Week 14: Farm day planned for 9/28
Tian Tian Farm Newsletter - September 5, 2024
Logistics
We will be hosting a CSA Day at our farm on Saturday, September 28, 2024. Our farm is located at 24026 Wax Orchard Road SW, Vashon, WA 98070.
In the coming week, please email us to R.S.V.P if you plan to attend, including in your email how many people you think you’d bring. Family is welcome, as are significant others. One or two close friends are also welcome. But please don’t bring your knitting circle or co-working floor.
The CSA Day will include a farm tour as well as an activity or two (to be determined). Last year we made kimchi. We will have more details to share next week.
This Week’s Share:
Kale
Slicing tomatoes
Shallot
Stir-fry mix
Sun gold tomatoes
Choy sum
Napa cabbage (Vashon, West Seattle, Ballard, Maple Leaf)
Amaranth Greens (not pictured, Central District, Beacon Hill)
Eggplant
Cucumber
Shishito peppers
Unlike the onions from earlier this season, the shallots in your box have cured and should have a considerable shelf life if stored in a cool, dry, dark place.
It’s very exciting for us to pack choy sum in your boxes this week. This is a crop that has given us a lot of trouble over the seasons (early bolting), and we believe we’ve finally cracked it.
Roughly half of you will get napa cabbage this week. And the other half will get amaranth greens. This will flip-flop next week. The reasoning is to give some of our napa more time to head up.
Seeing
Throughout my life I’ve been dogged by a wandering brain, Tangents concerning movies or friends or past mistakes flood my thoughts and leave me standing in the kitchen wondering what am I doing here again? These intrusions have left a path of broken promises, unfinished tasks, and forgotten appointments and have generally held me back in an economic system that glorifies productivity.
Tian Tian Farm has been a great place to work on my space cadet problems. So much of farming is seeing, and so much of seeing is focusing. I’ve started to adopt a principle of attending to something as soon as I notice something needs attending. One example concerning insect netting:
We’ve learned that brassicas (bok choy, gai lan, turnips, etc.) will almost always attract flea beetles, which completely demolish their foliage. A few nibbles here and there aren’t too much of a problem, as the contemporary consumer accepts insect damage as a tradeoff for pesticide-free produce. But too many nibbles in the seedling stages will hinder their growth. So, we like to cover brassicas with insect netting as soon they’re in the soil. BUT if the forecast calls for heat, as we’ve experienced often this summer, insect netting can suffocate seedlings. We leave the seedlings uncovered in those cases and hope that the flea beetles bug off to other leaf buffets. But this week, I noticed that one row of gai lan seedlings had tiny holes that are the tell-tale sign of flea beetle damage and as soon as I noticed the damage, I focused on covering them, and potentially saved a crop from decimation.
It’s great practice.
Recipe
Try stir-fried choy sum.
‘Til next week,
Steven