Abbe Hills Farm CSA

Greetings shareholders,

This week, we have broccoli, cabbage, kohlrabi, kale, onions, garlic scapes, lettuce, Chinese cabbage, daikon radish, red globe radishes, bok choi, cilantro, basil, maybe peas and beets.  I don't think we'll have all these things both days, but you should expect to get most of them.  Everything is growing like crazy with the warm and the rain, so it's about all we can do to keep up.  Plant diseases, especially leaf diseases, also do well in these environmental conditions, and some crops are starting to suffer.  We are looking forward to a comfortable, sunny, mild, and dry week that will do everybody - including all the workers - a world of good.

The Chinese cabbage will be in rather loose heads.  It would like cooler weather to make the heads like you see in the grocery store.  It's still delicious cooked or raw.  Daikon radish are the big long white ones that we usually have late in the fall.  I found a source for their smaller spring cousins and am excited to try them out this spring.  I haven't tasted these yet, but I'll bet that they will be quite mild after you peel off their thick skin.  The peas may be harvestable; we won't know until we try to do it.  They have been so beat up by all the rain and mud, I'm not optimistic.  If we are fit to harvest, they will mostly be shell peas this week, the kind where you just eat the peas inside and throw away the pod.  I'm sorry we didn't have more peas and better peas this year.  They don't do very well with the kind of late spring we have experienced.  Peas are always better in late May and early June than they are now.

I'm also sorry that I haven't had better lettuce for you.  I worked very hard on lettuce this spring and planted out several beds and hundreds of head lettuce plants, looking forward to giving you lots of pretty heads through the months of June and July.  Great plan - but bad results.  The mother deer who started bothering us last fall for the first time came back this spring, with her three horrible babies right behind, and they have eaten hundreds of heads of lettuce just as each bed was getting near its harvest time.  They've managed to wipe out nearly complete plantings in three different gardens.  And what the deer missed, the pounding rains have destroyed the rest of the way.  I've learned a lot about lettuce this spring and can promise you that things will be different in the future, starting this fall.  I've got the electric fence figured out and will use it joyously this fall.  Fall lettuce is always better tasting than is spring lettuce.  I think you'll enjoy it even more since we have had so little this spring.

Sometimes you need a recipe for a new vegetable.  There are jillions of sites on the Web that have recipes, but if you want some that are simple and easy and have been tried out by other CSA members, check out this site run by our friends at Local Harvest CSA in Solon.  http://www.csaharvestrecipes.com/  .  I also have some excellent cookbooks available for purchase.  They have good pictures, easy recipes, and basic information on most of the vegetables we'll have this summer.   I can offer you "Simply in Season" for $20, "Asparagus to Zucchini" for $18, and "Simply in Season Children's Cookbook" for $15.  I just got a few copies of a new book, "Saving the Season", that is about preserving.  Looks like it might be a good one.  It is $20.  I'll put the cookbooks out where you can take a look at them this week.

One last thing.  Our first MOVIE NIGHT is fast approaching.  It will be Wednesday, July 7, the night before the beginning of Heritage Days.  The movie is "Up".  Starts about 8:40, or as soon as it is dark enough to show it on the front of the shed.  Bring lawn chairs, bug spray, and your friends.  The movie is free and everybody is welcome.  We'll sell sodas and popcorn and donate the money to the food pantry at Southeast Linn Community Center.  Good plan, but it still has a couple of weaknesses.  I'm pretty sure I can hustle a projector and a laptop to run the movie, but we still need some good speakers.  Anybody out there have speakers they can donate for the evening?  I'll also likely need your technical skills, since I wouldn't know good speakers if they smacked me on the head. 

Time to get outside and pick some things on this very beautiful day.

See you this week,
Laura