This week we make the final winter CSA deliveries on the biweekly schedule. The regular season will start again on March 16 and 17 with weekly deliveries through November 16 and 17. The weather forecasters tell us that El Nino still has some rain in store for us, so we’re using this dry window to get some more ground worked up for spring planting.
This is the time of year when the “seasonality” of belonging to a CSA really comes clear. The selection of veggies tends to get the most challenging about this time, when stores of holdover veggies like winter squash are gone and the late spring fruits and vegetables are not quite ready. The crops that we harvest at this time of year mostly have been in the ground for a long time, because they grow slower during the shorter days of winter. This gives more opportunity for pests and otherwise minor leaf diseases to discolor the leaves or riddle them with holes. The box tends to have more root vegetables with the greens removed for this reason.
These late winter/early spring boxes can also be the ones that most expand the world of home cooks. Black Spanish radishes may be something you wouldn’t normally look for in the supermarket. Maybe you never even heard of Green Garlic. My advice is to embrace the less common vegetables you’re seeing in these boxes. You may find that you like them more than you expected. And the strawberries will seem that much sweeter when they come in.
Speaking of strawberries, we expect to have fruit fairly early again this year. Of the two varieties we’re growing, the Sweet Annes should be the first to come in as the plants have been growing vigorously and are already setting a load of flowers and fruit. The Albions tend to be our slow and steady variety; they’ll come in a little later, but tend to produce more reliably throughout the season. Here’s a picture taken today of the Sweet Anne on the left and Albion on the right.
If you haven’t yet paid for the coming season, please see below for information on discounts for signing up for more weeks. Embrace the seasonality and join us for the whole year if you can! Thanks for supporting our farm for another year.
If you enjoyed this article, please consider sharing it!
