Potatoes in bloom; a new horsedrawn cultivator in action!
In the CSA Share this Week:
- Sugar Snap Peas
- Fresh Fava Beans
- Baby Bunch Carrots
- Head Lettuce
- Kohlrabi
- Basil
On Rotation:
- Persian Cucumbers
- Broccolini
Notes from the Field:
This week your CSA tote is loaded with a hefty pile of fresh fava beans, one of early summer's unique and fleeting offerings. Favas are grown as a nitrogen-fixing cover crop in mild climates, but we also grow them intentionally as a food crop. For some of you, this is probably your first encounter so here's a tutorial for how to get to the beans inside and enjoy them once you do: How to Cook Fava Beans and 17 Chefs on their Favorite Ways to Cook Fava Beans. We're having a bumper crop this year - the biggest pods I've ever seen! Flood effect!
Sugar Snap Peas are making their debut this week, with lots more coming! Sugar Snaps are NOT shelling peas - you eat the whole thing, pod and all. I like them best raw or lightly sauteed.
You're getting a double-up on head lettuce this week, thanks to the long days of summer solstice. We're having more cucumber beetle pressure in the lettuce than usual right now, which means we have to strip more of the munched outer leaves. The good news is that what remains is crunchy, sweet hearts - the best part. We plant a new bed of head lettuce every week to supply the CSA and to satisfy the demand for case quanitites at Coos Head Food Co-Op, Port Orford Co-Op, 7 Devils Pub and Alehouse, Barnacle Bistro, Crazy Norwegian, the Langlois Market and more. We also send a lot of lettuce to the Common Good foodbank and the Coos Bay Library Community Fridge each week so we can keep our community in ample salad.
The first carrots of the season are making their way into your tote this week. Carrots will likely be intermittent over the next month because we lost a couple of early plantings to the flood. Fortunately we have strong germination in our later seedings so they'll become a regular fixture once those beds are sized up.
And finally, a happy little baby donkey update, in photos (all's well)!!! Mazzy is a magical creature - part unicorn we're pretty sure - and her mama loves her. If it's not obvious, we do, too:
