Main Season Week 6

Hope everyone has a great week.

Snap Peas - I always try to make one snap pea dish a year where the peas are the star.  I never pass the planing without picking a few to snack on but rarely do we sit down to a dish made with them.  Last year I made a dish with burrata and the mild cheese with the peas was delicious.  I think that is why I was attracted to this salad when I saw it.  I used queso fresco.  I also think it would be good with grilled snap peas.
Carrots
Kale or Arugula - TBD
Turnips
Cucumber - I don't know where I got the motivation on Friday night, but I made homemade dumpling dough that I filled with a veggie (broccoli, cabbage, carrots and chard) filling.  We also had this cucumber salad.  I just used regular slicing cukes like the ones in the boxes this week and I thought they worked well.
Broccoli - Small Only
Salad - Large Only
Potatoes - Large Only

Main Season Week 5

Happy summer everyone.  Summer arrived as it always does and I barely took notice as I always do.  The days blur together this time of year during normal times and this year we started the season with a smaller crew and are now frantically trying to add some labor before things start to spiral downward.  No need for you all to be nervous.  There will be plenty of vegetables, but it is feeling a bit chaotic.  We are also trying to decided if we should shift or change any of our fall production plan.  Will we still be in the first wave, the second wave, will things be stranger and so forth.  One of the reasons we are at market right now is because the peas and carrots and beets you have been eating were seeded in February.   Our production plan and first plantings were designed for market which means you can have lots of some things and not much of others.  This week for example you have scallions seeded March 1st.  It is our only scallion planting and there will be just enough for the CSA with no market leftovers.  Carrots on the other hand would need a 500 plus person CSA to move them all.  We did shift some things around for summer harvest and as we seed things for fall it is difficult to know exactly who we will be selling to and how we will be selling it.  Which is why on Saturday, the first day of summer, the longest day of the year, we scarfed down slice after slice of Vic's pizza and then went to bed earlier than we had all week!

Carrots
Cabbage
Zucchini
Scallions
New Potatoes - One of my favorite things - I really look forward to these  We had some last night with grilled lamb chops and a snap pea and radish salad.  The lamb and salad were good, but I would have been happy with a giant plate of potatoes.  The easiest things to do with them are to steam them or roast them.  Steaming seems boring but it really lets the new potato shine.  Drizzle them with a bit of butter or olive oil and a fresh herb and enjoy.  My absolute favorite way to prepare them is to cut them in half, steam them until tender and then pan fry them in a cast iron skillet until the cut side gets extra crispy.  This works for potatoes of all sizes although I typically for the smaller ones.
Herb - Basil for the large shares and either cilantro, dill or basil for the small shares.
Mini Lettuce - Small Share Only
Broccoli - Large Share Only

Main Season Week 4

Sorry, this is going out a bit late.  I did the Sunday market at Olympia yesterday and it really threw my schedule off.  I am hoping we can find someone else to do it and I can return to my Sunday routine.  We typically do an afternoon farm walk on Sundays to make a list for the week and to make a list of available produce for you all but we squeezed it in this afternoon instead. 

Head Lettuce
Carrots
Snap Peas
Daikon Radish  
Cucumber
Garlic - Spanish Red - This garlic is wet!  You can use it right away, but what you don't use should just be left in the open air on your counter.  The flavor is a little milder than when it is fully cured and dried down.
Collards - You may not care if you get collards in your box but for me I have failed you if you don't get the spring trifecta of bunched greens - chard, kale and collards in the first part of the CSA.  You can cut the center rib out, roll them up tight and slice them thinly and give them just a quick cook in a hot pan with a bit of oil and garlic. 
Salad - Large Only

Main Season Week 3

You may notice something unusual in you bag this week, particularly if you have been a CSA member in previous years - your carrots have no tops.  When we are low on labor in the fall we occasionally top the CSA carrots, but during the spring and summer we always bunch them.  This year you are going to be seeing a lot more bulk carrots.  Bunched carrots are beautiful, but they are labor intensive and we are trying to keep the crew small.  There is the misconception that bunched carrots are fresher.  That may be the case at times in the grocery store, but your bulk/loose carrots are harvested on the same day as if we were bunching them. 

Snap Peas
Head Lettuce
Turnips 
Carrots
Broccoli 
Chard-Small Only
Beets - Large Only

Main Season Week 2

I can't remember a May with such perfect weather.  In recent years it has been either unusually dry or unusually wet.  We have had a nice mix of rain and dry days and have had to do very little irrigating which is a huge time saver.  We even treated to the rare thunder and lightening storm on Saturday morning as we were loading up for market.

We have a couple big single planting crops to get transplanted this week, melons and winter squash.  Hoping to get the winter squash in today and tomorrow.   This is also the first week of the Chehalis market.

Carrots
Salad
Kale
Herb- Most if not all of you will get basil.
Turnips or zucchini
Garlic Scapes - It may take us two weeks to get everyone scapes.
Rainbow Chard - Large Only
Purple Sprouting Broccoli - Large Only