Orange Food

The carrots are here! Orange, sweet, and so unlike grocery store carrots. Every year I look forward to them with a special anticipation, and once they have finally fattened up to a harvestable size, a sense of calm relief comes over me. They mark a turn in our farming season, towards heavier, more substantial foods. More roots; more heft in your tote each week; more color to offset all the green; a reliable, universally-appreciated crop that sees us all the way through December and beyond.

Most likely there will be carrots in your share from now until you get your last Harvest Basket. For me, it’s great to have a staple vegetable that I can count on like that – and one that few people tire of.  The task of deciding what should go into your Harvest Baskets each week is somewhat of a juggling act: I do a fieldwalk to decide what to harvest for your share, and hopefully what’s ready on the farm will come together in the totes with a reasonable balance of greens, roots, berries, herbs, and seasonal showcase veggies like tomatoes (in a few weeks), or this week’s neon cauliflower. In the first six weeks of the season, the share is always heavier on the greens, which mature more quickly than slow-growing roots. Beets are one of the root crops that come on fairly early, but I’ve learned over the years that I can’t give those out every week unless I want to incite a veggie revolt. So, we wait patiently for carrots.

Each spring I optimistically sow them outdoors in the field, starting in April and planting a new bed every two weeks. And each spring, despite elaborate attempts to cover them with row cover and nurse them along, all of my early plantings fail completely due to a combo of cold soil temperatures and voracious slugs. It’s not until about mid-may when finally the soil temperature is warm enough to get good germination, and perhaps by then the slugs are distracted by all the other crops in the ground. For four years now, I have hoped for mid-July carrots, but it seems we never really have them until early August. But once we have them, we have them in spades, week after week. They become a base note in the Harvest Basket, attended by other ever-changing produce that comes and goes on the farm throughout the year.

I hope you enjoy your inaugural carrot share. There will be plenty more to come.

New Recipes

A couple CSA members have sent me some of their tried and true recipes over the past week, which I’ve posted on the recipe exchange: http://www.valleyflorafarm.com/forum/4

yum!

In your share this week:

• Head Lettuce
• Strawberries
• Purplette Onions           
• Broccoli
• Carrots
• Cucumbers
• Zucchini

On Rotation:

• Very Colorful Cauliflower!

Kitchen Tips

Don’t forget to visit the Recipe Wizard to find ingredient-specific recipes, or go to the Recipe Exchange if you have a recipe you’d like to share with everyone!

Please note: all of our produce is field-rinsed, not washed. We recommend you wash all of your produce before eating it.

Purplette Onions

You got these last week, and hopefully you figured out how to eat them in the absence of any newsletter pointers. They are a wonderful, pretty, spring onion. We harvest them fresh with still-green tops, before they have cured. Normally when you buy onions, they are not in the refrigerated section of the produce aisle, they don’t have green tops, and they have a papery skin. That’s a “cured” onion, meaning it will store for quite awhile unrefrigerated. The purplettes, on the other hand, need refrigeration. They are mild and juicy and you can use the green top like a green onion. Use the bulb raw in salads, or sautéed in any dish.

Storage: Plastic bag, fridge. The bulb will hold longer than the green tops – many weeks – so top them and store separately if you don’t use them within a week.

Cauliflower, with Pizazz

Last year I trialed three cauliflowers: a white, a purple, and an orange. Usually the fancy-pants varieties (i.e. the purple and orange) don’t do as well as your good ol’ reliable plain jane varieties. But not so with these cauliflowers. The orange and purple (named Cheddar and Graffiti, respectively), outperformed the white (ironically named “Amazing”). As a result, there’s no white cauliflower on the farm this year; only 80’s neon colors. You should get one or the other in the next couple of weeks as they mature.

The flavor is much the same as regular cauliflower. If you get a Cheddar head, the orange color becomes even brighter when lightly cooked. The purple will also hold its color when cooked, but is bolder when raw. Makes a lovely splash on a platter of raw veggies and dip.

Storage: Will last a week or more in a plastic bag in the fridge.

