In the share this week:
2.5 lbs mixed tomatoes
1 pie pumpkin
1 medium garlic
1 bunch dill
1 bunch swiss chard
1 lb green beans
Thoughts from Farmer Anna:
We have a field day with the Organic Association of Ky (OAK) coming up next Tuesday. I'll be talking through the organizational systems that keep our CSA running smoothly, both in the field and in the pack shed. I thought it would be fun to share a bit of that behind the scenes info with all of you too! The photo above is under the shed roof of the pack shed which is where we wash and store our harvest and storage crates. We have both blue and gray storage crates, with the gray ones being used for CSA veggies and the blue ones for the farmers market. Most of our veggies are harvested the day before or the day of distribution and kept in our 8x10 ft cooler space until they are ready to go out. This cooler is twice as big as our old one and has been a game changer for organization and being able to keep more crops that do store longer (like carrots, cabbage, turnips, etc). What really helps to keep us organized and on-task on harvest and share packing days are the many spreadsheets I create or download from our Farmigo software. We harvest the most tender crops early in the morning so they can get washed and into the cooler quickly to preserve their freshness. Then we move on to heartier crops like tomatoes, green onions, or squash. Harvest and washing typically takes all morning on Mon, Wed and Fri, and then we break for lunch and work on other tasks in the afternoon (planting, weeding, bed prep for new crops). This week we have just a couple more crops to plant, so we'll be spending more of our time on weeding all of the fall crops we've put in over the last few weeks. This is mostly hoeing, although we do sometimes need to handweed crops as well.
We have such a burst of tomatoes this week that everyone is getting over 2 lbs in their shares! The hertiage tomato plants are having another flush of fruit just as our second planting of red slicer tomatoes is on strong. With those and the beautiful new planting of swiss chard in your share, I thought you might make a little something like this side dish below:
Or if you want to make it into a full meal, you could do a version with pasta like this:
If you need another idea for what to do with your dill, you can use that and your garlic in a super tasty sauce/dip that is great on other veggies, or honestly you could even dip chips or french fries into it :)
Hope you all have a great week!