In Your Box:

• Beets
• Cucumber or summer squash or kohlrabi
• Head lettuce
• Kale, “Red Russian”
• Red onions
• Salad mix
• Snap Peas

Farm News

Thanks so much to everyone who made it out to the farm last weekend for our Lakewinds Farm Day! The day was very hazy with wildfire smoke, but we still had 60 people out to the farm to meet and explore the farm.

I’m still planning a work day in August if you want to come and pick onions or just explore the farm. I’m not sure when the onions will be ready to harvest, but I’ll get you more info as we get closer and settle on a date.

Please remember to return your empty CSA boxes! Also, please keep the name tag labels on unless they are in bad shape and falling off. We use a water-resistant label that is fairly expensive, so it helps save us time and money if the labels are left on each week. Thanks!

This week’s box

Even though the weather has been enjoyably on the cool side this week, it’s starting to look a bit more like summer in our CSA boxes. We have much more to come–our green beans look to be ready for picking next week and some of our tomatoes are ripening. We’re excited to start featuring some of the great flavors and familiar crops of summer shortly!

This week brings our first picking of sugar snap peas of the year. Peas are about as good as it gets–sweet flavor, a family favorite, and among my favorite crops to pick. Soon I’ll be hunched over picking beans for hours at a time, but for now I’m loving the stand-up picking experience of searching for peas on a tall trellis. Snap peas are best eaten raw: just snap off the flower stem and any attached strings and enjoy the peas as is. Peas take up a lot of room in the garden for even a meager harvest, so we’ll just have a crop this week and next.

Our beets are in great shape and I was very impressed with their quality and size for this first harvest. Beet greens are edible and work well as a substitute for cooking spinach. The leaves keep well for 3-4 days in a bag in the fridge while the roots keep for 7-10 days. 

We do have more scallions in the field, but for this week I thought I’d take a break from them and switch to red onions. This is an heirloom Italian variety called “Red Long of Tropea,” a torpedo-shaped red onion that we love growing. These are still fresh onions, so they’ll be happiest kept in the fridge. The greens are in good shape and they may be eaten as well.

Roasted Beet and Kale Salad

Ingredients:

• 4 cups roughly chopped kale
• 2 medium beets
• ½ cup dried cranberries
• ½ cup roughly chopped walnuts
• 2 ounces goat cheese
• ¼ cup balsamic vinaigrette

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 400°F. Trim the tops off the beets, leaving about 1 to 2 inches of stem, and then gently wash the beets.
2. Place the beets in a small Dutch oven or a casserole dish with a lid. Bake them covered for 1 hour, or until the beets are tender and pierced easily with a fork. Let them cool to the touch.
3. Slice the remaining stem completely off, then place the beets under running water, and use your fingers to gently rub off the skin. You can use gloves to prevent staining your fingers, or alternatively, you can use a paper towel to remove the skin. Then slice each beet into smaller pieces.
4. In a large mixing bowl, add the kale, sliced beets, cranberries, walnuts, and goat cheese. Drizzle with balsamic vinaigrette and toss together.
5. Transfer the salad to a serving bowl, and if you’d like, top it with a little extra sprinkle of goat cheese (as the tossed goat cheese turns pink) or chopped walnuts before serving.

Coming up

Next week’s box should have summer squash, peas, scallions, head lettuce, carrots, chard, beans, tomatoes and cucumbers.