The Introductory Harvest
Though the creatures of the natural world have no Sundays, their days are filled with Sabbaths.
(Wendell Berry, paraphrased)
We’re chopping, snipping, and yanking our first harvest for 2023 this week! A diverse selection of cool season whole foods will be included in the delivery with a variety of salad ingredients, flavors, and textures with which your family can arrange meals and side dishes throughout the week.
As we are harvesting, preparing, and thriving on our own share of this week’s harvest, we do not under-appreciate this unique privilege. Not only do we have the opportunity to acquire tillable land, not only do we have the time and physical wellness to cultivate the land, but we have the insurance of a dedicated community of supporters allowing it to be sustainable and worth it all the while.
A few housekeeping notes-
*We will happily recycle, reuse, and/or re-purpose any materials that are delivered with your food. This includes the 12”x 12”x 6” delivery box itself, which after the first delivery may be used as a delivery receptacle each week if a small cooler is unavailable or unnecessary. Food will be delivered using materials like plastic bags, zip ties, rubber bands, etc. If you leave these materials out with your delivery receptacle, we will happily take them back for reuse.
*We will also take your organic food scraps, egg shells, compost, etc.
*Our deliveries may be slower this week as we adjust to new routes. Deliveries will go out in the afternoon/early evening. We will send a notification text ahead of the delivery. We’ve reached out to some individuals for whom we didn’t yet have phone numbers to contact. If you think to, it would be helpful if you could reply to this email with an appropriate number for us to text ahead of deliveries.
A late frost
With Mother’s Day and the almanac’s “last frost date” behind us, clear skies & dry soil in the forecast, and anxious vegetable seedlings stretching to be planted in their forever home gardens, we’ve been excitedly shuttling, transplanting, and trellising summer crops like tomatoes, squashes, and peppers into our big summer gardens. The earlier we plant, the earlier transplants will recover from the shock of the move, the earlier we will have ripe fruit, the longer the season will be, and ultimately, we’ll experience a greater overall yield by the fall frost.
But a late frost came, as it ironically and inevitably does. In general, our spring garden, populated with cool-season frost-tolerant crops, ought to be able to take it. Our time, attention, and energy, therefore, was focused on protecting our summer gardens, populated with warm-season crops vulnerable to a good frost. When the frost lifted, we were pleased to see very little damage to our summer garden- a relief indeed, and a justification for an annoying afternoon of tedious and unexpected maintenance.
So it goes. Change is the only constant. This week’s delivery will include the following whole foods:
Green Butter Lettuce
If we were asked two weeks ago about the item of which we’d be most proud for our first delivery, we wouldn’t have hesitated to point to our head lettuce. It’s a wise decision to grow head lettuce. It’s easy to grow, the pests stay away, and the harvest is simple. We love the complete absence of any processing in the harvest, pack, and delivery. When we had shareholders picking up their boxes from the farm in previous seasons, we would often go out and cut the lettuce head and hand it directly to the family. This kind of direct, straight-forward food production is what we are all about.
Then came the frost. While we were busy fretting over the exposure of our summer crops, we neglected to keep an eye on our spring garden, with the assumption being that the frost would be light & patchy, and the cool season crops could handle it. Our resources were limited and we had to triage crops to receive frost protection materials in order to prioritize those most vulnerable.
The frost was indeed patchy, but those patches were heavy. One of those unseasonably heavy patches settled sneakily over a row of Green Butter Salanova lettuce, discoloring the overexposed lettuce heads and taking these overconfident farmers down a peg or two.
We will still harvest the heads, but they will be bagged as loose-leaf lettuce instead of delivered as full heads. There may be a little discoloration to a few leaves, but there ought to be plenty of bowl-filling buttery leaves left for the week.
Bok Choy
Flea beetles are difficult pests to responsibly manage on our farm. We have a very hard time keeping them away from Brassica crops like Bok Choy, Arugula, and other Mustards on our farm. We tolerate them with some crops more than others, depending on how the pests degrade the final kitchen experience. Bok Choy can usually be prepared just as satisfyingly with or without pest damage.
This week’s Bok Choy is mature, broad-leaved, and substantial. It’s a lot of food. It’s not likely something you’ll want to eat raw. We often simply throw a bunch of stems in a medium-hot buttery skillet, cover them, and cook them down until the stems tenderize. You can also chop the stems and leaves to prepare the same way, or throw them in a soup. You’ll notice that the greens compress and the discouraging flea beetle bites become significantly less noticeable.
