Winter CSA Week 7: February 12th

Hello Everyone!

It’s a frigid week out there for winter farming, but alas there are still veggies to be eaten! We are doing the pick up a little different this week because Andy and I are getting vaccinated on Friday, unfortunately with appointment times during CSA pick up hours! It will be a “self serve” pick up this week. I will have a sheet with everyone’s name on it in the greenhouse, just simply check your name off the sheet and grab your share. If you come across any issues, feel free to call me at 720-217-5270. Deliveries will go out around 2:00 instead of 3:00. The pick up will be during the normal time: This Friday Feb. 12th from 3-6pm. I’ll miss seeing you all this week but feel really relieved to be protecting ourselves! Here is what will be in your shares:

Collard Greens

Lettuce Mix

Cabbage

Hakurei Turnips

Radish

Sunchokes

Celeriac

Radiant Radishes

The newbie to this week’s line up are radishes! Not just any radishes though, we have Purple Daikon and watermelon radishes. The Purple Daikon look so beautiful when sliced into coins because of their radial purple tie dye pattern. Watermelon radishes of course have the same effect but with green and red instead! They are both so crisp and sweet from the plants producing extra sugars in order to protect themselves from frost damage. “Sugars” (like glucose and fructose) dissolved in the plants’ cells make them less susceptible to cellular level frost damage in the same way that salt reduces ice on the roads. What a gift that plants have natural defences against the elements AND it tastes more delicious to us!

A quick note on the sunchokes and celeriac: we have been sitting on small amounts of both not sure what to do with them. But I decided even a small portion of those unique veggies will still be a nice addition to the share! I would suggest not planning a big celeriac or sunchoke soup as the portions per share will only be about ½ a pound or less.

Recipe Time!

This week I chose a radish, orange, and pistachio salad. It screams deep winter to me, with in-season citrus, crispy radishes, and flavorful pistachio. The recipe calls for pistachio oil, which if you have that on hand, bravo, but I think olive oil with some extra crushed up pistachios will do the trick!

Field Notes

We’ve been mostly avoiding the field to be totally honest! This cold snap and snow pack is a great excuse to put projects off for another couple of weeks. We are obviously still monitoring the hoop houses for sunny days to ventilate and cold days to add extra coverage. Some plantings are not at the stage we would like. The spicy mix growing in the hoop house on Humboldt Street is seemingly taking ages to mature. We thought this week for sure the greens would be tall enough for a harvest but they are still a little stunted. I do think that the growing daylight hours and (hopefully) an increase in sunny days will allow for some spicy mix on your plates for the last week of shares!

We also have a very cute new farm visitor: a small deer! I had never seen a deer in our neighborhood for the three years we have been here, but this little one has been hanging out in one of our caterpillar tunnels. The deer hasn’t eaten any of the crops so far, so it’s a friend and not a pest until proven guilty! It’s fun to see some “wildlife” in the city. We have tons of pheasants around and have seen coyotes several times, but now it really feels like we have some bits of the country in the city!

Summer CSAs are also available on our website now! This season we are also offering bread and egg shares as a way to offer a more full diet from local sources. Thank you to everyone who has signed up already and please spread the word to other veggie lovers!

We hope you all stay warm and cozy this coming week! And have a Happy Lunar New Year, Valentine’s Day, President’s Day, and eat all the paczkis on Fat Tuesday!

Peace,

Amy and Andy