Week #2 Saturday, June 28 – Tuesday, July 1, 2008 Downloadable Word .doc for printing

In your bag
Lettuce (freckles romaine & green bibb- a colorful combo!)
Scallions
Chinese Cabbage
Red Russian Kale
Broccoli
Sugar Snap Peas (peas and pod are edible)
Garlic Scapes*
Spinach**

*These curly, tasty treats can be cut in 1 inch pieces and sautéed in olive oil for a few minutes until tender. They’ll add a nice, mild garlic flavor to your greens, salad, eggs, etc.
**This is the spinach we had hoped to harvest last week, but it was water-logged and yellow. We harvested what we could this week. This is NOT the tender, sweet spinach we are accustomed to. This stuff has lived through hail, heavy rains and winds. This is the spinach Popeye would love- spinach with character! I don’t recommend making a salad with it. I would use it as a cooked green, sautéing it with olive oil or butter and garlic scapes or using it in a quiche or lasagna.

Coming Soon
Several things are coming along nicely. I’m guessing sugar snap peas and beets will be ready next week. We may have zucchini – perhaps round two of broccoli, maybe purple kohlrabi and more lettuce, scapes and scallions.

Harvest/Delivery Sign-up
If you haven’t signed-up yet for your day on the farm, we have a number of openings in July:
Tuesday, July 15th – Need 2
Tuesday, July 22nd - Need 3
Saturday, July 26th – Need 1
Tuesday, July 29th – Need 2
You can either call our delivery coordinator, Michele at 612-378-0380 or e-mail her at mgersich@att.net.

Farm News

It sure is nice to eat fresh food again, isn’t it? I love this time of year. It’s so wonderful to have beautiful flowers to enjoy, freshly mowed hay to smell (I don’t have allergies!) birds to listen to and what a treat it is to eat fresh salads and cooked greens again.

Chickens have arrived at Spring Hill! We now have 3 laying hens in our newly built chicken coop, two Buff Orpingtons and one Silver Laced Wyandotte. Maggie is doing a fine job of caring for them, keeping them fed and watered and checking for eggs several times a day! I think we’ve gotten about 8 eggs this first week. In addition to their feed, they’ve been feasting on salad greens themselves.

In the fields, it seems we’re moving past the wet stage. The tomato, pepper and squash plants are settling in, potatoes have jumped (Mike tossed me a ping-pong sized potato today). We actually needed to irrigate this past week – particularly where we were doing some transplanting or seeding. We’re putting in a number of things for mid-summer – some fennel and chard, zucchini and cilantro. We also planted some crops for the fall this week - a few beds of carrots, some broccoli, cauliflower and celeriac. Now we just need to get in those rutabagas we’re trying this year!

I was just reading another CSA’s newsletter and in it the grower, David Perkins, said “Farming is the art of making do.” I suppose that’s true. It’s working with what’s been tossed your way, making adjustments, believing things are going to be okay, carrying on … a lot like life.

Next Week’s Harvesters
Saturday, July 5th - Lee Pfannmuller & Gary Seim, Carie Essig, Carol Johnson,
Naomi Jackson & Anita Doyle
Tuesday, July 8th – Katy Podolinsky & Larry Schmidt, Kristin Dyrhaug & Catriona Moore, Brian Devore, Patricia Turner