In the share this week:
1 bunch gold beets
1 head lettuce (summer romaine or summer crisp)
2 zucchini or summer squash (planting pictured below)
1 bunch sweet onions
1 bunch green onions
1 cucumber
1 bunch dill
1 cabbage
Thoughts from Farmer Anna:
What a wonderful break from the super hot weather we had this past weekend! It gave Steve and my dad time to finish up the insulated concrete form (ICF) walls on the foundation of our house. Those two worked straight through Fathers Day getting this stage of the project finished so that we can stay on our fairly tight timeline leading up to the strawbale wall workshop at the end of July. I helped where I could and kept the farm watered while I was up there. The kids are having fun at the construction site just poking around ("mining") in the dirt and building stuff with sticks like all kids ever love to do. The farm is looking pretty good right now, aside from the fact that it's been a bit dry the last 10 days so we're are having to keep up with watering. The dry weather has given us time to catch up with weeding though, so that is great!
We are moving right into the summer crops as we officially begin summer this week! The zucchini and squash are producing beautifully and are very tasty sauteed with the sweet onions in your share this week. The cucumbers are not producing quite as well as hoped and I suspect that they didn't pollinate well during the really hot days last week. Since we had a bit of a reprieve over the weekend I see more small cucumbers that should be sizing up through the week. So anyway, that is why you are only getting 1 cucumber in your shares this week. Happily, our planting of dill lined up perfectly to harvest with the first cukes and it would be fabulous in a fresh salad with your sweet onions (pretty much everything this week is better with sweet onions :)
Week 2 of beets, but this week we have golden beets! This variety is called 'Badger Flame' and was bred by one of Steve's professors at UW-Madison. It is a cylidrical shaped beet and has lower levels of geosimin which is the compound that makes beets taste earthy. So if you don't prefer the earthiness of beets generally, you may like this variety. Since you have some big gorgeous heads of lettuce I would make a big salad with roasted beets this week:
Speaking of the lettuce, one of our CSA members shared a cooked lettuce recipe with me a few years ago. Cooked lettuce you say? Yep, I had never thought about doing this either even though I love many types of cooked greens, including radicchio which is closely related to lettuce. If you are feeling like trying something new with your big ol' heads of lettuce this week, I'd say give it a try and see what you think!
Have a great week everyone!