Shared Legacy Farms CSA Week 1 Newsletter, June 12, 2022

CSA Newsletter Week 1

June 13-18, 2022    |    “A” Week

The tops of the garlic plant form a curlicue. This is called the garlic “scape,” and it’s totally edible!

What’s in the Box this Week?

SPINACH (1 LB.) ~ We call this “Everlasting spinach” for a reason! This green has some legs! Store it in a Debbie Meyer Green bag or Tupperware FridgeSmart container right away and leave it in the fridge. You could probably wait to eat this until later in the week if needed. Don’t wash this green until you’re ready to use it. Then spin it dry in a salad spinner. The obvious way to use spinach is in a salad. But it also will wilt down when cooked in a skillet dish, frittata or omelette, or add it to your next lasagna! Since this is a large portion, you may decide to blanch and freeze part of it for later use. This is easy to do using our Green Cubes recipe — we call this our #1 greens exit strategy.

CARROTS (with tops) ~ SAVE THE CARROT TOPS! You can make really cool stuff with them… To store, first take the tops off your carrots and put them into a plastic bag in the fridge. The roots should be stored separately in the crisper in a plastic bag. If they get soft, just put them in some water to crisp them up again. Eat within 3 weeks.

Don’t throw the carrot greens away! Use them to make carrot top pesto! Or dehydrate them on your counter and add them as a parsley-type herb to future dishes. Or throw them into a “veggie scrap bag” in your freezer (with other things like the tops of celery, onion skins, carrot ends). When the bag gets full, use it to create your own DIY veggie broth (which you can then freeze into ice cubes for later use!) Not sure how to make DIY broth?… grab our guide here.

SCALLIONS  ~ Place your scallions into a glass filled with an inch of cold water and place it in your fridge (or leave on the counter).  I like to place a baggie over the tops of the greens, if it’s going in my fridge to keep them from drying out. Refresh the water every 3 days. These will last a long time stored this way. You can trim the green tops off the scallion and use them to garnish tacos or salads or meat dishes. You can also chop them up and freeze them for later use! The whites of the onions are often used in salad dressing vinaigrettes, on salads, or enjoyed grilled with a little olive oil and s/p.

GARLIC SCAPES ~ Download my Garlic Scape E-Guide here. (Super helpful if you’re new to scapes!) These June delicacies will be in your box for the next 2 weeks. They have a curlicue shape, and a garlic flavor. Chop off the bottom inch of the scape (the tough end), and discard in your Veggie Scrap bag. Chop/mince the scape (even the flower bulb part), and use it wherever you would use garlic. You can eat the scapes roasted on the grill whole.  Store the scapes whole or chopped in a Ziploc baggie, and use within a couple weeks. If you can’t get through them fast enough, just chop them up and throw them into the freezer in a Ziploc freezer bag. Use them all winter long as a garlic substitute. I like to use these in garlic-scape compound butter or add to my own DIY cream cheese.

POTTED HERB PLANT  ~ Every year, we give our CSA members two different potted herb plants. You will receive one herb this week, and the other option on week 2. At your pickup site, you will be shown a list of several herb types while you are waiting in the drive-through lane. Once you get to your site host, let them know which variety you want. When you take it home, put it in a sunny place in your garden or on your kitchen windowsill. Then be sure to “prune” the plant as it grows. This means cutting the herb leaves along the stem. This will cause the plant to branch off where you pruned it, and get bushier over time. It’s important to stimulate growth by pruning! You can start enjoying your herbs in your kitchen after a few weeks, once they bush out!

WEEK #1 ADD-ON SHARES: We are Week “A”

Odd-numbered weeks of our CSA season (week 1,3,5) are called “A” weeks. And even-numbered weeks (week 2,4,6) are called “B” weeks. If you have any kind of non-veggie, bi-weekly share, you have been assigned to either “A” or “B” week for the season. If you get a cheese share, it always comes on Week “A.”

WEEK 1 FRUIT SHARE:

STRAWBERRIES (2 QUARTS) ~ (from Polter’s Berry Farm, Fremont) To store: Put your berries in a colander in your fridge (or store them in a Debbie Meyer Green Bag), where they will keep for up to 5 days. Do not wash until you eat them. To prep: Wash off the berries and remove the green tops before eating. To freeze: Place whole berries on a cookie sheet and freeze. Once they are frozen, pop them into a Ziplock bag for easy storage and freeze.

RHUBARB (1 bunch) ~ (from Wayward Seed Farm, Fremont) This tart vegetable is one of the first to emerge in the spring. Because of its sour taste, sugar is usually added. It has the look and texture of celery and can be red or green. To store: Wrap in plastic baggie and place in the fridge. Use within a week. To prep: Remove the leaves and bottom inch of the stalk. Chop or mince. To use: Add to pies, cakes, muffins, scones, jello, or just try making an easy sauce to top your ice cream or pound cake. Try eating rhubarb raw as a snack, dipped in sugar! To freeze: Super easy! Just chop and pack into Ziplock freezer bags to flash freeze. I often do this with my rhubarb, because I’m at a loss for how to use so much of it. It lasts for up to a year this way!

