Share Notes – May 1, 2025

2nd Wed. in a row with massive storms interrupting our harvest and making conditions much more challenging and even dangerous for us to do our work for you.  Y’all say a prayer that this pattern shifts and rain starts falling on some other day of the week! (But not on Saturday/farmers market day, either!)

We’re looking forward to what’s in store. This week’s harvest is really showing how the harvest is starting to build. Several new crops are ready this week in small quantities, even more will be ready next week, and very soon your boxes will be full.  We think turnips, and head lettuce will be ready next week, and so far, the pea crop is growing well (it’s a tricky one!) so we hope to have snow peas for you for 2 or 3 more weeks. Hold tight and anticipate good things coming your way.

We’re hiring one more harvest crew person! $13-15/hr, 10-20 hrs per week on Tues/Wed/or Fri.  If you have anyone in mind who would enjoy a part-time role on our little hippy farm, send them our way! The work is fast and sometimes sweaty, but so enjoyable, surrounded by sunshine and mother nature.

Here’s your vegetable line-up:

• Garlic Scapes! – This is probably my favorite crop of spring and I am so glad we get to kick off the season with this one! This crop is the flowering top of the garlic plant. Growers remove this stalk before it has produced a flower in order to get the plant to focus its’ energy on growing the root bulb.  And lucky us, this necessary production task results in the most delicious, tender edible. We might have them another week, or this could be the end, so enjoy them while you’ve got them!  You can use them raw to top a taco or a stir fry, much like you might use green onions, but they’re amazing cooked too. You can swap them in place of garlic in any dish, but I’d say the flavor is about 1/4 as strong as garlic, so you can use a lot without overpowering a dish. They’re also fantastic in a spring pasta primavera, or turned into a pesto with nuts and parm, or also grilled or roasted, even bacon wrapped like you might do with asparagus bundles. Excellent in a quiche or egg casserole. The options are endless.
• Snow Peas! – One of my favorite spring crops, that’s very short-lived, so enjoy them while we’ve got them!
• Lettuce – Bags of leaf lettuce for the Large and Regular shares. Tender, colorful baby lettuce, perfect for spring salads.  Mini shares received a head of Muir lettue, a green summer crisp. Great on a burger, or a caesar salad.
• Spring Mix – A super flavorful blend of Asian greens filled with an array of colors and textures. Excellent as a salad, also wonderful braised or sauteed.
• Radishes – French Breakfast radishes for the regular shares, Red Rover for the Large and Mini shares.
• Kale/Collard – Bunched Red Russian kale for the regular shares, Lacinato kale for the Large shares, and Collards for the Mini shares.
• Chard – Bunches for the large and Mini shares this week!
• Spring onions – a few young onions, great to use as you would scallions/green onions, but they can also be cooked at this age and are great that way, too.
• A hearty root crop for each share – Large shares received a few beets, Regular shares received petite carrots, and Mini shares received sweet potatoes. The carrots and beets are actually very stunted from a new-to-the-farm pest we’ve discovered: nematodes! You’ll notice strange bumps on the root hairs. That’s scar tissue from nematode damage. The roots are totally fine to eat but wouldn’t grow any larger, so we needed to pull them.  We have other plantings of these crops on the other side of the farm that are doing great, unaffected by the nematodes, and should be ready in a month or so.

Veggie Storage tips:

• Everything wants to be washed well before cooking, but keep the dirt on till then, to prevent faster spoilage.
• Everything in this week’s harvest wants to be stored in your fridge except for sweet potatoes. Seal all your leafy greens up in a bag or container to retain moisture for longest storage life.
• Roots will store best when severed from their tops, and stored separately (remember the tops of all these roots are edible, too!)

We’d love to hear stories and recipes of your culinary adventures this week. Tag us on Instagram or Facebook, showing us how you’ve used your CSA share.

Your farmers, Jess & Justin

Regular Share

Regular Share – top row left to right: Spring Mix, Red Russian kale, Garlic Scapes, (across the bottom) French Breakfast radish, leaf lettuce, snow peas, carrots, and spring onions.

Large Share

Large shares – top row left to right: Swiss Chard, Lacinato kale, Garlic Scapes, (across the bottom) Red Rover radish, leaf lettuce, snow peas, beets, and spring onions.

Mini Share

Mini shares – top row left to right:  Swiss Chard, collards, Garlic Scapes, (across the bottom) Head lettuce, Red Rover radish, snow peas, sweet potatoes, and spring onions.

Flower Shares!

This week everyone received loads of larkspur, Queen Anne’s lace, Statice, Veronica, Baptisia, and Buplurum, and I had a little strawflower, yarrow, feverfew, nigella, yellow cosmos, Verbena, Blue sage, and a few odds and ends to add here and there. Lots more variety is nearly ready!