Friday, June 10, 2016

2016 CSA Week 1 Newsletter

Greetings from Dancing Hen Farm.  Welcome to Week 1 of the 2016 CSA.  This is an egg week and this is a chicken share week.

We are in the midst of ordering for the first CSA delivery for 2016.  Deliveries will be on Tuesday, June 14th.  The window to order opened yesterday, Thursday, and closes at 6 pm on Sunday.  Please be aware that items are available on a first come first serve basis and some items are in limited supply.  This ( and every odd week going forward) is an egg week.  If you purchased an egg share, you should receive eggs in your box this week.  If you purchased 2 egg shares, we generally give you one dozen each week.  This is also a chicken share week.  If you purchased a chicken share, your chicken will be in a separate cooler at your drop site.  Please bring a cooler or bags with you to carry your chicken home in.  Leave the cooler at the drop site for us to pick up an reuse.  And, if you placed a buying club order, your buying club order will either be in your CSA box or in a separate cooler.  All CSA boxes and all items in the coolers will be labeled with your name.
 
We do still have a few shares available for this season.  Please contact the farm if you are interested.

Yep, time to talk about the weather again.  It has been really crazy lately!  Freezing temperatures and sleet less than a month ago, followed by the dog days of summer in May and now fall in June.  And crazy stormy skies.  On Wednesday, it was sunny and raining at the house and the sky was black and stormy looking at the barn, but no rain.  Yesterday I hung laundry on the line and of course the wind brought down the line.  Thanks to Farmer Don for picking the not quite dry clothes up off the ground!  But, as I hung the wash out, this crazy weather year was so evident.  In the same load of clothes, I had long underwear, wool socks, shorts and a swim suit!!
 
As always this time of year, we are busy on farm.  Farmer Don has declared "War on Weeds", so, lately lots of mowing, weed eating, cultivating and hand pulling of weeds has been happening.  Weeds are a never ending project on our farm!  Between weeding and the rain drops we have also been busy planting, planting and planting some more.  Soon all of our summer crops (tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, etc) will be planted.  And as always we continue with our rotation of beans and greens.  We are happy to be harvesting squash. Greens continue to size up and rotations continue to be planted.  The hope is to harvest greens throughout the season.  Our beets are looking good and hopefully the deer will not eat them before the roots size up.  Snow and Snap peas are blooming and making peas.  Look for peas next week!  The first planting of red potatoes is also looking good and our first planting of cucumbers are blooming and growing nicely.  Cucumbers and potatoes should be available in a few weeks.

In the kitchen we continue with our version of Dancing Hen Farm's field to table.  Last night for supper we had a nice steak topped with chard and a side of sauted summer squash.  Here is a link to the steak and chard recipe ( http://www.finecooking.com/recipes/sirloin-steaks-garlicky-swiss-chard.aspx?nterms=53122,50040 ).  Of course, we used green garlic.  I brought back some childhood memories by preparing the squash as my Mother always did.  Saute some thin sliced onion in a bit of butter or oil.  Then add the thin sliced squash, lots of black pepper and either some chicken stock or some water and a bouillon cube.  Put the lid on and allow the squash to steam in the broth until tender.  I have to confess, growing up we ate zucchini and summer squash a lot and this was my Mom's favorite  way of preparing it and it often by mid-summer I did not look forward to zucchini for supper again!

The sun is up, breakfast is over, Farmers Don and Matt are already harvesting for Forks Farm Market tomorrow and I have a load of laundry ready to hang out.  Laundry, like pulling weeds, is a never ending task on this farm!  So, I will end this newsletter.  If you are a CSA member, please watch for an email coming your way with additional CSA information, including drop site details.

Thanks again for everyone's support of our small family farm.  And as Farmer Don would say: "be safe, be well and enjoy those veggies".


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