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Week 7 from Valley Flora (early!)

Beet Box -

Week 7 from Valley Flora (early!) Purplette Onions! Zucchini!
Thanks for eating locally from our family farm!
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What's Cookin' at the Farm...
  • Purplettes and Zukes!
  • Flowers, Lovely Flowers!
  • Your Farmer Flew the Coop!
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What's In Your Share This Week:*
  • Purplette Onions
  • Broccoli
  • Head Lettuce
  • Strawberries
  • Fava Beans
  • Bunch Carrots
  • Collards
  • Zucchini
On Rotation:
(Some locations will receive it this week; others in a future week)
  • Possibly green cauliflower...
*Harvest Basket contents may vary between pickup sites in a given week depending on what's ripe and ready on the farm. Don't worry - if something is on the list but not in your tote, you'll get it soon!

The VF Crystal Ball - What Might be in your Share Next Week...
  • Carrots
  • Walla Walla Sweet Onions
  • Broccoli
  • Lettuce
  • Strawberries
  • Cilantro
  • Zucchini
  • Rainbow Chard
  • Red Cabbage
Purplettes and Zukes!
The first onions of the year are always confirmation that it's really, truly summer. These little purplette onions are a lovely teaser of what's to come for the rest of the season: pretty little purple onions give way to big, fat, sweet Walla Wallas, then torpedo-shaped Red Long of Tropea, more Walla Wallas (while the gettin' is good and onion ring season is high!), and then we'll rock steady with yellow and red storage onions and hifalutin shallots - deep into wintertime (in fact, we're still eating last year's shallots!). The purplettes are relatively mild - great eaten raw or cooked - and very pretty to boot. Store them in the fridge since they aren't a cured onion that will hold up on the counter.

Zucchini! It always starts so benignly - one or two glossy fruits proffered forth on a tame, orderly plant. And then...

But we aren't to the "and then..." part yet (the part, usually in August, when people are locking their car doors to keep neighbors from dumping overabundant zucchini-blimps into the backseat). No, we're still in that beautiful moment of anticipation - like the early days of a romance - when everything about zucchini is AMAZING! So enjoy it, any way you like it. Zucchini made my 8-year old's list of Top Five Favorite vegetables recently (especially when cooked in lots of butter). Let it be amongst your top five this week, too.
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Strawberries for all, hard-working horses, too!
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Flowers, Lovely Flowers!
Amelia's flower patch is in full bloom! The best is still to come in her flower CSA, (zinnias! dahlias! marigolds!), and she has prorated flower shares available if you'd like to join up. If you're looking for extra flowers for an event or special occasion, she's your gal. For all flower-related inquiries, reach out to her directly at clements.amelia@gmail.com or (914) 419-0413. 
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Your Farmer Flew the Coop!
Who says farmers can't go on vacation in the summer? Well, I did for the past eleven years, but we're breaking free of that paradigm this season and have set things up so that everyone on my crew is going to take a week off during peak summer craziness. Yours truly is going first (to test the theory that it's possible....), and in a few hours I'm loading up my kids and hubby and driving to Idaho to float the Salmon River for a week. I used to run rivers all the time in the summer - especially Idaho rivers - but then I hitched myself to this farming dream and have been tied down on Floras Creek every summer since. Not that it's a bad place to be tied down to, but there is a little part of my soul that also dwells in the Sawtooths and the Uintahs and the Wallowas and the Wasatch and every river that flows forth from those inland mountains, and it's high time I reunited with that little vestige of my former twenty-something self. Especially since I'm turning 40 in a week. What better place to celebrate than deep in the largest wilderness area in the Lower 48, pretending I'm 20!?

Which is all to say, I'm out this week! Amelia will be checking the email, so if you need to communicate that's the best way to get a message through while I'm gone (or call  the farm at 541-348-2229). I'll be back in the saddle on Wednesday, July 17th. You're in great hands; I've made a million lists that the crew probably doesn't even need and there's great summer food starting to pop in the fields (zucchinis for all this week!). So eat well, be good, have fun, and I'll be back with a newsletter on July 17th full of tales about black bears and huge wave trains and yellow jackets and sunburns. And I'm sure I'll be hungry for some veg after a week of rice and beans.
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The Farmstand is Open for Summer Hours!
 
Every Wednesday & Saturday
9 am to 2 pm
Rain or shine!

Fresh Produce
U-Pick Strawberries & Flowers
Homemade Jam & Hot Sauce

Please bring your own bags and u-pick containers if possible!

Directions to the Farm
For Recipes & Cooking Inspiration:
 
Valley Flora Recipe Wizard
Our own collection of recipes gathered over the years.
 