Farm Fact of the Week:

All of the food you are enjoying now is the product of a full month of in-depth wintertime planning. I spend almost all of January in front of my computer, tweaking a huge complex of excel spreadsheets in order to craft a crop plan that will deliver cauliflower on the week of August 8^th (right on time this year!), potatoes every 3 weeks starting in July, and enough broccoli to feed an army (or in this case 106 Harvest Basket members) in the summer and fall. By the end of January, I have multiple spreadsheets that constitute the blueprint for the season – one for greenhouse seeding; one for field tillage; one for direct seeding and transplanting; one for the projected CSA share; and a slew of field maps. From that point on, we use them to make up our weekly to-do lists. It’s a huge help to do most of the thinking and planning in the quiet winter months, so that once the frenzy of the growing season is upon us we can mostly “do” instead of stopping to figure out what we should do.

Local Abundance

Pasture-raised eggs and broilers. Grass-finished beef. Raw honey. Fresh produce. Heritage turkeys. Organic blueberries.

You name it, and these days Langlois has it. The turn towards eating locally has enabled a cluster of local food businesses and farms to gain a beloved foothold in our tiny town. It means that on any given night, we often look at our plates and can count the number of “food miles” that our dinner traveled on one, maybe two, hands. Here’s a run-down of some of the farmers who fill the corner of our plate that isn’t heaped with veggies:

Joe Pestana, Oregon Grassfed

Joe raises grass-finished, dry-aged beef on his family’s ranch on the Sixes River. It’s an incredible product – flavorful, tender, and as healthy as beef gets. You can buy just about any cut, plus ground beef, at the Langlois Market or at any Ray’s Food Place from Bandon to Brookings. Joe is also often at the Port Orford Farmers Market on Saturday mornings.

http://www.oregongrassfed.com/

Candace Carnahan, Carnahan Livestock

Candace is raising pastured eggs and broilers on Floras Creek, just downstream from Valley Flora. Her flock of layers has just started producing the most delicious, orange-yolked eggs you’ll ever eat. You can buy eggs by the dozen at our farmstand most Wednesdays and Saturdays, and at the Port Orford Farmers Market on Saturday mornings. Her broilers are available by special order; let us know if you'd like her email.

Lee & Jack Lawrence, Lee’s Bees

Jack and Lee have become famous for their array of raw, unfiltered honeys. Lee has hives locally and throughout Oregon. She hand-harvests artisan batches of honey including Local Wildflower, Blueberry, Fireweed, and the out-of-this-world Meadowfoam (tastes like a combo of root beer and marshmallows). Her honey is available at many businesses in Langlois (B&B Farm Supply, LaLaBelle’s, Langlois Market, Valley Flora farmstand), as well as the Port Orford Farmers Market, Well Within Acupuncture Clinic in Bandon, and online.

http://www.leesbeeshoney.com

Warren & Andrea Bowden, Common Ground Farm Blueberries; John & Nancy Jensen, Jensen Organic Blueberries; Charlie Valentine

Blueberry season is almost upon us, and in my opinion there is nothing better than picking your own. We usually put upwards of 40 pounds of blueberries in our freezer each year, so fortunately for us there are no less than three u-pick blueberry farms in and near Langlois. Common Ground is just north of town: 94319 Bono Road, 541-348-2179. Jensen’s is a few miles south at mile post 291: 46760 Highway 101 South, 541-348-2473. Charlie Valentine has a young 7-acre field of berries that has just started producing this season: Look for the sign at Sydnam Lane, about 3 miles north of Langlois.

In your share this week:

• Head Lettuce
• Strawberries
• Scallions
• Snap peas
• Fennel
• Cilantro

On Rotation:

• Spinach
• Zucchini
• Cucumbers

Kitchen Tips

Don’t forget to visit the Recipe Wizard to find ingredient-specific recipes, or go to the Recipe Exchange if you have a recipe you’d like to share with everyone!

Please note: all of our produce is field-rinsed, not washed. We recommend you wash all of your produce before eating it.

