New Season - 2009

I'm not sure if I'll keep this up, but I will for a little while. Here's this year's first newsletter for June 12, 2009.

Springdale Farm News
This week's vegetables: lettuce, spinach, zucchini, pea shoots
Greens Share: additional spinach and pea shoots

Next week: lettuce, spinach, zucchini, parsley, sample bread from Fond du Lac baker, eggs (for those who ordered them)

Coming soon: garlic scapes, mushrooms, scallions, peas, strawberries, cilantro, broccoli, maple syrup

Notice: For those of you who get eggs, we will not be delivering them today, but will be delivering them every other week starting next week.

Welcome to the new season! It sure has been a cool spring so far. We even had two very late killing frosts, one in early June that took out a bunch of tomatoes that we had transplanted to the field a few days before. (Fortunately, we had replacements ready to go, so we should still have many tomatoes coming your way!) Usually by Memorial Day it is safe to plant the warm weather crops outside (such as the tomatoes, squashes, melons, etc.), but this year we had to cover all those crops with buckets, blankets (some of which are huge, covering a 1/2 acre in area!), or straw to keep them from freezing. Luckily our efforts were largely successful, with the exception of some low-lying tomatoes that succumbed to the cold. In our five large greenhouses, one is filled with zucchini, which is already producing, one has European cucumbers, which have also suffered some damage due to the cold, and the other three have tomatoes, which are all looking fantastic so far. In the field, the lettuce and spinach does fine with the cold weather, as does the onions, peas, and garlic, while the strawberries seem to have suffered some winterkill, to our huge disappointment, which will likely lead to a few less berries than we were hoping for.

Lots of spinach this week. As usual, despite successive plantings with intervals of 5 to 7 days, the spinach from several plantings seem to want to mature all together, so look for lots of spinach these first couple weeks.

New vegetable: pea shoots. Thanks to a couple of our Hmong helpers, who have continually encouraged us over the years to eat the tender growing tips of the pea plants, we finally succumbed to their pressure and tried them. And we like them. And now you are getting some, too, packed in the bag with your spinach. You could either fry them in some oil, and boil or steam them, and add some salt if you like. Coincidentally, we planted a crop of oats and peas on part of our field that is remaining fallow till late summer, so we went ahead and clipped off the growing tips of those peas. (I would not dare to clip off the growing tip of the sugar snap or snow peas that we are growing for you, since I wouldn't want to adversely affect the yield of the mature peas.) (By the way, these peas are not the new vegetable promised in our questionnaire last fall -- there'll be something else new coming later as well.)

Pick-up reminders: Plan to come every week from now on (till late October) to pick up a box. Barring some horrendous weather, there will be something ready to harvest for you each week, and though the early boxes are always on the lighter side, the planting is going well, and we look forward to a good season. Return the box to your pick-up site the following week, unfold the box (as shown in the 4-minute clip accessed via our website -- www.springdalefarmcsa.org), and place it neatly in a stack.

Exchange Box: At each pick-up site we leave one or a couple of boxes labeled "Exchange Box". We often put some items in the Exchange Boxes before they leave the farm. This week there is some extra spinach in the Exchange Boxes. If you wish, you can take a small quantity of the contents of the Exchange Box to add to your own box. Alternatively, if you find something in your box that you do not want to bring home with you, you can place it in the Exchange Box for someone else to enjoy. For the first month or so, there are usually not so many extras to be found in the Exchange Box, but do keep it mind, both for extras for yourself, and to pass along to others what you may not enjoy in your own box.

More news, information, recipes, etc. to come in the following newsletters. In the meantime, lots of details for us to attend to to make sure these first deliveries go smoothly!