Week 6: February 20 - 23
One of the great joys of four-season farming is filling a CSA bag with fresh greens in the depths of winter. With nighttime lows pushing 20 below zero this week, we’re especially pleased to have a bag full of tasty greens for you!
Some of those greens have a fairly straightforward path to the CSA bag - spinach comes from our spinach tunnels and microgreens come from our main greenhouse. But our Persephone Mix salad is a bit more of a patchwork affair. To maximize the use of our limited winter growing space, we grow salad mix wherever we can.
In our heated greenhouses, which we keep at 45 degrees, we grow lettuce mix in containers of all shapes and sizes. We use repurposed gutters that we put up on racks or hang from the ceilings. We grow lettuce in 10” x 20” open trays of soil in our oldest greenhouse, and on heat mats under grow lights in our warmest greenhouse to give it an extra boost. And we also plant lettuce mixes in low tubs that line the greenhouses’ walking paths, and in large stationary planters. If you look through the interior door or window of the market barn when you come to pick up your bag, you’ll see lettuce growing happily just under your nose.
To augment that mix of lettuces, we also grow a number of cold-hardy leafy greens that give our Persephone Mix its signature look and flavor. Joining the lettuce in tubs, trays, and gutters are a beautiful red mustard and tatsoi, bright green Tokyo Bekana, and tasty red mizuna. These greens are so cold-tolerant that we grow them in our large, minimally heated tunnel as well, where they hang out at around 32 degrees for most of the winter.
When it comes time to harvest, we play a careful game of hunt and mix, traveling from greenhouse to tunnel to greenhouse with knives and bins, cutting a few pounds here and a few pounds there. We balance taking enough for each week with leaving enough for the weeks to come, estimating future regrowth based on a complicated equation of plant size + planter size + sunlight in the coming week (and more). And we’re in a constant cycle of replanting any spent tubs, trays, or gutters to make sure the salad days continue unabated.
Once we’ve harvested the various components, everything is weighed, combined, washed, spun dry, weighed again and bagged before it’s ready to take its place in your CSA. It’s a bit of a dance, but when we dig into a fresh salad in single digit temperatures, we think it’s well worth it - and we hope you do too.
Have a week where you mix it up,
Chris, Ashley, Hallie and the 10th Street Farm Crew
Reminder: Your bag is hanging BELOW your name on the bag rack.
In Your Bag This Week
Carrots: These carrots are sweet, crunchy, and oh so addicting! Store in your fridge.
Arugula microgreens: Peppery micros add a little punch to pizza, salads, pestos, sandwiches, eggs, and more. Store in your fridge.
Persephone Mix salad greens: Our fresh-cut winter blend of lettuce and cold-hardy greens. Store in a bag in your fridge.
Flavor Mix microgreens: Mild and tasty, these make an easy salad on their own or can add some color to any other salad. Try them on eggs or sandwiches – or anything, really! Store in a bag in your fridge.
Spinach: The best spinach you can eat is grown in a cold place! Use as a salad base, sautéed as a side dish or bake into a casserole. Store in a bag in your fridge.
Garlic: The best cooking advice we ever received? When a recipe calls for a clove of garlic, use two or three! Store on your counter.
Pea Shoots: Sweet and crisp, these make a great addition to sandwiches, wraps, salads or can be lightly sautéed as a side dish. Store in a bag in your fridge.
Swiss Chard: Stunning rainbow chard offers a pop of color with an earthy, spinach-like flavor. Store in a bag in your fridge.
What should I make with what’s in the bag?
We’ve got micro arugula in the share this week to give a delightfully peppery kick to anything you make. NY Times Cooking recently did a whole feature on arugula, so maybe try a recipe from their collection - like an offbeat pizza, a Dutch baby with goat cheese and herbs, or an arugula pesto pasta.
We’ve been whipping up grain bowls and big salads to stave off the winter blues. These honey-garlic roasted carrots would be great with either spinach or Persephone mix - and why not mix some flavor mix as well? And if your garlic is stacking up, consider treating yourself to some garlic confit or garlic butter!
If you've found a recipe you're loving, please send it our way. We're always looking for new things to cook and share with other members!
We wash everything in your bag but we wash them in bulk so some things may need an extra rinse at home. Thanks!
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