People ask how things are going, and I reflect a moment and tell them things are good.

It’s the most succient and accurate way I can hope to respond. It’s a good life (always, hopefully in the Helen & Scott Nearing way and not the Twilight Zone episode ;) ). Rain exists, the new deer fence and tractor are satisfyingly functional.

The field feels strong, the woods, lush. I was fully expecting drought, heat, blasting sun. I’m enjoying having been wrong. “Too little sun” and “too cool” feel like novel problems to be having, it having been several years.

Squirrelly is still around – we don’t feed him from our hands anymore, but he doesn’t mind when we come near. The first chicken of the woods mushrooms haven’t emerged in our part of woods yet, but they’ve been sighted at a neighbors. The whippoorwills sing all night long, June bugs are en vogue, mosquitoes still haven’t made a comeback. Two pair of hens shares motherhood, one twosome with 7 chicks between them, and one with two. It works for them.

And the sun is shining now.

It works for us.

inside Box Two

Arugula – this arugula is spicy and full sized, so will need to be chopped for salad-making purposes. You can’t go wrong with a lemon and olive oil vinaigrette and some Parmesan cheese. Arugula pesto is really good too.

Bok Choi – This recipe looks solid for using it raw. A good website for using your CSA veggies too!

Romaine Lettuce – usually a Ceasar salad is the play

Radishes 

Turnips

Rutabaga Greens – (aka Swede Collards) – it wouldn’t be a CSA without some unusual vegetables – the things that look like shriveled carrots. But the greens are the part we think you’ll want to eat this week, see.

“I prepared them by browning the white parts of onions in bacon grease, and then adding the chopped greens and letting them wilt. Salt, pepper, maybe a little apple cider vinegar would be good. They didn’t take long to cook.”

Green Onions – new folks, be advised: we like to provide onions regularly because they are so darn useful.

Cilantro – love it or hate it. Good to have it with us this year.

Kale & Amaranth Microgreens – the jewel-toned leaves of red amaranth are mild & earthy, with a hint of beet-like sweetness. Use in:

• Salads:  as a colorful garnish or mix into baby greens

• Sandwiches & Wraps: with roasted vegetables or hummus. if you hummus

• Egg dishes: scatter over frittatas or poached eggs just before serving.

• Grain bowls & tacos: Top warm dishes to let the greens wilt slightly while maintaining their integrity.

Store refrigerated and use promptly; amaranth is more ephemeral than most.

Welcome back, returning shareholders, and welcome aboard to those new to this ride!

When we started the CSA 11 years ago, I never would have predicted any of this … that we would wind up coming to the farm and living here off grid for a decade, that I’d quit my career to do so, or that we’d have two boys and I’d be struggling to remove a tiny deer tick from one of their foreskins in a moving car while trying to write this newsletter … but here we are!

Inside the Box

Salad mix – A mix of tender lettuce, peppery arugula, and the slight snap of tat soi.

Green garlic – Somewhere between a scallion and a clove of garlic. It is milder than cured garlic. Chop the lower white part like usual garlic and slice the greens tops thin then cook into soup, stir fries, omelettes, or leave raw and use in a dressing or as a garnish.

Spring onions – Used root to tip. Similar to the green garlic, the lower part is more pungent and better for cooking, the greens are milder and more suited for fresh eating or light cooking.

Salad turnips – Mild, juicy, and crisp. Eaten raw in salads, roasted until golden, or sliced into a hot pan with butter and salt.

Sunflower microgreens – Thick-stemmed and nutty, with a strong crunch. Used as a sandwich or wrap green, layered over grain bowls, or as a topping for anything that needs a little extra something.

Radishes – Sharp when raw, mellow when roasted. A nice addition to salads and slaws. The greens are edible too. Our favorite uses are pesto and chopped and lightly sauteed with some garlic and soy sauce.

Mint – Peppermint-adjacent. Used for tea or muddled into drinks. Not an everyday herb, but one that marks the shift into summer. Dries well.

Bok choi – Sturdy stems and tender leaves. Stir-fried with garlic and onion, or left raw in a cold noodle salad. Quick to cook, quick to wilt.

In the beginning of the week, we all thought it was too cool, too soon. By the end of this week, we were steamed into eagerness for fall. So the storm came and the temperature dropped twenty degrees whilst the wind tore apart the mosquito gazebo and felled dead oaks pell mell through the chickenyard.

