We’ve made it to the first week of the CSA and our fields and high tunnels are looking pretty good! Last week we tried to finish as many projects as we could before CSA harvests start to take over our mornings. We planted flowers, lettuce, cucumbers, watermelon, edamame, herbs, tomatillos and husk cherries, as well as the first of our winter squash! In addition to planting, we prepped beds for sweet potatoes (which should be arriving ready to plant this week), as well as more winter squash and watermelon. We also trellised tomatoes in our high tunnel, laid down landscape fabric between cucumber beds for weed control, continued picking Colorado Potato beetles and their eggs off our potatoes and eggplants, hand weeded carrots and beets, and we cultivated beans, sunflowers, leeks, fennel, cabbage, lettuce and carrots with tractors and hoes. Whew!
CSA distribution is outside under a white canopy tent by the farm stand (and the farm store remains inside the farm stand building). CSA pick-up hours are Tuesday and Thursday from 11am-6pm and Saturday from 9am - 3pm. After checking in with the shopkeeper at the tent, CSA members may select their own produce from the bins laid out under the tent, choosing what they would like to take home from the CSA distribution area. Usually 3-5 items will be limited and members may take what they would like of the remaining items until their CSA bag is full. As always, there will be a crew member at the tent to refill produce bins throughout the day and answer any questions you might have! In addition to the CSA bag filled from items under the tent we will have a set amount of pick-your-own available. The shopkeeper will provide you with the appropriate size container for pick-your-own crops. While we do have some scissors available to borrow, we recommend bringing your own scissors or pruners (especially this week as we have Sweet William Flowers for CSA members to pick!). We will have a portable handwashing sink by the white tent and pick-your-own field. For additional important 2022 CSA information please read our short 2022 CSA Guide here: http://www.barrettsmillfarm.com/member-guide.
This week CSA customers will notice something new in the CSA (store customers may have already noticed this): compostable BioBags! Many of our customers have been asking us over the years about whether we would ever offer compostable produce bags as a bagging option. We had not used compostable bags in the past because those bags are not allowed for composting under an organic system. However, because the Town of Concord now has a pilot compost drop-off program that accepts compostable “plastic bags,” we are now offering them as a bagging option in the store and CSA. Please note that the BioBags we are offering do not keep greens as well as the regular plastic bag, so if you choose to use those bags for your leafy greens, you should be sure to transfer them to another container when you get home!
In the CSA this week:
Beets - It’s early for beets, but since we worked hard to get irrigation on them early they have sized up nicely! The greens do have some leaf miner damage, but it doesn’t impact the flavor of the beets.
Scallions - These are coming from our high tunnel. The field scallions aren’t too far behind, so we should have them again in June!
Kohlrabi
Radishes
Salad turnips
Mini daikon radish
Spinach - We have an abundance this week. Spinach does not do well in warmer conditions, so we are not sure how it will hold up in the field for next week, so make sure to enjoy it now!
Lettuce - We’ll have romaine and butterhead, as well as some green leaf and red leaf head lettuces available
Salanova lettuce mix - This cut leaf mix is a little crisper than a mesclun mix and therefore keeps well for longer!
Arugula
Baby bok choi
Bok choi
Kale
Red Russian kale - This is a smaller more tender kale leaf. It’s great mixed in salads, but also is nice lightly sauteed!
CSA Pick-Your-Own:
PYO items are limited to the posted amount for each CSA membership (the appropriate size container will be provided) but these items do not need to fit in your CSA bag. Handwashing sinks are provided at the entrance to each PYO field. For the sake of food safety, please wash hands before picking. The barn bathroom and wash area sinks in the barn are for employees only. There is a portable restroom behind the red barn and a portable hand washing sink available for member and customer use.
Strawberries or Sugar Snap Peas - We will have to assess conditions at each pick-up day but we plan to have either strawberries or sugar snap peas for members each day (ideally a choice between the two). We have an odd lag between pea successions. The first planting produced very well last week (but too early!), however it is winding down this week and the second succession doesn’t yet have any peas on it. Once the second and third successions start producing we should have a nice supply for the CSA. The strawberries in the CSA PYO field are unfortunately not doing well as we have seen a lot of plant die-off from disease. We have been trying to keep strawberry plantings close to the farm stand for easy member access, but that has made it very difficult to adequately rotate each year’s planting. We are planning to rotate them much further away from the diseased sections, which will mean a longer walk to get to strawberries starting in the 2024 season (strawberries aren’t harvestable until their second year), but that will hopefully lead to a more reliable harvest!
