Share Notes May 19, 2022
CSA Share Notes:
Welcome to another week of the Spring CSA season! It’s peak season so your boxes are loaded down. If you can’t eat it all, share it with a friend!
Garden update: Y’all, this heat has not been a friend to the spring crops. We almost harvested arugula for you *last* week but we wanted to wait another week to let it get a little bigger so there was more to go around to send to you this week. Well that plan was foiled, as the heat totally cooked it and it’s no longer good. Missed our window, darn it!
The heat is causing the lettuce to bolt (trying to go to flower) which means the flavor won’t likely be good after this week so that’s the end of the lettuce (we had 4 more weeks of lettuce planted for ya!). The heat has also done in the snow peas and appears to likely be killing the cauliflower, but we’ve got our fingers crossed on that one. Kale is suffering, cabbage and collards, too. We’re a bit bummed but we planned well with lots of other delicious crops that tolerate heat and are thriving. Pretty soon we’ll be harvesting onions, garlic, potatoes, and leeks. The carrots and beets are close to ready, too.
If you haven’t snatched a spot in our Summer season yet, we’re about 2/3 filled. You can head here to register: https://csa.farmigo.com/join/redmoonfarm/summer2022 (harvests start at the end of June or early July and run till mid-August, most years.) Remember, once your spring shares come to an end (in the ballpark of 2-4 more weeks? ish?), that’ll be curtains for your access to our weekly boxes, unless you are signed up for the next season!
Now on to your vegetable line up. This is the time of year when we’re so overloaded with work we barely have time to come up for air. With that in mind, this week’s share notes are gonna be short and sweet so we can get back out to water the germinating squash and beans. If you want kitchen ideas for any particular crop, scan back through the share notes of prior weeks (even previous years!) spring harvests and you’ll find our culinary suggestions and links to recipes, or use the search feature to pull up blog posts that contain that item.
- Large Shares: Collards, Lettuce, dandelion greens, escarole, (see the photos below to help you tell the escarole apart from your other leafy greens! Also, try it in soups, or grill it) kohlrabi, scarlet queen turnip, diakon radish, garlic scapes, broccoli, and swiss chard.
- Regular Shares: Winterbor kale, lettuce, dandelion greens, kohlrabi, purple top turnips, daikon radishes, garlic scapes, and broccoli.
- Mini Shares: Red Russian kale, lettuce, dandelion greens, kohlrabi, hakurei turnips, garlic scapes, and swiss chard.
Veggie Storage tips:
Most everything will keep longest stored in the fridge sealed up in produce bags. All root crops should be severed from their tops to keep the roots from getting rubbery, and the greens stored separately, sealed up to stay fresh. Scapes prefer to be sealed up like your greens. Everything will need a gentle washing before cooking, but leave the dirt on until you’re ready to use them to prevent spoilage.
We’d love to hear stories and recipes of your culinary adventures this week. Send us a note or post a comment of how you’ve used your CSA share.
Your farmers, Jess & Justin