Rhubarb is also just good raw — it’s pretty sour so dip it in a bit of sugar and take a bite!

CHEESE SAMPLER:

1. Cheddar cheese, fresh mozzarella from Knueven Creamery;
2. Apricot-Ginger chevre from MacKenzie Creamery – this goat cheese comes in a little cub container. The apricot flavor sits at the top. So when you open it up and dump it out, the fruit will run down like a volcano. This chevre CAN BE FROZEN!

Ice Cream Flavor of the Week:

Rhubarb Crumble from Knueven Creamery. Note: be sure to stop and pick up your ice cream from the Knueven milk truck at your pickup site! They will be located either right before or after your veggie pickup. Your farmers will not be passing this out in their delivery line.

COFFEE Flavor of the Week:

Maddie & Bella Coffee Company ~ Peru Chanchamayo Highland — nutty/bright/clean

This week: CAR SIGN CONTEST

It’s that time again! We’re holding the third annual CSA CAR NAME SIGN contest! Time to bling up and decorate your CSA name sign. We’re picking our favorite sign from EACH site, and giving them a free pint of Knueven Creamery ice cream the next week. (That’s a total of 4 winners!) Make sure your sign has your last name written in large letters, so we can see it from 2 car lengths away. We’ll choose our winner on week 2 of the CSA.

Hold up your car sign when you get close to the front of the line.

HOW TO PICK UP YOUR SHARE:

All pickups will be drive-thru style. To help us keep things moving, do not get out of your cars.

1. Follow the flow of traffic until you get to the site staff host at the tent/truck. For Perrysburg and Sylvania, you will be able to form TWO identical lines on either side of the tent. Do not leave your vehicle. Hold up a sign in your car window with your customer last name on it. Pop your trunk (or roll down your window and tell us where you want us to put your bin). Make sure your veggie bin from the last week is in the trunk (starting week 2).
2. Staff host will remove your bin from the prior week from your vehicle. Please return all egg cartons and veggie totes each week.
3. The staff host will give you your share(s) using their checklist – this could include vegetable, fruit, flowers, coffee, cheese, or an egg share. (Cheese is delivered on the odd weeks of the season — also known as “A” week). You will be asked to choose from a variety of potted culinary herbs during week 1 and 2.
4. Staff will add any additional online store orders you may have purchased in advance from Shared Legacy Farms store.
5. Perrysburg and Sylvania: Drive to the Knueven Creamery station and pick up your milk or ice cream order or any store order you placed the week prior at www.KnuevenCreamy.com. (Elmore customers will get their milk share and /or dairy store orders from Corinna and her team.)

Elmore Pickup (Tuesdays, 5:30-6:30 PM) – Cell phone: 419-344-7092

Sylvania Pickup (Tuesdays, 5:30-6:30 PM) – Cell phone: 419-345-5659 – expect longer lines the first half hour

Perrysburg Pickup (Thursdays, 5-6:30 PM) – Cell phone: 419-345-5659 – expect long lines the first 45 minutes

Port Clinton Pickup (Thursdays, 6-6:30 PM) – Cell phone: 419-344-7092

FARMER KURT’S FIELD NOTES

Welcome to week 1!! Are you ready?

Corinna and I were just talking this morning about how unstressed we feel. This is not normal. Usually, we are hustling our butts around, trying to get everything in the ground, feeling rushed and behind schedule.

This year, things are different. I think it’s because we invested in a strong crew. If you remember, last year was a tough year for us, after 4 of our crew members left mid-season, and we were left scrambling to figure things out. Well, I decided not to take anything for chance this year, and so we invested in the U.S. Worker Visa Program — also called H2-A in the agriculture world.

It’s been the best decision ever.

Our harvest and field crew consists of Polo, Pedro, Jose, and Jesus — all from Mexico, all related to each other in some way, so they have a good synergy. They are joined by 2 locals: John (a CSA member) and Noah. Together, this 6-person full-time crew is getting the jobs done, and I’m spending less of my time doing the manual labor of harvesting and weeding, and instead managing my business.

In fact, if you take a look at our farm’s org chart, you’ll notice we have lined up a LOT of people this season who help make the machine run — 7 paid staff crew, 15 site hosts, 8 box packers, 2 store order packers, 1 maintenance guy, 5 bin washers, 1 book-keeper, 1 virtual assistant for Corinna, and 1 CSA Coach (Cadie). Making sure that we have the right people on the bus to help share the load of work has made all the difference in managing our stress. Everyone is doing their job, so all we have to do is manage the team, and then I can focus on the things that only I can do.