Scallions

This is the first time I’ve grown scallions for the CSA. I was motivated by a desire to have an early allium – some kind of onion that would come on sooner in the season than the Purplettes (that mild, purple fresh onion that so many of you love). I seeded these scallions back in April at the same time we were transplanting all of our onions into the field from the greenhouse. As it turns out, the scallions have matured almost neck-and-neck with the Purplettes, which you’ll be seeing in your tote next week. So much for an earlier allium, but at least it’s something new and different in the line-up.

These scallions are more green top than they are white stalk (I suppose next year we ought to hill them to blanch those stems!), but there is still plenty of flavor there.

Last weekend I stopped in for our ritual libation at LaLaBelle’s (Langlois’ very own coffee and variety shoppe, open weekends 8-3…where most of us descend on Saturday mornings for the best homemade cinnamon rolls on earth!). Dawn, the owner and chef extraordinaire, had made a fresh pea soup with mint, crème fraiche, and scallions. She wouldn’t share her secret recipe, but all I can say is this: it was the best soup I have eaten in a long, long time. Maybe ever even. Dawn is a Harvest Basket member and had used some Valley Flora snap peas in the soup. Unfortunately she is on vacation this week, so she won’t be able to make it again with Valley Flora peas AND scallions, but I’d encourage you to plumb the depths of your recipe books and the internet to see if you can come up with a recipe that might yield such a smooth, bright green, mouth-watering soup. And if you find one, will you send it to me? Me oh my oh yumminess.

Storage: Plastic bag, fridge, up to a week before the greens start to get slimy.

Baby Fennel

In the first couple years of Harvest Baskets, I was on a crusade to turn as many people as I could into fennel appreciators. I myself love fennel. What I learned is that lots of folks like fennel, but just as many don’t – and never will. And no matter how many times I put it in your totes in a season, they fennel-haters aren’t going to change their mind. They are just going to keep feeding it to their cows, or their compost bins.

I wouldn’t say I’ve given up on converting people into adoring fennel-ites, but I have perhaps become more realistic in my expectations. Instead of five fennel plantings, there are only three this year, and this first one is rather petite. If it’s your first encounter with fennel, you can expect a mildly licorice-like flavor and a celery-like texture. You can eat fennel raw, sliced thinly into salads, or you can cook it. Steaming it is the simplest way, but it’s also great chopped into pasta sauce, added to soup, or braised and served alongside fish. The Italians love this stuff; it's as common in their grocery stores as iceberg lettuce is in ours.

Cut it lengthwise, then cut it into slices cross-wise. Work around the woody core that resembles a cabbage core. Enjoy the lacy tops as a dill substitute for a little added herbal flavor.

Storage: Top the bulbs and they will last in a plastic bag in the fridge for weeks. The greens will last up to a week in a plastic bag in the fridge.

The basil crop is coming on strong and we finally have enough to offer it in bulk to those of you who love it! There's nothing better than thawing out some homemade pesto in the middle of winter!

Bulk Basil Details:

• $14/pound - primo tops only, no stem!
• Available in 1 pound increments only. We will fill orders as the basil is available and will contact you when your order is ready.
• We will deliver your order to your pickup site in a marked bag.

To Order, email us:

• Your name
• Your pickup location
• Your phone number
• The quantity of basil you would like, in one pound increments.

Payment:

• We will be in touch with payment details once your order has been filled.

We will likely have basil all summer, but there may be some lulls in production here and there. We'll do our best to fill your order as quickly as possible.

The Reality and Reward of Eating Seasonally

Radishes again?!?!!!

I kept imagining that refrain as you opened up your totes this week, to once more find kale, broccoli, hakurei turnips, lettuce, radishes, and strawberries in there – which by now, are familiar friends (or foes) in your weekly Harvest Basket. Usually at this point in the season, there are some folks who have reached their “fed up” point – enough with the greens and spicy roots already! Bring on the summer food!

Well, the good news is that the summer food is coming: cukes, zukes, snap peas, new potatoes, beets, and more (and yes, this is the LAST week of radishes until fall!). Most likely you’ll see a few of those new summery crops in your tote next week, thanks to the recent blast of sunshine and heat.

