Newsletter: Happy Spring?!
Greens are a-growing at Foxtail!
According to the calendar, we're about two and a half weeks out of winter. According to the thermometer...
Part of the rush of early season growing is seeing just how early we can push our vegetable starts. For those of you that haven't been out to the farm or may be new to the CSA, all of the fresh veggies in your boxes were grown in our four 30x96' hoophouses. They are passively heated, which is to say nothing but the sun warms them up. On bluebird days, it can top 100 degrees inside when it's barely 30 outside. When we get multiple overcast days in a row, indoor and outdoor temps are just about even. If it's cloudy plant growth slows down due to lack of photosynthesis. When we're socked in and the temperature is hovering around freezing for days on end, we start to worry.
That's not to say we're without any tools. We're able to roll up the sides of our hoophouses to cool off on the sunny days, and we use woven row cover over top of our vegetable beds to hold onto a couple degrees on the cold nights. The past few nights we've had to use two or sometimes three layers over our newest, most sensitive seedlings and transplants! It gets extra exciting when it's sunny, chilly and windy; we end up opening, closing, covering and uncovering multiple times a day.
All said, while the weather has made a lot of extra work for us these past few weeks, I really can't complain. After the worst drought in decades last year, all of this extra precipitation is very much needed. It's definitely sloppy pretty much anywhere you step, but part of the reason I wanted to be a farmer was so I could play in the mud. I've been, frankly, blown away by the positive attitudes and energy that our staff have shown in the face of this soggy spring.
Speaking of staff, some introductions are in order! Emmalyn and I (Cody) are still here, and we're thrilled that Ashley is back as our co-manager once again. I swear, Ashley and Emmalyn are on a near telepathic level when it comes to communicating about row cover, mole and gopher traps, seeding schedules, you name it. We also have two new faces this year, and both of them share an Alaskan connection! Claire joined us in early February, highly recommended to us by some old friends of ours near Denali National Park. To say we're happy with her is an understatement. She's fun, hardworking, and sometimes even laughs at my jokes.
Our other new hire hails from Seldovia, a boat or fly-in only town in southeast Alaska (near Homer). Callie managed a CSA and market farm last year, and has a vast amount of knowledge about not only growing in temperate climates, but also how to source materials hyper-locally. As an example, they used freezer-burnt halibut and other fish donated from their coastal Alaskan community as part of their soil amendments. We're very excited to pick Callie's brain to continue to work towards a closed-loop food system.
That's all I have for this time around, please enjoy the vegetables and take care! Think warm thoughts!
-Cody
What’s in the Box?!
-Baby Spinach: We are so excited to be eating our own fresh greens again! Enjoy a fresh salad, first of the year!
-Cooking Spinach: Before you say "wait...more spinach?!?" hear me out. Spinach is versatile. The texture of the smaller bag is a hardier variety called a savoy leaf style. It's best used for cooking.
-Green Cabbage or Kohlrabi: It's a luck of the draw! Great shredded in salad or slaw. Don't forget to peel the kohlrabi first!
-Green Onions: So excited to bunch up these fresh green onions from our hoop house! We seeded these onions at the end of October and the timing panned out!
- Sweet Mokum Carrots: Yum. These carrots hold up until the fresh ones come in. We still love ‘em raw with hummus, steamed, sautéed or roasted.
- Cylindra Beets: These strange looking vegetables are actually quite delicious. Roasted, pureed into a soup, boiled and peeled as a salad topping, beets are a favorite veggie around here!
- Butternut Squash Puree: Makes a great soup base or curry. Try it out as a pumpkin pie filling or in a sweet loaf or bar.... ok I'm getting hungry.
- Pickled Veggie Quartet: (Daikon and Red Globe Radish, Carrot, Kohlrabi) These pickles are in a vinegar brine spiced with peppercorns, mustard seeds and garlic cloves. They're tangy, crunchy and wonderful on a sandwich or atop a spinach salad perhaps?
- Apple Sauce: Just so tasty.
- Frozen Whole Tomatoes: Frozen from last year's harvest. Treat these like you would canned tomatoes; use as a base for a sauce, chili, or other soup or stew.