In their shares this week, members will receive the following vegetables: broccoli, kohlrabi, two types of head lettuce, garlic scapes, collard greens and beets with beet greens.

This newsletter includes a roundup of news from the farm as well as information and recipes. Feel free to jump to the bottom of the newsletter to find the section titled, “This week’s veggies and recipes.”

News from the farm

This week’s newsletter will be brief. With the Fourth of July weekend and the fact that we are going to try to leave the farm for a couple days, we have few hours left in our days. So, we thought we’d do two things with this newsletter:

First, we want to share a story about a vegetable that is very important to us, as a couple: collard greens. The story of the collard greens begins in the summer of 2018 when Heather-Marie messaged John asking for some ideas on recipes for collard greens.

“Hi Surfer John! I have a random food question. Especially since you are from the South ;). Do you have a “recipe” for collards that you like and can share?”

To learn the rest of the story and see a few collard recipes, read the following story. 

Second, we want to devote this newsletter to images – not images of us, but images of all the people who have come out to the farm to help us in the past few months. We are so grateful to our amazing intern Olivia and to the CSA contributing share members who have come out in the past month to help us take care of a million different chores. We are grateful to you all.

Important dates and details

Here is a rundown of important dates and other happenings at the farm.

Farm stand this Friday: With new hours for the season, we opened our farm’s roadside farm stand last week.  Our new hours this season will be from 3 to 6 p.m.  We will be open Fridays until October.

Have a cider with your farmers every Tuesday: Throughout the CSA season, we will be at our pickup spot at Duluth Cider from 4 to 7 p.m. Even if your pickup spot is in another location, we hope you’ll stop by and have a cider and say hello – especially if you are new to the CSA this year.

Calendar of events for the rest of the season: Look for an email this week with a list of the other farm events for the rest of the season. 

This week’s veggies and recipes

We are proud of this week’s share. This is early to have such wonderful beets. We are also very happy with our head lettuce. We are also excited to share with you purple kohlrabi, which is a pretty special, crunchy, wonderful treat. And, of course, we are very glad to give each of you a head of broccoli. Broccoli are fickle little buggers. Heather-Marie put more than 100 plants in the ground in hopes that we’d have enough for this week’s share. And we just made it. Broccoli have a mind of their own. They all grow at their own pace, so there is no guarantee that they will all be ready for harvest at the same time.

Sadly, not all we had planned for this share worked out. We grew some beautiful French breakfast radishes that we had counted on for this week’s share. But, as we began to inspect them, it became clear they were pithy and past their prime. This was even sadder because they were not ready for harvest for last week’s share. So, we made the tough decision not to include them in the share.

Beets

Beets taste like dirt. And for some people, that’s a turnoff, but we urge you to follow the advice of chef and cookbook author Josh McFadden, who urges us to embrace the beets.

What’s more, in the spring, he says, the best way to eat beets is raw. He also stresses that early season beets like the ones we are harvesting this week have delicious greens that can be sauteed and enjoyed.

On a workday with our intern Olivia, we took McFadden’s advice, making his beet slaw recipe from his book, Six Seasons and sauteeing the greens in some olive oil, adding a little garlic and lemon juice at the end of cooking. We did not make the pistachio butter in this recipe and found it was still very good.

Beet Slaw with Pistachios and Raisins

Ingredients

• 2 garlic cloves, smashed and peeled
• 1/2 cup golden raisins
• 2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
• 1 1/4 pounds beets, peeled; use a mix of colors if you can
• 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• 1/2 cup lightly packed flat-leaf parsley leaves
• 1/2 cup lightly packed mint leaves
• 1/2 teaspoon dried chile flakes
• Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
• Extra-virgin olive oil

Pistachio Butter

• 1 cup (about 5 ounces) pistachios, lightly toasted
• 1/3 cup water
• 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 3 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

Instructions

1. Combine the garlic, raisins, and vinegar in a large bowl and let sit for 1 hour.
2. Grate the beets on the large holes of a box grater or cut into fine julienne. Yes, your hands will get stained, but the color fades quickly.
3. Remove the garlic from the raisins and discard. Add the beets, lemon juice, most of the parsley and mint (save the rest for finishing), and chile flakes. Season with 1 1/2 teaspoons salt and lots of black pepper and toss. Let it sit for about 5 minutes and then taste—the slaw should be tart, spicy, peppery, and sweet. Adjust the seasoning, if necessary, then add 1/4 cup olive oil. Toss and taste again.
4. To make pistachio butter: Process the pistachios in a food processor to get them as fine as possible. With the motor running, pour in the water, vinegar, and salt and process until smooth, scraping down the sides as needed.
5. Again with the motor running, drizzle in the olive oil. Taste and adjust with more salt or vinegar. Store in the fridge for up to 10 days.
6. To serve, spread a layer of pistachio butter onto each plate and top with the slaw. Finish with the reserved fresh herbs and a drizzle of olive oil.

Broccoli

Roasted Broccoli

From Asparagus to Zucchini

These are so yummy!  I made these for a recipe and found it hard not to eat them all first!

• 1 head broccoli, large and medium stems removed and reserved for another use
• 1 ½ Tb olive oil
• ½ tsp garlic salt
• 1 tsp balsamic vinegar
• ¼ tsp ground black pepper

Heat oven to 400 degrees.  Break broccoli head into medium florets and toss with remaining ingredients.  Arrange in single layer on baking sheet.  Bake 18-22 minutes, shaking the pan halfway through.  Remove from oven when broccoli is a deep green color with some darkened spots.  Makes 4 servings.