In Your Box:

• Beets
• Bok choy
• Broccolini
• Garlic Scapes
• Head lettuce
• Kohlrabi or radishes
• Salad mix
• Scallions
• Strawberries (full shares only)

Farm News

For the past month I’ve been sharing space in our main garden with a nesting pair of killdeer. If you’re not familiar with these birds, they would even make Darwin question the “survival of the fittest.” Killdeer insist on laying eggs right on the ground, not even in a nest, and usually right out in the open. Since they’re too lazy or dumb to at least hide their nest, it falls on the parents to protect the eggs once they’re laid. Except that they are too small and peace-loving to offer any protection.

So instead, killdeer parents spend their whole nesting time trying to distract predators, and me, from their nest. They squawk at the nearest approach. They run around, pretending their wing is out of joint, in an attempt to lure the predator away from the nest. Sometimes they’ll just sit there, shaking a wing that truly looks broken. And then once they’ve lured a predator away from their nest, they’ll fly off and loop around and come back to the nest, ready to do it all again.

I am not a predator of killdeer. I let a mating pair take up part of my beet bed in order to tend to four beautiful eggs. I endured their squawking, let the weeds grow up around their eggs as I gave them plenty of space, and watched again and again as they tried to lure me away. 

And then last weekend I went out to weed nearby, and no killdeer squawked at me. No overacting birds pretending to be mortally injured. So I went to check on the nest, and found only a trail of small mammal prints in the mud. The parents had lost their eggs, probably just a week short of hatching, and a possum or raccoon had a meal of eggs. And now we’ll enjoy the beets from the nesting area they’ve abandoned. But I miss those ridiculous birds that kept me entertained as I pulled weeds.

This week’s box

This week brings our first broccoli of the year. Most of the broccoli that we grow now is a sprouting broccoli called “broccolini,” which starts off with a small head and then continues producing several weeks worth of broccoli shoots. This tends to be less pest-prone than regular large-headed broccoli, and personally we prefer the tender shoots and delicious flavor of these sprouting broccolis. Some of our broccoli is purple, so we hope you enjoy the variety of colors and sizes of the broccoli we provide. This week we offer mostly the large initial heads, but over the next couple months we’ll regularly have harvests of small shoots bunched together. It can all be used as a stand-in for regular broccoli, though we find it doesn’t take as long to boil down and is quite delicious raw and fresh. The long stems are entirely edible according to your taste.

Our strawberry patch has spent too much time under water this year to offer us much in the way of berries, unfortunately. We’ll hope for better luck next year, and I’ll also be starting a new planting in a higher garden next spring.

Our beet harvest is off to a great start, with healthy leaves and good sized roots early in their year. Beets are happiest in the fridge and keep well for 2 weeks. The greens are edible and can be used in the same ways as spinach or chard. They don’t keep as long as the roots, so you’ll want to keep them in a bag and use them in 5 days or so.

Warm Bok Choy, Beet & Feta Salad

• 3 beets, trimmed, leaving 1 inch of stems attached
• 4 cloves garlic or scapes, chopped
• 1 tsp olive oil
• 1 head bok choy
• 2 TB peanut oil
• 1 ½ tsp butter
• 1/3 c. crumbed feta cheese

1. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Place the beets, one quarter of the chopped garlic, and the olive oil on a piece of heavy aluminum foil; fold the foil around the beets into a sealed packet.
2. Roast the beets in the preheated oven until easily pierced with a fork, 40 minutes to 1 hour. Let beets cool just until they can be handled, then rub with a paper towel to remove skins. Chop into 1/2” cubes; set aside.
3. Heat the peanut oil and butter in a heavy skillet over medium-high heat. Cook and stir bok choy and the remaining garlic together until bok choy is slightly softened but still crunchy, about 4 minutes. Remove from heat; stir in the beets and the feta. Serve warm.

Serves 4

Coming up

 We are expecting tat soi, garlic scapes, scallions, head lettuce, radishes, salad mix, turnips and broccolini.