Week #2 of Our Summer CSA 6-26-24

Jack's exciting share reveal

Hello everyone and welcome to week two of our summer CSA program.

The last 10 days have been crazy wet folks and real implications for certain crops. Slight damage on certain things, not optimal quality here and there but we are doing absolutely everything we can to accommodate you and produce quality crops for boxes despite the flooding in fields.

Thanks for your patience on this one.

We start this week with with Napa cabbage. It was picked 10 days ago before all the rain. We didn't want them to get sick so they've been in storage but they're really high quality. There is a handful of Napa cabbages left, those wonderful ribs make a great coleslaw.

This week we have our first bunched carrots, nice full bunch of carrots, green tops from the high tunnel. These are not our winter storage types. They're very good eating. Growing in the spring high tunnel they'll have good quality flavor but not like our winter carrots. Certainly something really nice for a box as early as this in the month of June.

Field grown beets are also growing very nicely and getting to the size where we will need to be peeling them back, skinning them. The tops this week are a casualty because of the mud. These tops looked beautiful 10 days ago but they are toast as of now. Still good quality roots from the field.

Likewise with our kohlrabis this week, they are starting to size up nicely. Very good eating as I described last week but they need to be peeled.

Field grown onions do not like to get wet. So many of these things prefer dry conditions. The onions all grown in Hollister, California, are baking dry. So when it rains here and we get a little bit of mud on there we don't like to wash them because it turns the top slimy. We're going to leave a little bit of extra mud on there as a quality control with the idea of you peeling them back yourself at your home. This will make them look like a million bucks. If we did this here, the onions would be slimy before it got to you. It's a quality control thing to pack a little bit of extra mud in the box given the wet conditions we have.

We have wonderful beans this week. This is Nathan and his picking crew pulling a rabbit out of a hat. Generally speaking when it rains I'm really downbeat about beans but these came in really nicely. They're smaller bags but these are the premium small beans, not heavy and really prime eating. I think there are bonus beans for certain boxes because we had a really nice bumper crop.

Swiss chard is a casualty of rain folks. I think you can see a little bit of the bruising from these heavy downpours on these tender leaves. If you have Swiss chard in your box it's good news. You're going to enjoy eating it but I'm going to strongly recommend that you eat Swiss chard early in the week. If you attempt to keep this in your refrigerator three, four, five, six days it won't hold up because of being waterlogged and very slightly damaged by these torrential rains that just pummeled these small, tender-tender leaves.

We have some wonderful basil. The first of the year. This is a relatively small box. This is a little teaser. A couple of ounces. These are growing tips picked off the tops of the plants. Coming up very soon we will have much larger volumes of basil for pesto and drying. Just a pesto tease. Do not keep basil in your refrigerator. It needs to be low airflow. Use it very quickly. Basil is a very volatile crop.

We have wonderful kale. Field grown kale. Big fat bunches. The lacinato, green kale are really prime again this time of year and do hold up relatively well with rainfall.

We have another round of Abby's garlic scapes which I described last week. These are getting pretty good size here. They'll keep well. If you had scapes last week and you haven't used them, no problem. Keep them in a plastic bag in your fridge. They'll keep for weeks and weeks really. Garlic scapes are a pretty hardy crop.

This is an unusual and wonderful one. When I got my start in produce 30 five years ago, I worked in a in a produce shop in New Haven, Connecticut with 80 year old Italian man. Hands down their top crop at that produce stand was the escarole. They love the stuff. We're passing some on to you this week. Don't confuse it for green leaf lettuce. This is a bitter Italian cooking green. Highly prized for Italian dishes. It's not green leaf lettuce. If you attempt to put it in a salad with ranch dressing, you'll be disappointed. If you look up escarole recipes for Italian dishes, you'll be very very pleased.