In your CSA Share this Week...
If the sheer quantity of green things in this week's tote frightens you, remember you have these superpowers at your disposal:
- Heat: cooking greens like tatsoi, pac choi, spinach, kale, chard, collards, etc reduces them to almost nothing
- The blender: make a dent in your greens by supercharging your smoothie with spinach, mizuna or lettuce
- Powerful mandibles: embrace the act of chewing. You got this!
- Broccolini
- Bunched Spinach - monster bunches this week so you have plenty to make a big salad or spinach-forward dish
- Abby's Baby Mizuna (1/2# bag)
- Green Kohlrabi - the ugly step-sister to last week's purple variety (just as tasty on the inside though!)
- Head Lettuce
- Red Onion
- Tatsoi (dark green spoon-shaped leaves with white stems, bunched - great in stir-fry or hot pot)
- Strawberries
- Red Radish - a token baby bunch - this is it for spring radishes for the season
- Hakurei turnips
- Cilantro
- Cherry Tomato Plant
Cherry Tomato Plants this Week!
Remember to take home a SunOrange cherry tomato plant this week - one per harvest basket! Plant it deeply - bury the stem up to its leaves - in balanced, rich soil in a warm, protected spot. SunOrange is a vigorous indeterminate variety so it will need support as it grows (a cage or trellis). Prune excess leaves as it grows bigger for airflow and light. By August you should start to see abundant clusters of tangerine-orange fruits with exquisite flavor. As mentioned in last week's newsletter, we experimented with growing this year's starts in Earthpots to avoid using all those 4" plastic pots, but unfortunately the Earthpot soil blend is missing some of the magic of our regular propagation mix. The plants are smaller and spindlier as a result, but should take off once they hit some fertile dirt in your garden. Next year, back to our old system, dang the plastic pots!
Double Up Food Bucks Comes to the Farmstand!
As of today the you can use SNAP at our weekly farmstand and get a 50% discount on Valley Flora fruit and veggies!
Our farmstand is now part of Double Up Food Bucks Oregon, an initiative to make fresh produce more accessible to low income families around the state. We've been offering this program to our CSA members for a few years, but are thrilled to now be able to bring it to our farmstand customers as well. Grab your Oregon Trail card and head to the farmstand between 11:30 and 2:30 every Wednesday & Saturday to take advantage of this great program. Please spread the word among your friends and neighbors!
A few things to know if you want to shop with SNAP:
- We can only accept SNAP in-person for drop-in shopping. We aren’t able to process SNAP for online pre-orders.
- Only fresh fruits and vegetables are eligible for the Double Up Food Bucks discount. If you want to purchase eggs, tea, hot sauce or jam you can pay with your SNAP card but will not receive the 50% discount on those items.
- U-pick strawberries are eligible for the Double Up discount but you will have to check out at the farmstand instead of at the u-pick tent. U-pick is scheduled to open this Saturday, June 13th!
Strawberry U-Pick and the Saturday Farmstand Open on June 13th!
Given how much the phone has been ringing with u-pick inquiries it might be mayhem in the strawbery patch this Saturday - but the picking is lovely and the weather forecasters say it's supposed to feel like summer!
We'll also be open for our first Saturday farmstand where we'll have a wide array of early summer produce, including pre-picked strawberries.
U-pick and the farmstand both open at 11:30, until we're picked out/sold out. Fair warning: I'm predicting we'll get the usual 11:30 rush and be picked out pretty quickly, which means we'll most likely close both the u-pick and the farmstand before 2:30 this Saturday.
Remember to bring your own containers to take your berries home in. We accept cash/check and Farm Direct coupons, or you can use SNAP and get a 50% Double Up Food Bucks discount on your berries and produce (note: all SNAP transactions have to be processed at the farmstand, not at the u-pick tent).
More info at https://www.valleyflorafarm.com/content/u-pick-farmstand
See you up the creek!
