CSA Newsletter // Week 5

Greetings All,

It was quite a week over here. We had a lot of exciting things happen, like harvesting the first sweet corn of the season for example! I am so happy that it's finally here!! You'll all get some in your CSAs this week.

I have started writing this newsletter in my head about a hundred times so far this weekend.. I can't think of any other way to start so here it is.

I was in a bad car accident on Wednesday. I was sitting at a red light and didn't see it coming at all. A lady (likely on her phone) crashed into me and she never saw it coming either, she never braked. She totalled her SUV on the back of my delivery van while I was in the middle of my route, her air bags deployed even though she was wearing her seat belt. It was on the back roads if you go past Cabela's in Rogers, there are some county roads that bring me to my Maple Grove site. The doors are crunched up on the back and won't open, and she hit me so hard it buckled the floor in the back of the van. My van is totaled too, great timing. Ben used it this weekend at the stand because he didn't have another option, and as he pointed out "it still has 4 wheels and drives". You know how fast insurance works, so this was really the only option.

Ben delivered all those shares on Thursday afternoon. It's important to fulfill our commitment and even though he's never delivered at some of those sites he went through the whole route from Maple Grove to St. Cloud on Thursday to make sure everyone got their veggies. He assured me that the produce was still really nice, in those new stiff boxes. So hopefully that was your experience, too!

You know how I've said there is something we can be grateful for? I am grateful that in all of this, I was by myself. Some of ya'll don't know us too well yet but we have a son and two daughters. So far this season (and every season prior basically) I have one of my little helpers with me. On Wednesday, I was by myself because the girls were working on a project together and William was harvesting.

I have a bad concussion and have been getting really dizzy, headaches, vomiting, the standard concussion crud. Everyone keeps telling me to take it easy and lay low, and I have been doing a good job of that because there is basically nothing else I could do, even if I wanted to. Ben is pulling double duty around here. If you read the blog every week you're probably realizing that I just did the same thing for Ben. He was sick for a long stretch there and wasn't out of bed for about a week. The roles have reversed now and he is taking the lead.

One thing that is really hard is accepting help. I am a pretty confident person, I like to build shelves and chicken brooders, move heavy things, haul 2- 5 gallon buckets of grain (for our heritage hogs) at a time. It's hard going from being strong to being so weak! It's hard taking a seat and saying "yes" to when others offer to come help us here. My parents, Ben's parents, our family, our church. So many of our extended family have shown up for us, we are very grateful for the help and meals!! Every day that's passed I have felt better, but I do feel a little dumb. lol. I had payroll to do on Friday and my Mom came and did the numbers for me and then Ben double checked all the check stubs to make sure I was writing out the checks right this evening. I need to find some humor in this or I might just lose it. So if you read me saying something dumb, let's just chalk it up to the concussion talking. Let's just establish that now, lol. WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT NEXT WEEK:

Jumbo and Family Shares: Sweet Corn!, Green Beans, Purple Cauliflower, Zucchini/ Summer Squash, Broccoli & Onions.

Single Shares: Sweet Corn!, Green Beans, White Cauliflower, Zucchini/ Summer Squash & Onions.

Let's start by just going over the alternating produce again. We try to make sure we alternate every week from summer squash and zucchini, and we document it on my clipboard so we always know what we included the weeks prior. The reason we do this is because zucchini and summer squash have to be harvested every other day. You can't take a week off, or even 3-4 days off, or they'll be bloated and big. That doesn't make them inedible but it's our job to offer produce that is at the peak of value; which is a more medium sized. So we harvest every other day and use each of those varieties as we're harvesting them.

The same concept applied to cucumbers and pickles; we will get into that next week hopefully. We just picked our first handful on Friday and Ben brought them to the stand! I never even got any before he left lol; but to be honest I wasn't upright at all on Friday or eating or cooking, so it made sense.

Last week, we were expecting to send some purple cauliflowers with you guys but all purple varieties grow slower than their original counterparts. Red cabbage for example, grows significantly slower than green, same with kohlrabi which is why Ben doesn't grow purples anymore. (Not to mention, you peel the outer skin so you don't see the purple anyways). Just saying we were expecting to include some purples but everyone got the white last week. So this week, Ben and his team are harvesting the purple for the Jumbo & Family Shares and the Single Shares will get white to start out with. We plan to do purple cauliflower in the Singles the following week.

**If for some reason we are short, you might get something you're not expecting. Like white instead of purple or vice versa. Or summer squash instead of zucchini, etc. Just know that we document all of that so we can make up for it later. We want everyone in our CSA to be able to try everything equally.

Purple cauliflower are fun because they're so unique! Something you'll never find at a regular grocery store, no matter the time of year. I think it's because of the color variation. Some are really deep purple and others are more of a soft lilac color; it depends on how much foliage they have as they grow and if the head is exposed to the sun. So it varies with every single head of cauliflower (not ideal for commercial production). The same variation is in white cauliflower heads too, you'll see some that have a more yellow color, that's usually because they're larger and have been exposed to the sun more. *Color variation is normal; it does not affect flavor or usability, its weather related.

GREEN BEANS!

We are so excited to offer these in your CSAs. This is one of our favorite varieties on the whole farm. They're welcome raw as a snack or an addition to a charcuterie board, or my favorite- steaming them for a couple minutes and then adding a little garlic and butter. Then right before serving, a big squeeze of fresh lemon. These will come in plastic bags because we have to; we don't like bagging produce but there is no other way to package these properly to add to your CSAs. We try to reduce bags and binders. The only other thing that gets bagged is the hot peppers, so it doesn't make anything else in your box 'hot'.

Onions! I know ya'll have gotten quite a few onions so far this season but I hope that you can find a use for them. Our CSA Member Karen just sent me a recipe like this and it made me think to add a dried onion powder recipe to the blog. That way if you have too many, you can start drying some for long term storage, and everyone uses onion powder ;)

WRAPPING IT UP This was a hard week. I have delivered CSAs for more years than not. We've never had anything like this happen, let alone a distracted driver who has the potential to impact my cognitive ability and our livelihood. As (most of) you know, we don't have outside jobs. We earn our livelihood on the farm, so taking this blow at this time of year is absolutely devastating. Ben is keeping the ship afloat but we will definitely be feeling this accident for some time.

Not to mention, I was really looking forward to William's baseball tournament. I love watching him play and his team is awesome, they're so much fun. I got to watch via pictures and a couple videos from my cell phone this weekend while sitting in my room with the blinds pulled because I'm really sensitive to light and sound right now. I didn't have it in me to go. For those interested- the team won both their games yesterday and lost the championship game by 1 point in the final inning today. They played hard! Just last week I was planning a big cook out for the family, ordering extra groceries, also to have plenty of Gatorades on hand for the team, stocking up on buns and supplies to host our families. No one came back to our house after the games obviously, I spent an hour out of bed yesterday. Things can change fast.

Here is a picture of William's cheer squad, I think he filled up a whole sideline basically.

Reminder: There is always something to be grateful for. I am so sad that I missed the tournament but look here- I am SO grateful for our family and our cheerleaders, the messages with updates on the scores and the snap chat videos. And for Farmer Ben, that tough guy worked over 40 hours just in the last 3 days. Lots of long days ahead but we will take it one day at a time.

Eat Good & Be Well,

~The Farmer's Wife