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In the share this week: 1 bunch beets 2 green kohlrabi 1 lb broccoli or 1 bunch turnips 1 bunch spring onions 1 bag sugar snap peas 1 bag salad mix 1 bunch parsley Thoughts from Farmer Anna: Welcome to the first share of the new season! Since we waited until June to start, you have some pretty bomb shares coming at you right away, with lots of substantial crops like beets, kohlrabi and broccoli. The farm is exploding with late spring crops that were planted in the early days of April. May was a very unseasonably dry month and now in the first week of June it feels like drought conditions. We have a pretty good irrigation system with a combination of drip tapes and sprinklers, but it's tough to keep up when we haven't had significant rain in weeks. Let's all hope for a good soaking rain soon! It's been such a whirlwind in the past few weeks here - it always is from mid-May to mid-June. We are starting to harvest more and more crops, while still finishing up all of the major spring planting of warm weather crops like squash, sweet potatoes, peppers, tomatoes and beans. This year we also moved into the house we've been building for the past year and are moving our wash and pack operations up to the new pack shed. It's a lot. We don't stop most nights until our heads hit the pillow. It's a beautiful kind of full though. Our new house is steps away from our farm fields vs. a trek up the hill. I can easily walk over and switch the irrigation. The kids have been coming over to say hi while I'm working during the day and sometimes I can convince them to pick sugar snap peas with me as the sun is setting (see above photographic evidence). We feel so lucky to have this land and to do this work of growing good food for our community! I really love the vegetables of spring. I'm pretty excited about the broccoli (that was a bit of a surprise as we starting harvesting before I thought we would) and the kohlrabi (related to broccoli and tastes like a combination of that and turnips) as brassicas are my favorite vegetable group. I'm thinking about making a broccoli peanut sauce stir fry for our farm lunch tomorrow. You could definitely chop up your kohlrabi and throw in the sugar snap peas to the mix too. Maybe something a bit like this: https://tastysimplyvegan.com/peanut-sauce-broccoli/ The beets are also looking quite fabulous this week. One benefit of the dry weather is that the beet greens are looking very healthy. If you like greens, these are excellent for cooking and taste very similar to swiss chard. We often eat our beets roasted and then added to a grain bowl with lots of onion, nuts, and feta cheese (your parsley could be a good addition here too) or used to top a salad. If you want to prepare your beets with their greens in a simple and tasty way, this recipe looks perfect: Simmered Beet Greens With Roasted Beets, Lemon and Yogurt (Published 2012),https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/12305-simmered-beet-greens-with-roasted-beets-lemon-and-yogurt We'd love to hear what you are making with your share items this week. If you feel inspired, leave a link for us in the recipes section of the forum! Happy cooking and have a great week!

In the share this week: 2 lbs scarlet turnips (pictured first) 2 lbs rutabaga (pictured second) 2 kohlrabi bulbs 1 fennel bulb 6 oz bag baby kale 5 oz bag spinach Thoughts from Farmer Anna: We've made it through another season! We've been growing and you've been eating these veggies for 26 weeks. That's half a year! I think we can all feel a bit proud of this accomplishment. Even though we've been growing for nearly 10 years now and many of you have been CSA members for a few years or more, it still feels like a big deal to make it through a season successfully. I bet you've tried some new veggies and cooked a few new recipes this year. One of the beautiful aspects of CSA is that it encourages you to step out of your food comfort zone just a bit. I still find it a bit thrilling to find a new way to enjoy a vegetable that I haven't particularly liked before. The more different kinds of veggies we eat, the healthier we are. And health is a huge driving force behind what we do here. Healthy individuals build healthy connections with other people and the environment and that helps our communities become healthier places to live. As our farm continues to grow, we are excited to not only share the best food we can grow, but also to become a gathering place to strengthen community bonds, and of course to have some good old fashioned fun! Root vegetables are a staple of the late fall garden. In the share this week you have rutabagas, scarlet turnips and kohlrabi bulbs. All of these root veggies will keep for awhile in your fridge if you don't want to use them right away. Rutabaga in particular has a reputation for being a rather homely vegetable. Don't let its appearance fool you though! The flavor and texture of this veggie is wonderful in many soups and stews. We often use ours for a rutabaga gratin on the Thanksgiving table. I also love the idea of making it into a simple soup like the recipe below. Pureed soups are so comforting this time of year! https://yummyaddiction.com/creamy-roasted-rutabaga-soup/ If you find yourself need something fresh tasting amongst all the rich foods of fall and winter, you could make a vinegary slaw with your kohlrabi and turnips. This would be a good addition to a Thanksgiving meal, as so many of the traditional foods lack any sort of acidity to balance the richness. The fresh bright flavors might just bring a little sunshine back into these darker days. https://www.marthastewart.com/1049900/kohlrabi-and-turnip-slaw Well, that is all for now. We can't thank you enough for your support of the farm this year. We hope it was a good experience for you and we'd like to hear from you about how it went. Stay tuned for an end of the season survey and for farm updates throughout the winter! Hope you all have a wonderful holiday season and winter!

In the share this week: 2 lbs sweet potatoes 1 bunch scarlet turnips 2 fennel bulbs 2 oz ginger 6 oz bag salad mix 5 oz bag spinach Thoughts from Farmer Anna: We are feeling thankful that the weather has been so nice since the cold weekend we had a couple of weeks ago. It's been really pleasant getting the last few beds prepped and planting out our overwintering onions and a few beds of hoophouse greens. I just saw today that the spinach and baby kale have germinated in one of the hoophouses. Those hearty greens are reliable winter producers in our climate, so we always like to have a few beds of them going. Lettuces are less reliable, but we have had some decent success with them too. Even though I do need a bit of a break from production this winter, it would be tough not to have anything going. Plus Mallory will be working a couple of days a week with me through the winter to help with harvest and packing. Greens planted in the fall will reach first harvest size around the end of January or beginning of February depending on how warm it is in December. You might be surprised to know that these greens do continue to grow when the light levels are really low (from mid-Nov to the end of January) as long as temperatures are above 40 degrees. In the hoophouses, temps are often higher than 40 if the sun is out. We'll be planting out next year's garlic at the end of this week. I like to get mine in the first week of November, but you can plant it a couple of weeks earlier or later if needed. To grow garlic, you simply break apart the cloves from a head and plant each one. Each clove will grow into it's own head next year. We typically do a mix of our own garlic and some purchased garlic from a really good grower in case ours doesn't do well in storage. I was pretty happy with our harvest this year and we'll see how well they've stored when we start breaking apart the heads tomorrow. You have a couple of items in your shares this week that people often find difficult to use. Fennel is one of these veggies. This bulb vegetable has a sweet, anise flavor and crunchy texture that adds some awesome aromatics to many dishes. We like it paired with sausage if you are a meat eater. It's also great roasted with other root veggies. This sweet potato and fennel gratin sounds super comforting and delicious: https://breathingandcooking.com/fennel-and-sweet-potato-gratin/ The other tough item for many people is the scarlet turnips. These are a heartier turnip than the salad turnip variety we had in the last few shares. They are great in stews with carrots and other hearty root vegetables. I also like the idea of the very simple preparation in the recipe below, which lets the turnip flavor and texture shine through: https://www.thelalolab.com/blog/szechuan-pepper-scarlet-turnips Well, it's already been a bit of a long week, so I think I'll leave it there for tonight. Hope you all are having a good week!