Winter Week 9 from Valley Flora!

  • Cauliflower
  • Cabbage
  • Head Lettuce
  • Pea Shoots
  • Yellow Onions
  • Purple Moon Potatoes
  • Radishes
  • Spring Onions
  • Curly Parsley
  • Yukina Savoy Pac Choi
  • Zucchini
  • Spring Raab

It always feels silly to be referring to it as the "Winter CSA" at this point in the season, when the world is bursting with flowers and dripping with springtime. Nevertheless, this tote pays homage to the last of winter (as well as spring: radishes! pea shoots! pac choi! head lettuce! AND also the first of summer: zucchini and fresh onions!).

But back to winter. This is the last of our storage potatoes and it shows: they are far from picture-perfect, but still a victory to have them in May. It's also the last of the yellow storage onions, which have blown our minds this year with how well they have kept in our dry room. We trialed a new variety called "Talon" last year, which we are assuming is the big onion you're receiving this week - but it's hard to know for sure because our yellow storage varieties got mixed up during harvest (hah! the story of our lives whenever we try to do some scientific experimentation on the farm). Whatever it's called, it's a winner (and yes, we are repeating our trail again this season in hopes that we can keep 'em all straight this time when we harvest come August)! Also in the share: the last of the overwintered cauliflower - some of them VERY LARGE - and spring raab from our overwintering cabbage patch.

Thank you, Winter, for all the ever-surprising abundance, but I also just gotta say how fun it is to be putting zucchini in your totes right now. Ask me in a couple months what I think about zucchini and I'll tell you something very different, but right now they are magnetic - perhaps because they are the first "fruit" we've harvested in many months of handling roots and cabbages and leafy things. They're coming out of one of our unheated field tunnels, which has been growing greens and spinach for you all winter. As soon as one of those beds frees up in early March, we plug zucchini transplants in, tuck them in with row cover to keep their world a little warmer, and by mid-April we start to see fruit (miraculous in my opinion, given how cold it's been). 

A big thank you to the 85+ folks who showed up on Sunday for our Mayday farm tour! What an amazing collection of fantastic people, curious about the farm and excited to see where their food comes from. It was a delight to show you all around.

If you were at the tour and lost a ring, please contact us! We would love to return it to its owner.

Happy May to everyone! Signing off now and heading for the field - we've got a big, busy day ahead of us as we scurry like crazy before the next three inches of rain arrives. Yikes!

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