Welcome to Week 9 of the 2025 summer CSA season. This week is a Group A week, which means full shares in all locations pick up and half shares in Duluth pick up.
In their shares this week, members will receive the following vegetables: Bunching onions, cilantro, broccoli, head lettuce, slicing cucumbers, summer squash, snap peas, green peppers, hot peppers and fennel. We also hope to give both cherry tomatoes and slicing tomatoes, but that will depend on how many are ready for harvest.
Sunflower bouquets available through online store
The online store is open this week, offering sunflower and mixed-flower bouquets, herbs and other items. The store also has farm gear and Heather-Marie’s linoleum block prints. Please place orders by 10 a.m. Tuesday morning to allow for processing.
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
With Week 9, we enter the second half of the summer CSA season, offering a chance to reflect on how the season has gone and ask you, our members for input on what you’re enjoying.
In general, it’s been a productive and good season from our perspective. Our cold-weather loving plants have thrived this year, but, as could be anticipated, our heat-loving tomatoes and peppers have been a little sluggish this year. We are finally seeing enough ripe tomatoes that we can begin adding those to shares.
This is also the time of year when we begin to have a surplus of some items, which allows us to sell those items in bulk. Pickling cucumbers, paste tomatoes, slicing tomatoes and other items will soon be available for purchase on the online store in larger quantities.
Soon, we will also offer members the opportunity to sign up for our three-week fall share in October. Fall shares can be either one week or all three weeks. They include a bounty of fall crops including potatoes, winter squash, storage onions and so much more.
In the meantime, please take a moment and tell us how we are doing. What are you enjoying most about this year’s growing season? What else could we be doing to make your CSA experience as satisfying as possible? Send us an email and let us know!
This week’s veggies and recipes
Fennel
This was a new item for the farm two years ago and we love adding new things. Most often when buying fennel in a grocery store, it comes with the stalks and fronds trimmed off. We are harvesting them with it all attached as you can eat it all. The bulbs can be eaten raw or cooked, although the bulb can be tough so should be cut thinly. Trim the stalks and fronds off when ready to cook and use the fronds as you would any herb.
Brenna’s Excellent Fennel Salad
When John’s daughter, Brenna, was here visiting us, she made this excellent salad. Neither John, nor Heather-Marie, have cooked much with fennel so this was a treat.
Fennel bulb, and stalks (bulb sections washed)
- Apples
- Celery
- Lots of herbs
- Olive oil
- Lemon juice
- Salt and pepper
1. Cut fennel in thin slices
2. Cut apples and/or celery pretty thin
3. Chop up some fennel greens and some herbs (whatever is around mint oregano thyme whatever) and toss that in a bowl with chopped stuff
4. Mix it up with some oil, kosher salt, lots of lemon juice, and toss it around with some pepper
5. Finish with flaky salt
Roasted broccoli
- Broccoli heads
- Soy Sauce to drizzle over the leaves
- Scallions, and/or bunching onions
- Four cloves of garlic
- Sesame Oil or Olive Oil
- Salt and Pepper to taste
Pre-heat the oven at 200 °C/400°F. Wash the broccoli and cut into bite-size pieces, discarding the toughest outer layer of leaves. Smash a few cloves of garlic and chop them coarsely. Chop some bunching onions as well — the whole onion, not just the white part.
Toss the garlic, onions, and cauliflower/broccoli with a generous splash of soy sauce and oil in a roasting pan. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Place the uncovered roasting pan in the oven for about 20 minutes, or until the green leaves are crisp and both the florets and the thicker stalks are tender and can be pierced easily with a fork. (Change the time if you are using a convection oven.)