You all know we love our CSA members, but you may not know where the rest of our vegetables go. Today I wanted to tell you about a couple other places our vegetables end up throughout the year. Most Saturdays throughout the year, you will see one or two people coming through the market with black and white, vertical striped, puffy pants and neat white jackets with their first name in black cursive on them. That’s Kevin and or his sous chef from the restaurant Bread & Cup, a restaurant in the Haymarket that opened in 2007. Each Saturday, this restaurant features a Market Meal. Kevin walks through the market looking at what is seasonal and then decides what will be on the menu that night, much like you as CSA members don’t know what vegetables you will have to cook with until you open your CSA bag. We like to think it’s a little bit like Christmas:) At the restaurant, Pekarek’s Produce vegetables have been used in anything from grilled zucchini to roasted potatoes to sautéed turnips and kohlrabi with parsley to sweet and sour carrots to a creamed spinach and beet medley and more.
We also deliver vegetables to an indoor farmer’s market and CSA in Omaha called Tomato Tomato. At this location we are usually harvesting anywhere from 500 to 1000 shares of one or two vegetables. One week we might bunch 1000 beets and the next week it might be 500 pounds of green beans. You can be sure that this keeps everybody on their toes.
And speaking of Omaha, we still have one high tunnel structure to get home, but with all of the farm activities we have not yet accomplished this. We’ve already got plans for how we will be using this and the other high tunnels we brought home in pieces for next year! Tomatoes are starting to produce very well now, but next year we will put many more under the cover of a new high tunnel. The tomatoes are still grown in the ground (real dirt) but high tunnels passively (no heater) provide additional 2-4 degrees of heat during the early growing months, protect the crop in case of wind or hail, and help us to have more tomato crop earlier.
We also are excited to say that we’ve started harvesting sweet corn as of this past week. We didn’t quite have any by our July 4 goal, but we are happy none the less. Everybody has their favorite way of cooking sweet corn – mine being on the grill, out of the husks and brushed with olive oil so that it gets that nice smoky, charred flavor. But for our newer members who may still be experimenting with vegetables this year, you may try something simple. We recommend getting your water to a rolling boil. Boil the corn for 3 minutes, turn the burner off and let the corn sit for 6-7 minutes – then eat! No need to wait 30 minutes for boiled corn on the cob, its just that quick!
We hope you all enjoy your produce this week and love to hear from you on how you are doing! We appreciate your continued participation in the CSA.
Your Farmers,
Ryan, Katie, and Crew