Sweet William flowers
In the farm store:
In addition to the items listed in the CSA, we will also have panisse (oakleaf) lettuce and seedlings, as well as mushrooms from Fat Moon Farm. The strawberry patch that we planted for the store has improved as we are seeing more berries that formed after the cold snap that damaged the ones we had hoped to harvest last week. We should have strawberries in the store most days this week, but there won’t be any sugar snap peas while we wait for the second succession to start producing.
We accept credit card, cash, check and EBT in the farm store. The farm store is open Tuesday - Friday 11am - 6pm and Saturday 9am - 3pm. We also continue to take online pre-orders for Wednesday, Friday and Saturday pick-up. The link for online orders is https://openfoodnetwork.net/barrett-s-mill-farm/shop#/shop. Online ordering opens at 6pm the day before pick-up.
Mushroom CSA Week 7: It is week 7 of our 10-week spring Mushroom CSA from Fat Moon Farm and this week’s mushrooms are another Farmer’s Mix! Now that the farm store is staffed you may come anytime the farm store is open: Tuesday- Friday 11am-6pm and Saturday 9am-3pm. Just check in with the shopkeeper at the farm stand when you arrive and they will retrieve them for you! We do still suggest a Tuesday or Wednesday pick-up for the freshest possible mushrooms.
Vegan Spinach Pesto
by Kristina Todini, A Fork in the Road
Ingredients
2 cups spinach
⅓ cup pine nuts, or pumpkin seeds if nut-free
2 whole garlic cloves
½ cup extra virgin olive oil
⅓ cup nutritional yeast
⅛ teaspoon salt
⅛ teaspoon fresh cracked pepper
Optional: squeeze of fresh lemon juice
Instructions
Wash and prep the spinach: Start by submerging spinach in a bowl of water and cleaning it off, making sure to remove any dirt. Use a salad spinner to dry it or lay the spinach flat on a plate or kitchen towel.
Blend the greens, nuts, garlic, and oil: Toss the cleaned and dried spinach in a food processor. Next, add nuts/seeds and garlic cloves. Pulse until finely chopped, slowly drizzling in olive oil until the chopped ingredients are well coated in oil but still chunky.
Add nutritional yeast, spices, and lemon juice: Finish by adding in nutritional yeast, salt, and pepper. Give the pesto a taste and add more seasonings until it's flavored to your liking.
Gingery Fried Rice With Bok Choy, Mushrooms and Basil
by Alexa Weibel, NY Times Cooking
Ingredients
4 cups cooked, day-old jasmine rice (or 1 cup uncooked jasmine rice; see Tip)
5 tablespoons canola or vegetable oil
¾ pound mixed fresh mushrooms, such as shiitake and cremini, thinly sliced, or whole shimeji mushrooms
Kosher salt and black pepper
¾ pound baby bok choy (about 8 small baby bok choy), trimmed, then sliced crosswise 1/2-inch thick
5 scallions, trimmed, greens and whites thinly sliced (about 1/2 cup)
3 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
1 jalapeño, thinly sliced (optional)
¾ cup frozen peas
2 to 3 tablespoons finely chopped fresh ginger (from one 2-inch piece)
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons sesame oil
⅛ teaspoon white pepper (optional)
½ cup thinly sliced fresh basil (we have basil plants in the store!)
Preparation
Take the cooked rice out of the refrigerator, and set it aside at room temperature.
In a large wok or nonstick skillet, heat 2 tablespoons canola oil over medium-high. Add the mushrooms, season generously with salt and pepper, and cook, stirring occasionally, until browned and tender, 5 or 6 minutes. Transfer to a large bowl.
Wipe out the skillet, if needed, then add 1 tablespoon canola oil and heat over medium-high. Add the bok choy, scallions, garlic and jalapeño, if using. Season with salt and pepper and stir-fry, stirring frequently, until aromatic and barely crisp-tender, 2 to 3 minutes. Transfer to the bowl with the mushrooms.
Add the remaining 2 tablespoons canola oil to the skillet and heat over medium-high. Add the rice and cook, stirring occasionally, until toasted and toothsome, 4 to 5 minutes. Add the frozen peas, ginger, soy sauce, sesame oil and white pepper (if using), and stir until rice is evenly coated in soy sauce mixture, and no uncoated rice grains remain, 1 to 2 minutes.
Stir in the mushroom and bok choy mixture and the basil until basil is wilted, 1 to 2 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper then divide among bowls; serve hot.
Tip: Leftover rice that has dried out in the refrigerator for a day or two works best for this recipe because it will crisp better than fresh rice. If you don’t have time to cook your rice a day in advance, you can cook 1 cup jasmine rice according to package instructions, transfer the cooked rice to a large baking sheet, spread it in an even layer and pop it in the freezer to chill it while you prepare the vegetables, then pull the rice from the freezer to cook it in Step 4.