week 2

Hello CSA friends

We're just catching our breath- doing the two farmer's markets, growing for twice as many shareholders at two weekly pick-ups while attempting to tend the fields, make large amounts of the prepared foods and take care of two kids keeps us on our toes. Life is never boring. We love what we do.

It was great to be able to match new faces with new names (and email addresses) at the pick-ups this week. Although there was some early confusion about the point system, we think that its a great way to give folks some choices. We had a lot of positive feedback about the herb garden tour. Kat loves herbs and she'll be there again this week to help you find cilantro, parsley, oregano, basil, mint, papalo, tarragon, anise, spilanthes, wasabi mustard, peppercress, dill, fennel, and scallions in the garden.

A brief word about eggs—the folks who picked up on Friday noticed that there was a bit of an egg shortage. This will be apparent this Tuesday as well. We've got enough chickens to provide plenty of eggs, but the problem is that a good percentage of them haven't started laying yet. We anticipate them starting soon, but until then we have to ask that those with small shares only take a half dozen and for folks with large shares to only take a dozen if they really need them. We hate to have to ration the eggs like this, but it should be a very temporary thing. In other chicken news, we have finally started our food waste program with many local restaurants thanks to Merideth, a Bennington College student who will be working on this project for the season. The chickens will feast on foodwaste from Laney's, Zoey's, Perfect Wife, Little Rooster, Mrs. Murphy's, The Bagel Works, and of course the Wilburton Inn, among others. The system of using chickens to create high quality compost from food waste is based on the work of Karl Hamer, the awesome compost genius from the Vermont Compost Company. Hopefully the added nutrition will also encourage the young hens to start laying!

More crops are just starting to come in, this week we'll have kohlrabi, kale, a little cauliflower and the very beginnings of the summer squash.

Before leaving you all with the recipes for this week's harvest, here's an inspirational tidbit from "The Omnivore's Dilemma" author Michael Pollan's latest book, "In Defense of Food". Advocating for people taking pleasure and exercising power by cooking their own food, he states:

"To reclaim this much control over one's food, to take it back from industry and science, is no small thing; indeed, in our time cooking from scratch and growing any of your own food qualify as subversive acts. And what these acts subvert is nutritionism: the belief that food is foremost about nutrition and nutrition is so complex that only experts and industry can possibly supply it. When you're cooking with food as alive as this…you're in no danger of mistaking it as a commodity or a fuel, or a collection of chemical nutrients. No, in the eye of the cook or the gardener or the farmer who grew it, this food reveals itself for what it is: no mere thing, but a web of relationships among a great many living beings, some of them human, some of them not, but each of them dependent on the other, and all of them ultimately rooted in soil and nourished by sunlight. I'm thinking of the relationship between the plants and the soil, between the grower and the plants and the animals he or she tends, between the cook and the growers who supply the ingredients, and between the cook and the people who will soon come to the table to enjoy the meal. It is a large community to nourish and be nourished by. The cook in the kitchen preparing the meal from plants and animals at the shortest of food chains has a great many things to worry about, but 'health' is not one of them, because it is given."

So now that you are all totally empowered to roll up your sleeves in the kitchen, try some kohlrabi:

Kohlrabi

The alien spacecraft of the garden has arrived. The green and purple orbs are in fact relatives of broccoli. Kohlrabi initiates know what a treasure these outlandish vegetables are. Their sweet crunch is excellent cooked or raw.

Storage

If you plan to use it soon, wrap the whole unwashed kohlrabi—stem, stalks, leaves, and all—in a plastic bag and keep it in the refrigerator. Otherwise, store the bulb in a plastic bag in the fridge and use it within two weeks.

Handling

Rinse kohlrabi under cold running water just before use. Unless the skin seems particularly tough, kohlrabi does not have to be peeled. Just trim off the remains of the stalks and root. Grate, slice, or chop kohlrabi as desired.


Keep enjoying the salad, we'll be eating leeks and winter squash before long.

Have a good week and a happy summer.

-your friends at Teleion Holon