farm share

[rushthatspeaks]

My household has purchased a share in one of the organic farm collective delivery services around here-- this one delivers by tricycle-- and I've decided to make a note each week of what they send us so that at the end of the summer it will be easy to review and we can decide whether to do it again. This is mostly for future reference.

The first delivery was today.


Inventory:

Live herbs:
one dwarf sunflower (okay then, harvest-your-own sunflower seeds it is)
one sweet basil
one Thai basil
one cinnamon basil
one spicy bush (which I looked up and apparently it is uber-basil or something)

Veggies:
about one pound young pea shoots (had an interesting time figuring out what they were)

Fruits:
one quart strawberries

Groceries:
one large circular loaf cranberry-walnut bread
one jar strawberry jam
one dozen eggs (one duck egg, the rest chicken)

ETA: We got a note from the place saying that it wasn't a duck egg, it's just that about a third of their flock of chickens is a breed of chicken that lay multi-colored eggs, some of which greatly resemble duck eggs (seriously, this was a perfect match against several online photos).

Also, What We Did With The Food:

Picked-over and washed pea shoots wilted slightly in blood-orange-infused olive oil and tossed in tangerine balsamic vinegar and a dash of salt, on top of thinly sliced strawberries, on top of lightly toasted cranberry-walnut bread. With choice of strawberry rhubarb jam, hot pepper jelly, sweet Tabasco, or (definitely the winner) both strawberry rhubarb jam *and* hot pepper jelly.

Incredibly light, incredibly summery, with a light hint of citrus and a taste that can only be described as fresh and green.



We've had eggs on corn griddle cakes and eggs in a broccoli quiche-- the thing is, we already had a dozen eggs in the house. Tomorrow I am attempting a souffle in self-defence.

Comments

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

Oh, that sounds lovely! Alas, it's no use my ordering farmers' marketry: no matter how fervently I resolve, I never get round to cooking it. What a waste.

Nine

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

Clearly you should come over to our place for dinner sometimes.

[tiamat360.livejournal.com]

one duck egg, the rest chicken

That seems...somewhat bizarre.

Will the deliveries always be that large, or is this one especially bountiful because it's the first week?

[fiddledragon.livejournal.com]

If my farm share is anything to go by, most of them will be considerably larger. One week last year included twenty pounds of tomatoes.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

On the one hand, I am seriously hoping for tomatoes because of the commercial tomato shortage due to the salmonella scare.

On the other hand, twenty... pounds... *blinks*. Whatever did you do with them? Sauce?

[fiddledragon.livejournal.com]

We canned and dried most of them. Drying them is useful because it requires very little effort and then they become small and easily storable. Most of the tomato-season weeks were somewhere between 3 and 10 pounds; that had been a record week for the farm. :-)

[shahnasa.livejournal.com]

Yes, that struck me as small, too. But we're kind of still in the pre-season. The harvest will be much more bountiful.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

I'm hoping they'll be larger, actually, because it would be nice if this were all the vegetables for the week. This week we had to buy some fruit and so on at the grocery store. However, not much is in season yet.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

That sounds... magnificently random. Clearly this isn't the same sort of deal as the weekly box schemes we have here, where you get the basics (I gave up because I couldn't cope with all those carrots, every week). May I ask how much (roughly) this arrangement costs?

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

Somewhat under seven hundred dollars for the whole summer; this is the size that is meant to be the four-people size. I think they basically send us what they have lying about.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I love pea shoots!

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

I do too! I'd never had them before and they were so good! I am hoping they will be in season at least another week.

[fiddledragon.livejournal.com]

Ooo, yay! What farm are you getting these from? You get all sorts of interesting non-produce things that we don't.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

It is called I think Silverbrook Farm.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Oh, I am so jealous! Even when I'm well enough to cook, I can't get the guys to sign up for a farm share. "Why don't we just go to the farmer's market and get what we know we want?" they say. Sigh.

Our favorite Chinese place in San Francisco cuts garlic into paper-thin slivers to saute with their pea sprouts. So very good.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

I have to try that if we get more pea sprouts.

Have you mentioned to them that the farmer's market doesn't deliver?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

When I'm feeling well enough to wander about, they consider wandering about the farmer's market with me to be a reward rather than a punishment.

Sigh.

[eredien]

You should make pea shoot soup. Look at the syllabub blog.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

... man, I really hope they send us more pea sprouts, because that looks wonderful too.

[larryhammer]

By tricycle? I'm jealous. Well, okay, mostly because our farmer's share pickup is 6 miles away, down at the Historic Y -- which is in theory busable or bikeable, but we rarely get it together and end up driving. Especially with it into the six month of hot season.

We've moved out of greens and into root veggies and the start of squashes.

---L.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

Wow. We don't really have greens yet.

I did not actually see the tricycle because I was not home when they delivered, but I Have Faith.

[larryhammer]

Greens are our winter crop, here in the desert -- enough of 'em we couldn't keep up. The weekly lareg bunches of cillantro were good, though. This week's crop is potatoes, onions, indeterminate melons, tomatoes again yay, plums/peaches/oh hey nectarines (pick one), tomatillos, peppers, oranges, and something called verdolagas, whatever they are. Last week we got another baggie of pinto beans.

Beet season is also, alas, long gone. Those were GOOD. Though the 3.5 pound one was a bit rediculous.

[gallian.livejournal.com]

Fezzik is jealous of all that basil!

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

Hee!

[signy1.livejournal.com]

If the fruits keep on a-comin', (and the jams don't) you really ought to try making your own jam. I do, every year, and invariably it tastes better than the store-bought kind.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

It is on my list of things to try.

[goat-girl.livejournal.com]

I hope you will be posting the recipes you devise to cook all of these wonderful things. I will feel cheated if you don't.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

See my ETA!

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

Oh, so _that's_ where you get pea shoots!

I've wondered.

The herbs sound great! Little plants?

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'd seen various people mention pea shoots before, and they never, ever turn up at the grocery store. I hope hope hope they keep sending them.

Little plants in pots, yeah. The basils will need repotted in larger pots Real Soon Now; each plant is at the stage where we can take 5-6 leaves off without hurting them, except the ordinary basil, which seems to be going for size of leaf instead of number (I have never seen a four-inch-wide basil leaf before). The sunflower is going to sit there being useless for months, but I forgive it on grounds of aesthetics and also it looks likely to have about five blooms.