CSA Week 3 and Farm Stand Updates

Our days have been filled with harvesting and planting and weeding and - when we have time - our favorite activity of potato beetle picking! This week we need to focus in on trellising and pruning tomatoes as well as putting down landscape fabric in pathways to keep down weeds. We are also going to get back on track with tractor cultivation. One of our cultivating tractors was out of commission last week due to a leaky tire, but thanks to Lise’s dad a brand new tire arrived today to get us up and running again. (We have been relying heavily on the courier services of both of Lise and Melissa’s parents this year!) We’ve had a bit of reprieve with timely rains and cooler temperatures, but we now need to get back to setting up irrigation across the street as the first succession of fall carrots and beets gets seeded there this week and you never want to be setting up an entire field’s worth of irrigation in an emergency! We sure do miss Melissa!

In the CSA this week:

• Garlic scapes - These are the flower stem and buds of our garlic. We snap them off for 2 reasons: doing so helps the plants focus their growing energy on the bulbs, and also they are delicious! A little milder than garlic heads.

• Fennel - Grown in our high tunnel.

• Summer squash and zucchini - Putting row cover on these plants when we planted them in May has certainly paid off, as we are going to enjoy these earlier than typical (even in spite of the cooler June we’ve experienced!).

• Curly kale - A little later than usual, as many of our early spring brassicas (like kale and cabbage) got hit hard by flea beetles and are only now starting to grow past that damage. We had decided not to put protective row cover on these when we planted them in April (it’s a windy time of year and we had gotten tired of spending hours re-tacking down row cover on our day off!) but this year was unfortunately a bad spring for flea beetles - lesson learned!

• Slicing cucumbers

• Carrots

• Kohlrabi

• Radishes

• Salad turnips

• Mini daikon radish

• Lettuce

• Salanova lettuce mix

• Arugula

• Bok choi

• Yukina savoy

CSA Pick-Your-Own:

• Strawberries - All of the beds are finally producing! These are a popular item, so in order to ensure that people coming at the end of the day still have ripe strawberries to pick, please do not overfill your container and (as tempting as it is!) please do not snack on berries in the field.

• Herbs - In addition to sage, thyme, parsley, dill and cilantro we now also have basil!

In the farm store:

In addition to the items listed in the CSA, we will have seedlings, flowers, spinach, pickling cucumbers and Persian (thin-skinned, mini) cucumbers. We hope to have summer squash and zucchini in the store by the end of the week. We will also have mushrooms from Fat Moon Farm. We know that strawberries are on many store customers’ minds - the planting for the farm store has unfortunately mostly petered out, so we are unlikely to have more in the store this season.

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 and Friday pick-up. The link for online orders is https://openfoodnetwork.net/barrett-s-mill-farm/shop#/shop. Online ordering currently opens at 6pm on Tuesday for Wednesday pick-up and 6pm on Thursday for Friday pick-up.

Mushroom CSA:

You may come to pick up your mushrooms anytime the farm store is open (Tuesday-Friday 11am-6pm and Saturday 9am-3pm). Your mushrooms will be kept in the cooler and retrieved by the shopkeeper when you arrive at the store. It is week 7 of the 8-week Spring Mushroom CSA. This week’s variety is shiitake.

Salad Turnips and Cucumbers with Garlic Scape Labneh

adapted from Ricardo Cuisine

Ingredients:

Labneh:

• ½ cup (125 ml) labneh, 10% plain yogurt or Greek yogurt

• 2 tsp garlic scapes, chopped (see note)

• ¼ tsp Espelette pepper

Dressing:

• ¼ cup (60 ml) olive oil

• 2 tbsp (30 ml) white wine vinegar

• 1 tbsp (15 ml) whole-grain mustard

• 1 tbsp (15 ml) maple syrup

• 1 tbsp poppy seeds

Turnips and Cucumbers:

• ½ lb (225 g) salad turnips with tops, scrubbed clean (see note)

• 3 slicing cucumbers (or 8 Persian cucumbers), halved lengthwise and cut diagonally into pieces ¾ inch (2 cm) long

• ¼ cup (10 g) purple or green basil leaves

Preparation:

Labneh:

In a bowl, combine all of the ingredients. Season with salt and pepper. Set aside in the refrigerator.

Dressing:

In another bowl, whisk together all of the ingredients. Season with salt and pepper. Set aside.

Turnips and Cucumbers:

1. Using a mandoline, thinly slice the turnips. Set the green tops aside.

2. Place the sliced turnips in a bowl of ice water. Let soak for 5 minutes or until very crunchy. Drain and dry on a clean dishcloth. Place in a large bowl.

3. Add the turnip tops, cucumbers and dressing to the bowl of sliced turnips. Season with salt and pepper. Mix well.

4. Spread the labneh out in a serving dish. Top with the salad. Sprinkle with the basil. Serve immediately.