Whole Farm CSA - Week of May 9th

Full share: 2 lettuce heads, ½ lb mustard mix, hakurei, carrots or broccolini (depending on supply), cilantro, scallions, microgreens

Half share: 1 lettuce head, ½ lb mustard mix, hakurei, carrots or broccolini (depending on supply), scallions, microgreens

Happy Wednesday CSA folk!

Sunday night’s snow made for a wet start to the week. Since it’s difficult to plant when it’s this wet, we’re keeping busy with our greenhouse, animal and orchard projects while last week’s seedlings soak up all that extra moisture. There’s always lots to do!

The past two weeks we’ve started the process of “hardening off” the seedlings we’ve had growing in the greenhouse since February, prepping them to go in the ground by getting them used to outside conditions.  This means moving flats of seedlings from the safety and warmth of the greenhouse (where they’re absolutely spoiled with careful, consistent hand watering and protection from the Montana elements) to an area outside where they’ll stay for a week or so until they graduate to the fields. On the flower side we have 4 rows planted so far with around 20 different varieties of flowers (!!!) and the veggie crew has been busy planting onions, shallots, kale, collards and chard. Delicious!

Seedlings hardening off; they get a nice row cover blanket for the nights and we wait until the patch has a bit more sun to uncover them in the morning.

This week I’ve enlisted Alex, our vegetable crew lead, to write a little bit about himself and what they’ll be getting up to over on the veggie side this summer. Recipes and storage tips continue below!

Hi everyone! My name is Alex and I’m the harvest lead at GVB. I recently moved back to Bozeman from Boise, and I'm privileged to be living at the farm. Fishing, reading, and harvesting are what I do for fun! This week's harvest was one of my favorites so far. Broccolini and carrots got the crew excited for summer days under the sun. Once this dreary weather clears up we will be planting in the field and it’s go time from there! For this week's CSA box I made a giant salad with some of the “eat me'' produce and it was delicious. The butter lettuce is so refreshing and flavorful. I sliced the haikureis and carrots over shares of the lettuce and mustard mix with a homemade vinaigrette dressing. 

Alex’s aforementioned butter lettuce!

Recipes and storage notes:

  • A quick note on herb storage: Herbs can be divided into 2 main categories for storing: tender and hardy. Tender herbs include parsley, cilantro, dill, mint, and tarragon. Hardy herbs are rosemary, thyme, sage and chives. These distinctions are different when it comes to growing -- for example mint, parsley and cilantro are quite hearty in the field whereas rosemary can be quite finicky, but for the purpose of proper storage, they’re useful. This week’s cilantro (along with other “tender” herbs) will stay fresh for 3 weeks when stored in a sealed mason jar in an inch of water in the refrigerator. Hearty herbs prefer to be wrapped in a damp paper towel and bagged. This is a useful guide to refer to for all other herbs. I also liked this article on 10 ways to use your cilantro!

Recipes: The freshness of this week’s box and the springiness in the air turned my attention toward spring rolls and spring roll adjacent recipes this week. Either of these will make good use of this week’s box (don’t be afraid to make substitutions!). The mustard green salad is one that I’ve tried before and loved - it’s amazing what a bit of massage can do to your mustard greens. While their pepperiness is sometimes exactly what I’m looking for, it’s nice to have a recipe that cuts that a bit and still lets the greens shine. Let us know what you try!

  • Thai Lettuce Wraps (use your lettuce, carrots, scallions, cilantro and chicken if you still have it)

  • Fresh Spring Rolls with Peanut Sauce (lettuce, carrots, cilantro, scallions - and we still have a few cabbages at the farm stand!) 

  • Mustard Greens Salad -- if the zing is still too much, sautéing or processing the leaves a bit more in other ways will reduce that. Or you could always just use them sparingly as an addition to several of your week’s meals.

I hope you enjoy these recipes and this weekend’s beautiful weather! 

Until next week,

Sasha

Jacy Rothschiller