Many thanks to the 3 CSA families that donated bicycles to Pedro, Jose, and Jesus. Although I spend one day a week driving them around on their errands, they like to have the freedom to ride to Genoa Bank or the Mexican food shop in Lyndsey whenever they need it. This has been a VERY hospitable gesture on your part. Thank you for making our farm feel so welcoming to them.

My new “stale bedder” machine is awesome. In case you didn’t hear, I partnered with Tilmor Tractor to help draw up the concept plans for this new invention. This tool works is a weeding tool that only goes down into the soil a few inches, without damaging the lower strata of the soil (which has a lot of micro-biology at work!). Other machines destroy that lower layer. Anyway, Tilmor agreed to build a proto-type off my design this winter. They were out to film me using the tool for their marketing a few weeks ago. You can watch the video below. By the way, I got to keep the original beta version of this tool as my payment! Soon they’ll be selling this product to other farmers around the country.

The melons and sweet corn are in. Tomatoes went in. So did the peppers last week. These are seriously the best-looking peppers I’ve ever had. We also have some early tomatoes growing in one of our high tunnels. Because of the heat it traps, the high tunnel allows us to plant things like tomatoes a whole lot earlier, which means they’re ready earlier! We had about 2 inches of rain this week — that’s just where we need it. Not too much, just enough. My crew is out weeding the new bed of carrots and beets today — it’s tedious after a rain, but if we don’t get to it, I’ll  lose the whole crop.

Like everyone else, our farm is feeling the pinch with recent rising costs for fuel and packaging supplies. I don’t expect you to solve this for me, but I do just want you to be aware of it, and you will likely see the prices in our online store rise a bit as we try to manage it. It’s something facing every farmer right now. Thanks for supporting your local farmer!

The garlic is scaping nicely. In the past, I’ve waited a bit longer before cutting the tops of the garlic plant. But my mentors have told me that I’ll get bigger heads of garlic if I scape now. (Scaping is when you take the flowering curlicue part of the plant off. It’s edible too, and tastes just like garlic). So we’ll be having slightly smaller-looking scapes this year since they’re earlier. But I think they’ll be more delicate.

We visited Tatum Park this Saturday to learn more about how we can support Sonja’s work in building up urban gardening communities.

We stopped by Tatum Park this Saturday to visit with the founder of Urban Wholistics. Sonja and Zahra gave us a tour of this non-profit organization that has set up a community garden in downtown Toledo. Their mission is to function as a kind of nature school for urban kids, and teach them how to grow and prepare their own food. There were raised beds full of vegetable transplants all around, a high tunnel, a newly constructed shed, and even a makeshift spot for farmer’s market vendors. Corinna and I have decided to build a relationship with the people at Urban Wholistics, and try to find a way to accelerate their growth. There is so much energy and change happening, and we want to be a part of it! We’re hoping to find a specific project our CSA can help with, and even give you an opportunity to head over and volunteer at Tatum Park sometime this summer.

Josiah celebrated his 11th birthday this week. My family came over for a small party. Somehow Josiah got Grandma to bake him 5 cherry pies! I still remember the day he came into the world. Corinna came outside and announced, “We need to go to the hospital now.” And I answered: “Just hold on, Babe! I’ve got to get a few more tomatoes in…” And she responded, “No, we need to go NOW.” And 2 hours later, our son was born. Now here he is — eleven years old.

Well, that’s a big update for this week. There was a lot of talk about! I can’t wait to see all of you at the pickup. Remember, you’ll see Corinna if you go to Elmore or Port Clinton. I’m the point guard at Perrysburg and Sylvania. Be patient with us on week one! There will likely be a few mistakes as we work out the logistics of 396 bins moving around Toledo.

We appreciate you standing behind our farm through thick and thin. Knowing you have our backs makes us feel incredibly strong, no matter what may happen. Not every farmer can say that.

