Yeah, I know, don’t quit my day job for a new career in photography. Still, doesn’t this week’s haul look amazing? Clockwise, from upper left: Spinach (bagged), kohlrabi, Swiss chard, radishes, garlic scapes, snap peas, Red Butterhead lettuce, Romaine lettuce.

I was hoping to get a glimpse of the Burning River Farm crew as they dropped off my still-wet cardboard box, but these people work fast; they were in and out before the good guys in Shipping and Receiving here at Strib HQ could even get me on the horn to tell me that my CSA box had arrived. So much for snapping with my trusty little Canon PowerShot. Maybe next week.

Here’s the news from Burning River Farm, via farmer and diarist Mike Noreen:

“By the time you get this third delivery, activities here on the farm reach about their halfway point,” he wrote. “We’re barely into deliveries of shares and weekly journeys to the farmers market, but things were started in the greenhouse by the first week in March and have been going full-time ever since. By this time in the season, we’re looking at adolescent tomatoes and stubborn peppers, trying to coax them on. The weeds, however, don’t need coaxing. Things that were weeded and clean three weeks ago are now in need of major attention and a carpet of quack grass appears one place just when we got it down in another. We run around with hoes and rototillers, cultivate with tractors, and get down on our hands and knees to pull them at their source. If you ask me, we are short on weed-killing devices. I dream of a fleet of tractors with different shapes of steel and ingenious devices for dealing with these plants before they become a problem. But for now, we make due with what we have.

“Once neighbored by weeds, now in your box” (Translation: This is the contents of my CSA box for the week; the descriptions are Mike’s):

1. Lettuce (Red Butterhead, and Romaine for the big boxes)

2. Radishes: “Easter Egg, probably the last of the radishes.”

3. Sugar snap peas: “Yum. Be careful. Eat slowly. Savor. For those who scarf these sweeties too fast awaits the feeling of the unmistakable peabelly!”

4. Garlic scapes: “These bunches are the flowering heads of the garlic. Use just as you would garlic itself.”

5. Kohlrabi: “These are very sweet. Stir fry, or shred for raw use. Don’t be discouraged by these oddities.”

6. Swiss chard: “Because we love you. Beautiful, don’t you think?”

Next week’s forecast: “[We] should see for sure the first of the scallions. Also I hope some arugula, broccoli, more peas? We’ll see.”

Me again. I have to admit that after last week’s kale, the first item that got a whistle of appreciation was the gorgeous chard: The long, proud leaves have an almost muscular strength, their rhubarb-red stems contrasting so vividly against the forest green of those rippling leaves.

And can I tell you how incredibly generous this all feels? Three weeks in, and I’m definitely of the opinion that a CSA - well, at least my CSA - is proving to be a major value. That overstuffed bag of premium-quality spinach kept my household happy for almost four days; ditto the ample lettuces. And how much would those radishes and kohlrabi fetch at Whole Foods Market? I don’t think that I want to know.

You know what? I’m also loving the unpredictability of it all; it’s like playing a vegetable version of Mystery Date. Who knows what lies behind Door No. 1, right? I was thrilled to pull that marvelous purple-tinged leaf lettuce out of the box and discover that underneath it was a pair of kohlrabi. That’s going to be my goal tomorrow: Find a few delicious uses for this cousin of the turnip, along with getting another vinaigrette under my belt, since the crisper drawer of our refrigerator has become the most popular place in the house. Yep, our salad spinner is really going to get a workout this week.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 3rd, 2008 at 10:36 pm and is filed under Weekly CSA delivery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.