Share 1 - week of May 19th
In the share this week:
1 bunch bodacious beets
1 bunch radishes
1 bunch salad turnips
1 head bok choy
1 bunch green garlic
1 bunch curly kale
1 bag salad mix
1 bag spicy salad mix
We are off and running with the first CSA shares of the year headed out this week! This is a really nice and bountiful first share if I do say so myself. While all of the crops are pretty darn nice, I am just bowled over by the beets. We planted these babies in mid-March in a hoophouse that the chickens had spent some time in this past winter. Holy moly, they are the biggest beets with ginormous greens that are basically just a bunch of chard along with your beets. These bodacious beets are making me excited for just how much of a fertility boost we can get from keeping the chickens in different areas of the farm. What kind of awesome tomatoes and peppers will we be harvesting from chicken areas? How will they affect our pest pressure? How much will they reduce our reliance on outside fertilizers? These are exciting questions!
Right now the chickens are not in crop areas, because we have most of the farm planted up and because we have to have them out of an area 3-4 months before we expect to harvest from that spot (for food safety reasons). This makes it a fun puzzle to figure out how we can slot them into our rotations. While they are off the fields, I'm hoping to get another load of wood chips soon, so that I can get them to drop their little fertilizer pellets in with the wood, let it age and mix together, and then use the resulting organic goodness to amend our crop beds.
Early shares can sometimes feel difficult to get through because they are just so voluminous. If you are feeling overwhelmed, you can cook down and freeze some of the greens. This would work well for kale, beet greens, bok choy, spicy salad, turnip greens. You could honestly mix them together to cook and freeze and then have greens ready to go to add to soups, or frittatas like this recipe below that would be excellent with your green garlic as well:
The green garlic this year is the best we've ever grown. I'm not quite sure why it's so nice, but we did grow cover crops in these beds last season, so that could be part of the reason. We also planted exclusively soft neck garlic this year. Soft neck is good because it can form big heads that last longer than hard neck. The downside is that it doesn't throw scapes (the flower stalks of garlic that are very tasty). This is a new variety for us. We use the small cloves for green garlic and the larger ones we'll allow to size us to full heads. If you've never prepared green garlic, you can cut off the roots, then chop up the entire plant to add to whatever you are making. We've used it in all manner of soups, ramen, frittata, stir fry, etc. I think you will love it.
Here's an idea for using those lovely beets, along with some of your other greens:
https://dishingupthedirt.com/farm-fresh/beets/bok-choy-kale-beet-slaw-with-creamy-cashew-dressing/
We'd love to hear about what you are making with your veggies. If you are willing to share, I can include your recipe in a future newsletter. Hope you all have a great week!