As you may suspect judging by the massive amounts of lettuce coming in your boxes in the past two weeks, we have been swimming in lettuce here at the farm! We had a few large succession plantings that came on all at once, and so while we shared as much as we could with you in the past few weeks, it has been much more than we could handle. So this morning alongside our CSA pack we cleared the field out and harvested 304 lbs of lettuce that were then picked up by the food bank this afternoon! We are so thankful to Sandra Dumitras who connected us with Sources, a local non-profit who took all our food donations. Sandra runs our Farm to Families program and has been/will be helping us find ways to feed our local community with excess produce and veggie donations all season! It was awesome to hear that the lettuce we might have lost in the field this week due to the heat, will instead be in people's kitchens in the next few days.
This week the root veggies are here in full force and we will be offering 3 fantastic roots this week!
First up, carrots! After months of carefully tending to our carrot patch and hours of weeding, the first carrots of the season are here. We are quite proud of them and hope you will taste in them the many hours of committed volunteer and farm crew labor that went into bringing those carrots to our tables. Carrots are slow growing and take quite a long time to grow, and this means lots of time for weeds to pop up, so in a system that does not use pesticides this means a major labor of love.
Next, beets! Beets are a personal favorite of mine both to admire for their bright beauty in the field as it stains my fingers, and to cook and eat all sorts of different ways!
And finally, the feature root of the week - salad turnips! Salad turnips surprised me when I first started farming. I had no idea a turnip could be so sweet and tasty fresh out of the ground! They are refreshing and crisp, a perfect addition to salads or nice light snack.
In the spirit of new exciting root veggies, I will leave you with a favorite recipe of mine you might want to try with your season’s first beets.
Balsamic Marinated Beets:
-1 bunch of beets, topped
-Dried herbs such as thyme, oregano, dried basil
- Scallions
- Olive oil
- Balsamic vinegar
- Salt and pepper
1. Toss the beets in oil and the herbs and then wrap in foil and roast at 400 until tender
2. Meanwhile make a marinade mixing ½ cup olive oil and a ½ cup balsamic vinegar, finely chopped scallions, and salt and pepper to taste
3. When beets are tender remove from oven and cool, once cool peel the skins and chop into slices
4.Marinate beets in oil and vinegar at least 1 hour or overnight if possible.
5. Serve as a side as is or as a salad with goat cheese a top some arugula
Have a wonderful veggie filled week!
Farmer Carly
PS: special thank you to those of you who have filled out the survey I sent out earlier this week about protecting the land surrounding A Rocha and the farm. Some of the land at risk is actually land we are growing your food on currently. If you have not yet had the chance to fill out the quick survey you still have until this Sunday to do so (https://www.surrey.ca/
