Turkey Hill CSA Newsletter - Week 3
Important Notes From the Farm
A bunch of little notes this week. First of all, I wanted to mention that we have our own farm eggs for sale at $3.75/dozen. Farm pickup members can just get these when they come (put money/check in the cash box), delivery customers - let me know ahead of time (email or call) if you want eggs and I will get them in your tote. We have a limited supply, so its first come, first serve.
Varieties varieties varieties!
Beets: This week we are getting into the full patch of beets and I wanted to mention the varieties. Most of last week's beets were called 'Pablo' - a specialty beet grown especially for baby sized picking (very dark red and succulent). We also picked a little bit of the Golden and new this year Yellow beets. We'll have lots more of both of these types this week, as well as the standard 'Red Ace' which is a scarlet red and is the classic beet and we will have Chiooggias - these look pink on the outside, but slices horizontally reveal candy cane stripe red/white circles. One caveat - these colors pretty much disappear when the beet boiled, so consider some thin slices fresh as a garnish or on a salad. Finally, we also grow 'Forno' a cylindrical shaped beet thats also dark red, and fun to cook with because of its shape.
Lettuce: last week we picked the 1st lettuce crop, a succulent crisp head called 'blonde de paris'. this week i'm moving into a new patch that includes green butter heads, red butter, green romaine, red lollo (frilly red) and a beautiful green romaine with red speckles. More varieties to come! We pick some of these very small so they won't get bitter and package them 2-3 to a sleeve.
Chard: This year we have 6 or more individual colors planted, including yellow, golden, green, red, crimson, lipstick and orange. next week we will start mixing these into colorful bunches, for now the leaves are too small to bunch so we are bagging the chard.
Carrots: This week we are starting to pick the 4" long 'kinko' carrots, and some of the deep red 'cosmic purple' type. these make a great early carrot combo, and we have many other varieties to come.
More Notes:
Our very first planting of peas was eaten by a flock of birds and we are just getting into the next patch. we should have peas for the boxes next week. we start with the edible pod sugar snap and snow peas, then go to shelling peas a bit later. Its getting HOT out and this means summer is here, but we still have a few more weeks of spring crops before the next wave of items comes in. Typically August and September are our most bountiful months, and its not even July yet! A note to marble/redstone customers: because your thursday delivery comes earlier in the week than the rest of the csa members, you may get a slightly different mix of items than the other areas.
This time of the year is a bit of a lull before the storm. A fun way to get an idea of what will be coming in over the next 3 or 6 weeks is to scan through the emails i sent out last year, which are organized by date on the blog. week three this year equates to week 1 last year (we started two weeks earlier than in any previous year this year) -
Time for a salad
Make the most of all the succulent spring greens while we have them! The next few weeks will be a bit HEAVY on the lettuce, and part of a CSA is eating whats bountiful, so make the most of the season by eating salad regularly. Lettuce (but not the salad mix) will taper off later in the season, so enjoy it while its here!
Questions and Answers
Please send me your questions, let me know what you want to know!Send me your questions! Need a recipe? We have a recipe page on the website, or try allrecipes.com. Want to know when a certain vegetable is coming in? confused about something in your box? email me!
This Week's Box
Salad Mix - we'll try to have this mix every week
Fruit
NEW: cherries 'Brooke' cherries from First Fruits, Paonia CO