Epicurious
A vast collection of recipes, searchable by one or multiple ingredients
 
Full Belly Farm
Recipes from one of my favorite farms in California, pioneers of the organic movement since the 80s.

Farm Fresh to You
A storehouse of recipes, searchable by ingredient.
 
Helsing Junction Farm
A Washington farm that has a good collection of seasonal recipes geared toward CSA members.
Copyright © 2019 Valley Flora, All rights reserved.


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Week 6 from Valley Flora!

Beet Box -

Week 6 from Valley Flora! Fava Beans! Beets! Dill!
Thanks for eating locally from our family farm!
View this email in your browser
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What's Cookin' at the Farm...
  • Favas - Beets - Dill
  • Tamales this Week!
  • Delivery Van Woes
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What's In Your Share This Week:*
  • Cylindra Beets
  • Broccoli
  • Sugar Snap Peas
  • Head Lettuce
  • Strawberries
  • Dill
  • Fava Beans
  • Bunch Carrots
  • Red Ursa Kale
On Rotation:
(Some locations will receive it this week; others in a future week)
  • Broccolini
  • Possibly green cauliflower...
*Harvest Basket contents may vary between pickup sites in a given week depending on what's ripe and ready on the farm. Don't worry - if something is on the list but not in your tote, you'll get it soon!

The VF Crystal Ball - What Might be in your Share Next Week...
  • Carrots
  • Purplette Onions?
  • Broccoli
  • Lettuce
  • Strawberries
  • Basil?
  • Fava Beans
  • Zucchini
  • Collards?
  • Cucumbers?
  • Cauliflower?
Favas - Beets - Dill
Those of you who are familiar with fava beans probably know them more as a cover crop you plant in your garden in the fall, but you also know that after those those tall, grey-green plants bloom their ambrosial, bee-attracting bloom, they make big fat pods. And inside the cottony cushion of those pods (see above), are big fat beans wrapped in a light green skin. And if you peel away that light green skin (you can learn how to do this most efficiently here), you come to a bright green bean that is tender and delicious. Kind of a process, yes, but worth it. I'd approach the pile of favas in your tote  as a weekend adventure, when you have a little more time to play in the kitchen (and ideally have friends and family over to help you de-pod and de-skin them).

Once you get your beans prepped, the sky's the limit. Here's a gallery of recipes to stoke your creative juices: 19 Fava Bean Recipes from Epicurious.

The totes are getting a little less green and fluffy and a little more dense and coloful thanks to the root crops that are starting to size up on the farm. Beets for all this week! One thing I've learned after a decade of doing the CSA is that there are controversial vegetables and beets are one of them. Some of you will no doubt thrilled to see them this week and some of you will be downright disgusted. Studies show that in the case of kids, who always have strong opinions about food, it takes 20 tries before they will learn to like something that they are dead-set against eating. You might put yourself up to the 20-Try Challenge if you're wrinkling your nose at beets this week. And as a little aside, our raw beets are one of kids' favorite things when school groups come to the farm for fieldtrips each spring and fall and get to taste things in the field. If the second graders can do it (and love it), so can you! And of course, if all else fails, there's always chocolate beet cake (and it's even gluten free).
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Tamales this Week!
We'll be delivering tamale shares in marked blue coolers this week. Please only take tamales if you have signed up for them. Thanks!
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Delivery Van Woes
Some of you may have noticed the absence of the Valley Flora delivery van on the road these past few weeks. The timing chain went out three weeks ago and our mechanic has been beset by problems getting the parts to fix it. We've been cobbling it together with rented U-hauls and vans (a big thank you to Joe Pestana of Costpro Direct for letting us use his van on Saturdays, and to Amelia for her good-natured ability to take it as it comes on her Wednesday delivery route, which has been thoroughly upended the past three weeks!). If anyone has a spare van or box truck lying around that they want to rent to us until we resolve this problem, email me!
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The Farmstand is Open for Summer Hours!
 
Every Wednesday & Saturday
9 am to 2 pm
Rain or shine!

Fresh Produce
U-Pick Strawberries & Flowers
Homemade Jam & Hot Sauce

Please bring your own bags and u-pick containers if possible!

Directions to the Farm
For Recipes & Cooking Inspiration:
 
Valley Flora Recipe Wizard
Our own collection of recipes gathered over the years.
 
Epicurious
A vast collection of recipes, searchable by one or multiple ingredients
 
Full Belly Farm
Recipes from one of my favorite farms in California, pioneers of the organic movement since the 80s.

Farm Fresh to You
A storehouse of recipes, searchable by ingredient.
 
Helsing Junction Farm
A Washington farm that has a good collection of seasonal recipes geared toward CSA members.
Copyright © 2019 Valley Flora, All rights reserved.


unsubscribe from this list    update subscription preferences 

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