CSA Week 3!
Summer has certainly set in up here at the farm. I turned my head for a second and the not yet pruned cherry tomatoes seemed to devour an entire bed! Must make time for that I suppose. Flowers are in bloom, the summer veggies are coming along, and our new pond continues to fill up creating a great, hot afternoon refuge for farmers and frogs. We made some big decisions this week that will hopefully enhance our work/life balance as our lives here began to feel completely out of balance. Knowing that the bulk of the workload is condensed into a short amount of time during the calendar year, it is always a question whether the hard work is just the right amount of hard yet still in balance or too hard and creating instability. We discovered upon stepping back that it was the latter and we quickly made a decision that will bring the work and the non-work aspects of the farm back to some semblance of harmony. Or harmonious chaos at the very least. So once again, I come back to hope. It is the theme I spend a lot of time thinking about and draw translations to life from this work. Hope is pure because it resides within and reaches out toward a future that does not yet exist and pairs with our hopeful expectations and possibility: Hope that things can change for the better, hope that everything will turn out positive, hope for happiness. Hope is the best defense against challenge and discomfort. And so today we are both hopeful. And happy doing what we do and being where we are.
Enough with the musings. On to the share!!!!
Cukes - for salad or eating. I’m growing some snack size cucumbers this year called Katrina - they seem really good!
Lettuce mix - good for salad makin’
a bunch of garlic scapes - you can sauté those as you would garlic, puree them with basil for a fresh pesto, use them anyway you would garlic!
a bunch of flowering Broccolini - back by popular demand - all is edible, the flowers are sweet and delicious and the stalks are tender and sweet all the way down. You can chop in a salad raw, cook in a hot pan of oil or fat for a nice side dish sprinkled with salt and peppers.
a bunch of Kohlrabi - the veterans have heard this a bunch of times but I’ll repeat - I love kohlrabi, it is cool and delicious. You can shave it on to a salad, stir fry it cubed, slice it with and top it with a hunk of nice cheese like cheese and crackers. Here is a link for some other ideas too:
https://www.thekitchn.com/5-tasty-ways-to-prepare-kohlrabi-60321
a small bunch of summer savory - Genica called this “thyme lite” today. So you can use it as you would fresh thyme. Spice a nice piece of meat, fish, or chicken. Or use the scapes for this dish:
https://www.lifesambrosia.com/summer-savory-and-garlic-green-beans-recipe/
better yet, sub the green beans (which are on the way by the way) for broccolini for a summer savory, garlic scape, broccolini side dish. Yum
And of course the Snap Peas if the even made it home. This was an experiment in one of the greenhouses and these particular peas were planted in late March. Unfortunately our newly graded and compacted soil as a result of grading the greenhouse site last fall, did not provide a super great growing space for the peas but it was fun to try it out and we learned a lot. Next year will be much better. And therein lies the constant hope.
Have an amazing week and I will see you all soon!!