Greetings
from Dancing Hen Farm!
Welcome to
Week 3 of our CSA! Week 3 is an egg
week!
Some CSA
notes to start the newsletter: We have
just purchased new boxes for our shares.
Boxes are a fairly large expenditure for us each season, so please treat
them with care. The new boxes are stiff
and sometimes hard to work with. So,
rather than immediately pulling up on the top to open your box, please PUSH
DOWN first to allow the tabs to release rather than tear. The farm and our boxes thank you for your help
with this!
It seems as
though summer has arrived! Lots of heat
and humidity over the last week. Yesterday
brought some nice rain to the farm. We
had been missing many of the storms which popped up near us the last few days
and we really needed some soaking rain.
And with Farmers Don and Phil out on deliveries, it was the perfect day
for rain!
Fields are
looking good and filling up with plants.
String beans should continue to be available with numbers
increasing. Summer means zucchini and
our zucchini is looking good, so get your recipes ready. Unfortunately, lettuce does not like the heat
and these hot summer days, so look for a lull in lettuce. Harvests of beets and potatoes should
continue. Our kale is looking really
good right now.
Speaking of
kale, I always get a bit of a smile on my face when I think about kale. When we first started to sell at farmer's
markets, we spent a good deal of time educating our customers on kale. Many people thought kale was simply a garnish,
but the news media was telling everyone what a super food it was. We learned quickly our customers were curious
and needed to know that kale could be eaten, it was delicious, and that it was
good for you. We learned people were
willing to try kale and we just needed to have some easy ways for them to
prepare it. I spent lots of time telling
people about sauteing kale and making a farm favorite of roasted potatoes, kale
and sausage. What is funny is that
suddenly, overnight suddenly, everyone at market wanted kale and we could not
grow enough. Customers not only were
demanding kale, they were passing recipes on to us and even knew the difference
between red Russian and curly kale!
About this time I was excited to learn about massaged kale salad. I
would stand at our market table and enthusiastically tell people how to
make it, how good it was and how massaging made the kale almost appear cooked. Then I would learn most of our kale followers
were already making these salads. Now it
seems kale's popularity has diminished and again quite suddenly, again almost
overnight! So my real question from all
of this is "what is the next super food?".
We do try to
eat in season here on farm. Meaning we
try to either eat what is being harvested or what I have been able to preserve
from the previous year's harvest. This
means sometimes our winter menus are a bit limited, but summer time means lots
of variety! With lettuce in a bit of a
heat lull, we will be relying on massaged kale salads now and soon tomato and
cucumber salads. The grill has been
fired up and we are already eating grilled zucchini - a farm favorite. With early beets being harvested, I have my
summer jar of red beet pickled eggs in the fridge. To me a pickled egg and some beets is a
perfect afternoon snack! I am hoping to
pickle and can some beets this summer so I can make pickled eggs in the winter
without relying on grocery store canned beets.
With string beans being harvested, I am hoping this weekend to make a
batch of my Mother's bean salad. Another
nice dish to have marinating in the fridge for a quick snack or lunch.
This
Saturday is the opening of the Back Mountain Farmers Market. This market is held at the Dallas High
School. Market opens at 9am. Many local farmers have lost outlets to sell
their product due to the pandemic, so please come out and support the local
economy by purchasing from local producers.
Farmers Don and Phil will be at market with lots of Apple Orchard Pork,
Pasture raised chicken and veggies.
I want to
take a little extra time to thank everyone for their support this season. We are trying to get product to you, but, by
far, this season has been one of our most challenging seasons yet. Health issues are always hard to deal with,
but trying to farm while healing poses an extra challenge. Farmer Don is doing well and is slowly
recuperating. His throat is healing and
he is now able to drink and eat small amounts of soft foods. He is still fatigued and sometimes it breaks
my heart to see how exhausted he is when he comes in for lunch or at the end of
the day. Farmer Don is strong and he is
very committed to Dancing Hen Farm. This
commitment and his continual push forward keeps us all motivated and moving
forward. We are already planning for
next year, a healthy year!
Ok, time to
actually send this newsletter!
And as
Farmer Don always says: "Be safe, be well and enjoy those veggies!"
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