The box this week is just brimming with leaves. Red and green, sweet and spicy, crunchy and tender. Afraid you’ll spontaneously transform into a rabbit if you eat any more leafy greens? Don’t worry, more “real” vegetables are on the way. Beets are coming soon (hopefully next week!), and more turnips including Scarlet Queen and Purple Tops in addition to more of the white Hakurei you have already seen in your box. Kohlrabi won’t be far behind and even the cabbages have started turning their leaves inward to make heads. Last year we had onions, yellow squash and cucumbers by late May so let’s keep our fingers crossed for a repeat performance this year. Even with some more “hard-crunchies” there will still be lots of greens in the shares. Here are some of the ways we’ve been eating our greens on the farm:
- Kale soup with white beans and potatoes in homemade chicken broth
- Baby mustard greens sautéed in bacon fat with a fried egg on top
- Radish, radish green, kale and egg stir-fry with rice and Flora at Bluebird Farm’s “Mississippi Kimchi”
- Grilled cheese-and-wilted-chard sandwiches (great with arugula, too!)
- Green salad with fresh strawberries, apple, walnuts and honey balsamic dressing
If you still can’t power through all those greens, consider blanching and freezing some. Kale in particular freezes very well. Just drop in boiling water for about a minute, drain, and freeze in small bags to use during the annual greens gap, i.e. July through September.
The Blissful Quiet of Rural Life
It has been a noisy few days on the farm. We have been weaning the goats. The does and their kids cannot see each other, but they can sure hear each other and have been calling back and forth non-stop! I want nothing more than to let them all out so that they can be reunited. This is our first time weaning, and everyone does it differently. Some people deworm at weaning as a regular matter of course, others don’t. Stress and being separated from the antibodies in mom’s milk for the first time can cause health problems. It’s no picnic for mom either and her bags fill with milk and no suckling baby to relieve the pressure. Now that the deed is done I am second guessing all our choices. The constant crying in the background doesn’t help, of course. I know we just need to keep an eye on things and wait it out until everyone settles down.
