july 12th, 2023
What’s in your share?
Salad Mix
Cucumbers
Zucchini
White Sweet Spanish Onions*
Basil*
Garlic Scapes
Cherry Tomatoes 0r Japanese Eggplant* 0r Green Beans (we’re starting to harvest these crops and you will all get them in the coming weeks, so don’t worry!)
Before we go into detail about the items in the share, we wanted to chat about the hail storm we had last week. Weather events are inevitable and we’ve taken a lot of precautions to mitigate potential threats that inclement weather can pose. Our biggest safety factor is our greenhouses: increasing the temperature in the colder months so that crops don’t freeze and mature more dependably, slowing down the wind we get from the bluff of Lake Michigan, and being able to control the amount of water we feed the plants. However, we can’t cover everything. This past week we got a pretty serious hail/wind storm with 1 inch balls of hail combined with wind. We had some beautiful romaine lettuce planned for the share, as well as some Japanese salad turnips, but the hail absolutely shredded the leaves, making them unmarketable. You may notice a little hail damage on your basil and zucchini. We thought you all would rather get those crops with a little bit of cosmetic damage than have us compost them, which seems wasteful. It was pretty sad, but honestly, it could have been worse and we’re thankful we had the tomatoes, eggplants, cucumbers, and peppers under the cover of our tunnels. This is the beauty of sharing in the risk and the reward that is inherent to CSA!
The first bean harvest - everyone’s still smiling! Beans are coming your way!
*White Sweet Spanish Sweet Onions - are early onions. They are grown to be eaten fresh and their flavor is sweet and juicy. Early onions differ from the onions you can keep out on the counter or in your root cellar because they haven’t been cured and have no dry layer of outer skin. Store these in the fridge - they are best used within a month. They have a delicate flavor if eaten raw, but you can totally cook them. Because of their size, they go further if you eat them raw.
*Japanese Eggplant - are super underrated! Finding a good eggplant recipe is hard, but we’ve had amazing luck with the Japanese varieties. They have very small seed cavities, and less moisture content than Italian varieties, wildly reducing cooking time, and making for a less mushy/seedy dish. We love broiling and grilling them, adding them to kebabs and ratatouille, and baba ganoush is the absolute best and easiest way to have a really flavorful snack or meal.
*Basil - got a little hammered by hail. If you take the twist tie off and store the bouquet in a jar of water, you’ll get the most out of its shelf life. Here is a pesto recipe we like!
Basil Pesto
I bag of basil (de-stem tough stems)
1/4-1/3 C olive oil
1/4 C parmesan cheese (grated)
1 t lemon juice
1-2 garlic scapes or garlic cloves (roughly chopped)
1/3 C pine nuts or walnuts
Salt and pepper to taste
Put all ingredients in food processor except olive oil. Blend a little bit, then add olive oil gradually. Taste and add salt or pepper or more olive oil if you want.
recipes to try
Fun things are happening in our backfield! We got a grant from the NRCS to plant a pasture. We don’t have any tractors or equipment for planting this amount of acreage, but a neighbor farmer graciously helped us out by plowing, discing, and seeding our field for us. It’s an unfortunate year for establishing a pasture without irrigation, but it’s looking great anyways! We’re hoping to raise chickens for eggs and meat next year!