CSA Week 9: On the cusp of Summer's bounty
Tian Tian Farm Newsletter - July 30, 2024
Logistics:
We are planning to move to all Thursday deliveries, but have pushed back our anticipated start date. Our new start date for all-Thursday deliveries will be the week of August 21 to 27 with all deliveries taking place on August 22. We will give you a heads up before making the switch.
This week we will begin staggering certain crops, meaning some drop-off locations will get one crop while another drop off will get the other. Then the following week, we’ll flip the crops to make sure everybody eventually gets the same vegetables. We’ll make a note of it in the following section.
This Week’s Share:
Scallions
Head lettuce
Stir-fry mix
Pea shoots (Beacon Hill, Central District, Vashon)
Green beans or dragon beans (Not pictured… Ballard, Maple Leaf)
Summer squash
Carrots
Two sooyow cucumbers
Kale (Lacinato or Red Russian)
We’re just on the cusp of summer’s bounty… With enough tomatoes for market but not quite for all 50 members just yet. We expect this week’s heat to bring in many tomatoes, eggplants, and shishito peppers, all of which we expect to begin appearing in your boxes in the coming weeks.
For now, cucumbers and summer squash will continue to represent the summer. We are having a bumper crop of our suyo cucumbers, so we’ve loaded you up with two this week. Consider keeping a quick pickle in your fridge.
Wednesday’s shares will get pea shoots while Thursday’s shares will get either green beans or dragon’s tongue beans. Next week will be the inverse. I apologize for forgetting to photograph the beans. Either way, both varieties shine in a quick blanch. Here’s just one of many recipes to try.
Apologies to Kale
In the summer of 2020, Elizabeth and I apprenticed at Persephone Farm, a 20-acre commercial vegetable operation that served Portland farmers markets. Persephone planted maybe half an acre of kale, about half the size of Tian Tian Farm. If you’ve ever sustained a kale plant from spring to fall, you know brassica oleracea has incredible growth potential. During our season at Persephone, the farm’s kale patch transformed into a kale forest, with plants reaching our eye level. We spent many mornings harvesting kale, leaf by leaf, bundle by bundle. And we ate lots of kale salad.
When we started Tian Tian Farm, we pointedly decided against buying kale seeds. At the time we were pretty committed to solely growing “Asian heritage vegetables,” a pretty vague food category that to us excluded kale. As Elizabeth said in a contemporaneous Seattle PI story about our farm: “You can find fresh kale at any market.”
We softened our stance over time, and took the plunge on many varieties of lettuces and tomatoes. This season we finally gave in to kale. We planted three rows, and I am glad we did.
In my opinion, kale is a miracle crop. Once established, it is almost impervious to the seasonal changes that affect other leafy greens. Whereas extreme heat will cause most of our brassicas to bolt and turn most of our lettuces to turn bitter, kale just coasts along, getting leafier and taller. While a light frost will extinguish much of our field, kale just becomes sweeter and crisper. In the past three winters, we’ve subsisted on kale grown by the two sisters who used to share the land we farm on, at times brushing snow off our harvest.
To Elizabeth’s point, kale has not been a great market crop for us this season. I don’t think people come to us for it. But it has been a regular order from the Vashon food bank, and it feels good to feed our neighbors.
As always, thank you for supporting our farm.
‘Til next week,
Steven