Week 5

Crop	Half	Cost	Full	Cost
Carrots	1 bunch	1.75	1 larger	2.50
Beets	1 bunch	1.75	1 larger	2.50
Cauliflower	.5-.75lb.	1.50	1-1.25 lb.	2.75
Cabbage	1.5-2 lb.	3.00	1.5-2 lb.	3.00
Green Onions	1 bunch	1.50	1 larger	2.25
Lettuce	1 head	2.00	2 heads	4.00
Broccoli			.75-1 lb.	2.00
Straw berries	1 pint	2.50	2 pints	5.00
Total		14.00		25.00

Recipe Of The Week

Carrot and Beet Slaw

2 medium beets

5 medium carrots

½ lb. Cabbage

1 green onion

olive oil lemon juice

salt and pepper to taste

Grate vegetables on a medium-fine grater or in a food processor all together in a bowl. Add olive oil and lemon juice as a salad dressing to suite your taste. You don’t want too much dressing, but you do want the tartness of the lemon to be prominent.

What’s Going On?

Hello folks. Hope you all had a nice week. Weird weather this year has led to an early end to strawberry season unfortunately. The berries in your box this week sure are good though, very sweet, so enjoy them, I think this will be the last of them but who knows, this hot dry weather is great for them. We may have a few next week.. Now that we are not picking strawberries two out of the five work days a week, we have had some time to catch up on other projects. This week we have been working on weeding, transplanting, and well....more weeding! We put the winter squash in the ground last week, as well as the second planting of tomatoes this week. We also transplanted the second planting of cucumbers, summer squash, and melons. The first planting of these crops all look good, and we should have an earlier start to the season for them.

The Lantern Restaurant in Chapel Hill featured the farm this past Sunday at a special dinner put on by chef Andrea Ruesling. Every vegetable in the five course meal was bought from Elysian Fields, and it was really interesting to see all the amazing things she could do with my vegetables. The cauliflower soup with truffle oil in it was to die for!

I have been a day or so late on getting the early notification emails out to folks and apologize. I find it hard to know exactly what we are going to give out until at least lunch on Monday. At that point I have had time to walk around and access how things have been growing over the weekend. Of course, the past two weeks, I have simply forgot to send out the email at lunch as I am usually busy making phone calls and catching up on emails. I feel I will get better at this though as it becomes less ‘new’ and thus easier to remember. As for the list serve, come on folks, lets get talking! I know there have to be some of you out there who are needing new ideas for lettuce or beets or turnips.....speak up! Remember, the email address is obscenely long at elysianfieldsfarmcsa2006produceinfo@yahoogroups.com

I have decided to make the next work day on Sunday June 4^th, and thank all of you who sent in your thoughts about that topic. I will send out further notification next week and up till the date to remind folks. This will probably be the last on until the fall as to avoid having work days in REALLY hot summer weather.

Produce Information:

So, it is beet and carrot season again, how exciting! Some of the full shares have received Chioggia beets, which are an heirloom variety. They taste the same, maybe a little sweeter, but are really pretty inside as they have white and red swirls of color. They are bright red on the outside and the leaves aren’t as big as the other beets so don’t confuse these with radishes, there are no radishes this week! One thing I would like to recommend is to not peel the ‘skin’ off of either of these crops before eating. At this point these vegetables are so young and tender, it is not necessary. A very simple rustic salad was served as an appetizer at the dinner at the Lantern this Sunday. It had raw carrots, radishes, turnips and beets (the beets were the only thing that was not raw, they had been somehow boiled or steamed to soften them to eat). The vegetables were on a plate with dip, and sooooo good eaten that way. So, no need to peel. All of the roots that you are receiving in your shares will also last a long time in the refrigerator. The greens will not, but the roots will last weeks and weeks. Most root crops like carrots, turnips and beets are all good for storing for months in a ‘root cellar’ over winter. Of course they are better and more full of nutrients eaten fresh, but no need to worry if you don’t get to them right away. Cabbage is very similar to this, it stores for a long time.

What To Look Forward To....

As I mentioned above, you can look forward to earlier cucumbers an summer squash this year as we already have small fruits forming. Typically ‘early’ for these crops means early to mid June, but we are looking here at late May. The onions and potatoes are doing well as well as the garlic, red cabbage, and broccoli. We will have more beets an carrots for the next few weeks. The sugar snap peas are a little late this year for us since we lost the first planting. The second planting is coming along well, and we should have some sugar snap peas in a couple of weeks. The first planting of Kohlrabi was a variety called Kolribi, and I liked the way it grew and tasted a good bit. The later plantings are a variety called ‘Early Purple Vienna’, and I do not like the way these plantings are growing at all. The seed was cheaper, hence my trial with it, but I have learned why it is cheaper, because it doesn’t really grow that well. So, I am not sure if we will have anymore Kohlrabi this spring or not, I will keep my eye on them. Okay, that is about it for now folks. Hope you all have a great week! Please send me any feedback, it is important! Elise.