CSA Week 5: Patiently waiting for summer veggies to pop

In their shares this week, members will receive the following vegetables: Snap peas, beets with beet greens, kale, radishes, fresh, uncured garlic and either basil or oregano.

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

It was still and dark as we dipped our paddles into the water, leaving the shoreline for the center of the lake. The water was like glass. Once in the center of the lake, we pointed our canoe north and waited. It didn’t take long. Off in the distance, lightening arced horizontally across the sky. A few seconds later, a deep thunder rumbled.
On the radar, we had seen the storm and then heard the thunder, so we decided to leave our campsite and paddle out for a look.
It was a long, powerful storm, running east to west. We stared on, envious of this rain, knowing that 115 miles south of us, our farm was getting no rain and none was in the forecast for the foreseeable future.
Finally, the mosquitoes became too much and we raced back to shore and to our campsite where our friends were waiting for us at the campfire.
This week’s CSA share was a little hard to determine when we walked the field on Saturday. We optimistically watched a few vegetables with hopes that they would be ready for Tuesday — specifically, a beautiful second planting of kohlrabi and one final harvest of red radishes. We also talked very politely to the basil plants, asking if they might like to grow just a little bit more. All of those were on the maybe list.
But we knew it was going to be close.
Along with that we anticipated having sugar snap peas (first of season), kale and perhaps the best beets with beet greens we have ever grown.

Farmers go camping

With all this uncertainty about what would be available, we decided that rather than sit around and worry about it, we should go camping.
We irrigated the field well and asked our good friend John of Sprouted Earth Farm to water the remaining plants in the greenhouse. Off we went to Scenic State Park, which has been Heather-Marie’s favorite state park since she was a child.
The two-night vacation was just what we needed. We canoed, we biked, we swam and, for the first time in a while, we sat and relaxed, catching up with good friends.
(And, of course, we ate some good food prepared with farm vegetables, including one recipe we’re including in this week’s newsletter.)

A look at the field

We returned Monday afternoon and walked the field to see what we would be able to harvest. The radishes and basil were ready to go, though the yields from both were well below what we had hoped for. The kohlrabi was still small and would have to wait.
This week’s share is smaller than what we’d like to be giving CSA members at this point in the season. When we look back on last year’s deliveries at this time, we see that we were already pulling daily harvest of cucumbers out of the high tunnel as well as harvesting our first round of purple cauliflower.
Even though we planted earlier this year than last, there are a couple of reasons for the delays. The first is that we continue to be in drought conditions. The rain that Duluth has received in the past weeks has largely avoided us aside from one or two rainfalls.
The second is that because of those drought conditions, we’ve seen a few pests in the field that have affected production, especially with our brassicas (crops in the cabbage family).

This is what Heather-Marie calls “a lull” in vegetable production.

Having said that, we remain excited about this season and the shape of our fields and our produce. Tomatoes are plumping up and getting ready to turn. Summer squash and cucumbers are growing by the day. Broccoli plants are very close to consistent production. 

And, perhaps most exciting to us are the carrots. We have a regular succession of five plantings of 50-foot beds, each with five rows of carrots. In other words, we have 750 feet of carrots in the ground that we will be harvesting consistently throughout the summer.

In other words, there’s gonna be a lot of carrots — hopefully. In farming, it’s always “hopefully.”

We hope you are enjoying being part of our CSA. We’ve so enjoyed meeting our new members and look forward to seeing more of you out at the farm at our community events.

This week’s veggies and recipes

Fresh Garlic

There are two new vegetables in this week’s share: fresh garlic and sugar snap peas. The garlic is a smaller variety called German red, and we thought it would be fun to give you a fresh head of this. This means that the garlic has not been cured, so it will not last very long. It is wet and pungent and can be used the same way you’d use any garlic, including in the vegetable biryani recipe below.  The flavor is more delicate and mild and therefore can be used raw.  

