CSA Week 2 and Farm Stand Updates

It was great to welcome our CSA members back to the farm last week! In terms of farm work there’s not much to report - it was a blur of harvest, rinse, fill the coolers, display, stock, empty the coolers, and wash out all the bins! We fit in planting any afternoon we could and managed to get some winter squash, sweet potatoes, celery and cucumbers in the ground. Both the vegetables and the weeds took off in the heat and rain (yay for timely rain!) last week so this week we have a great crop selection which we will harvest as quickly as possible in the mornings to get to weeding, cultivating and planting for the rest of the day! We hope you enjoy what is likely our last week of strawberries in the CSA and farm store. While we know this is a farm favorite, we have other highlights yet to come including the first carrots of the season next week!

In the CSA this week:

• Cucumbers! From our high tunnel.

• Green garlic - To use this early garlic, chop the whole bulb and the tender part of the stem.

• Fennel - These are grown on the outside edges of our cucumber high tunnel! We grow this planting in our high tunnel to get it as early as possible. These bulbs are also bigger than what we typically can grow in the field!

• Swiss chard - We grow a variety called Bright Lights for it’s colorful stems! This can be used instead of spinach when a recipe calls for cooked spinach, as they are in the same family.

• Yukina Savoy- This is a brassica green with a very mild flavor (as opposed to spicy arugula!). It can be used in place of raw spinach.

• Beets

• Kohlrabi

• Radishes

• Salad turnips

• Mini daikon radish

• Lettuce - We’ll have romaine, butterhead, panisse (oakleaf) and green and red leaf lettuce available.

• Salanova lettuce mix

• Arugula

• Kale

• Red Russian kale or red mizuna

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! All beds are producing. They are particularly plentiful at the back of the beds.

• Sugar Snap Peas or Shelling Peas - We hope to have a choice for members each day. These are in two different fields this year. Shelling peas are big sweet peas that must be “shelled,” which means you remove their pod.

In the farm store:

In addition to the items listed in the CSA, we will also have bok choi, scallions, seedlings, and our first ever crop of European thin skinned cucumbers (we are trying them out in our high tunnel as a result of customer requests!). We will also have mushrooms from Fat Moon Farm and eggs from Codman Farm. We will be harvesting some strawberries for the store most days.

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 8: It is week 8 of our 10-week spring Mushroom CSA from Fat Moon Farm and this week’s mushrooms are shiitake and chestnuts. 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.

Garlicky Swiss Chard

By Melissa Clark, from NY Times Cooking

Serve it as a side to any roasted or grilled meat, or over a mound of creamy polenta that's been crowned with a fried egg.

Ingredients

• 2 bunches Swiss chard, stems removed

• 1 tablespoon olive oil

• 2 garlic cloves, minced (or dice up one bunch of green garlic!)

• Large pinch crushed red pepper flakes

• Salt

Preparation

1. Stack chard leaves on top of one another (you can make several piles) and slice them into 1/4-inch strips.

2. Heat oil in a very large skillet (or use a soup pot). Add garlic and red pepper flakes and sauté for 30 seconds, until garlic is fragrant. Stir in the chard, coating it in oil. Cover pan and let cook for about 2 minutes, until chard is wilted. Uncover, stir and cook for 2 minutes longer. Season with salt.

Pickled Daikon

from Just One Cookbook

Ingredients 

• 1 lb daikon radish

• 1 dried red chili pepper

• 2 Tbsp rice vinegar (unseasoned)

• 1 tsp sake (optional)

• 1 Tbsp kosher salt (Diamond Crystal; use half for table salt)

• ⅓ cup sugar

Instructions 

1. Gather all the ingredients.

2. Peel daikon and cut into ¼ inch (6 mm) slices.

3. Cut the chili peppers into small pieces and discard the seeds if you prefer less spicy.

4. Put all the ingredients in a resealable plastic bag and rub well.

5. Remove the air from the bag and close it. You can start enjoying it after 2-3 hours.

To store: You can keep the pickles in the refrigerator for a month. When the flavor is getting strong, remove the solution and store the pickles in an airtight container.

CSA Week 1 and Farm stand updates!

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 

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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

1. Take the cooked rice out of the refrigerator, and set it aside at room temperature.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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.

The farm stand is staffed this week!

Farm to-do lists this time of year can look a bit out of control. They usually read something to the effect of “plant and weed everything!” We can also add to that list “irrigate everything,” as well as picking Colorado potato beetles off the potato plants (it takes the whole week to get through all the beds, only to need to restart again the next week). Next week, we’ll be adding “harvest everything” to the list, as the CSA starts up Tuesday June 7th! We are pretty proud that we’ve come as close as we ever have to keeping up with the non-stop tasks, thanks in large part to having so many returning crew members able to jump right into familiar tasks.

The farm stand is staffed this week, so we spent a large portion of our Monday organizing, cleaning and setting up the farm stand. This now means that in addition to Barrett’s Bucks and checks we can take credit card and EBT payments, and we can also make change for cash purchases. We will continue to have online pre-ordering as well. Pick-ups will be available for Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, with ordering opening the day before pick-up starting at 6pm (so if you are ordering for Friday pick-up, ordering will open at 6pm on Thursday).

