Week 4,    6/6/2012
\Remember,  you can look at newsletters (and recipes) from previous weeks by scrolling down or looking at the menu on the right side of the CSA blog. www.BluebirdFarmCSA.blogspot.com

Salad of the week: Try making a big ole salad with scallions, cucumbers, radishes, chopped boiled eggs and with lettuce mix, greens mix, and arugula.

This week’s harvest

Head Lettuce- Enjoy. We may not have lettuce next week.  Cross your fingers, and tell the lettuce to stay happy!

Radishes “French Breakfast”

Kale “Red Russian”

Swiss Chard “Rainbow”: See recipe below.

Zucchini and Summer Squash: Not much zucchini yet. I think it’s better than being sick of eating it, right? We’ve fertilized them with organic fertilizer, so hopefully they will produce well soon.

Lettuce Mix           

Arugula

Greens Mix (Mizuna, and Tatsoi) – This mix is not so tiny in size anymore; you can also enjoy it by chopping into 1 inch pieces and wilting it down in a stir fry.  This lively mix has the peppery flavor of arugula with the more mild flavors of mizuna and tatsoi.  You may also dice it up and wilt down in a dish at the very end of cooking.

Mizuna- fancy Japanese green that is a bit peppery, but is much more mild than arugula. It has fancy, deeply serrated edges.

        Tatsoi-(pronounced: tat soy)     

Sugar Snap Peas: The season is just so short.  We don’t have as many this week. Maybe the cool rain will make them happy again!

Garlic scapes: Chop ‘em up and use them raw or cooked. Tastes like garlic and onions.

Scallions: Use the fleshy part and the greens too.  Nice mild onion flavor.  Check out this blog for a great sauce. It’s good on the snap peas…Ginger Scallion Sauce. http://www.salon.com/2010/06/19/ginger_scallion_sauce_recipe/

Cucumbers: Mmm… There’s nothing like a cucumber in season from the garden. 

Hello all,

This week there was no one big project that kept us busy.  But boy oh boy do the little projects add up.  One thing after the next and the next, then at the end of the day there’s another thing to do.  Whew! Sorry- no recipes this week…We’ve been outside every night ‘til 9:30 or 10 pm. Remember that you can go to the blog and view the recipes from previous weeks.

     One of the many projects was to rescue the cucumbers and squash from the weed jungle.  We’ve been working sun up ‘til sun down to get the spring farm work done, but that didn’t include time for the rapidly growing weeds.  We were able to pre-weed some of the garden beds before planting the 3^rd generation of cucumbers and squash.  Those beds were easy.  Just a quick back and forth with our hoes and it was clean.  But we were officially behind on the older plants.  In some places it was tricky to even find the crops under weeds.  When the weeds take over like that they compete for water and nutrients.  We could tell, the crops looked stunted and the leaves were beginning to yellow.  A few hours of dirt grubbing later though and the crops were out in the open.  They looked better already.  The next step was to get the plants a little nutrient boost to make up for the weed competition. This year we are using a mixture of fish emulsion, the emulsified and stabilized leftovers from a western NC trout farm.  It isn’t very high in nutrients, but because we deliver it in a liquid form the nutrients are immediately available to the plant.  We dilute this into water and add some dried sea minerals.  This is essentially sea salt, but unpurified so it contains all the micro-nutrients from the sea=iron, zinc, copper, and other minerals.  All these are important to plants in small amounts and sea salt provides an excellent source for these minerals.

     

     On the animal side of things we brought the second flock of the broiler chickens to the butcher.  This flock was hatched at the end of March.  Since then they’ve enjoyed wonderful weather-not too hot, not too cold, and some good rain.  Animals like good weather just like people and vegetables!  Even better, the good weather made for excellent pasture.  Each day as the chickens progressed across the pasture they would dive onto the next patch of clover.  If we were quiet we could even hear them chomping away.  Their diet of pasture and insects supplemented the diet of organic grain they receive.  The organic feed provides them a diverse diet that is chemical free and free of genetically modified organisms.  Enjoy the very best chicken!