One-Pot Vegetable Biryani
We’ve made this recipe twice and have been pleased with it both times. One great thing about it is that you can vary it based on what vegetables you happen to have. This time, we used beets, broccoli, kohlrabi and red onions. It was great fun to make it in advance and have it for dinner on one of the nights of our camping trip. For this week’s shares, beets, their greens, the fresh garlic and even the snap peas would make nice additions to this recipe.
The recipe says it takes 30 minutes to prepare, but there is a lot of vegetable preparation involved, and we found it definitely took longer because of that.
Excerpted from New York Times cooking. https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1022758-one-pot-vegetable-biryani?smid=url-share
Ingredients

• 4 to 6 servings
• 2 cups basmati rice
• ¼ cup ghee or any neutral oil
• 1 dried bay leaf
• 2 whole star anise (optional)
• 4 whole cloves
• 4 cardamom pods
• 4 fresh Thai green chiles or green finger chiles, stems removed
• 1 medium red onion, finely chopped
• 1 tablespoon ginger paste or freshly grated ginger
• 1 tablespoon garlic paste or freshly grated garlic
• ½ teaspoon turmeric powder
• 2 teaspoons Kashmiri red chile powder or other ground red chile
• 1 plum tomato, finely chopped
• ½cup chopped cilantro leaves
• ½cup chopped mint leaves
• 1 medium carrot, peeled and thinly sliced
• 1 small potato, peeled and finely diced
• 1 cup small cauliflower florets
• ½cup frozen green peas, thawed
• ½cup cut green beans (fresh or frozen)
• ½ cup full-fat Greek yogurt
• 2 tablespoons fine sea salt
• 2½ cups unsalted vegetable stock or water
• 1 teaspoon garam masala
• 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice, plus 3 lemon slices
• ½ cup fresh pomegranate seeds (optional)
• ¼ cup toasted or fried cashews, halved (optional)

Instructions:
Step 1: Rinse the rice and place it in a bowl. Cover it with cold water and let it soak for 20 minutes. Meanwhile, melt the ghee in a large pot over medium heat for about 30 to 45 seconds. Add the bay leaf, star anise, cloves, cardamom, and green chilies. Fry them until they become fragrant, which takes around 30 seconds. Then, add the onion and continue frying, stirring often, until they start turning golden brown, approximately 5 minutes.
Step 2: Next, add the ginger and garlic. Continue frying and stirring until the raw smell dissipates, which usually takes about 1 minute. Add the turmeric and red chili powder, and stir for another 30 seconds to toast them without burning. Now, add the tomato and 2 tablespoons of water. Also, add half of the cilantro and mint. Keep stirring until the tomato starts to break down, which takes around 5 minutes.
Step 3: Now, add the carrot, potato, cauliflower, green peas, green beans, yogurt, and salt to the pot. Cook everything, stirring occasionally, for about 5 minutes until all the ingredients are well incorporated.
Step 4: Drain the soaked rice and add it to the pot along with the lemon juice and garam masala. Stir everything until it is evenly mixed. Then, pour in the vegetable stock and give it a good stir. Cover the pot and let it cook over medium heat for 5 minutes.
Step 5: After 5 minutes, uncover the pot and give it a stir. Add the remaining cilantro and mint, as well as the lemon slices. Cover the pot again and let it cook over low heat for 20 minutes. Once the cooking time is complete, turn off the stove and let the pot stand for an additional 15 minutes. Finally, fluff the rice and garnish it with fresh pomegranate seeds and cashews if desired.

Sugar Snap Peas
Nothing says summer like sugar snap peas.  We mostly eat them raw, and you can cook them but that seems a shame.  Snap peas are meant to be eaten whole, as in the pod and peas inside.  Just pull the stem off and the sting along the “seam” and they’re ready to eat.

Sugar Snap Pea and Radish Slaw with Sesame Seeds

“Farmstand Fresh” collection by Fine Cooking Mag.

• 8 ounces sugar snap peas, tough strings removed
• 1 bunch radishes (about 8 ounces), tops and bottoms trimmed
• 1 Tb plus 1 tsp seasoned rice vinegar (also called sushi vinegar); more as needed
• 1 ½ tsp toasted sesame oil; more as needed
• ½ tsp umi plum vinegar
• Kosher salt
• 1 tsp black or white sesame seeds

With a sharp knife, cut the snap peas lengthwise into fine julienne (about 1/8 inch thick), so they look like skinny matchsticks.  Cut the radishes into thin disks, then stack the disks and cut across into matchsticks.  Toss together in a bowl.
Whisk the vinegar, sesame oil, and plum vinegar together.  Pour over the peas and radishes and toss well.  Let sit for about 5 minutes, then taste and adjust with more rice vinegar, sesame oil, or a pinch salt.

Sprinkle the sesame seeds over the top of the salad just before serving.