Summer is Coming

WEEK 8 OF VEGGIES & FLOWERS DURING COVID-19

This week’s offerings include:

Mixed Veggie Box

  • Green wave mustards OR Kaailan

  • Little gem lettuces

  • Arugula microgreens

  • Radishes

  • Spinach

  • Baby bok choi

  • Green garlic

Salad Box

  • 1 Big Mama bag of Salad mix (equivalent of 2 bags, but with half the packaging!)

  • 1 pint Arugula microgreens

Flowers for Mom

  • Ranunculus

  • Anemones

  • Geum

  • Orlaya

  • Tulips

  • Love

FARMER APPROVED RECIPES!

Here are some farmer-approved recipes for this week’s veggies!

Radishes

  • How to use radishes: This is one of those veggies that you probably always do the same thing with: slice and toss in a salad (or perhaps on tacos). Radishes are a real spring food. They aren’t the easiest to grow on our farm, and also don’t grow well in summer heat, so we only have them for a couple of months a year. Here’s what I like to make to enjoy them each spring:

  • Radish & Butter Tartine. One of those recipes that is too simple to be so good. But dang, if combining butter, salt, radishes & crusty bread isn’t one of the best things ever. If you haven’t tried it you NEED to!

  • Radish Top Aioli. The greens on radishes are peppery and bright, but also a little fuzzy in texture. They work best in sauces, soups, and pestos. If you haven’t cooked with radish greens before, this aioli is a great place to start! And then you can dip your radishes in it! Yum.

Green wave mustards OR Kaailan

  • How to use these veggies: Both of these delicious veggies are tender, quick cooking, and have a bit of sweetness combined with a zippy mustardy undertone. Both are better cooked, and are perfect for stir fries or quickly sautéed with eggs in the morning.

  • Mustard Green Harissa. If you are into the spicy side of things, this harissa is a delicious use for a bunch of mustard greens! Quickly wilted and combined with hot chili and a ton of spices, this is addictively good stuff.

  • Pickled Mustard Greens. This is a quick and easy condiment that you can add to all kinds of meals: top toast with hummus and these pickled greens, serve with eggs, beans, or as a condiment on stir fry, quiche etc. The possibilities are endless!

  • Chinese Broccoli Salad with Sesame Sriracha Dressing. This is one of my favorite meals to make with kaailan, and I think it’d also be great with mustard greens (just cut the cooking time to the bare minimum!). Both of these veggies pair so well with sesame—the richness matches the little bit of pepperiness in the greens so so well.

Bok choi

  • What to do with bok choi: Last spring turned me into a bonafide box choi lover. I almost always do the same thing with with it (recipe below), but it also makes a very excellent salad green (so crunchy!). I’m including my fave bok choi salad recipe here too.

  • Miso Butter Baby Bok Choi. This recipe is great grilled for sure, but also searing the bok choi in a cast iron skillet works perfectly.

  • Bok Choi Salad with Miso Tahini Dressing. Bok choi is a surprising salad green. SO crunchy and delicious. Give this a shot!

NOTES FROM THE FIELD

“Spring: a lovely reminder of how beautiful change can truly be.”
- Unknown

This week came roaring on in with summer work loads and summery weather to boot. It seems like somewhere at the beginning of May every year, we get a few days of hot summer-like weather that causes both panic (everything needs irrigation! now!) and excitement (scroll down to see some epic fruit set on our high tunnel tomatoes, and the first zucchini!). We never are really ready for this early blast of heat: it’s hard on the spring crops which prefer cool or moderate temperatures, but it also feels pretty amazing to work in a tank top and see the food in the field grow by visible inches over a week.

Next week the forecast is calling for much more normal spring weather: temperatures in the 60s and a decent amount of rain. This weekend we will be pushing hard to prep the remaining ground on the farm and to lay plastic mulch for a bunch of summer (and winter!!) crops. Laying the mulch this weekend while the weather is hot and sunny will allow us to plant next week despite the rainy weather. In our clay soils, it takes only maybe 30 minutes of steady rain to transform our beautiful, soft, ready to plant tilled beds into a muddy mess.

The plastic we put down on the beds is (first of all) a biodegradable corn-based plastic, and (second of all) will keep the beds a nice, plantable moisture for us, confining the mud to the pathways which is much more manageable. There is drip tape installed under the mulch, which allows us to water the crops super efficiently; the mulch itself holds in the moisture from the irrigation, prevents weeds from taking over the beds, and boosts the soil temperature, which crops like squash and peppers really love. Our hope over the next week or so is to get our summer field plantings out: zucchini (we will plant this repeatedly all summer, but this is our first field planting!), peppers of all sorts, celery, celeriac (not a summer crop, but it does have to grow all summer long!), and winter squash (again, a winter food, but it will grow all summer long).

Top to Bottom, L to R: The Siletz tomatoes in the greenhouse are just cruising right along and ready for a trellis! // This week we also planted out the flower block—there are going to be so many beautiful blooms before we know it. // A snap of this week’s beautiful spring box contents: radishes & kaailan. // The peas are blooming! // The zucchini is coming! // And an epic mustard green floof during harvest this week.

There is no doubt about it: summer is coming. The food and the weather and the birds and the blooming hawthorns all agree. Summer work levels are here. There will be so much food to pick so soon. Let’s do this thing!

That’s it from the field this week.

Your farmers,

Beth, Erik, the crew, & Maddie the farm dog too