner is a great storage container. I only have one salad spinner. If I had more I would use it to store more of the greens, I don’t, thus the reuse of the bags.
I wash all the greens the same; dunk them in clean cool water and drain and dry them. Things like cut lettuce and arugula I spin in the salad spinner to dry. Drying the greens, all types, is important for long storage.
Placing paper towels or dry dish cloths in the container you are storing the greens in keeps the vegetables damp, but not soggy in the bag so you don’t get those weird slimy leaves that make the whole bag go bad.
It just takes a few minutes to do and I find I and more inclined to use the produce if it is ready to eat.
It was wonderful seeing you all last week – your smiles and gratitude fuel this farm. The fields are looking really promising, and we’re excited to bring you this week’s harvest. Still in the spring of things, expect greens, herbs, and lettuce – oh my!
Does anybody else feel disoriented? What happened to winter? I’m still thrown off a bit when I realize it’s already the end of May. We started with an exceptionally dry winter and spring with a record-breaking heatwave in March. It felt like we might get some relief in April with some much-needed rain. But storm after storm missed our area. By May 1 things looked truly dismal. That’s the date when water providers in our area usually take stock of the water situation and make plans for the year. Municipalities and other water districts started announcing voluntary and mandatory watering restrictions. By then Wyatt had started calling around to try to lease irrigation water from anybody he could think of. Then on May 5 we finally had a big snow storm. I have never been so happy to walk through our muddy fields! A second big storm on May 17 gave me more hope. (Although it came with a few minutes of heart-stopping hail.) We are not out of the woods in terms of the drought but the moisture we received in May has helped a lot.
Wyatt and I have been through all kinds of weather challenges in the 22 years we’ve been farming. But this year feels like the biggest curveball yet. Every year we plant a handful of crops (mostly alliums) in the fall to over-winter and have them ready for the first few weeks of CSA pickups in the spring. Those crops woke up way too early this year. Those of you who came to our harvest event last week got some walking onions and green garlic. But that was at the very end of the harvest window for those crops and now they’re too mature and woody so we’ll miss having them for our CSA pickups this year. You should see some garlic scapes in your shares this week. If you’re a long-time CSA member you might remember that you normally see those in mid-June. But again, the over-wintered crops are weeks ahead of when they’d normally be ready.
So if the alliums are early why are other spring crops behind? The short answer is that most of the spring crops are planted in March and April. Wyatt told me to blame him for not having those crops ready now. But I gave him a big eye roll and asked how anybody could have known the right decisions to make since it felt like we’ve been in uncharted territory with the weather the last few months. We planted a few rows of crops in March and watered them with tap water to make sure we had them ready for the harvest event last week. However, Wyatt waited to do a lot of his usual March planting because it was so hot that he thought there was a good chance those crops would be ready before CSA pickups started. And we were having trouble getting water at our home farm on 63rd St which is where we do the first spring planting.
We were also delayed in doing our spring field preparation. The soil needs to be the right moisture before we can plow and till. When it’s too dry the soil is rock hard and you can’t do those things. We normally wait for rain or snow in the spring to soften the soil then we plow and till just as the soil reaches the right moisture while drying out. In April Wyatt would look at the weather forecast and see a storm heading our way and make plans to plow. Then the storm would miss us. I think that happened 3 times in April. One option when the fields are dry and there’s no rain is to irrigate the soil so it is the right moisture for plowing. But in a year when irrigation water is so precious we were trying to hold off in the hopes that we would receive some moisture from the sky. Hence, my ecstatic response to the May 5th snow storm! It was pretty soggy after that storm. The downside of receiving so much moisture is that the fields are too wet and you have to wait a little while for them to dry out before you plow or you compact the soil. But at least that’s a problem we’ve faced before and know how to work around it.
In between all of this Wyatt did use a little bit of our irrigation water to prep the fields in early April so he could plant the arugula and turnips you are receiving this week. He also decided to prioritize our summer crops so we could get those in the ground on schedule. Many of those crops are grown using drip irrigation and it felt like we weren’t using up a lot of our precious water with them.
One result of all of this is that our CSA shares this week are much smaller than we would like. The timing didn’t work out this year and we didn’t have a road map to show us how to navigate through these challenges. However, thanks to the moisture we received in May many of our spring crops should be caught up in the next week or two and we should have our regular offerings for your CSA shares. Plus we should have enough food to make up for the light shares this week!
Fortunately, our wonderful farm crew has been working hard to get things planted whenever the weather allows. Even though the timing has been a challenge I am amazed at how good things are looking in the fields. You can see a handful of photos below that I took on Saturday when Wyatt and I were looking at the crops.
To our CSA members, thank you for your continued support. I’ve said it many times before but I’ll say it again. You are the reason that we can keep farming. Every farm season brings its own challenges. This season has been the most mind-boggling yet so far. But we’re able to keep moving forward knowing that you’ve got our backs.
With heartfelt gratitude,
Amy
We normally harvest garlic around July 4th. It will probably be ready in mid-June this year.
This lettuce needs just a few days before it’s big enough to harvest.
Only a few weeks until we are harvesting basil.
All of our tomatoes are in tunnels this year and they’re looking vibrant and healthy.
Turnip and Arugula Salad is simple and satisfying using only a few ingredients. Add grains like quinoa or protein like grilled tofu or salmon for an easy meal.
Turnip and Arugula Salad with Honey, Almonds and Mint
Makes about 4 servings
3 or 4 hakurei turnips thinly sliced
2 T fresh lemon juice or more as needed
1 t honey)
3/4 t salt
4 cups washed and loosely packed arugula
A small handful of fresh mint leaves or basil or parsley
2 T Olive oil or more as needed
Optional but delicious so you should add one or more! 1/4 c sliced almonds-or any nut chopped-Cheese, avocado, grains, any additional toppings you like!
Directions:
Combine the sliced turnips in a small bowl with the lemon juice, honey, and salt. Let sit for 5 minutes, tossing occasionally. (I put the mint in there, opps)
Combine the arugula and mint in a medium bowl, drizzle on the oil. Add the turnips and dressing to the arugula and toss to incorporate. Taste, and season with more lemon juice, oil, and/or salt as needed.
We are so excited to begin another season with you! Mother nature has started us off with a bit of a warmer spring this year, which is great for enjoying the great outdoors but not so much for crop predictability. The crops that were planted got a little bit ahead and bolted with the warm weather – this week’s share is a little smaller to start off.
