Holy OnionTomatoesCukeBeetCabbage Batman!
Whoa, dense food!

This week's tote is a crescendo of some things late, some things early and others right on time. Tomatoes: early. Beets and Walla Wallas: late. Red Cabbage: spot on.

All I could see while we were packing Harvest Baskets yesterday was a chopped salad with tomatoes and cucumber and carrots and Walla Wallas - some iteration of Greek salad. It's one of my favorite things to eat and as a result I anticipate and crave this collision of farm food all year. It's the kind of of salad that can easily become a stand-alone dinner, especially if you pump it up with some nuts, or beans or cheese to give it more protein oompf.

Chef and cookbook author Yotam Ottolenghi really made me fall in love with the idea thanks to this recipe: Spiced Chickpea with Fresh Vegetable Salad. I improvise everytime I make it, adding whatever choppable veg I have on hand, and usually omitting the radishes since I never have them growing on the farm at the same time as cucumbers and tomatoes. The spiced chickpeas are addictive. Come eggplant time (soon!), I like to broil eggplant slabs, chop them up and add them to the salad as well. If you don't own any of Ottolenghi's cookbooks, this is the right season to buy one (or four). Jerusalem is a great place to start. He excels at all things vegetable (and meat) and will teach you how to make a mean shawarma.
 

Happy Solstice: Crunchy Veg!
A lot can happen in a weekend! In a few short (long) days our broccoli went kaboom, our next round of peas swelled noticeably, the conehead green cabbages filled out, the carrots sized up, and shades of pink started developing in the new strawberry patch (= berries soon!). My farming self esteem always bumps up a notch once we have carrots to share with you, because whereas you might be eating your kale and braising mix dutifully each week, I bet you're going to devour your fresh bunch carrots gleefully. We're all human after all, hard-wired to love the sweet stuff. The carrots are also an indicator of other crunchy things to come, like beets and cauliflower, and yes, those pointy green cabbages in your tote this week (great for slaw, super tender and sweet).

There's also a bag of sunflower shoots for everyone this week. Our winter CSA members will know what to do with them, but if this is your first try I have a couple tips. My favorite way to eat them is raw in salads (give them a rinse and a spin dry first). For some reason they are especially good with avocado. They also make beautiful garnish on any kind of dish, like potato salad, fish tacos, or try this Miso-Glazed Black Cod on Sunflower Shoots.

My guess is that the fish would go great with this spin on broccolini/broccoli: Broccolini with Spicy Sesame Vinaigrette.

Enjoy the crunch, and the longest day of the year tomorrow!

Three Things You Should Do This Week:
It's that happy time of year again....here comes the fresh produce! We're excited to bring you your first CSA delivery this week. It's also the week that I brace myself for the barrage of emails and phone calls about salad shares gone missing and egg share mix-ups. Most of the mishaps during our CSA season happen the very first week due to confusion at pickup sites. Please do your very best to only go home with the food you signed up for this week!

Here are three very simple things you can do this week to ensure it all goes smoothly:

1. Read this newlsetter before you pick up your CSA share on Wednesday or Saturday! It has some key info that everyone needs to know for CSA pickups to go smoothly.
2. Read all the labels and signage at your pickup site this week. We try our best to label things clearly in hopes of preventing any mix ups.
3. Read the pickup instructions for your specific site on our website. There's important info listed there, like what time your pickup site starts and who to call if you can't make it to your pickup in time.

• Do check your name off the list at your pickup site each week.
• Do pack your veggies into your own bags and leave the tote and lid at your pickup site in a tidy stack.
• Do ask other CSA members about any produce you're not familiar with - about 80% of our CSA members are returning veterans and know their veggies! They can help you figure out what to do with that kohlrabi! So can the internet, cookbooks, and this newsletter. Never fear!
• If you are splitting a share, don't leave a partial share in a tote for your CSA partner to pick up later. Please pack the produce into your own bags. More than once an unsuspecting CSA member has ended up with someone's half share and emailed me wondering why the head lettuce was cut down the middle. :)

• Don't take a salad share from the marked red coolers if you didn't sign up for one!
• Do pay attention to the lists on the coolers and the labels on individual bags. Full pound shares are labeled with members' names; half pound shares are unlabeled. All Salad Share members are listed on the cooler lid. Double-triple check before you take that bag of greens home!

