What’s in your Spring Box: Week 3

Good morning, it is week three of our spring CSA program. I have just washed my hands in accordance with all USDA, FDA, MDA, AAA, and AARP guidelines, clean as a whistle, ready to look at what's in your box this week. We have, first of all, spring onions, which are a brand new crop at Featherstone, really working on expanding our offerings.

Spring Onions: These are difficult to grow in this kind of really nice uniform format, but we've got them this week for the first time in years and years at Featherstone Farms. So you know what to do with spring onions.

Bok Choy: We have bok choy, baby bok choy, once again, from our high tunnel. These guys are once again very, very tender, but super tasty. I've been using them in stir fries recently, but I have to put them in at the very, very last minute, no more than about 30 seconds of heat on the stems. And the leaves cook themselves in a stir fry if there's enough heat and other things in the wok. So very fine, but gentle, easy cooking.

Baby Beet and turnips: We have our first week of bunch beets and bunch turnips. These things are really fine, fresh eating in the roots. These are what we call baby roots. They do not need to be skinned or peeled. They can be rinsed and thin sliced for salads, grated into salads. I love to cook these little roots, excuse me, prepare these little roots as fresh appetizers. There are some recipes coming in your box. But do not overlook the greens in these cases. The beautiful top greens of the beets are really one of the finest aspects of it. Don't forget to make sure to cook those, prepare those, light sauté or very light steaming, blanching. They're tender, but so worth eating.

Asparagus: We have asparagus. Nobody needs any prompting on asparagus. We're planting more and more asparagus every year so that it'll be more available to more boxes. But this year we have a two, three week supply, I think for most members, more coming in future years.

Sugar Snap Peas: We have our first picking of spring sugar snap peas out of the high tunnels. I won't open the bag, but these are really a treat. The fatter the pea, the tastier, it's difficult to grow them in high tunnels for a number of reasons that I'll talk about when we get out there in future videos. But the sugar snap peas are a rare treat for the month of May in Minnesota, high tunnel production.

Red Russian Kale: We have my favorite ever kale, also grown in high tunnel production. This is a red Russian. So much more tender and just like a melt in your mouth sweet than the more durable, heartier outdoor green kales that will coming up in the next box or two. The red Russian we do not grow in the field because it's so tender that in wind conditions, in outdoor environments, heat and cold and so forth, these get torn up, but very tender. You want to prepare this like spinach. Don't overcook it, light saute or stir fry.

Leaf Lettuces: Leaf lettuces from the field are just in their absolute prime right now. The first May lettuces for us are the very, very best. However, I will say that this is also a muddy year, and so we do have a certain amount of residual mud in the bags. We do what we can to wash and prep these, but lettuce is so crunchy and so tender and so vital coming out of the field this time of year, that it's a big trade-off for us. If we wash them, we risk damaging and we risk degrading the leaves sitting wet in a bag because it's so difficult to dry the darn things. Again, if you're in the arid west, you're picking these in the imperial valley of California where they've never got rained on, they'll come to you bone dry and in good B, B plus condition all the time. These are A plus lettuces this time of year, but the price of emission is a little bit of mud because that's what happens in the four season climate when they're growing so nicely outdoors in our good black dirt in Minnesota.

Herbs, Dill and Cilantro and Arugula: We have herbs from the high tunnels, in this case cilantro and beautiful dill here. This is one of these trade-offs again, folks, as you can well imagine with the bagging. We also have an arugula here, the three herbs. We've heard from members over and over again, less bagging, less plastic, so we have to make trade-offs. In this case, we've decided that the arugula is the most tender of the three, the one that needs the bagging the most, so your arugula will come in a bag, but your cilantro and your dill, we're hoping, will hold up well enough being so fresh, cut in the greenhouse in the high tunnel this morning, yesterday, Monday, Memorial Day. These are really fresh cut, they're very tender, but very flavorful, and they will round out your box for week three of the Spring CSA. Enjoy, everyone.

Thanks for being members. See you next week.

From the Voice of Jack; transcribed from his Instagram reel