CSA Week 4, 2018

CSA Week 4

It’s surely been a week of beat the heat right? Regardless the weather, we have to be out there picking, planting, weeding, packing CSA boxes… and there’s no AC out in the fields 😉 This morning (Friday, when I write the weekly letter) it is breezy and cooler, I anxiously await some rain.

You MAY have in your bag/box: corn, summer squashes, cucumbers, lettuce, some kind of greens like chard or kale, and blueberries. I heard there also may be Hakerai turnips, so if you get a bunch of very white, round roots with somewhat hairy greens attached, you got them. Blueberry season is quite a bit longer than strawberry season, and one of the jobs that had to get done this week in the heat was to cover the blueberry bushes with netting so we don’t share too many with the Robins, Cedar Waxwings, Bluebirds and other fruit hounds, I mean birds.

CORN!! Was I surprised to hear corn went into boxes last week! You may not realize how early it is to have corn in Massachusetts. I am confident Glenn had the first in the state and you were definitely the first CSA to get corn in the state! As it is so early, and we don’t have tons of early corn, we won’t be loading you up yet, but rest assured, as we get into main season corn that your farmer didn’t go through lots of growing gymnastics to produce, there will be more ears in your weekly allotment. If you are new to our CSA, your corn was picked the same day as your CSA pickup. We strongly encourage you to plan on corn for dinner that night. We still grow old-school sweet corn, no GMO, and none of the hybridizing that has been done to produce “super sweet”. As soon as corn is harvested, the sugars begin breaking down and converting to starch, so it truly is BEST the day it is picked. The corn you see in the supermarkets now is NOT from New England and it is very likely GMO Round-up ready corn. Even the organic corn found at large markets would be a supersweet variety, bred to have a very tough pericarp (the kernel skin) and very high in sugars so that even after two weeks there would still be sweetness. I was called a farm snob once and the name stuck. Just so you don’t get offended by my commentary here’s a Farm snob alert: I don’t like any corn from the supermarket and I don’t even like supersweet varieties that we have trialed on the farm. I don’t care for the texture or the lack of actual corn flavor.

Hakerai turnips are a sweet, crunchy summer turnip, also known as salad turnip. While they are beautifully white, we also grow a bright red one called Scarlet Queen, which will appear on the scene any day now. Both are great raw, in a salad, or julienned/grated for slaw. I love that turnip-y bite they have, not as strong and peppery as a radish, and perhaps slightly more complex tasting. As they are not the dense, hard turnips you see in the fall, cooking them is a snap too. As always, remove the greens from the roots before storing. As a time saver, I always remove the roots below the rubber band, and while still banded together, I plunge the greens up and down in a pot of water pretty aggressively to get the dirt and creatures off, shake excess water off, then store in a plastic bag in fridge (yes, you can store them in the same bag with your roots). When I am ready to use them, all I have to do is cut off the extra stems with the rubber band and they are ready to go! Read more about turnips here.

What have you been making? Email me your recipes so I can put them in the letter! Member Megan has a beautiful gluten free blog (easy to do with our CSA ;^)) with a dedicated veggies section – check it out! Gluten Free Gerblie

Kale Pizza and other thoughts
Kale Pesto
Bok Choi
Zsa Zsa’s Chicken and Squash stir-fry

Sauteed Turnips with their Greens

Remove tops from bottoms, wash both carefully. Slice or quarter the roots;  Discard most of the stems, and roughly chop the leaves.
Melt 2 TBS of butter in skillet, when foaming add the roots, sauté for 7-10 minutes, add greens, stirring until they look tender, about 2 minutes. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Enjoy as is, or embellish with a little acid (vinegar of choice, lemon juice, mustard). I almost always stir in 1-2 tsp Dijon because it is such a nice compliment to turnips.

In the picture below I sauteed a little red onion and chopped garlic scapes with the sliced turnip and used a very scant amount of balsamic on the greens.

An hour ago I was going to call this section Farm Dirt, but we just got a lovely shower! It wasn’t enough to not be moving irrigation pipe, but it was enough to perk up some of the greens and give all the field workers some relief form the heat. It will be a lot less dusty driving around the fields today too! Glenn likes to remind people that the nights you cannot sleep the corn is growing. I’m pretty sure by the 4th day of heat even he was having a hard time being positive sounding 😉 One thing none of us seem to experience is the whole “I don’t feel like eating” thing. We manage to consume plenty of food…any hopes of losing weight through an involuntary “heat” diet were dashed!

Farmer’s markets are in full swing everywhere and we find ourselves short handed again. We are fond of saying “space is the final frontier” (original eh?) because we are often scrambling around for enough field space for whatever crop is ready to go into the ground. BUT, the last few years that expression has been replaced by “Help is the final frontier”. It is increasingly difficult to hire and retain employees whether it is for picking, driving, or selling for CSA and markets. Sometimes we get no response at all. We get a fair amount of people who are inexperienced and that would be ok, but we are noticing more and more people who have no idea what it means to actually have a job, you know, basic stuff like show up on time, be reliable, communicate, listen, follow directions, hustle, complete the job at hand correctly, don’t phone in unless it is a real emergency or you are actually sick ,and so much more! This is a problem for businesses everywhere and believe me when I say that we have had plenty of college grads that don’t have these basic skills. I cannot remember someone actually telling me these things as a kid, so I assume I gained it through osmosis from my parents and school. Something must have changed along the way because we see more and more “unreadiness” for a job. Here’s the plan: everyone make sure the high school and college kids in their lives know that they need to learn to work hard in primary school, master the above in secondary school, and then they will be all set for college and/or the workplace. 🙂

Meanwhile, we are looking again for someone who can to Coolidge Corner and work at the Brookline market on Thursdays, and someone who lives near the New Braintree farm to do CSA deliveries and go to a couple markets a week. Pass the word along!

On a super upbeat note, two of our managers at BPM came out to the farm last week. We had a lovely visit and they got to see the produce they have been selling actually growing! Glenn is leading them through the recently scaped garlic field. I am thinking next year we should have a “Scape the Garlic” CSA party? What do you think?

Eat well,

Geneviève Stillman