This Week's Vegetable Harvest: Spring Salad Mix Bibb Head Lettuce Garlic Chives Young Spring Spinach Cucumber Red Radishes Rhubarb  Asparagus

Farm Journal

Good morning from the farm! We hope you enjoyed some surprise sunshine this Memorial Day weekend.

We enjoyed a beautiful, sunny Saturday morning at the Oak Park Farmers' Market and thanks to our family, including my hardworking niece pictured here, we shared spring produce with plenty of familiar faces. Thank you to all of our market customers and friends of the farm, who travel distances for our produce!

We find that family farming depends not only on our fearless crew but also on our extremely supportive family members, answering our calls and lending us a hand whenever we need them most.

On Memorial Day, our harvest crew, including its youngest members (our sons!) took part in washing and bringing in the harvest from our soggy fields.

Speaking of the fields, we wanted to provide you with a brief update. We have patches of flooding throughout the farm, which is to be expected given the amount of rainfall we've received this May. Some of our earliest field crops are struggling against wet spring pest and weed pressures to survive (e.g. arugula). However our hearty brassica and lettuce crops, better suited for cooler temperatures and water, are doing well despite the lack of sunshine and warmth this spring. We remain hopeful that June will be drier!

The upside to the rain is that our beneficial insect population is thriving. With plenty of dandelions to visit, bees, butterflies and dragonflies decorate the farm these spring days. There's not much better than being surrounded by life throughout the farm! Enjoy this week's spring harvest! ~ Jen, Jeff, Owen, Gavin and our farm crew

Notes from the Farm Kitchen

Salad mix season is upon us! Our family spent most of our winter season enjoying preserved and root vegetables. When salad greens appear in spring, we cherish eating lots of salads! Here at the farm, we triple wash the salad mix and spin it dry. We aim to make the salad mix easy for you to work with in the kitchen, lasting at least a week (if not longer). Here's my favorite resource for salad making inspiration.

This week members will receive fresh rhubarb from Mick Klug Farm. We enjoy rhubarb for its versatility in both savory and sweet dishes. Our colleagues at The Land Connection produced these fun spring recipe nutrition cards to encourage us all to try unfamiliar local produce and learn more about their nutritional value. Enjoy the helpful cooking and storage ideas!

Recipes from the Farm Kitchen Spring Chive Soup  Asparagus with Green Lentils and Poached Egg  Green Spinach Smoothie

Next Week's Harvest (our best guess)... mushrooms, rainbow swiss chard, salad mix, asparagus and more!

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