But we hope you don’t say goodbye to the past month of greens-heavy Harvest Baskets with disgust. If nothing else, the food you’ve been receiving for the past few weeks is exactly what grows – and grows well – at this point in the year (not to mention the fact that nutrient-dense greens are considered the perfect thing to cleanse and fortify the body after a long fresh-veggie-deprived winter). And that’s part of what CSA – community supported agriculture - is all about: experiencing what it means to eat locally and seasonally.

I suppose we could put cherry tomatoes in your totes in June, if we wanted to import them from Mexico, but that would negate much of what we’re trying to achieve on our family farm: reducing the number of miles from farm to fork; helping our eaters understand what kind of food grows on the southcoast of Oregon, and when; and making sure that whatever you get from the farm was picked at its peak of flavor and freshness.

As a result, when you sign up with Valley Flora you’re signing up for an experience marked both by abundance and, yes, limitation (how un-American!). We aren’t a supermarket that offers every kind of fruit and vegetable every week of the year; we’re a physical farm, tended by real people, within the constraints of a specific climate, weather, latitude, ecosystem, soil, and water supply. It means that most of the time you can’t have it all: tomatoes in February or radishes in August. There are limitations on our farm, and on our local food supply.

But what you can have is exactly whatever is in its prime and at its peak here on Floras Creek. And if you like to preserve food by canning, freezing, or drying, you’ll be able to enjoy summertime tomatoes next winter after all.

We’ve found after years of growing and eating our own food year-round, our bodies crave exactly what is in season at any given point of the year. We eat kale and winter squash for 3 months straight through the winter, and for some reason never tire of it. By August we are salivating for a fresh tomato; but come November we’re kinda over them and ready for hearty winter food again. The fact that we can’t have it all, all the time, reminds us to savor and celebrate the fresh food that is in season – because before we know it, it’s gone again.

Hopefully you can taste the difference that fresh, local and seasonal makes - and hopefully that flavor is enough to convince you that some things are worth waiting for, and other things are worth putting up with…:)

On that note, enjoy your last little spicy pile of amethyst radishes this week!

Reminder: Tamale Shares are going out this week! Tamales will be delivered to pick-up sites in marked coolers. PLEASE DO NOT TAKE TAMALES unless you have signed up for them and your name is on the list on the cooler!

In your share this week:

Arugula or Braising Mix

Broccoli

Red Ursa Kale

Head Lettuce

Strawberries

Amethyst Radishes

Hakurei turnips

On Rotation:

Kohlrabi

Raspberries

Kitchen Tips

Don’t forget to visit the Recipe Wizard to find ingredient-specific recipes, or go to the Recipe Exchange if you have a recipe you’d like to share with everyone!

Please note: all of our produce is field-rinsed, not washed. We recommend you wash all of your produce before eating it.

Amethyst Radishes

I had to grow these this year, for the color alone. They are a spicy radish, which is partly the variety itself and partly the fact that they have grown through some warm weather. Heat brings up the heat in a radish root. Remember, you can always tone down the picante factor by peeling them; all the spice is in the pretty skin.

Storage: keep in the fridge, in a plastic bag; greens will store a few days to a week; the roots, if topped, will store for weeks.

Farm Fact of the Week:

All combined, the farm drinks up about 100,000 gallons of water per week to irrigate all our crops. Vegetables and berries are mostly water! We draw our water from Floras Creek, via a state water right. We use drip irrigation on more than half of our acreage in order to make the most efficient use of this precious resource, and to leave as much water as possible in the creek for fish, otters, and other aquatic critters.

Farm Notes

An apology for any newsletter confusion last week…our website was down for a few days due a problem with the server, which meant that many of you did not receive the Beet Box until this Monday (eek!). Hopefully you figured out what to do with your kale and rhubarb in the absence of any pointers!

