Howdy ya’ll!

It’s the first of the monthly installment of your vegetable boxes! Get ready to eat some tasty meals and side dishes! For the first time, we are able to provide you with a bundle of purple asparagus! If you don’t like it-I bet a neighbor or friend does. It lasts up to 3 weeks if stored in a baggie, like most vegetables.

The first foods to eat are kale and chard. Kale always jazzes up a lasagna, and the more vegetables in pasta, the merrier the pasta!

Your head lettuce- yes, there is a lot of it- can be a versatile food. Skip the buns, breads, tortillas, other grains, and use lettuce instead. Get creative and use what you have in your box instead of creating fancy recipes. You can also stir-fry lettuce. I made Miso butter noodles this week and threw in a bag of frozen broccoli, snow peas, and tofu. Very few dishes to wash and dinner in under 30 minutes- a win! Laarb also uses quite a bit of lettuce. I bet you’ll do great- you have 4 weeks to eat it all. Make sure you store it in a way that works for you!

Fermentation and Storage Station:

This is the part of the newsletter where you can learn to extend the harvest. Have you decided to focus on eating all the lettuce, and you’re not sure you’ll get to the chard or kale? Time to freeze it then! Blanching and freezing greens is easy and takes about 5-15 min to do the whole process. The link is a YouTube video…this lady thinks she needs to freeze it in a silicone tray, which is fine, but we use small freezer bags or canning jars. Snap peas and snow peas also freeze well with a similar method. Make sure everything is a lovely green color; if it looks a bit putrid, you may have over-blanched. Start your preservation journey in small trial steps, then do the whole batch!

Sorry for the stock photos, but a good example of a small batch of pickles.

Hakurei pickles: root vegetables last a long time, but this might be the only batch of hakurei you get. You can pickle them! Same goes for the watermelon radishes…pickled radishes on a taco bowl with fresh lettuce? Sign me up!

I hope you enjoy the bounty of the box and try not to get overwhelmed. Think of it as a 4-week grocery shop that happened all at once. Preserve, pickle, and properly store your way to many happy meals!

Your next delivery is July 11th! Feel free to give us feedback about the first box after a couple of weeks, so we can possibly improve!

The Full List:

4 bunches of Garlic Scapes. 1.5 pound snap pea- sweet and crunchy, more full pods

1 pound Asparagus. 1 pound snow peas- flatter and crunchy, great cooked

3.5 pound bulk hakurei turnip (white round vegetable, stores well)

3-4 watermelon radish (stores very well) 1-3 summer squash

1 bunch chive blossoms. 1 bunch tarragon. 1 bunch oregano.

The Greens!

1 bunch chard

1-3 stems spigarello ( slightly curly leaf looks a little like broccoli)

1 curly kale

1 dino kale

5 heads of little gem (green, baby romaine) 5 heads of red butterhead- must be stored in a plastic baggie or prepped and stored in a container! Never pre-dress your salad unless you like soggy lettuce!

Lastly, this is likely our last season of CSA for the clover bee farmers. I- Margaret- have been offered a job as a reading specialist in Minneapolis at a charter school and we are moving!

If you know anyone who would love to live in a 126-year-old house on our charming acreage, please send them our way- we would love for someone thoughtful and kind to continue farming and stewarding our land the way we think it should be. We would like to sell as a FSBO and are looking for a great real estate lawyer as well.

Happy June!!

June Delivery