- Chives
- Overwintered Spinach (thick leaves, great for cooking)
- Little Yellow Storage Potatoes*
- Mixed Salad Greens
- Crimini Mushrooms*
- Arugula or Radishes
- Overwintered Onions (look like small leeks)
Farm Journal
1 p.m. Tuesday
Skies are gloomy but spirits are high as we pull our hats down over our ears and turn our faces from the wind. This is a big day here on the farm--our first planting day in weeks. We load up the planter with flats of swiss chard and kale plants that have been toughened by weeks of wind and rain. The plants show the stress of the recent weather in the purplish cast of their leaves. We do not worry because we know that once the plants are in the ground they will perk up within a matter of days and begin to grow new healthy, green leaves. Tyler stands to warm his hands briefly over the tractor's exhaust pipe before sitting back down in the driver's seat and putting the tractor in gear. Click, click, click, go the wheels of the planter. With each click, another plant is tucked neatly into the soil.
John Ruskin wrote that there is no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather. While I'm willing to concede that this year's unusually cold and gray April weather wasn't necessarily bad, I'm definitely ready for some different weather. It hasn't been the easiest spring here on the farm, but easy isn't what we signed up for when we chose to become vegetable farmers. In my opinion successful farming is one one part planning, one part hard work, and one part sheer determination. Things will work out, I sometimes have to remind myself. They always do. We are going to have a wonderful season and we're so glad that you are all joining us for this adventure. There's so much to look forward to, but in the meantime we're already eating well. I hope you enjoy these first wonderful spring vegetables. Please let us know if there's anything we can do to make your CSA experience a better one. (And keep your fingers crossed for sunny skies!)
Have a great week,
Peg
from left: Tyler, Kate, Travis, Camille, Jeff and Pat
Notes from the Farm Kitchen
In my kitchen, spring is all about alliums. The allium family includes onions, leeks, shallots, chives and garlic. Beginning in mid-summer we will start harvesting garlic bulbs and the type of red and yellow bulb onions you can buy at the grocery store. In the meantime, there are all kinds of other wonderful cold-hardy plants in the onion family that can be used in place of the bulb types. At this time of year, chives and winter onions feature prominently in the seasonal kitchen. While you may be familiar with chives, you are probably less familiar with winter onions. These are onions that are planted early enough in the fall that they are able to establish some good roots. With enough good root development, winter onions are able to survive the freezing temperatures of winter, and then they begin to grow again once the soil thaws. Pretty amazing in my opinion!
Another feature of the seasonal kitchen is the creative use of the last of the winter storage vegetables. April and May are the months when I finish up the last of our fall-harvested roots such as potatoes, carrots and celeriac. At this time of year a typical meal at our farm might feature roasted potates served with chives and sour cream along with a nice big salad topped with sliced hard boiled eggs. Spring eating doesn't get any better than that!
We don't yet have the infrastructure to store large amounts of potatoes, so this week's little yellow potatoes come to us from our friend Brian Igl, an organic potato grower near Antigo, WI. These potatoes were harvested last fall and have been in storage all winter. Now that they are out of storage, they are going to want to sprout up on us, so I recommend storing them in the refrigerator and using them in the next week or two.
Overwintered spinach has thicker and sweeter leaves than spring-planted spinach because it gets planted in October and grows throughout the winter before being harvested in May. Because of its thick leaves, it is best used in cooked dishes rather than eaten raw in salads.
Use chopped chives in potato salads, egg dishes, salad dressings, marinades and much more. You can make chive butter and freeze it for later use by adding chopped chives to softened butter. Mold it into a rectangle (or some fancier shape if you are the artistic sort), wrap in a piece of waxed paper and place in a freezer bag.
We've known Eric Rose, the grower of these wonderful crimini mushrooms, ever since we started farming in East Troy in 2000. His farm, River Valley Ranch, is a short drive from our old farm. For over twenty years he has been growing mushrooms without the aid of aerosols, fungicides, or chemical fertilizers, practices that are common among conventional mushroom growers.
Most spring vegetables must be refrigerated in a plastic bag. Some items (such as the leaf lettuce) are bagged by us at the farm. You will need to supply plastic bags for other items such as asparagus and head lettuce. Keeping these items in plastic helps prevent wilting. If you’ve got lettuce or some other tender vegetable that appears droopy, soak it in cold water for a few minutes and refrigerate in a plastic bag until it perks up. On another note, we rinse the vegetables here at the farm, but you should always wash them again prior to eating.
This Week's Recipes
Above: A broccoli plant in the snow. It's been years since we've seen that!
