This weeks harvest:
- Sugar Snap and Snow Peas - (or either/or for half shares) - not much explanation needed. These peas are incredible fresh or cooked!
- Beet Greens or - Be sure to fully cook the small beets that come with the beet greens, but remember the greens can be eaten fresh.
- Spring Raab or Dinosaur Kale -- This is just one variety of raab--we will try different varieties in the fall. The Dino kale, also called Lacinado, is delicious sauteed, baked, or chopped for salad.
- Lettuce - The last of our red loose leaf and our first harvest of green Buttercrunch or a choice between the two for half shares. Important lettuce note: with the constant rain, some of our early lettuces have been getting "soggy bottoms", the green Buttercrunch in particular. The bottoms can be cut off, the rest is fine -- great actually!
- Green Onions - Our spring onions continue to get larger!
- Garlic Scapes - Tender, sweet seed stalks with strong garlic flavor. Scapes can be cooked like the green garlic, or sauteed in a pan whole.
- Arugula - Arugula
is great fresh or cooked as it gets spicier when the weather warms.
- Cilantro
- Parsley - we will give out parsley most weeks throughout the season if you want it.
- Mint - Tea made with this mint, honey, and ice is our favorite mid-day refresher.
- Broccoli - East Nashville pick up only this week - more of this sweet, heirloom broccoli to come!
News From The Farm
First, it was great to meet our new members and revisit with our friends from last year. Everyone, including us, seems very excited and optimistic about this season! With the regular rain, the past week has consisted mostly of planting and harvesting. When blessed with rain, it is very important to us that the fields are walked in as little as possible. Walking on wet soil compacts it, making it dry hard and discourages good root growth. There are times, however, when it is necessary to break this rule--like all week.
Early last week, when it finally dried up enough to plant, it started to rain again just as we began to drop the seed in the ground. A messy, somewhat muddy planting, yet one that had to happen after losing early summer plantings to the...Great Flood of Aught Ten.
Anyway, the conditions must not have been too unfavorable, as we now, a week later, have beautiful rows of yellow snap beans, yard long beans, pole beans, red okra, cucumbers, zucchini, yellow squash, dill, and basil. We also transplanted several hundred pepper and tomato plants.
Our next wet-field episode occurred Friday while trying to harvest for our largest pick up (~40 members). We barely began the harvest when the heavy rain came in. This meant postponing the harvest until 5 pm. Harvest and post-harvest handling (washing, peeling, bunching) went on until 1 a.m. with a crew of 4! We also had some hail damage to the lettuce that evening, prompting us to wait until the morning to harvest it with the hope that the leaves would heal. This meant a 5 a.m. start to harvest 70 heads of lettuce, wash twice, bag, and pack for the market by 7! What a wild start to the CSA.
I hope this does not sound like a complaint, as this late-night harvest was one of the most incredible garden moments I've experienced. When walking back to the field at 12 am to harvest the last beet greens, we witnessed something incredible. The plants all seemed to have pulled as much moister out of the air as possible, leaving their stems and leaves completely covered with diamond-like drops of dew. A flash of the headlamp revealed many rows of glow-in-the-dark cabbage, kholrabi, broccoli, kale, and peas (literally, they were glowing in the dark).
Lastly this week, there are two points I want to touch on: one on how we harvest for the CSA and one on washing veggies. Our CSA harvest may seem confusing (actually it is), but I'll try to briefly explain so no one feels left out. Basically, every member will get about the same amount of everything throughout the season, no matter the pick up location. Sometimes we only have enough mature broccoli to bring it to one location, such as this week. No need to worry about missing the chance to eat this sweet, heirloom broccoli. These are only the first ready heads -- there are 200 more in the field starting to bud out. We keep track of who gets what when, and we will make sure everyone has the chance to try it all!
On the subject of post-harvest handling, I'll note that we always try our best to wash veggies for you, bunch veggies for you, and make your share look good. That said, there will be times when we cannot spend hours washing vegetables because we have to, well...farm also! We expect that everyone re-washes vegetables before eating, and we will let you know if the lettuce may need "three-washing" after a splashy rain. It is our hope that eventually people will become accustomed to veggies looking like they do when they come out of the field -- dirty because they come from the dirt!
This farm photo for the week shows one crop that you will surely find
some dirt on: potatoes! These are the new fields we prepared in the fall, planted with thousands and thousands of potato plants -- only about...6,000 row feet of 'em! Our crop looks great and, with the exception of the Long Hungry Creek CSA, we are the only ones who grow/give this many potatoes for our CSA. We can't wait to eat them either. Red, White, and Yukon Gold!
Have a wonderful week!
Your farmers,
Eric,
Brooke, George, Kevin, Adrian, and more!
