Welcome to our first blog posting of the 2013 season.  Its has been a crazy first 4 weeks of the season, but on the bright side, the contents of the baskets have not changed much so this posting will work great for all of them.  There has been a bounty of cool season crops: Lettuce, Radishes, Onions, Endive, Rhubarb, Dill, Broccoli, and other various greens.  The cool wet spring was wonderful for most of them, as long as they didn’t flood out. We were particularly lucky as we were able to dodge the major flooding, hail and wind that many other growers had to contend with.  The only losses were some early planted green beans, spinach and a few spotty tomatoes plants that got a little too wet right after planting.

The last two weeks have seen a shift in our weather pattern to lots of sun an heat.  This all couldn’t come soon enough to get our heat loving plants to grow.  This includes the peppers, squash, green beans, melons, and beloved tomatoes. But with the heat, it does mean we will probably see the amount of greens diminishing (I am sure some of you are thankful for that).

In terms of other happenings on the farm, the poultry flock is growing by size and number nearly every day.  More free ranged muscovy ducks and renegade chickens have been coming off of nests with little ones and the broiler chickens have made it to a size where we started butchering this week.  If your interested in chickens, there are few that will be available yet.  The next processing day is Monday, July 8.  Contact me if you have any questions.

While the goats are done kidding, they are still milking well.  Some of the milk has been used for feeding kids and our household use.  We have also started making those wonderful fresh chevre and fromage blanc goat cheeses.  What is left over has been used to fatten up the 8 feeder pigs that have been growing like weeds.

Hay has been baled much to the enjoyment of the goats and cattle and it looks like the corn made it to Knee High by the 4th of July(waist high actually). Some sweet corn is only ankle high, but that will be good for a later crop.  Now just pray for timely rains and good warmth to let this growing season catch up.

Basket #4 Contents:

Napa Cabbage – This year has been one of the best for producing Napa Cabbage.  This is the second, but probably last week to enjoy it.  It works fine as a cabbage substitute but I prefer it used in a basic fresh salad with a simple vinaigrette dressing.  Theold Daytons Potluck Cook Book has a wonderful recipe submitted by Carole Busch.  Of course you can omitt the chicken or use other ramen flavors. It goes as follows:

Dressing:

• 5 tablespoons white vinegar
• 3/4 cup vegetable oil
• 3 tablespoons sugar
• flavor packet from 2 packages chicken-flavored ramen noodles

Salad:

• 1 pound cabbage, shredded
• 3 green onions, chopped
• Noodles from 2 ramen noodle packs
• 5 tablespoons sesame seed
• 3/4 cup slivered almonds, toasted
• 2 cups cubed cooked chicken.

In a small bowl, combine the dressing ingredients.  Cover: refrigerate 4 hours or overnight.  Just before serving, combine all salad ingredients in a large bowl; add dressing. Mix well.

Also in the basket is a bag of mixed lettuce (green and red leaves), onions, rhubarb, cilantro, mint (mojitos anyone?), garlic scapes, french breakfast radishes, and spicy Italian salad mix (all green and mostly frilly leaves). The full share folks also received our fist zucchini and kale as well.

After getting radished for 4 weeks, you may be out of ideas for them.  My sister found this great radish salad that uses radishes and the cilantro.  If radish flavor is just too much, then substitute some 50% of the radishes for jicama.

Garlic scapes are the flower buds of a hardneck garlic plant.  Each clove planted in the previous fall produces one scape.  Many remove scapes because they feel it will encourage increased size of the growing garlic bulb; I remove them because they make a great garlic substitute with out sacrificing the whole bulb right away.  To learn more about garlic scapes, check out the Plum Creek Garlic posting on scapes. If your really interested in garlic, you should consider going to the Minnesota Garlic Festival.

The spicy Italian salad mix is comprised of bib lettuce, arugula, chicory and mostly frisee endive.  It has a little punch when eaten so is best to have wilted or braised.

A sneak peek into next weeks box: same old stuff + baby beets, pak choi, and possibly sugar snap peas and raspberries.

I hope this week treats you well and you find a great way to celebrate the 4th of July and this wonderful weather.

Larry