lettuce, bok choy, tokyo bekana, yukina savoy, chard, arugulai or spinach, radish, hakurei turnips, thyme, kohlrabi or scapes
we should have: lettuce, arugula, kale, bok choy, tokyo bekana - a tender napa cabbage, sen po sai- a very tender collard type green, spinach, broccoli raab, garlic scapes, and rhubarb for Tuesday or escarole for Thursday
Here’s what we thing should be in your bag this week: Please be advised that we sometimes have to alter the plan according to what the vegetables demand…
Lettuce, Arugula, Radish, Broccoli Raab, Spinach, Kale, Escarole, Komatsuna, Garlic, Oregano, Kohrlabi
Autumn is upon us as we charge past the equinox. Dress warmer (with sequin socks) and go out and enjoy the last hurrahs of nature. Cold days are coming but we have a little bit of warm. Average temperatures are above the norm. Maybe that is why all those school children are striking. Futures full of climate chaos are not what they’re liking. Futures full of visionary leaders would be better, but what really matters is how we deal with the present. Leaders who are decent and prescient would be pleasant.
Let’s do our best to give all future humans a world like we inherited, or better.
Your bag should contain:
Delicata Squash
Mixed fingerling potatoes
Lively Yellow Peppers
Carmen Peppers
Carrots
Leeks
Korean Hot Peppers
Cilantro or Dill
Kohlrabi
Hakurei or Purple top turnips
Tomatoes
Kale
Delicata is an easy squash as it does not require peeling or too much chopping.
The seeds can be rinsed and roasted for a delicious snack. Salt them before roasting.
The tomatoes are coming in from the high tunnels (greenhouses where the plants are growing directly in the soil). They are plants from modern disease resistant root stock that has been grafted to productive delicious varieties to try to get the best of both worlds. At this point some of them are about 15 feet tall and have passed their highest supporting structure and started back down toward the ground. Hopefully the will keep up the good work.
Our last csa pick up is scheduled for October 9th - 2 weeks away. This will be a double bag with mostly storage crops for the rest of the fall. For those of you near the cape - we do host a late fall and winter csa with organic produce from farms in New Hampshire and Western MA. To find out more information, please visit www.sharedharvestcsa.com
It was 18 years ago that we were shocked and overwhelmed by the attacks on New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania. That day many of us were unsure of what to do next, or how to proceed in life. The plants did not pause or react, but continued on their same course. As a result, I did as well, which gave me a sense of purpose and reason to keep on going. I am grateful to them for that. The recipe of the week that day was the following. . .
Preheat oven to 1500 degrees. Take ethnic hatred, vengefulness, greed, ignorance, single mindedness,and nationalism, and place them in a covered pot. Make sure the lid is tight. Place them in the oven and leave there until all the contents are incinerated. Discard. Meanwhile mix respectfulness, decency and freedom of thought in an open vessel. Let stand for eternity. Salt to taste.
Your bag should contain:
Delicata Squash
Lettuce
Garlic
Radish or Ruby Streaks Mizuna
Green Beans
Lively Yellow Peppers
Kohlrabi
Beets
Kale
Leeks
Leeks for weeks. Make sure you make use of them. Tubular onions, but cut them small and you won’t even notice, don’t cut them much at all and they extend like a telescope. What could be cooler. (maybe having Bill Belichick beat Don Shula for the most wins ever)
Delicata Squash are smaller than most winter squash. Find ways to take advantage, if you’re into squash you can bake them up halved with butter, or in rings full of savory custard batter, what could be better. Delicata skins are very tender when cooked so they don’t need to be skinned.
Let me start with the bags, so I don’t forget. If we don’t get them back, then I might get upset. We might give you veggies all wrapped up in leaves. Leaf wrapped CSA veg is hard to achieve. It’s simpler by far to fill a container that’s reusable, because plastic on everything is now inexcusable. So please bring them back, we won’t ask any questions. We will even refrain from making helpful suggestions.
It’s August, and summer’s heat has brought on some fruiting. Solinacious crops, tomatoes, potatoes no disputing the sense of intense summer they put on our palates, and grilled eggplants and huge numbers of cucumbers salads. Tomatoes with flavor, we’re not talking about the pallid and sickly crisp tomato available in the store. It’s the kind that makes you want to eat more for sure. Get them now, they are here and they are very evanescent. If you let them lay around they’ll get effervescent and unpleasant.
This week’s bag should contain: Summer Squash, Cucumbers, Radish, Eggplant, Swiss Chard, Ailsa Craig Onion, Tot soi or sen po sai., Fennel, Tomato, Purslane (red stalks, green tear drop leaves), Parsley
Hot. So hot and then there’s the humidity. So hot it leads to distraction and stupidity. What was I doing? Something to do with picking some thing. Getting on a tractor with spinning blades might be a dumb thing.
Meanwhile the crops grow faster when it’s hotter- If we can get them enough water, so a lot of our focus is on irrigating, because our soil is sandy. In places it’s so sandy that it’s just sand, so it’s handy to have the pump running when we transplant the crops. That way at least they don’t wilt till it stops. We are almost half way through the season! This is your friendly reminder that the second half payment is due by next week. Thank you! In your bag should be:
Summer Squash
Cucumbers
Lettuce or Arugula and Mizuna
Black Summer Choy
Scallions
Celery
Cherry Tomatoes
Carrots
Beans-(please wash, soon)
Eggplant
Scallions
The weather’s been intense, there is flooding and heat. Tornado hit the cape. We had to retreat indoors, for hours, rain beat down the flowers.
