In Your Box:

  • Garlic scapes
  • Head lettuce: Buttercrunch
  • Radishes
  • Salad mix
  • Scallions
  • Spinach or broccolini
  • Tat soi

Farm News

We hope you all have a safe and enjoyable holiday weekend! At this point in the year most of the planting is behind me and I’ve cycled through the gardens to pull all the weeds a couple times (if only they weren’t so quickly replaced….), and I’ll be able to take a little time away from the farm to enjoy the 4th of July.

We had a goal at the farms where we apprenticed before starting our own farm: “Weed free by the 4th of July.” I didn’t really appreciate just how elusive this is at the time, and it seemed like something to shoot for. The problem is that new weeds keep germinating every time you work your way through a bed to clear out the competition, so even if there are no weeds on Saturday, there will be some on Sunday. The blessing is that fewer and fewer weeds will germinate past midsummer, so if the gardens are at least in decent shape by this point in the year, things should stay in line the rest of the way.

In case you want to see how we’re progressing towards the ideal weed-free garden, or maybe to pull a few weeds yourself, we’re participating in an open house put on by the Crow River Chapter of the Sustainable Farming Association (SFA). We’d love to show you around the farm on Sunday, July 12th from 2-4pm. You’re welcome to stop by for a few minutes or take a tour and see where and how your food is grown. We’ll have a couple more opportunities in the fall to see the farm, but this is a great time to see everything at its best. Our address is 17250 County Road 122 / New Germany MN. Hope to see you on the farm this year! 

This week’s box

Our once promising stand of spinach is rapidly surrendering to the heat this week. Spinach is a cool weather crop and loses its texture and sweetness in heat waves, so this will be the last harvest until the fall. We ran a little short on spinach, so some of you will receive early heads of broccoli instead.

This week’s cooking green is tat soi, a close relative of bok choy. Tat soi is great in stir fries and we usually pair ours with buckwheat soba noodles (see recipe below).

Note: If you are having someone else pick up your box for you, please make sure they know to look for the proper name label on the boxes. Sometimes other folks just grab any box, which leads to a lot of problems down the line.

Radish Dip

  • 8 oz package of cream cheese, softened
  • ¼ c butter, softened
  • 1 c finely chopped radishes
  • ½ c finely chopped onion
  • 2 tsp dried parsley
  • ½ tsp season salt
  1. Mix cream cheese and butter until smooth.  Then add the other ingredients.
  2. Chill for one hour

Serve with crackers, snack chips, or fresh vegetable strips.  This recipe produces quite a lot, so smaller families might do well to halve it.

If you’re not a big fan of radishes or are having a hard time keeping up, this is a great way to use them up and even sneak them by picky eaters.

Coming up

Next week we are expecting turnips, scallions, kohlrabi, head lettuce, radishes, salad mix, summer squash and chard.

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