Baby Bok Choy Stir Fry

Happy Solstice!

Summer is finally here and we have a fridge full of fresh produce waiting to be eaten. Our CSA started last week and it is super fun. Since I know a bit about CSAs already I have quite the "game plan" for dealing with our weekly share:

1. I will bring some shopping bags to each weekly pick-up site and fill them up, leaving the box out of our cluttered house.

2. I plan on washing and trimming all the produce before putting it away. It is being stored in tupperware and reused spinach clam shells (you know, the huge rectangular plastic containers that spinach and salad greens are packed into).

3. There shall be no rationing. All of the produce is so delicious fresh that it's best to gobble it up. There has not been a problem thus far of running out since I've also been volunteering at the farm for some extra stuff. It would be much worse to have something spoil.

4. Salads for lunch every day.

That's all I have so far. The biggest difference so far between joining a CSA and living on a CSA farm is that I have this urgency to use everything up. When we were living at the farm, it was like,

"Oh, half a head of lettuce left? Just feed it to the chickens and we'll pick more tomorrow. "

and now it's,

"Use every bit, rehydrate that fallen leaf and it will be as good as new."

Here's a pre-CSA baby bok choy stir fry that I was cooking up after snagging a boxload of greens after an afternoon of volunteer hand weeding a couple of weeks ago. It's so pretty.

CSA

After one warm day, I am filled with spring fever. 45 degrees in January in Minnesota is like a tropical vacation. Seriously, as I was jogging behind the jogging stroller I told a sidewalk-scraping St. Paulian that 45 is hot enough, I was sweating buckets. Spring fever usually gets me excited to plant the first seeds and to finalize all the CSA plans for the upcoming growing season. Since we are no longer on the farm or running a CSA, I started to feel sad and bitter...again...about moving away from the farm. I emailed Loon Organics (they bought our farm) and decided to join their CSA this year. I thought it would be a great way to keep in touch with the farm, Toblerone, and hopefully some of our members. I will really really miss all the produce so it should help to get a full box every week. We will be picking up at the Mill City Farmers' Market in Minneapolis every Saturday morning. The new farmers (I call them the loons), will be selling produce as early as May 9 with hoophouse greens (yum!) I'm very excited to visit this market, as we had no time to do such things the past 6 summers while farming. I also signed up for the tomato share, salsa, greens, and pesto share (which were very popular amongst our August Earth members). It will be very interesting to experience a CSA from the other end. As for playing in the dirt (another thing I will greatly miss), I plan on getting a community garden plot, helping friends with their gardens (Sarah for one) and volunteering at "the" farm (our old farm). I feel like this farm transfer may end up like an open adoption. Hopefully.

A shot from last spring in the greenhouse with new onions, brassica seedlings, and spinach poking up in the background: