This Week’s Share:
- Green Garlic
- Hakurei Turnips
- Lettuce
- Mizuna
- Spinach
- Cherry Tomato Plant
Green Garlic – Many of you asked about the green garlic at pick-up last week. Here are a few ways I like to use green garlic…. in an omelette or frittata, in risotto, diced into salads and salad dressing, or cooked in a stir fry. Remember you can use the whole thing!
Hakurei Turnips – I love these fresh spring turnips. You can roast them or boil them, but I strongly encourage you to try them raw. They are sweet with a little spice.
Lettuce – This week you’ll likely see Summer Crisp variety called Nevada in the share. Summer Crisps are also known as Batavian lettuce. They have the crunch of an iceberg lettuce in a leaf lettuce form.
Mizuna – You might recognize mizuna as a regular ingredient in our salad share. This week we are harvesting a good sized bunch of mizuna. Try it on it’s own in a salad, mix it with lettuces, use it in a stir fry or as a bed for fish or meat.
Spinach – The spinach this week is just a small taste of what’s coming. We seeded an unplanned planting of spinach where an early pea planting had not germinated. Where the peas didn’t make it, the spinach here flourished. It’s not as sweet as winter spinach, but these tender leaves beg to be eaten in salad. And don’t worry, the next pea planting is perfectly plentiful.
Cherry Tomato Plant – We love cherry tomatoes here at SIO, however they are very labor intensive to harvest on a large scale. We concentrate on growing several varieties of slicing tomatoes and delicious sauce tomatoes and raise cherry tomato plants for you to plant in your garden. When you go to plant yours – chose a sunny spot in your garden. Bury the plant so that only a little stem and the newest leaves are showing. Water it deeply, about five gallons per plant weekly, once the plant is established. Watering at the base of the plant keeps the foliage dry and prevents disease. If you can provide a trellis for your tomato to climb, it will be easier to pick. If you don’t have a garden space to plant in, a five gallon bucket with a drain hole will work. Depending on your location, you should expect to start picking and eating these delicious little fruits by August. Let us know how you like them.
Recipes…
After a long winter of potatoes, winter squash and carrots, I am delighted to be facing an abundance of greens. I looked and thought about recipes to give you this week, but really much of what is in your share is perfect for eating raw with a simple dressing. Most of these vegetables go well together, so combine them in any way you like. Here are a few dressing recipes to toss them with…
Green Garlic Vinaigrette:
adapted from Lorna Sass’ Herb Vinaigrette in Lorna Sass’ Complete Vegetarian Kitchen
- 1/4 cup minced green garlic – green and white part
- 3/4 cup olive oil
- 1/4 cup white wine vinager
- 1 teaspoon salt
You can mince the green garlic by hand and combine all ingredients in a jar and shake. I like using a food processor to blend salad dressings. If you do this, add the green garlic first. Once the green garlic is minced, add the other ingredients and blend. Makes about 1 cup.
Sesame Ginger Vinaigrette:
adapted from Anne Somerville’s Field of Greens
- 1 teaspoon minced tangerine or orange zest
- 2 tablespoons fresh tangerine or orange juice
- 2 teaspoons grated fresh ginger
- 2 1/2 tablespoons rice wine vinegar
- 2 tablespoons light olive oil
- 1 tablespoon dark sesame oil
- 1 teaspoon soy sauce or tamari
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
Combine all the ingredients except for the zest in a blender and blend. Then whisk in the zest. Makes about 1/2 cup.
Vegan Caesar Dressing:
adapted from The Millenium Cookbook by Eric Tucker and John Westerdahl
- 1 cup lemon juice
- 2 cloves of garlic, minced or substitute 1 stalk of green garlic minced
- 2 teaspoons capers, drained
- 1 tablespoon dijon mustard
- 2 teaspoons nutritional yeast
- 1/2 teaspoon ground pepper
- 1/2 cup olive oil
- 1 cup canola oil or light olive oil
- salt to taste
Combine all the ingredients except the oil and salt in a blender. Blend until smooth. While the blender is running add the oil in a thin stream until incorporated. Add the salt. Makes about 1 3/4 cups.
From the fields….
After a few quiet January weeks of crop planning, and a few busy months of spring planting and preparing, it was great fun this week to finally harvest and bring that harvest to all of you. Returning members were back for another season, the kids all a little taller, picking up your shares with a memory of this time of year…. greens, and roots, green garlic, and more greens. And new members, here for the first time, figuring out this new way to “shop” for your food. The first week of pick-up was certainly a buzz with enthusiasm.
In the fields we are busy with lots of planting. Scott’s heaviest time of bed prep is upon him. He’s easy to find these days. Just listen for the tractor, and there he is, slowly humming over freshly spaded beds, loosening the ground for us to plant into. Scott has been pumping the first biodiesel into an SIO tractor this year. It’s a step we’ve been wanting to take for a while, and it’s exciting to finally be making the change. Scott can tell you more about that in his blog next week.
This week’s planting list includes summer squash, melons, beans, celery, brussels sprouts, and lettuce. And while the crops are growing, the weeds are keeping up right along side them. Scott can knock some of them back with the cultivating tractor, but he always makes sure to leave a few for the crew to hoe. As for this year’s crew… Becky and Vanessa are showing off all their well refined irrigation pipe moving tricks, while Shannon is getting the new apprentices acquainted with the millions of details that go into to the day to day at SIO. In his seventh and final year at the farm, Josh is finally getting to many of the projects that he has been dreaming up over the years. Last week he put up a long awaited shop area, a base camp of sorts, from which he can climb the mountain of invention. Shari will be busy this week fielding all the calls and questions that the first weeks of CSA bring. And I’ve been standing up at the conductor podium, waving around a shovel and a pitchfork, trying to hit every note in perfect harmony.
What can go into your compost bucket?
YES – all vegetable and fruit scraps (they do not have to be 100% organic & do not have to be from our farm), coffee grounds and filters, tea bags, eggs and egg shells, bread, dairy (limited), leftovers (without meat), bread and grains.
NO – meat, fish, bones, paper, rubberbands, produce twist ties
About your eggs from Kookoolan Farms
Kookoolan Farms is a very small, diversified, family farm in Yamhill, Oregon. They have a laying flock of 250 chickens, including Rhode Island Reds, Astralorp, Wyandoth, and Barred Rock hens, which all lay eggs with shells in shades of brown; and Auracauna hens, which lay the blue- and green-shelled eggs.
Their chickens forage for grass and bugs, supplemented by natural oyster shell for calcium and a certified organic layer ration. The resulting egg is delicious and high in Omega 3 fatty acids. The chickens get lots of exercise, sunshine and fresh air. They use no antibiotics or hormones. The eggs are hand-gathered, hand-washed, and hand-packed.