What's in the Harvest Basket this Week:
- Purple Kohlrabi
- Purple Onion
- Broccolini
- Head Lettuce
- Bunch Carrots
- Radish Micro Mix - a colorful confetti mix of mildly spicy radish microgreens (great on tacos!)
- Strawberries
On Rotation:
- Baby Spinach
- Braising Mix
- Collards
- Rainbow Chard
Hooray for a little rain! Hopefully it'll help us hold onto those green hills a little longer and stave off fire season.
The Dream Team
Usually when I talk about my "dream team" I'm referring to my Morgan/Belgian draft horses, Jack and Lily (who, by the way, are 100% dreamy). Exibit A (taken while we were cultivating and hilling the potatoes last week):
That's a ton and a half of harnessed muscle and heart, two horses that fill my chest to bursting every week as they quietly go about a mountain of work on the farm: mowing, discing, harrowing, cultivating, hilling, seeding, spreading.
But there's another dream team hustling about the farm as well, and that's our crew. I feel beyond lucky to have a rock solid seasoned crew this year: Roberto, who's been part of VF since 2010 (11 glorious years! applause!!!); Jen and Allen who joined us full-time a year ago and are knocking my socks off with all their ever-expanding farming prowess (they've learned so much! they've gotten so much faster! stronger! efficient-er! I wish I drove a mini-van so I could have a bumper sticker that reads "Proud Parent of some Bad-Ass Farmers!); Sarah, hitched to Allen, who wears a plethora of indispensable hats on the farm (childcare! harvest! farmstand! packout! what would we do without her!?); Donna and Maggie, who handle the farmstand hustle with good-natured grace and humor (stampeding crowds! strawberry fever! signs that don't get read!). The nature of seasonal work often means that farms like ours see high employee turnover, which is why we are SO INCREDIBLY GRATEFUL to our crew for sticking with us over the years.
I wish I had a photo of all of us together (it's an incredibly good-looking lot), but alas, the electrons zing too quickly around the farm and I'm pretty sure there has never, ever been a moment when all of us were standing still in the same place. So just imagine strapping, vital, sun-tanned, muscular (did I mention fashionable?) lads and lassies making light work of heavy things, day in and day out, and give thanks - as I do - for their unflagging commitment to the weekly delivery of your high fiber VF vittles.
Have a gang of fun with that kohlrabi this week! Pro tip: I like it best peeled and sliced up raw in some form. Kohlrabi caesar is awesome: https://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/kohlrabi-caesar-salad. And if that's not your schtick, here are 10 other recipe ideas to get you started: https://www.thekitchn.com/5-tasty-ways-to-prepare-kohlrabi-60321.
