Hello members, and welcome to our Main Season program!
At the bottom of this newsletter, you'll find a list of share contents, but we always write our updates first so that you can truly feel that you're a part of this farm and come to understand the contents of your share each week!
We're going to start off the newsletter with some housekeeping:
Don't forget to bring your bag for pickup! Delivery members, you'll be receiving a bag this week. Please remember to leave this same bag with your cooler outside so that we can pack into it next week. We'll leave your share in a cooler that you provide on your porch. If the cooler is in a less obvious location, please email us and let us know where to find it.
For biweekly members, the title of this blog post is coded as "1D" - that means that it's week 1 of the program and it's a delivery (D) week. Next week will be "2P" meaning that it's week 2 of the program and a biweekly pickup (P) week.
Balances are due upon your first pickup.
There may be some substitutions in your share this season, depending on availability. When we plan for the week ahead, the box contents listed in the newsletter are what we intend to harvest. Sometimes Mother Nature throws us a curveball, which may affect harvest quantities or quality and force us to make a substitution. Though we may need to substitute an item in your share, we are committed to providing the same value of produce in your share. We will do our best to tell you about a substitution at pickup, but please feel free to email us and ask if your box contents are different than expected.
Remember that we will hold your share for 24 hours after your pickup day (Monday for Saturday members), and then it will be donated to a local food pantry. With more members than ever before, we don't have the cooler space to hold onto shares longer than this.
If you need to skip your share for the week, or change your pickup day, you must provide us with 48 hours notice since we pack shares the day before pickup. Once your share has been harvested and packed, we can not cancel your pickup.
Although shares are not customizable, feel free to use the veggie swap table to change out one item of your choice each week, if you'd like. Remember that part of the fun of joining a subscription program is trying something new. We highly recommend trying a veggie first before deciding to swap it out.
FYI shareholders: this will be the last of the spinach, broccoli rabe, and arugula before the fall.
Now seems like the perfect time to introduce you to the crew members who harvest and prepare your veggies every week! On Tuesday, we'll send out an email with their bios so you can get to know them a little better.
For those who don't know, Randy and I (Victoria) operate Laurel Glen Farm. Randy is the head farmer and is responsible for all aspects of planning and caring for the crops grown here. I'm the voice of our communications and primarily responsible for packing your shares every week. If something is ever missing or the quality of an item slips by us, please send us an email. We're always happy to rectify our mistakes.
P.S. You can feel super comfortable addressing any emails to Victoria - I'm the one who writes to you!
This is our son Peter, who turned 3 in May. Though we don't post about him a lot, you can sometimes catch him in the store or around the farm on Saturdays. He loves to say hi!
Here are the crew members who make Laurel Glen Farm complete! Ethan, Carly, and Harmony are pictured first, because they are the most likely to see you at pickup. Click the arrow to scroll through the gallery.
This is Dawn, Randy's mom, who is also in the store on most Saturday mornings.
We can't wait to get to know all of our new members!
It was a super productive week on the farm. We finished last week not quite completing everything we had set out to do, which was a yucky feeling. This week we finished planting leeks and shallots, replacing the eggplant that was decimated by woodchucks, weeding the beets, and planting basil, which we had hoped to do last week.
This week we actually got so far ahead that we were able to weed our beans, onions, carrots, tomatoes, husk cherries, and eggplant, which is an awesome feeling. Weeding is usually the very last thing on our to-do list and often feels like a bonus if we can get to it. This season we pushed the start of our program back two weeks from when it typically begins, and Randy has really felt like it was the right thing to do. We were able to finish so many of our major projects and can focus primarily on harvesting now that we have 235 members in our Main Season program - the most ever!
Also accomplished this week: seeding all of our butternut, acorn, kabocha, delicata, spaghetti, and hubbard squash for the fall.
After the heavy rain on Wednesday night and Thursday morning, look what happened to our tomato field!
This is one of the lower spots on our Waverly Road property, so it's not a surprise that this happened. Here our crew members are finishing tying tomatoes up, and they're troopers, huh?! There was no damage to the crop, just maybe to some socks...
Although there aren't enough snap peas for shares this week, our crew members have been steadily harvesting what's available. Feel free to shop for pints of snap peas in the store, and cross your fingers for a full harvest next week!
Check out all of the amazing dishes our Extended Season members cooked with their cress! We harvested cress for the first time ever a couple of weeks ago and we challenged our members to share a photo of what they made with it. One thing we love about this program is that sometimes we find a trendy recipe and our community cooks it together, and sometimes we prove how diverse a crop can be and all of the incredibly different dishes you can make with it. This is a prime example of that!
Since all looked delicious and I received the submissions, I asked Randy to blindly choose a dish to win. He picked Jackie's sweet potato, bacon, onion, and watercress salad! Jackie was the winner of a bottle of Dash 'n Drizzle oil or vinegar of her choice. We thank EVERYONE who submitted to our contest! We host little contests like this over the course of our program, and we hope you'll join in!
One of the best tips we can give you about any root crops you'll receive this season, such as radishes, kohlrabi, carrots, or beets is this:
The first thing you should always do with them is twist off the green tops from the roots, right around the area of the rubber band for bunched items. To store them, you'll place them into Ziploc bags to keep them fresh. Separating the roots from the greens ensures that the roots stay firm.
But, don't throw those greens away! You can eat radish tops, kohlrabi greens, and even carrot greens. In our Library of Resources, we include a couple of recipes about what you can do with greens, like make Radish Top Soup. However, anything you would do with greens, you can do with these tops. For example, sprinkle the radish greens into a salad for a little extra zip, or throw them into a stir fry. They can be tossed in with egg salad, or wilted into a soup during the last few minutes. For carrot tops, you can even make chimichurri or pesto! Keep this in mind to make the most of your share this season. And if you're ever at a loss, just Google it: "radish greens recipe" should do the trick.
This wraps up our first newsletter of the season. Be sure to visit our Vegetable Library of Resources before you meal plan each week. There you'll find information that will help you identify your crops (like the kohlrabi!), understand how to store them, and inspire you with tons of recipes! We recommend meal planning as soon as you read the list of contents below. This will help you to avoid food waste!
In Your Share (Listed approximately from shortest shelf life to longest)
Large:
1/4 lb. of arugula
1 bunch of broccoli rabe
1 bunch of spinach
1 bunch of mustard greens
1 head of escarole
1 head of bok choy
1 bunch of radishes
2 kohlrabi
Small:
1/4 lb. of arugula
1 bunch of broccoli rabe
1 head of escarole
1 bunch of radishes
2 kohlrabi
Caring For Your Share (All of this information, plus long-term storage info, can also be found in our Vegetable Library of Resources)
Store spinach, escarole, broccoli rabe, bok choy, mustard greens in a plastic bag in the fridge.
Store arugula in a plastic bag in the fridge. When ready to use, wash in cold water and spin out in a salad spinner. Use within the week.
Remove the greens from the kolhrabi and radishes and store in separate plastic bags in the fridge. Use the greens within a week; the roots can last a couple of weeks if stored properly.
The LGF Cooking Club
30 Minutes or Less:
Simple Sauteed Greens (Start here if you're new to greens!)
Arugula Salad with Radishes, Avocado, and Truffle Lemon Vinaigrette (Instead of using truffle oil, choose one of the Dash 'n Drizzle flavored oils in our store!)
Kohlrabi Noodles with Sage Brown Butter (Use these directions for making your own kohlrabi noodles for the recipe above)
Grilled Escarole Salad with Black Pepper & Parmesan Dressing
Large Share Additional Ingredients:
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