Wholesome whole foods

Our first offering features pretty standard Morckel Meadows’ produce in terms of variety and quality. This box is a decent debut and reintroduction for our new and returning shareholders. Not without blemishes, but discernibly without chemicals. Maybe imperfect, but never insufficient. Wholesome whole foods.

On washing…

Wash your vegetables! Or don’t.

We try to leave the consumer with options.

On our farm, we are inclined to intervene as little as possible. We want minimal soil disturbance, minimal tillage, minimal weeding, minimal cultivation, minimal human intervention with livestock. The same instinct applies to our wash and pack process. If we can avoid washing produce, we will. This is actually in alignment with recommended agricultural practices. Produce isn’t generally getting food-borne illness in the field. Ironically, the problems can be introduced with water during the washing and processing stage of production. The fewer hands that handle your produce, the fewer water sources your produce contacts, the lower the probability of any bad health outcome.

We will be transporting our first home delivery shares of the season starting at NOON TODAY, Wednesday, May 18th. Our farm pick up folks may arrive between 12PM and 5PM this Sunday, May 22nd, to pick up their fresh produce.

This week’s harvest features the following products:

Green Garlic Scallions

Garlic is traditionally planted in the fall or at the end of summer, often in November. Our understanding is that this is common because garlic prefers “40 nights under 40 degrees” to eventually trigger clove multiplication. Admittedly, we’ve never been great at planting anything that late in the season (we will get there) and always hold out hope that our spring-planted garlic will work out. There is hope, so long as we plant before April. This spring, timing was perfect and we have an impressive stand of garlic greens, rooting deeply and encouraging us that we will have plenty of bulbs to share late in the summer.

For now, we are able to pull every other plant to use fresh as “Garlic Scallions” or “Green Garlic.” They will come with long, pungent greens functioning as an herb for flavoring up dishes as you would using spring onions, as well as a small tender round to use as your would traditional cloves.

Easter Egg Radishes

Multi-color radish roots with nutritious tops. This harvest, on average, the radishes are mild with the occasional spicy troublemaker. We have fewer “splitties” than we had last year so far- likely a result of more consistent water and attention.

Don’t throw out the green tops! Brassica greens are just useful. Although they can have some odd texture raw, they’re fantastic in the skillet. Quickly saute the greens from turnips, radishes, kohlrabi, broccoli, etc with a little bit of butter, salt and pepper.

Spinach

Infamously nutritious. Mature leaves, great with any preparation. Easy to grow, easy to eat.

Romaine/Cos Head Lettuce

We have many varieties of lettuce this spring with a couple variations on Romaine or Cos lettuce. We will distribute full heads of “Monte Carlo” romaine or “Parris Island” cos this week as available.

Butterhead Lettuce

This is a more elegant, tender-tissued lettuce variety. These lettuces ought to provide options and versatility for salads, sandwiches, and wraps.

Spring Mustard Greens

This is a spring mix featuring brassica greens. Compare it to a a product that called something like a “power blend” of baby Mustards and Chinese Cabbages you would find by the spring mixes in the grocery store. This is a nutrient-dense, flavorful salad base.

Broadleaf Brassica Greens

Collards, Kale, or Turnip Thinnings, as available. This was our first season growing Collard Greens and we were eager to try them out this Wednesday. For Sunday’s farm pickup harvest, it is unclear as to whether we will have available Collards, Kale, or Turnip Greens. Regardless, you’ll have super nutritious, thick-tissued skillet leaves to work with this week.

Microgreens

We really want to have microgreens available as often as possible for folks this season. They’re easy to grow but also easy to mess up (if that makes sense). They’re grown in a short period of time indoors and do require a different kind of attention and discipline- we can’t pray for rain or weather for the micros (bittersweet). They’re densely-packed with nutrients. This week, we will have brassica sprouts (kohlrabi, brassica mix) perfect for topping salads or sandwiches or tossing in with an egg scramble. Fresh cabbagey flavor.

Parsley

This is our wildcard. We will make a last minute decision as to whether we should go ahead and include this herb or be patient. Last spring, with such a fast start in March and April, we had cool season herbs in abundance. Parsley has grown slower this season. Herbs like Rosemary, Thyme, Sage, Basil, Cilantro, etc are planted and will be included appropriately as they mature.

Wildflower Bouquet

Erin foraged through woods and pasture to arrange a beautiful seasonal bouquet gift with asters, grass seed heads, fern leaves, wild mustard and rocket flowers- newly bloomed Phlox (our livestock guardian dog’s namesake).

Eggs

Our birds are clearly the happiest and healthiest they have ever been, in ideal conditions on pasture. They’ve reciprocated with rich dozens for us all this week.

We can’t wait to meet our new members and catch up with returning shareholders. Enjoy your fresh, local, regenerative food!

Thank you,

Erin & David