Monday, June 7, 2010

week one! welcome 2010 members

Yesterday was the first pick up of our 2010 season and marked the start of our second year hosting a Community Supported Agriculture program! It was a great start to the season... spring shares full of leafy goodness, meeting new members at the farm, and the chickens were reminded how much they love CSA pick up days after eating an obscene amount of cracked corn and other treats provided by all the enthusiastic kids.

Julie, my mom, and Todd and I were up early bright and early on Sunday morning harvesting all the produce for week one. This week everyone received heads of oakleaf and/or butterhead lettuces, deep purple and hardy white scallions, arugula, french breakfast radish, and some combination of bright lights, perpetual spinach and bionda chard. I mentioned that June is heavy on greens so it will pretty much be the Month Of Salads, but for variety's sake you might try using some of those salad ingredients to make a radish, lettuce and spring onion sandwich. I eat these quick & refreshing sandwiches all spring - butter two slices of bread, spread sliced radish (lightly salted) sprinkled with sliced spring onions on one half and and lettuce on the other. Sometimes instead of butter I'll spread fresh goat cheese on the bread. Sound disgusting? Trust me, it's amazing.

Lots of you had questions about the chard. Essentially, chard can be used in place of spinach in any recipe. Some members told me they were making a chard lasagna, some were making chard quiche or omelets, a friend of mine simply sautes it with garlic and mixes it with quinoa. It's wonderful in stir fries or sauteed with garlic and lemon zest as a side dish. Julie makes a standard stuffed pepper stuffing and wraps & bakes it in the chard leaves instead of peppers. Unlike kale, you can chop the ribs of (fresh) chard and use them along with the leaves. The options are endless! Get creative and post your recipes on the blog.
As far as storage suggestions - it's always best to use the ingredients when they're as fresh as possible but the chard will store pretty well in the crisper drawer of the fridge, rinsed and wrapped in a damp towel in an unsealed plastic bag. The same goes for lettuce storage; it keeps for a surprisingly long time treated the same way.

new members explore the chicken coop, and Todd pawns off a weeding job on returning member Elliot Morris

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