week 1

Cooking in Season
Week 1

Every year I ponder when the CSA should start. I usually start up mid-June to catch the strawberry and asparagus. We’re out of asparagus for the year and our strawberries were in high production two weeks ago and got made into jam. Today we have strawberries from a family farm in Navarre along with just a few of our own that are left. Trying to trick the cool weather vegetables into production this year has been next to impossible. We’ve had nothing but heat and rain, which made the brussel sprouts not grow and the broccoli I had growing at my work go to flower, but the flowers are edible. We do have radishes, fresh hand-picked lettuce and turnips, which should be enjoyed for their nutritious greens and delicious roots. I slice the roots thin and add them to a salad. The larger roots should be cubed and put into soups.

As we start up the season, here are a few things to remember.

1.Wash your veggies! Wash everything. Twice. We do not chlorine bathe our veggies like most prepared bagged salads or coat them with stay-fresh sprays, which is good. But there’s still dirt and we do use sprays that should be washed off.
2. Please come at the pickup time. Tuesdays 6-8pm or Wed. from 8-10am. I can make an extra pickup time if you email me, but baskets will not be ready at 5pm on Tuesdays as we pick everything fresh and only throw everything together right before everyone gets here at 6. If you come early, we’ll probably just still be running around like crazy, which could be good for a laugh, but we won’t have anything ready.
3. Use the veggies as soon as possible. Everything in your baskets is very perishable. Eat, freeze, can, dry, or give away your baskets each week. Not much will keep past a week. If you can’t use it all in a week, try to pick the baskets that are not as full or find someone to share with. This isn’t a problem for most members. We also include odd fruits and vegetables so if you don’t know how to prepare something, just ask.
4. If you’re on vacation, please find someone else to pickup your baskets. For the same reasons you should use your veggies fast, we can’t keep them for a week here either. Hopefully if you aren’t around to pickup, you know someone that can help you out and pickup for you. Just have them say your name on pickup day and you’re fine.
5. There will be bugs. Perfect food does not happen naturally. There is a reason that no bugs can be found in supermarket produce – they are sprayed with insecticides like crazy! If food is delicious, everything will want to eat it. We handpick bugs off (yes, very time consuming) and we use very light, organic, least-harmful sprays when we can’t handpick. What we grow is delicious and we’re constantly fighting everything else to get a crop including bugs, spores, groundhogs, bunnies, and even chickens. One of our seed catalogs listed crop failure on their seed crop of soybeans because the bunnies couldn’t resist, even though their soybeans were surrounded by Genetically Modified soybeans. The bunnies know what’s good. But that makes it harder for us. Wash everything. Salt water soak your broccoli too.
6. Return your baskets each week. We recycle them so return them when you pickup next week.
7. We could use your help. Even if you don’t have the time to hand weed the gardens with us, there’s other ways to help out. We always are in need of egg cartons or berry cartons that you might have. Flat trays or nursery pots are always useful around here along with any old leaky hoses or old gardening supplies you might be getting rid of. In the fall, we use bagged leaves to amend our gardens – we’ll even pick them up! I’ll also be updating canning dates (pickles are up next!) and everyone that helps gets to take home some of what we can. Or email me recipes that you love, which come in handy when summer squash is in full production or during what looks to be a productive tomato season.

Anyway, that’s it for now. Usually I include a recipe here, but it looks like the contents of this basket would lend well for a summer salad. We’re starting out light so we can ease our way into the season.

Email me with any questions. Enjoy! - Janee