Rain that was dense and intense in the sense that it made you feel smaller. Nature flexed its power. Crushing all resistance, not a shower for an hour, but a torrent, the kind that makes one think of building arks.
Last night the lightening lit up the dark and the thunder made us wonder if we should hide under our beds. Not beds of lettuce.
Items that should be in your bag: Summer Squash, Cucumbers, Satina or Pinto Potatoes, Lettuce, Baby Bok Choy or Asian Delight- also a baby bok choy, or Gun Sho, Fresh Garlic, Cilantro, Beans-(please wash, soon), Kale, Scallions, Green kohlrabi
Summer is here, it’s clear from the heat, and the lettuces want to go to seed and complete their life cycle, but they’re much more sweet, when they’re not old and bitter. We picked literally hundreds of heads of lettuce. Fridged them up before they bolted. Temperature drops and they’re jolted from extreme growth and change to a deep veggie slumber. You got three heads each, which is the number that you need for three bean salad, but we didn’t give you beans yet. Hope you like salad. Did you finish all your greens yet? We grew the following things for you so far:
Mixed asian green bunch (komatsuna + Joi Choi or Black Summer choi)
Lettuce-Three in a bag
Beets
Green Kohlrabi
Winterbor Kale
Peas
Cucumbers
Summmer Squash or Zucchini
Arugula
Dill and dill flowers
The Kohlrabi is green, it’s crispy and delicious. Don’t make its freaky shape make you suspicious. The beets are dropping in. We had to pull the beets before the mice ate them all, so some of them are baby beets. They need some cooking. Boil them quick if you’re looking for an easy way to eat them. Or on the grill wrapped in foil. Just don’t leave them in the back of the fridge to spoil. Dill goes well with cucumber or yogurt as a dressing, just add a little if you’re stressing cause I’m guessing you can add dill more easily than you can extract it. If you add none I’m sure you’ll notice that you lacked it. Zeke says: “if you’re stressing about your dressing, you can use your dill to make you chill”
When the heat goes up then moisture fills the clouds, we find something to be under when the thunder’s loud. Cumulonimbus, thunderheads can be real pretty, but when they nail your plants with hail it is a pity. We got hail in Middleboro, it was just rain at Bay End. There’s no telling when it comes or when it may end. Now June has ended and we’re in the splendid summer. (It hailed three feet in Guadalajara, Mexico, that’s got to be a bummer) Here is what you’re getting:
Joi Choi - bok choy
Lettuce (three heads in one bag)
Tot Soi (dark green bunched)
Snap Peas
Radish or Salad Turnips
Basil (with roots if you want to plant it, or keep it in water)
Squash or Zuccini
Cucumber
Fennel
Lavender
Make a giant salad for the Fourth. Everything but the summer squash and Totsoi could go in. Fennel, Cukes and Bok choy stems make good crisp salad ingredients. Snap Peas are best raw or barely cooked. Lavender is one of the herbs you have to be very subtle with, it also goes well on the dash board to make your car more fragrant.
Happy 4th of July!
Deer eating carrot tops, deer eating beets, there must be some vegetable that no deer eats.
Now we put up fencing, and hang out my sons’ cleats, cause when they get a whiff of them, deer retreat.
Deer are crepuscular, at dawn and dusk they’re active. They seem to find your organic produce attractive.
If I was there at dusk and dawn, perhaps they’d be dissuaded. I would suggest that they’re best when they’re dressed and marinated.
We grew the following things for you so far:
Joi Choi - bok choy
Lettuce-in a bag
Gun Sho Chinese Broccoli
Purple Kohlrabi
Kale
Chard
Sen Po Sai
Cilantro
Young Garlic
Scapes - the flower of the garlic plant - bunched curly stems
The sen po sai looks a bit like collard greens but is more tender in texture and flavor. Here’s a link to a sen po sai and kohlrabi recipe: http://www.mindyourplants.com/kohlrabi-senposai-and-red-pepper-stir-fry-with-spicy-sesame-sauce/
The Gun sho is similar to Broccoli Raab, but more tender- also known as Choy sum. Saveur website recommends blanching the greens and adding a garlic soy sauce over the greens.
Howdy.
Thanks for joining the Bay End Farm CSA. For some of you this is your first CSA letter ever, for others this is yet another note from me in a long chain of notes stretching back farther than any of us would care to admit. As a brief introduction for the new folks, this is the letter I use to explain what is going on here at the farm, while attempting to be both amusing and eloquent, trying to sound intelligent while saying what is relevant.
We have new hands on the farm and the old hands are older. Our kids are getting too old for scolding and they’re bolder. The winters get real cold and the springs are colder.
We have a new tractor on the farm this year, an allis-chalmers G. The engine’s in the back so in the front we’re free to see all the weeds that need controlling. It goes slower than strolling, but starts every time and so far it keeps on rolling.
This first bag is small, a small bag of leaves. I believe we will achieve better so you won’t grieve your decision to participate when the season’s ended. We respect your money and it’s splendid that you spend it with us, to support a local farm.