We’re excited about potatoes this season! BECAUSE…we rigged our new-very-old-electric-retrofitted cultivating tractor, Allis, with hilling discs – which means we can now easily and swiftly hill up our rows of potatoes to encourage them to set more tubers. So far, it’s the best-looking potato planting we’ve ever had. Barring any outbreak of blight, or attack by nefarious field mice, we might be in for a big harvest this year.

Visit the farm! In years past we have organized a spring tour for farm members, with mixed success. There is never a date that works for everyone, and there is often only a small showing. SO, this year we are going with the no-plan, zero-organization approach (which works really well for me right now in my current state; the headline should read “Uh-oh: new nursing mother charges headlong into crazy farm season”…). We’re encouraging you all to come out to the farm any Wednesday or Saturday, 9-5, for a visit. The u-pick and farmstand are open those days, and you can get a glimpse of all the food growing in the fields that’s destined eventually for your belly - unless you’re one of those Harvest Basket members who prefers to feed her share of fennel to her cow….:). Most likely, we will still organize a harvest party later in the season – maybe to dig all those spuds we’re hoping for!

Recipes and resources: If you’re looking for great background info, recipes, and tips for your produce, there is a wonderful book out there: From Asparagus to Zucchini: A guide to cooking farm-fresh seasonal produce. It’s organized alphabetically by vegetable and gives you historical background, cooking and storage tips, and an eclectic array of recipes for each vegetable. The recipes tend to be simple and quick, very seasonal, and tasty. You can order it online.

In your share this week:

• Braising Mix or Arugula
• Kohlrabi
• Head Lettuce
• Strawberries

On Rotation:

• Radishes
• Spring turnips
• Broccoli
• Basil
• Artichokes
• Asparagus

Kitchen Tips

Don’t forget to visit the Recipe Wizard to find ingredient-specific recipes, or go to the Recipe Exchange if you have a killer recipe you’d like to share with everyone!

Please note: all of our produce is field-rinsed, not washed. We recommend you wash all of your produce before eating it.

Braising Mix

This is a colorful, spicy mix of mustard greens, mizuna, tatsoi, and mixed kale. It’s great chopped up into a salad to add a little kick, or cooked down if you want to tame both the spice and the volume of greens in your life right now. Steamed or sautéed, braising mix is the perfect side to complement a good ol’ southern meal of cornbread and beans. Don’t forget the hot sauce!

Storage: keep in the fridge, in a plastic bag; stores up to a week.

Kohlrabi

This is one of the three most alien-looking vegetables we grow (the other two are romanesco cauliflower and celeriac, both of which appear in the fall). Depending on your pickup site, you’re either getting a purple variety or a white variety this week (you’ll see the other variety in next week’s tote). Both have a peacock plume of edible leaves, similar in texture and flavor to a hearty, toothsome kale leaf.

The flavor and texture of the kohlrabi bulb (really a modified swollen stem) is best likened to broccoli stems. Broccoli stems!? you’re thinking….that’s the part we toss out! But if you’ve ever peeled a broccoli stem and tried it, you know it’s a tender, juicy, crunchy surprise. Same with kohlrabi. Peel it and you’ll see.

We usually eat our kohlrabi raw: grated into a salad, or cut into crudités and dipped into something yummy like yogurt dill dip, or doused with lime and chili powder for a south of the border snack. It also cooks up beautifully, steamed, sautéed, or souped.

Storage: Cut the leaves off and store separately from the bulb. The leaves will keep a week or so in a plastic bag in the fridge; the bulb will store up to a month in a plastic bag.

Here’s a zingy recipe for a great summer salad:

Couscous with Kohlrabi and Chermoula Dressing

Borrowed from From Asparagus to Zucchini: A guide to cooking farm-fresh seasonal produce.

1-2 tsp minced garlic

2 Tbs. minced cilantro

2 Tbs. minced fresh parsley

1 tsp. paprika

½ tsp. cumin

salt

3 Tbs. fresh lemon juice

3 Tbs. olive oil

2-3 cooked couscous, cooled to warm temperature

2 cups peeled, diced kohlrabi

½ cup diced radishes and/or spring turnips

16 kalamata or oil-cured black olives

½ cup crumbled feta cheese

Mix garlic, cilantro, parsley, paprika, cumin and alt to taste. Stir in lemon juice and olive oil. toss this mixture with couscous. Bring to room temperature. Gently toss with kohlrabi, radishes/turnips, and olives. Sprinkle with feta. Serves 6.