Again, pick up
times and locations are as follows:
Pick up Location
|
Directions (click) |
Day/Time |
First pick up |
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Sulphur Creek Farm |
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Tuesdays
4 - 6pm |
May 11! |
East Nashville Farmers Market
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Wednesdays
3:30 - 6:30pm
|
May 12! |
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West Nashville Farmers Market |
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Saturdays
9am - 12pm |
May 15! |
Recipes
Our Friend, the Garlic Scape
Garlic scapes in all their glory.Here's the anatomy lesson: Garlic and its relatives in the allium
family, (leeks, chives, onions) grows underground where the bulb
begins its journey, soft and onion-like. As the bulb gets harder, and
more like the garlic we know, a shoot pokes its way through the
ground. Chlorophyll- green like a scallion, maybe even greener, the
shoot is long and thin and pliable enough to curl into gorgeous
tendrils.
This stage of growth is the garlic scape. If left unattended,
the scape will harden and transform from green to the familiar opaque
white/beige color of garlic peel. Keeping the shoot attached will also
curtail further growth of the bulb. So, in an effort to allow the
garlic to keep growing, the farmer is getting a two-for-one with this
edible delectable that folks are just beginning to discover.
In the kitchen, the scape is great fun; try dicing it into scrambled
eggs,
adding to a veggie saute or using as garnish for rice. However, a great
way to understand the beauty of the scape is to pulverize a
bunch into pesto. Instead of pine nuts, use heart-healthy walnuts or
almonds and
far less cheese than you would with a basil-based pesto. The garlic
flavor
is fresh and light rather than redolent and pervasive, which means you
can spread the pesto on toast and still kiss your kitchen mate.
Garlic Scape Pesto
Ingredients:
1 cup garlic scapes (about 8 or 9 scapes), top flowery part removed, cut
into ¼-inch slices
1/3 cup walnuts or almonds
¾ cup olive oil
¼-1/2 cup grated parmigiano
½ teaspoon sea salt
black pepper to taste
Method:
Place scapes and walnuts in the bowl of a food processor and whiz until
well combined and somewhat smooth. Slowly drizzle in oil and process
until integrated. With a rubber spatula, scoop pesto out of bowl and
into a mixing bowl. Add parmigiano to taste; add salt and pepper.
For ½ pound short pasta such as penne, add about 2 tablespoons of
pesto to cooked pasta and stir until pasta is well coated.
If
you're not going to use the pesto immediately, press a piece of
plastic against the surface to keep it from oxidizing. The pesto can be
stored in the refrigerator for a couple of days or packed airtight and
frozen for a couple of months, by which time tomatoes should be at
their juciest!
Roasted Garlic Scapes
Take the scapes and put them in a lightly oiled roasting pan,
top with salt (kosher or seas salt works best but any will do). Put
the loaded
and covered pan in a hot (425 °F) oven for 20 to 30 minutes or until
they are
beginning to turn brown. Serve as a side or main dish. Tastes like
roasted garlic
but creamier.
Mint Sugar Snap Peas
Ingredients
* 1 tablespoon olive oil
* 1 pound fresh
sugar snap peas
* 1 tablespoon fresh lime juice
* Salt
* Freshly ground black pepper
* 1 tablespoon chopped fresh
mint leaves
Directions
Heat
a medium skillet over medium-high heat. Add the oil and heat. Add the
snap peas and saute until crisp-tender, about 3 minutes. Add the lime
juice and saute, stirring, until the lime juice is almost completely
evaporated. Season, to taste, with salt and pepper. Remove from the
heat and stir in the mint.
Green Onion Biscuits
1
cup flour
1/2 cup yellow cornmeal
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon sugar
2
tablespoons cold butter cut into bits
4 green onions minced
1/2
cup cottage cheese
5 tablespoon milk
Directions
Preheat
oven to 425.
Grease a baking sheet.
Combine dry ingredients in a large bowl then
cut in butter until mixture is crumbly.
Stir in remaining ingredients
until soft dough forms.
Knead dough gently on a floured surface and
roll into a rectangle.
Cut into rounds with a two inch cutter and place on prepared sheet.
Bake
for 15 minutes.
Roasted Kale
Ingredients
* Kale (flat leaf tuscan kale is best)
* Olive oil (extra
virgin of course)
* Kosher, sea, or other coarse salt
* Fresh ground pepper
Directions
1. Wash kale and cut out center ribs
2. toss with about 2 Tbls.
Olive oil (use as much or little as you want, but the leaves should be
lightly coated)
3. sprinkle with salt and pepper
4. Arrange in one layer on a
baking sheet (use two if you have a lot of kale)
5. roast for 15
minutes
6. take out of oven and carefully rearrange leaves so they are all
evenly exposed to heat (they will be starting to get crispy)
7. roast until evenly crisp (about 15 minutes more)
Enjoy!
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