Farming with the Best Intentions

Here we are in week four of the CSA season and hopefully all of you are settling into the summer’s produce, turning our food and your inspiration into great meals. The peak of our week here on the farm is the harvest day, when we cut, pull, bunch, and pack all of these crops for you to take home.  Taking produce out of the fields is just the last in a long series of steps that started last fall at the end of the season.  Each winter we weave together the different crops to try and make each week’s harvest into a meal. This means matching up chinese cabbage, which takes eight weeks in the field to mature, with lettuce mix and bok choi which take only four weeks, and beets which take at least ten. This planning is a combination of experience, hope, and an ability to surf the chaos that is mother nature’s gift to us. This year has been pretty good so far (hopefully you agree…) with lots of crop diversity and quantity.  Each year we have great successes but we also have a few losses. This winter we thought to try a new spring crop and planted 1200 row feet of broccoli raab (like broccoli but with lots of leaf). Our hope was to add even more diversity to the harvests of June.  Shortly after planting we had a week of cold temps and the whole crop went to flower early. Broccoli raab is meant to be harvested in flower but when the plant have only four tiny leaves there is not much to harvest! Next year we will try a different variety and hope for a better break in the weather. In the mean time we get to enjoy this field of yellow.  The bees are loving all the nectar the flowers are pumping out.

Kohlrabi is Green this Week

Like the purple kohlrabi last week? You’ll love this green one. Old world style, this crop gets Brunswick’s German expats really excited. The farm crew eats them like apples in the field -sweet and creamy. Try them with salt and vinegar or just go johnny appleseed style…

Beets with Greens…they taste good.

This early beet is prized for it’s tender tasty greens. Eat them any way you would chard or spinach (the beets are mighty tasty too).

Chinese Cabbage…Think Cabbage But Lighter

Some call it Napa, we call it awesome. Anything you do with cabbage this crop can handle. We shred it into soup, make coleslaw with it, stir fry, etc.  Many cultures eat this stuff like Americans eat french fries. It’s a great vehicle for peanut sauce (recipe).

Salad Turnips Are the Best

Really, they are. Once you eat one you will not be able to stop, even if your mother calls long distance. Sweet and creamy, they are turnips only in name. If I had to survive a 1800’s winter in Maine I could do it with these turnips. The crew had a great time harvesting them in yesterday’s rainstorm…

What’s in the share…

Strawberries

Kohlrabi

Lettuce Mix

Chard

Chinese Cabbage

Beets with Greens

Salad Turnips

 

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