Farm Fact of the Week:

Long before Valley Flora hung out a shingle, in the days of bonafide truck farms, years before Abby and I were born, the land we now own and farm was used to grow commercial orchard fruit (apples, pears and plums) and strawberries. The legacy of our little reach of bottomland seems to have come full circle!

The much-anticipated harvest is upon us! In addition to harvest this week, we are planting squash, seeding corn, setting up irrigation, and tackling weeds!

In your share this week:

• Artichokes
• Asparagus
• Arugula
• Pac Choi
• Head Lettuce
• Strawberries
• A Cherry Tomato plant of your choosing

On Rotation:

• Radishes
• Spring turnips
• Broccoli

Kitchen Tips

Here’s some background info about the produce in your share this week, with tips for preparation and storage. Looking for a recipe? Visit the Recipe Wizard to find ingredient-specific recipes, or go to the Recipe Exchange if you have a killer recipe you’d like to share with everyone!

Please note: all of our produce is field-rinsed, not washed. We recommend you wash all of your produce before eating it.

Artichokes

This is an heirloom variety that we’ve propagated at the farm for over 30 years (long before Valley Flora proper existed). Our first plants came from a friend who lived on the jetty in Bandon, so they are well-acclimated to our coastal clime. We’ve been dividing them ever since, and enjoying their chokes every spring. The easiest way to eat them is to steam them until the outer leaves pluck off easily and then dip them into your choice of condiments – butter, mayo, or our favorite: a homemade aioli. Combine a few dollops of mayo with a splash of balsamic vinegar, some capers, and black pepper. Dip away. Don’t forget to relish the “heart” at the end – the meaty bottom of the artichoke.

You may be wondering, what’s with the small artichokes? Well, here’s your first farm fact for the season: Artichokes are actually a domesticated thistle. The plants tend to produce only a few “king” chokes – the big artichoke that grows from the center of the plant. They also produce a whole bunch of side-branching chokes, which tend to be smaller. In the supermarket world, you see the king chokes in the produce aisle for $3.99 each and you find the baby chokes a few aisles away in jars - in the form of marinated and canned artichoke hearts. A little known secret is that the baby chokes actually make wonderful fresh eating because they lack the hairy “choke” that you encounter in the center of a big artichoke. You can eat pretty much the entire thing, from the bottom up!

Storage: keep in the fridge, in a plastic bag. They’ll hold for a week or two.

Asparagus

We are celebrating the fact that this year, for the first time ever, we have asparagus for the first week of Harvest Basket deliveries. Usually the harvest is over by early June, but this year’s cold spring temps slowed production down enough that we are able to give everyone a full pound of spears. These are a supreme, seasonal treat for us; we hope you enjoy them!

The quickest way to eat asparagus is raw – yes, you can just bite into them. The next easiest is to steam them lightly until tender, but not limp. Dip into any of the condiments we suggested for artichokes, or drizzle them with olive oil and a sprinkle of salt. You can also roast asparagus in the oven with olive oil and salt at 400+ degrees. Or, grill them. Or make soup. Or stir-fry. They really aren’t picky, so long as you don’t overcook them!

Storage: in the fridge, in a plastic bag

Arugula

A little spicy, a little nutty. Eat it raw as a salad, or put it under filet of fish. There’s an arugula pesto recipe on the Recipe Wizard if you want to get creative.

Storage: in the fridge, will hold for a week or so

Pac Choi

A classic Asian stir-fry ingredient, pac choi (also spelled bok choy and bok choi) is a succulent green with meaty, crunchy ribs. Turns out, it’s also a favorite of our resident slug population at Valley Flora. If your pac choi has a few holes in it, or a tattered leaf, slugs are the culprit. More likely than not, there’s also a slug hiding inside your pac choi heads. Our apologies, but even a good dunk in the wash tub doesn’t dislodge them. I’d recommend washing each leaf before you get all crazy with the cleaver. You might end up with a slug in your stir-fry otherwise.

