Winter CSA Week 3: December 4th
Winter CSA Week 3
Another two weeks have gone by already! This Friday December 4th from 3-6pm, will be the next pick up and delivery day. Remember that the pick up location is in our small greenhouse on 15th Street!
The shares are starting to get a little more funky with some weirdos joining the lineup! We hope you have fun experimenting with these shelf stable winter vegetables:
Celeriac
Spicy Mix
Spinach
Baby Kale Mix
Chard
Carrots
Kohlrabi
Baby Cabbage
Pea Shoots
Hearty and Sweet
- Celeriac: also called celery root, though it is a crop separate from usual celery. Celeriac is like a less starchy potato with that savory sweet celery flavor. It can be intimidating for preparation, but my plan of attack is to cut off the root end and a bit of the top, rinse it off again, then cut off the skin on the remaining parts. These guys love to cling onto dirt no matter how much time we spend trying to blast them with water, so be prepared to have some of our soil make its way into your kitchen!
- Baby Cabbage: was in your share last week, but these are even smaller! I like to treat them like an extra large brussel sprout and roast them in halves in the oven with lots of olive oil and rosemary tucked between the leaves. They get tender quicker than the large dense heads. Great for roasting or salads, maybe not ideal for sauerkraut goals.
- Peas Shoots: are a deliciously sweet topping for your salads or sandwiches. We grow them in the heated greenhouse in 10 by 20 inch trays seeded very densely. They take a little over a week to sprout and grow to the proper harvesting size. Microgreens (aka sprouts) are a popular crop because they have a fast turnaround and high market value. They are probably our least favorite thing to grow, however, as they are very tedious and frivolous (in my opinion). But they do add a nice sweet flavor to dishes and are great for winter growing!
Recipe Time!
This week I am sharing a page on Celeriac from a cookbook called “From Asparagus to Zucchini: A Guide to Cooking Farm-Fresh Seasonal Produce,” created by the Madison Area Community Supported Agriculture Coalition. There are four recipes: Celeriac Potato Green Chili Soup, Celeriac Carrot Slaw, Celeriac au Gratin, and Curried Celeriac Carrot Puree. I thought they were all unique from each other and showcase the diverse ways that celeriac can be used!
Field Notes
The past couple of weeks have been all about wrapping up fall crops and putting the garden to bed for the winter. Over the weekend we spent a lot of time harvesting the cabbages, fennel, and celeriac remaining in the field in anticipation of the consistently cold nights ahead. While those crops are fairly cold hardy underneath a frost cloth, consecutive nights below thirty degrees causes cellular damage which eventually starts to rot. Since a lot of our fall crops were planted late, the veggies are a little on the small size and would have benefited from a few more weeks of growing time. A big part of farming, however, is working with your mistakes and still appreciating what came from imperfection. The cabbages are small and got eaten by cabbage moth larvae, but they will still feed us through the winter!
Wintertime also means that we are planning and setting goals for ourselves to improve the farm and business. A big move we are making now is to refinance our existing construction loan through a crowdfunding platform. We are currently accepting investments of various sizes from our community by visiting our project page on the Steward website. We are more than happy to answer any questions you have about our business and the Steward team can answer questions about investment specifics. We hope this is an opportunity for CSA members to become more invested (literally) in the farm!