(From May 4) Welcome to Passage Creek Farm’s 2009 Spring CSA!

We’ve started our earliest harvest ever this year, and it’s a daunting experiment for us. The bags this week are a little lighter than we had hoped, but they will continue to grow each week. The season so far has been kind to us: we haven’t had a frost in weeks, and we’ve been getting plenty of rain. We only had to water once during that early heat spell.
The greenhouse is packed with veggies to plant. Tomatoes, squash, okra and peppers are just a few of the plants that are ready to go in the ground. And we’re betting we won’t get another frost this spring (of course, anything we plant right now will be covered – the weather’s turned on us before!). The kale, kohlrabi and peas are all looking good in the field, so those should be appearing in your bags soon.

This Week:

Salad Mix (green leaf, red leaf and butterhead lettuces)
Spinach
Swiss Chard (baby sized, you can leave the stems)
Baby scallions
Oregano

What to do with it:

Salad mix is easy – just toss with some oil and vinegar on and you’re all set. Freshly chopped oregano makes a lovely addition to salad dressing. If you’re otherwise at a loss as to what to do with oregano, just hang it upside-down in you kitchen. You’ll have dried oregano whenever you need it. To keep herbs fresh longer, we generally recommend cutting the ends and putting in a glass of water and storing in the fridge (except for basil – store at room temp). Swiss chard is delicious sautéed with garlic and olive oil. We like ours with grits and parmesan or quinoa. Mushrooms and onions go well with chard. Spinach cooks down fast, so we tend to eat it fresh with salad. But we’ve kept it separate from the salad mix for you I case you want to steam it or sauté it (like for chard). The scallions can go with anything above. Enjoy!

Note: We were forced to use Ziploc bags this week, since we couldn’t find our regular bags for packaging greens. If you can’t reuse these bags, we can, so you don’t have to throw them out. In fact, that’s generally true of all the bags we use. You can leave them for us at your regular pickup spot or drop them at market. Thanks!