Fortunately, the slugs only hit hard in the early spring when the ground is wet and our cover crops aren’t completely broken down yet.

Enjoy pac choi raw, steamed, or stir-fried. We did it up last night lightly sautéed with a dressing of rice vinegar, mirin, sesame oil, olive oil, sesame seeds, salt, red pepper flakes and maple syrup.

Storage: in the fridge in a plastic bag, will hold for a week or so.

Head Lettuce

Slugs love green butterhead lettuce, so the outer leaves of your butterhead look a little ragged as well this week. Fortunately, the slugs don’t venture into the creamy, buttery, blanched heart, so the best part of the lettuce should be good as gold. Heap your head lettuce high with the other veggies in your share for salad galore!

Storage: in the fridge in a plastic bag, will hold for up to a week or so

Radish & Turnips – On rotation

Some sites are getting radishes this week, others are getting turnips. Whichever you get, you’ll receive the other next week. Sometimes we do this when a crop hasn’t matured fully enough to dole it out to everyone. Never fear, when crops are “on rotation” we keep track of who got what to ensure that everyone gets everything eventually!

If you are a radish site, you’ll be getting Crunchy Royale red radishes. They get rave reviews every year for being the perfect balance of spicy and sweet. All the kick is in the skin, so if you don’t like picante, you can peel them for a milder experience.

If you are a turnip site, you’ll be getting Tokyo Cross turnips. Usually we grow a variety called Hakurei, which is famous for it’s sweet, buttery flavor and texture. Unfortunately this year there was a seed crop failure and we couldn’t source seed anywhere. Tokyo Cross is supposed to be an almost identical replacement; we’ll leave that up to our veteran Harvest Basket members who know and love the Hakureis. Tell us what you think!

Both radishes and turnips are wonderful raw, in salads, or munched like a little apple. You can also eat the greens. They are similar to mustard greens, but are best lightly steamed or sautéed to tame their bristles.

Storage: frige, plastic bag, a week or two. The roots will keep longer if you cut the tops off.

Broccoli – On rotation

Our first broccoli harvest is just starting to come in. For early June, we grow a sprouting broccoli that doesn’t form full heads; instead it makes lots of florettes over the span of a few weeks. By the end of June, we should be harvesting full heads from our next plantings, but for now it’s the little guys. We plant broccoli every other week throughout the spring, for a total of 8 plantings. This means you should see broccoli in your share through July. We take a break for August and September when there is so much other food to eat(!), and then you’ll typically see it again throughout the Fall.

Storage: fridge, plastic bag, a week or so

Strawberries

They’re not the prettiest berries ever, but they are berries nonetheless! We had our first harvest of strawberries this week and with a little more sun they should be pumping from the field, red and sweet. Strawberries will be a regular in your share throughout the season. Might be time to stock up on some whipped cream for the fridge!

Storage: fridge or countertop, depending on how fast you eat them! In the fridge, a lidded tupperware helps keep them perky...Will last a couple days.

Cherry Tomato Plant

This week you get to take home your very own cherry tomato plant and grow some of your own food this summer! We’ll still be providing you with baskets of cherry tomatoes come September, but if you have a warm spot – be it in the ground, or in a pot on a deck – we encourage you to try your hand at growing your own cherry tomatoes this year! They are easy to grow and the surest-ripening of all the tomatoes. There are three varieties to choose from: Sungold (orange and tropical-sweet), Sweet Millions (red and prolific), and Yellow Mini (yellow and lemony-sweet).

Please choose one.

