Greetings, Members!
I hope everyone is as excited for the start of the CSA season as I am! Our well is drilled and powered up so that I can run irrigation and wash veggies with ease, and we put the finishing touches on the walk-in cooler so that everything is ready to go to bring you fresh, high-quality produce. So far we’re keeping up with the weeds this year and have put a real dent in perennial rhizomatic weeds such as quack grass - which was a real problem for me last year after turning in sod that had been in pasture for more than 50 years.
I often refer to the first few shares of the spring as “salad shares” - full of fresh greens and crunchy roots that taste great raw, before the first fruiting crops like squash, peas and tomatoes are ready. As the weather heats up, I find it’s refreshing to have crisp bowls of greens every week!
Myself and my (small) staff are fully vaccinated, and members who are fully vaccinated may come to pickup without masks. Please continue to follow common-sense rules such as staying home when feeling sick, and wearing a mask if unvaccinated. I’ll see you all either Tuesday or Friday, 4-6 pm, at 150 Horton Road in Sudbury.
Choices for Week One (Mother Nature willing) include:
- Broccoli- Organic spring broccoli can be tricky – the pests love it, and it matures so quickly that sometimes it blows right through its harvest window. So some of the heads may look a little funky – but I promise this fresh broccoli tastes incredible, and there’s more coming for future weeks. My favorite way to cook broccoli is to roast it, but in warm weather it’s great sauteed as well.
- Baby Bok Choy- For those unacquainted, bok choy (a.k.a. pac choi) is an Asian green very similar to cabbage. It has a sweet, mild taste and is the perfect vegetable for stir-fries. It also tastes great when simply cut in half, quickly marinated, and grilled. I often make Kimchi with mine, too – just replace the Napa cabbage with bok choy.
- Spinach- Sweet and delicate, hopefully everyone has their favorite way to prepare it! Many of the nutrients in spinach are fat-soluble, so Creamed Spinach might be healthier than you’d think. I like it steamed with a splash of vinegar, or cooked into scrambled eggs.
- Red Leaf Lettuce- Tasty AND beautiful – these lettuce heads resemble flowers; crunchy and sweet.
- Butter Lettuce- This has been a CSA member favorite since my first season; it’s tender with a smooth texture that quite literally feels like butter - very similar to Bibb lettuce. I recommend washing these thoroughly at home since the dense heads can trap grit and soil very easily.
- Hakurei Sweet Salad Turnips- Turnips you can eat raw! That’s right – these roots are crunchy, juicy, and sweet, perfect sliced raw on salads. Like radishes without the peppery zip, they are also great braised or sauteed with their greens (yes, you can eat the greens too – free extra food!). A classic recipe that I like to recommend to folks first trying Hakurei are Miso Glazed Turnips - you can substitute any white wine or even vinegar for the mirin if you don't have it on hand.
- Garlic Scapes- Truly ephemeral, garlic scapes are the flower stalk that garlic plants send up mid-summer. Because we want them to put their energy into bulb production, and not flowering and setting seed, we pluck these stalks when they are young and tender. The resulting vegetable is a cute, curly green stem with a bright, fresh garlicky flavor and a texture similar to asparagus. We like them simlpy grilled - but Scape Pesto is a big favorite among folks as well (you will probably have to halve this recipe, but more scapes are on their way since I grow four varieties of garlic and some flower later than others).
Click on the vegetable name to link to its entry in our vegetable dictionary. If you ever need recipe ideas or a quick meal fix, go to the Resources tab on our website.
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