Jack and Lily culitvating the potato patch this week. Sugar snap peas trellised on the left next to a half acre of potatoes to keep the horses busy all afternoon...
In the CSA share this week:
- Broccoli or Broccolini
- Carrots
- Persian Cucumbers
- Green Kohlrabi - the last of the spring harvest
- Head Lettuce
- Sugar Snap Peas
- Strawberries
On Rotation - "On Rotation" refers to items that we are rotating among CSA pickup locations - if you don't receive it this week, look for it in a future week:
- Basil
- Collard Greens
- Rainbow Chard
Some of our favorite things are making their first appearance this week: Basil, Persian cucumbers and Sugar Snap peas. Persian cukes can be eaten skin-on or peeled. Sugar Snaps are eaten whole, pod and all (don't shell these sweet treats, you'll be wasting half the goodness)! We take special care to try to pick you perfectly fat peas, right at the peak of their flavor and sweetness. It's a painstaking harvest that consumes most of our Monday and Thursday afternoons in late June and early July, but it's worth the effort. A speedy, experienced picker can bring in about 20 pounds an hour max, and at the peak of the harvest we're picking over 150 pounds twice a week. So yeah, lots of crew hours spent in the pea patch! The season lasts four-ish weeks from start to finish, which makes them a fleeting, highly-seasonal crop. All the more reason to savor them while we can.
In addition to our standby Persian cukes, we're also trialing a couple varieties of Japanese cucumbers this year. They look like a mini English cucumber and have unparalleled crisp texture and sweet flavor. They'll be rotating through the CSA totes this season and are notably longer and more slender than the Persian varieties, so keep an eye out. Cukes should be a fairly regular staple in your CSA share and at the farmstand throughout the summer.
Our indoor cucumber production system on hanging trellis with drip irrigation. This system requires hours of training and pruning every week but it's time well spent for the high quality cukes it produces.
Japanese cucumbers sizing up for our first harvest this week.
Next week we're looking forward to cone cabbage, fava beans, and more!