Planting Tips:

• Plant your tomato as deeply as possible. It will grow roots out of its stem if buried (a unique trait called adventitious rooting) and create a bigger root zone.
• Feed your tomato a balanced organic compost or fertilizer. Too much nitrogen will make a huge leafy plant – with no fruit!
• Water according to need. If your tomato is in a pot, it will need water more frequently. Try not to get the leaves wet when watering.
• Make sure you put your tomato in a sunny, warm spot.
• If growing in a container, the bigger the pot the better. A small pot will require more frequent watering and fertilizing.
• Provide support to your tomato in the form of a string trellis, a bamboo stake, or a wire cage.
• If all goes well you should see some fruit by August or September!

We leave you with this Farm Fact of the Week:

Measured end to end, we grow over 15 miles of crops at Valley Flora.

Week 1
June 1-6, 2009
 
What's In Your Basket?

• Tillamook and/or Seascape Strawberries
• Sylvesta Green Butterhead Lettuce
• Crunchy Royale Radishes
• Green Globe Artichokes
• Arugula
• Genovese Basil
• Black Summer Pac Choi

 
Coming Soon!

• Hakurei turnips
• Kale & Chard
• Kohlrabi
• Spinach

 
We're thrilled to be able to include some of our favorite tastes of summer in the very first Harvest Basket of the season - among them, basil and strawberries. June will be a month to savor these early treats, as well as some of Spring's signature crops: kale, chard, spinach, and the sweet, buttery hakurei turnip (coming soon!).
 
Also remember that these early Harvest Baskets will be leaner than those that come later in the season. We strive for an average value of $25 of produce each week, which means that as the season progresses the baskets will get heavier (literally!) with summer's bounty. Enjoy the first harvest!
 
And finally, we recommend that you wash your produce before eating it. Technically, we only "field-rinse" the produce, so it is not legally considered to be "washed."
 
 
Produce Tips - How to Eat It, Cook It and Keep It!
 
Radishes

• Some people love the spicy bite of a spring radish, but if you want a less sassy mouthful, peel your radishes. All of the heat is in that red skin; the meat of the radish is tender, juicy and sweet!
• Also, radish tops are great in stir-fy (they belong to the same family as mustard greens). Don't toss 'em - chop them up with your Pac Choi and sautee with a little rice vinegar, tamari or any other seasonings!
• If you want your radishes to last longer in the fridge, cut the tops off and store the roots in a ziploc in the crisper.

 
Artichokes

• We are choke addicts here at Valley Flora. We usually prepare them the simple old-fashioned way in a steamer basket. It usually takes 30-45 minutes in a regular steamer basket with plenty of water, depending on size, or 8-14 minutes in a pressure cooker. The bigger the choke, the longer it takes. Check for done-ness by plucking an outside leaf. The chokes are ready when a leaf plucks off easily. Dig in and eat your - its - heart out.
• Check out our easy ailoi recipe and turn your artichokes into a great vehicle for mayo, balsamic and capers.

 
Arugula

• This week's share includes enough arugula to make yourself a batch of arugula pesto. If you don't want to run those beautiful leaves through the blender, add it to a salad or use it as a bed of greens under fish.
• OR, try the unusual combination of arugula and strawberries in this recipe from www.epicurious.com (a great online compilation of Gourmet and Bon Appetit recipes): http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Strawberry-and-Arugula-Sala...

 
Pac Choi

• Great sauteed, stir-fried, or eaten raw, this succulent green keeps best in a plastic bag in the fridge.

 
Strawberries

• In the unlikely event that any of your berries are still left by the time you get home, folks say that their berries store best in an airtight container in the fridge with a damp paper towl lining the bottom.
• Whipped cream anyone?

On the Farm....
Now that the soil temperatures have warmed up and the nights are hovering near 50 degrees, we are putting lots of summer and fall crops in the ground this week: pepper plants galore, as well as an entire block of winter squash (for your eating pleasure come October...). We are also prepping fallow ground for some summer cover crop plantings of buckwheat and sudan grass. In the greenhouse, we're already seeding fall crops like chard, kale and cabbage, which will be planted in early July. Farming is one of those things where you are living 6 months in the future and every day in the moment - all at once....

As for the present moment, don't forget to visit the
Recipe Exchange
to check out the new recipes this week, and to share your own recipes with other farmsters.

Aprovecho!
 

 
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