Mustard Greens
Shareholders will receive a big bad of salad mustard greens this week. This nutritious Brassica mix includes Red Mustard, Mizuna, Tatsoi, Kale, and Arugula. The flea beetles found this bed of greens as well. We often reassure folks of a few important points regarding bug bites on their greens. If your salad greens have bug bites, it means a few good things: there was no pesticide applied to this crop, the crop was sun-grown in living soil rather than in an indoor hydroponic system and is likely more nutritious, plus minimal plastic was used to grow this crop.
We struggle with the economical and environmental cost/benefit of deterring such pests. Our options are as follows and we would love to hear your input/opinion!
Organic pesticides- we could use these pesticides and still claim to be “organic” and we sometimes choose to do so. But while these sprays are organically-derived and “safe” for organic production, they are broad-spectrum and destructive. Something like 85% of the insects in our garden are beneficial. Do we really want to sacrifice all the beneficial insects working to create a balanced soil environment just to easily manage the problem pests?
Insect protection cover- It feels antithetical for us to continue to purchase a whole bunch of plastic crop protection. These plastic products have short lifespans and are not 100% effective anyway. Mindlessly covering crops with plastic is a slippery slope to indoor growing. We want to farm more like homesteaders and less like commercial growers. We think that tolerating harmless, aesthetically-displeasing bug bites can be important to this approach.
Spinach
This was a solid spinach crop.
We like to provide diversity in salad ingredients in terms of texture, plant family, and size. We were successful with this effort this week. Shareholders will receive broad leaves of lettuce, medium and baby spinach, crunchy, spicy, spindly mustard greens, and microgreens for concentrated flavor and nutrition.
Green Garlic
We thinned our spring garlic bed, harvesting “green garlic” for deliveries this week. Keep these refrigerated and use the greens as you would scallions or green onions. The garlic round/clove can be used like regular garlic, just be sure to keep it in the refrigerator.
Brassica microgreens
We love this microgreen salad mix. These microgreens take only a week to mature. We grow these in our indoor nursery, under lights, though we hope to experiment with outdoor/greenhouse microgreens this summer. This is the freshest crop we offer. We carry trays of living microgreens on the delivery route and harvest them fresh at your location. This mix includes varieties of Broccoli, Kale, Kohlrabi, Arugula & Cabbage. These micros are useful in salads, mixed in with eggs, or thrown into smoothies. They’re versatile and they last a long time in the refrigerator.
Parsley
Our herb offering this week will likely be Parsley, though other herbs are coming on including cilantro, dill, rosemary, thyme, oregano, sage, etc. We will provide a bunch of herbs as they are available, but it’s likely that we will have curly Parsley included this week.
Pea Shoots
Micro crop varieties are generally divided into three categories- Sprouts, Shoots, and Microgreens.
Sprouts- These “greens” are more like “yellows,” as they are typically grown without light.
Shoots- Generally, the only difference between “sprouts” and “shoots” is photosynthesis. Shoots are exposed to light and tend to be tall and stemmy.
Microgreens- These are typical micro crops with full flavor and leaves.
This week’s pea shoots may serve as a quick snack, or a unique topping to a diverse salad.
Eggs & Flowers
We really appreciate those shareholders that purchased egg and flower shares this season in addition to the vegetable CSA membership. Half and full dozens will be included in those shareholders’ boxes, as appropriate. We are relieved to have more cooler space this year so we can build up a safe inventory of eggs in case predators or disease were to hit the flock. We can assure you our hens and roosters always have access to plenty of fresh pasture, insects and sunlight! They are having a wonderful spring.
Erin’s bouquets this week will go out to only those shareholders that selected weekly arrangements. Biweekly shareholders can expect their first bouquet next week - and monthly shareholders the week after. Jars this week include: Sunflowers, Phlox, Dame’s Rocket, Fleabane, Red Buckeye, Columbine, Ostrich Fern, Sweetshrub, Stinking Willie, Wild Geranium and more - all picked from our garden rows, meadows and woods. If you are interested in adding on flowers we have plenty to go around, let us know!
We are really looking forward to meeting our newest members and catching up with our returning, loyal shareholders. Here’s to a smooth first week of harvests and deliveries! Please share how you are using your items this week. Thank you shareholders!
Erin & David