Farm Store Hours:

Tuesday-Friday 11am - 6pm
Saturday 9am - 3pm

To order online visit: https://openfoodnetwork.net/barrett-s-mill-farm/shop#/shop

Available this week:

• Asparagus - this is probably the last week that we’ll be harvesting.

• Sugar snap peas

• Salanova lettuce mix

• Spinach

• Salad turnips

• Strawberries - We’ve had a high percentage of deformed fruit in the patch that we planted for the store, possibly from the flowers being exposed to colder than expected overnight temperatures several weeks ago (the CSA PYO strawberry patch was not flowering during this cold snap, so doesn’t appear to have this problem). We’re hoping that this week we’ll start to see more fruit coming from flowers that were not blooming during this period and that we will be able to harvest again for the store. We unfortunately do not know which days we will have strawberries available.

• Bok Choi - available later in the week

• Fat Moon Mushrooms - Farmers’ Mix 8oz bags and shiitake pints.

• Flowers - Stock (a beautiful fragrant flower grown in our high tunnel) and Sweet William.

• Herb seedlings: Basil, oregano, thyme. All suitable for container or garden planting. $4/plant

• Other seedlings: Cherry tomatoes (Jasper, Cherry Bomb, Sungold, Red Pearl grape), Slicing tomatoes (Big Beef), Heirloom tomatoes (Pineapple and Pruden’s Purple), Hot peppers (Red Ember cayenne, Jalapeño) and Eggplant (Michal).

Spring Mushroom CSA Week 6: It is week 6 of our 10-week spring Mushroom CSA from Fat Moon Farm and this week’s mushrooms are a 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 from our cooler for you! We do still suggest a Tuesday or Wednesday pick-up for the freshest possible mushrooms.

This week in the farm stand

The heat over the weekend was intense, but thanks to some focused work setting up irrigation over the course of several days, we were able to run irrigation all day Sunday to keep our lettuce, greens and spinach from withering. While we don’t particularly enjoy that type of hot weather, there is an upside. Those of you who came to the farm stand Friday late morning were in for a treat - we had the first strawberries of the season, and the sun and heat of the weekend ripened up more for this week! Strawberries are one of our most popular items, with demand always outstripping supply, so we ask customers to respect posted limits on berries this week so that we can ensure as many people as possible can enjoy them!

The farm stand continues to be self-serve, so please bring exact change or your checkbook if you are not a Barrett’s Bucks member. This will be the last week of self-serve. Starting May 31st the farm stand will be fully staffed and we will be able to make change and accept credit card and EBT payments. In the meantime, in order to make it easier for cash customers to bring exact change we are posting the prices below.

We will also continue to have pre-ordering available this week. Going forward, pick-ups will be available for Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, with ordering opening the day before pick-up starting at 6pm (so if you are ordering for Friday pick-up, ordering will open at 6pm on Thursday).

To order visit: https://openfoodnetwork.net/barrett-s-mill-farm/shop#/shop

Walk-up sales available Tuesday-Friday 11am - 6pm and Saturday 9am - 3pm

Available for in-person and pre-orders:

• Asparagus - Harvests have been solid, so we anticipate having plenty for everyone most of the week! $5/bunch

• Strawberries - Because it is hard to predict quantities for the following day, these will mostly be available for walk-up sales, but we may also make a limited supply available for pre-order. Please respect the posted limit. Our online ordering system doesn’t automatically cut you off if you order above the limit, so we will only honor orders up to that posted limit. $6/pint

• Spinach - $6/half pound bag

• Mini daikon - $3/bunch

• Bok Choi - $3/head

• Fat Moon Mushrooms - Farmers’ Mix 8oz bags. Available Thursday after 2pm. $9.50/bag

• Flowers - Stock (a beautiful fragrant flower grown in our high tunnel). $15/bouquet

• Herb seedlings: Basil, oregano, sage, thyme. All suitable for container or garden planting. $4/plant

• Other seedlings: Cherry tomatoes (Jasper and Cherry Bomb, with some Sungolds available at the end of the week), Slicing tomatoes (Big Beef), Heirloom tomatoes (Pineapple and Pruden’s Purple), Eggplant (Michal). $5/plant

Spring Mushroom CSA Week 5: It is week 5 of our 10-week spring Mushroom CSA from Fat Moon Farm! Mushroom CSA pick up is Tuesday 11am-6pm. Please email Melissa if you would like us to leave out your mushrooms after 6pm or if you would like us to leave them out for you on a different day this week. This week’s mushrooms are Lion’s Mane! The

Update on walk-up and online ordering hours for this week

With the upcoming weekend heat we are adjusting our Saturday hours (for May 21st). For walk up sales for the remainder of the week we are open Wednesday, Thursday and Friday 11am-6pm and Saturday 9am-Noon. Right now for walk-up sales we have asparagus bunches, tulip bunches, bags of spinach (the first of the season!), and assorted herb and tomato seedlings. Our farm stand is currently self-serve so please bring exact change.

Ordering is open now for Friday May 20th and Saturday May 21st pick-ups! Pick up options are Friday 2pm-4pm and 4pm-6pm and Saturday 10am-Noon (earlier than usual to beat the heat!). Online ordering is available for asparagus, spinach, mushrooms from Fat Moon Farm, and herb and tomato seedlings. Ordering is open to the public and is a great way to make sure we have what you want available when you arrive to pick-up! To order visit: https://openfoodnetwork.net/barrett-s-mill-farm/shop#/shop