What's in your share this week:

• Yellow Onion
• Purple Sprouting Broccoli
• Savoy Cabbage
• Arugula
• Pea Shoots
• Yellow Potatoes
• Spring Raab
• Autum Frost Winter Squash
• Cauliflower

There are a couple winter miracles in your share this week: purple sprouting broccoli and cauliflower! Both of these crops were seeded last July, planted in August and have been weathering winter for the past many months. Even after years of growing it, winter cauliflower never fails to amaze me. We have a mild enough climate here to pull it off - usually successfully - but nevertheless I'm always surprised when those pearly white heads start to show themselves, at a time when it doesn't seem like there could be anything to eat out there in the field. Winter cauliflower is also the tastiest of all the cauliflower we grow because it matures in cold weather, which sweetens up those Brassicas like nothing else. We grow four different overwintering cauliflower varieties that mature in succession, so hopefully you'll get to enjoy another two or three rounds of cauliflower before May.

Similarly, the purple sprouting broccoli in your share is a special thing. It requires patience and a lot of space, but what a treat once those neon purple florettes start to shoot skyward. We grow three varieties that mature between February and April, so it'll also make a few more appearances as we head into spring.

If pea shoots are a novelty to you, this is a great chance to become buddies with them. You guys are getting a full half pound this week - twice as much as planned - because our seeding did so well in the greenhouse this time around. Lengthening days and some sunshine are making all the difference in growth rates in the propagation house right now. I like to eat pea shoots raw in salads, or as the main body of a salad, but you can also sautee them or try making a pea shoot pesto. Here are two different riffs on that notion, one with pistachios and lemon juice and the other with toasted walnuts.

https://www.loveandlemons.com/pea-tendril-pistachio-pesto/

https://www.fresh52.com/recipes/pea-shoot-pesto

I wish I could say that the peas were bagged in the biodegradable cellophane bags we were so excited about last time, but we had a major disasco (disaster + fiasco) this week with the new bags. On Monday we harvested and bagged up all the CSA and farmstand pea shoots and micro mix and then put them in our walk-in cooler for the night so we'd be ready for packout on Tuesday. When we pulled them out of the cooler on Tuesday, we discovered that the new bags were practically melting and anything in contact with the bag was soggy AND wilted. It seems that those marine-degradable bags were already well on their way to breaking down and not doing our produce any good at all. We had to unbag everything (yes, hundreds of bags), toss the wilty shoots, and rebag them all in good ol' turtle murder poly bags. Sigh. The bag vendor has never heard of this problem and is trying to figure out if we got a faulty batch, or....?

So in the meantime until we can resolve the bio bag issue, please do your best to reuse the plastic bags we give you (as many times as possible!) and then recycle them when their life is over (McKay's in Bandon has a plastic bag recycling bin in their foyer; it's worth asking at Ray's in PO and Bandon, and anywhere else you shop for groceries).

Have a lovely week! Celebrate winter cauliflower!

Zoë