• Do make sure you take home the dozen or half dozen with your name on it! All eggs are labeled with last names.

• The first tamale shares will go out NEXT week, the week of June 4th.
• Do make sure you take home the tamales with your name on them! All Tamale Shares are labeled.

• Flower Shares will begin at the end of June or early July...

The Last Week!

Almost-December Surprises

ucurbits contain a group of chemicals called cucubitacins. It is these cucurbitacins that are responsible for squash that is bitter tasting. The higher the levels of cucubitacin, the more bitter the squash will taste. The most likely cause for a bitter taste in squash is due to an environmental stress of some sort, most likely a wide temperature flux or irregular irrigation.

Read more at Gardening Know How: Squash Is Bitter Tasting: Reasons For Bitter Squash Taste https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/edible/vegetables/squash/bitter-tasting-squash.htm

Cucurbits contain a group of chemicals called cucubitacins. It is these cucurbitacins that are responsible for squash that is bitter tasting. The higher the levels of cucubitacin, the more bitter the squash will taste. The most likely cause for a bitter taste in squash is due to an environmental stress of some sort, most likely a wide temperature flux or irregular irrigation

Read more at Gardening Know How: Squash Is Bitter Tasting: Reasons For Bitter Squash Taste https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/edible/vegetables/squash/bitter-tasting-squash.htm

Cucurbits contain a group of chemicals called cucubitacins. It is these cucurbitacins that are responsible for squash that is bitter tasting. The higher the levels of cucubitacin, the more bitter the squash will taste. The most likely cause for a bitter taste in squash is due to an environmental stress of some sort, most likely a wide temperature flux or irregular irrigation

Read more at Gardening Know How: Squash Is Bitter Tasting: Reasons For Bitter Squash Taste https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/edible/vegetables/squash/bitter-tasting-squash.htm

All CSA Pick-Ups are Today!!!

• Coos Bay: No change (12-5 pm)
• Valley Flora: No change (9 am -4 pm)
• Port Orford: 10 am - 5 pm
• Bandon: 10:30 am through the weekend (open-ended pickup, but we always encourage you to get your food ASAP).

The Scurry Before the Rain...
October is reminiscent of spring in many ways: green shoots of grass popping up; Hakurei turnips in your CSA share; the compulsive need to check the weather forecast three times a day. Not unlike springtime, there is so much to do that depends on good weather - and on good rain - that we live and plan by the 10-day forecast. This week we have been scurrying ahead of today's storm to get orchard fruit picked before the south winds knock it all down, to prep ground for cover cropping (tearing out spent cash crops like zucchini, eggplant, strawberries and salad greens to make space for winter cover crops), rolling up drip tape, bringing in sprinkler pipes, digging potatoes, and perhaps most importantly - seeding our winter cover crops on every bare corner of the farm and rolling them in with our antique horsedrawn cultipacker. The transition from the farm's summer appearance to its fall-winter look is abrupt at this time of year. The space we are harvesting from gets smaller every week and the bare ground expands. With this perfectly timed rain, we should see acres of cover crop greening up the farm by next week.

The one significant difference about fall and spring is that the scurrying takes place with the full, luxurious knowledge that these urgent bursts of activity are some of the last big to-do's before we wind down into a slower time of year on the farm: winter! Every farmer's favorite season!  And every farmer's husband's favorite season, right Danny :) ?

My husband really does put up with a lot: a wife who barely fits the definition of one; who stays out late almost every night from May through October (at least I'm in the field not at the bar); who comes home grubby and doesn't wear perfume (although I personally LOVE the eau de parfum of horse sweat); and who leaves most of the cooking to him during the busiest months (albeit he gets to use some pretty nice produce that I had a thing or two to do with....). He's not a farmer so it's probably a longshot that he'll ever fully understand this life that I am so in love with, and will probably continue to chafe at the fact that we will never eat dinner by six pm, and feel frustration at the fact that the weather forecast trumps everything in our lives. Given all that, thank you, Danny, for all the waiting you have done over the years, and for bending to the seasons that have me so fully in their grip. I hope you will continue to put up with me.