With a headlamp, predawn, I surveyed the damage and noted a rain covering askew upon the Playhouse RV, fetched a ladder and leaned it up and ascended to yank the roofing home. The storm I’d thought I’d dodged before bed came upon me unannounced in a deluge, as if a bathtub had been upended above my head, and I had literally to laugh aloud through the waterfall.

A day that starts with such a baptism feels good to live.

The vegetables were into it, too.

inside box 12 is a melon, and

• Onions – Onions are not to be placed into direct association with your melons; the internet is full of charlatans that will mislead you into wasting a perfectly good summer quinessence of a melon, if you do not be’ware.
• Potatoes
• Melon – take your melon and cut or ball it up and drizzle with honey, then scatter your holy basil up onto it, tiny piece-meal? Or, you can just eat it.
• Tomatoes – This is the time of year in which I try to blend the words “tomato” and “tornado” in a satisfying way.
• Cherry tomatoes
• Zucchini 
• Eggplant 
• Ripe peppers, not hot.
• Radishes
• Edamame – Don’t eat the pod. The storm knocked a bunch of dirt onto things so wash them first. Then boil them, salt them, and eat them. Could boil em and pop them out of their pods to use in your stirfry or blended into dip.
• Cabbage
• Tulsi/holy basil (you’ve been down too long in the midnight sea)– makes magical tea, or you could do something with it and your melon.

PS – Did you find the hidden toad up top?

The predator came back this morning and found where mama and the dozen had bedded down near the bird feeders. The chicks escaped while mom sacrificed herself to save them. It was not a great way to start the day and it wasn’t until the end of harvest that I stopped feeling gloomy. Hmm, I tried glossing over the Part 2 of the Bad Morning Blues I see. Well I was raised catholic so let’s do confession; when I tried to herd the 10 baby chicks to safety at dawn this morning, I fatally injured one of the chicks. A metal wall I was using to corral them tipped over on him (I’m gonna pretend to know it was a rooster to take the edge off, ok? and I had to end his life by hand. You might not be a baby chicken massacrer but perhaps you have made poor decisions that you regretted vehemently and you understand how it goes. Ugh.

But then there were ten, and after harvest was done we had a comical time trying to corral them, finally succeeding in capturing half the Orphans (as that generation are now collectively known), enabling us to box them up and send them to their new home at CSA shareholder Cody’s house – where they will grow up adored by her two children and spoiled as the only poultry people present. So that was nice. The remaining five will be bravely facing life and the lurking predators and the dangerous Gabe Guy with the rest of the flock.

There is also a vegetable predator marauding in the greenhouse – a woodchuck, so with the aid of a motion sensor alarm I send him running with a warning shot from the .22, but if he returns and continues to evade the live trap while making an absolute hog of himself on our produce, we might get to find out how his species tastes.

The deer, however, are no problem at all this year and it’s relaxing not having to worry about them – especially since we finally finished the amazing new deer fence yesterday (that last part was unlikely to be breached, but the possibility of being proven wrong had kept your farmer up at night worrying about the tender little fall crop seedlings growing up just inside there).

Foraging continues: this time of year is all blackberries and wild mushrooms – this week we brought a load of chicken of the woods over to Neighbor Marcia’s to refrigerate for the market, and found a hoard of far superior quality and quantity when we were driving away up her driveway looking into her woods! All rejoiced, and the abundance helped make the farmer’s market our most successful ever!

And in happiest news, mighty enough to counterbalance the chicken problems; the cat has officially adopted us and its name is Ranger and the boys love it and it purrs when we pet and pick it up.

Farm Life taketh away but it also giveths … so, so much.

Inside Box 11

• Little Old School Pears – eat these fast or they will become mush. Ideally eat them at the exact moment the greenish tint turns yellowish. If you wait too many minutes longer the flesh softens and browns. But they’re pretty yummy so try your skills at timing their consumption. Put them all in a shallow bowl where you can see them all; the comparison allows you to see which are yellow. Yellow ones might last a few more minutes if refrigerated but why not just eat it now?
• Bok Choi bagged with Baby Broccoli
• Melon – note: melons don’t keep getting riper/sweeter while they sit, unlike tomatoes
• either Radishes or Tomatillos
• Eggplants
• Zucchinis
• a Cucumber
• Tomatoes
• Cherry Tomatoes
• Shallots
• Italian Frying Peppers and one ripe Bell Pepper – use them the same.
• Jalepeno
• Sweet Corn
• Lettuce Leaf Italian Basil
• Kale Microgreens