~Your Farmer, Kurt

WEEK 1 ANNOUNCEMENTS

1. Don’t forget to bring back your plastic veggie tote on week 2. We’ll sub it out with a fresh one. Simply leave it in your car wherever you want the next bin to be placed by our team. Do not use your veggie box for anything else besides storing our food — don’t let your pets or your kids play in them. Please return all egg cartons the following week. We can re-use them.
2. Watch our weekly Live Unboxing video this Tuesday around 8 PM inside the private Facebook group. Cadie Jardin, our CSA coach and dietitian, will show you what’s in the box, share storage tips and ideas for how to use your product. You can find the Facebook group at this link. If you’re not on Facebook, we also upload this video by Wednesday night into the CSA Academy (free with your membership in our CSA). See below for how that Academy works.
3. T-shirts are in! If you pre-ordered a farm tshirt last month, we will have it for you at the pickup site this week!
4. Schedule a reminder for box pickup in your phone, and add your farmers’ cell phones to your contact list. If you miss your box pickup, call one of us as soon as you can. Please review our “Missed Box” policy in our CSA handbook. If you fail to pick up your box, we reserve the right to donate it. We usually bring back up to 3-5 boxes to the farm in case a customer wants to drive out to the farm to pick it up. But we only hold these for 2 days.
5. Beginning this week, you can order additional items from the Shared Legacy Farms online store. This week, we have scallions, spinach, Jed’s eggs, syrup, and rye flour for sale. Our store link is super easy to remember: www.sharedlegacyfarms.com/store. Just be sure to select the right pickup site that coincides with your pickup location. If the pickup option is greyed out or not available, it means you missed the window to order. You need to place your order 48 hours before your site time. We harvest the product on Monday and Wednesday mornings — early.

Taking Care of Your Cut Flowers

Our flowers come from flower farmer Kristy Buskirk at Clayhill Organic Farms.  Each week, you’ll get a new bouquet of fresh seasonal blooms. Kristy harvests them about 7 hours before you get them in your hands, so they are super fresh!

If you’re getting a flower bloom share, here are some quick tips for how to get them to last longer! First, get them out of your hot car and to your cool house ASAP. Before storing them in a vase of cool water, cut the bottom inch of stem off. This will “open” the stem and allow your flowers to drink deeply again. You may need to change the water every couple days. You’ll notice some blooms will droop faster than others — this is based on the variety. But you should expect your bouquet to look nice for about 5 days. They have a really long shelf life!

Element 112 Farm Dinner Tickets

June 25, 6-9 PM   |   4 tickets remaining

Once a year, Chef Chris Nixon of Element 112 restaurant comes out to our farm to cook his Chef Tasting for 12 lucky guests. This year the date is June 25, from 6-9 PM. Tickets are $150 per person, and include the full tasting, wine pairings with each course, and gratuity. You also get a seat next to your farmers, and the chance to hob-nob with one of the best chefs of Toledo. Walk the fields and see how gorgeous everything looks. Dinner includes a great view of the farm. There are currently 4 tickets available. To reserve your seat, email Corinna at the farm.

Pre-Order Salmon by June 15th

from Citizen Salmon Alaska

Our Community Supported Fishery partner begins fishing for wild Alaskan salmon after June 15th. Aaron is trying to get an idea of how many folks will be wanting fresh wild salmon, so he can schedule his small-crew fishermen. Place your order for salmon, halibut, or scallops now at www.CitizenSalmonAlaska.com. Try to order by June 15th. But you can order ANY time of year while supplies last.

The fish is SUPER fresh — processed and blast-frozen within 5 hours of the catch. Aaron processes it into smaller cuts (individual portion sizes) and each portion is vacuum-sealed. It arrives frozen on your doorstep, or your money back. And you’ll get a notification from Aaron once it’s shipped so you can keep track of its progress.

As a CSA member you get a 5% discount on ALL online orders with CitizenSalmonAlaska.com through December, 2022. Use the coupon code we gave you in your email. Note that the price of overnight FedEx shipping is included in the cost you see per pound on the website. You get a significant savings the more fish you buy. So a 50 lb. order of salmon will be much less than a 15 pound order. CSA members are organizing group orders right now inside the CSA Facebook group. So if you only want 20 lbs, you can partner up with other folks to get to the 50 lb. level and get the big discount.

How to Access to the CSA Membership Academy

This is a library of digital resources to help you master CSA membership. It includes videos and guides and handouts to support you as you grow into a CSA foodie member. Membership for you is FREE as a CSA member. To access the Academy, please go to www.sharedlegacyfarms.com/academy and login. If you don’t remember your login credentials, reach out to me at sharedlegacyfarms@gmail.com and I will reinstate you.

In this video, I show you the different modules inside the Academy, how it’s organized, and where you can find things. There’s a new module this year called RECIPES & RESOURCES, which is where we will be storing the Facebook live video unboxing, recipes, and newsletter link by week.

WEEK 1 CSA RECIPES

Members: You can download these recipes as a PDF here.   These recipes are designed to inspire you to use your box this week! Please check inside our private Facebook group to find your fellow members sharing ideas for what to make with their box! Share a photo and you might be featured in next week’s newsletter!

• Garlic Scape Hummus
• White Bean & Garlic Scape Dip
• Garlic Scape Pesto
• Creamy Herb Dressing
• Scallion Vinaigrette
• Spinach Turkey Meatballs
• Easy Spinach Frittata
• Mashed Cauliflower & Spinach
• Roasted Carrots with Carrot Top Pesto
• Curried Carrot Soup
• ‘Strawberry Rhubarb Crumble Bars
• Rhubarb Liqueur