Week 2 Newsletter - Bring your bags!!

Hello y'all!

Woohoo!  We made it through last week!  The first week is always the hardest between last minute sign-ups and making sure everyone figures out where they need to be. To top it off, I had to be in a board meeting last Thursday, so Robert, Mike and the boys took care of the farm pickup.  I hope it all went smoothly!  If it didn't, holler at me and we'll get everything straight.  

Now that you all know the drill, I'm going to add a layer of complication for you.  Returning members know that last year we attempted to produce a little less waste by asking customers to bring their own bags to pickup to put their produce in.  For the farm pickup and the Hillcrest pickup, this worked really smoothly.  I set out crates of food and y'all filled your bags.  The most successful way to do this was when people brought a few small things to put individual items in (old walmart bags or big tupperware containers) and then something a little bigger to carry the individual items (a cooler, picnic basket, cardboard box).  In the event that you forget, I'll have a roll of bags on hand, but I challenge you to make an attempt at zero waste.  If you are going to be in a hurry to pick up, or if you happen to be the one person that picks up 5 baskets, just send me a text and I can have your food ready for you when you get here.  For those of you that pick up from Julie's house on Tuesdays, we are making an attempt to cut back on plastic for you this year, so start bringing your bags!  You will need them this week to take home lettuce and bundles of greens out of the coolers.

To take this one step further, my compost challenge from last year still stands if you pickup from the farm.  If you think you'd be interested in trying to compost your food scraps from the week but don't have a compost pile in your backyard, you are welcome to dump your compost in our pile.  Last year I made this offer but didn't give a lot of guidance with it.  The result was that many people tried to bag their compost every day in individual walmart sacks and then brought these sacks to the farm in a garbage bag.  Unfortunately for me, that meant that at the end of a long pickup day I spent an hour emptying everyone's individual garbage scraps into the compost pile.  It wasn't exactly what I had in mind when I made the offer!  So, if you think you want to take me up on this, here is what I would suggest to make your lives, and mine, a little easier.  I would pick some type of plastic container with a lid, size appropriate to how much food scrap you have through the week, and dump all of your leftover food in it.  Then bring it with you on Thursdays, park at the curve in the driveway, next to the high tunnels and walk behind the tunnels to dump this container into the compost pile.  I'll even show you to a hydrant to rinse out your container.  Regarding what to put in it, send all of your food scrap.  I don't mind meat, dairy, vegetables, cooked or uncooked, eggshells, coffee ground and filters, just no plastic or twist ties or anything else that won't decompose.    

Ok, to this week's food.  As I walked around the farm this evening I realized this might be the first basket we've ever put together that contains entirely leafy greens, no solid vegetables.  We are catching the tail end of the early vegetables we grew for market and are a week or two out from the start of our early summer crops.  I thought we might see snap peas this week, but the rain and cooler temps have kept them slow.  Looking at the forecast, we have several days of sunshine coming up so I have no doubt y'all will see the sugar snap peas in the baskets for week 3.  Around the same time we have carrots, beets, cabbage, broccoli, cucumbers and green beans coming soon, but not quite this week.  So this basket will have a different variety of lettuce than last week, y'all will each get two (they aren't huge) nice heads of buttercrunch lettuce.  This week you will see a different variety of kale, it will either be a dark green, thick leafed dino kale or a curly, thick leafed Siberian kale.  Both are nice to make kale chips out of or to chop and saute for any meal.  Some of you may see collard greens, some may see broccoli greens (which I cook the same way as collards and actually prefer over all the other braising greens).  I expect all of you to see Swiss chard this week-it'll be the bunch with the rainbow colored stems.  It's possible that we may see a few strawberries still this week but after all the rain this weekend I'm not expecting much.  If greens aren't a staple in your diet and your feeling a little lost, hang in there.  The greens aren't around for long and I hope all of you enjoy them while they are here.  The internet is a wonderful place to find easy recipes for the more challenging vegetables this week.


I think that's all I have tonight.  Bring your bags y'all!  Remember to let me know if you need to use your skip week. See y'all soon!