This Week's Vegetable Harvest: Spring Spinach Spring Salad Mix Winter-Sweetened Carrots Romaine Head Lettuces Asparagus Yellow Popcorn Green Garlic Mini Cucumber

What's New at the Farm Stand

LAST WEEK for Organic Plants! The Garden Center will close this Sunday, June 11th at 7pm. All remaining organic plants are now discounted to $4 each or 2 for $7.50. Baby Garlic! Young, tender green garlic is now available and its versatility cannot be overstated! Use this young garlic in place of garlic in your favorite dishes, or feature this spring specialty on its own (here's a fun recipe). Only available in springtime, make sure to give green garlic a try! The Farm Stand and Garden Center are open daily, 7am-7pm.

Farm Journal

Good afternoon from the farm!

Thank you to our Spring Share members. This spring sure was eventful. We appreciate your kindness and support throughout as we balanced growing and the early stages of our hoophouse rebuilding project.

We also appreciate your feedback on and creativity with some of the new crops (e.g., pea shoots) that we grew throughout the spring season. We hope that you enjoyed your share of the spring harvest. It was a true collaboration of our spring growing and the growing of our farming partners.

In this final week of spring shares, members will see the last asparagus harvest while we let the milkweed take over to feed the monarch butterflies. Members will also receive the start of a variety of salad and cooking greens this week.

These salad greens are made possible by very consistent and diligent irrigation. As many know, vegetable farming is dependent on consistent water. We are extremely fortunate to have access to fresh, clean, groundwater that we use to irrigate our crops. We have two wells on our property with dozens of irrigation hoses, sprinklers, and valves to manage the water provided to greens.

That said, the amount of labor hours spent on managing irrigation is extremely high during dry spells, including the 30+ day dry spell we are experiencing this May (seen in the rain graph below). Every minute we spend managing irrigation is time we're unable to spend on other projects, so the free water from the sky is extremely valuable!

Rain also provides a sign of relief to farmers knowing that every plant is being watered simultaneously, without our labor, and no amount of irrigation can match a wonderful, full farm soaking rainfall.

Many farmers we communicate with are experiencing more frequent dry periods, so we're all adapting. Some farming adjust what crops they grow (e.g., growing fewer leafy greens in spring) and in our case, we are rotating through fields and soils differently.

For years, Jeff declared one of our fields (field 8.4, seen above in spring 2017) to be a "summer-planting-only" field. This was because the field could be flooded with about 4 inches of standing water in spring. Nowadays, this field hasn't flooded for several years, so the field is back into the spring rotation and perhaps a drier spring field will be taken out of the rotation.

We are very fortunate to have enough acreage to be flexible with our rotation. This allows us to take advantage of growing opportunities in the fields that are doing well during certain weather conditions and minimize losses due to unpredictable weather.

Thank you for staying flexible in the kitchen as we remain flexible with our growing! Enjoy this week's spring harvest, ~ The Miller Family, Cleto, David, Anacleto, Miguel, and Riley

Notes from the Farm Kitchen

Wintered carrots were stored and sweetened through winter. This week's winter-sweetened carrots are the last members will see until summer carrots arrive. These carrots will continue to store well in your crisper, even if a small trim is needed now and then.

Members will receive our final young (green) garlic harvest before garlic scapes arrive. You can use young garlic as you would regular garlic, chopping up to the light green color of the stem.  The young, tender cloves don't need to be peeled before chopping. Slice and use in potato salad or mince and stir into salad dressings. The light garlicky flavor enhances dishes without overpowering them. One stalk and bulb of spring garlic is equivalent to one clove of mature garlic.

Seasonal Recipes in the Farm Kitchen 10 Ways to Use Popped Popcorn as an Ingredient Caesar Salad with Greek-Style Yogurt Dressing Extra Crispy Carrot Fries Sautéed Spinach Every Day Salad Recipe

• Tags: Carrots, Lettuce, Popcorn, Salad Mix, Spinach

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