In Your Share (Jan. 3rd edition)

Happy New Year!! The freezing weather this week has made for a challenging harvest. Nice to see the sunshine and not have to slog in the mud, but burrrrrrrr it is cold out there!

This week your share may include…

  • Beets: We chipped these Winterkeeper beets out of the frozen ground. What an amazingly hardy variety this is! In December we covered some of the beds with floating row cover and I think that did help keep them a few degrees warmer. Unfortunately the row cover also made for VERY good field mouse habitat so I’ll apologize in advance for any nibbles you may see around the edges.
  • Brussel Sprouts: This has been a great season for sprouts. The variety is Diablo this week.
  • Collard Greens: These still looked great despite several days of below freezing temperatures. The variety this week is Top Bunch
  • Kale: These were a bit wilted when we picked them, but will spring back to life quickly if you give them a dunk when you get home. I put the wilty ones in some soup today and the flavor is still quite sweet. But I think they’ll last longer if you rinse them and store in a plastic bag in the crisper of the fridge.
  • Onions: Yellow Copra & Red Zepplin are the varieties this week.
  • Potatoes: The red potato Desiree is a versatile enough for almost any kind of cooking. It is pinkish red with creamy light yellow flesh and makes a good general cooking potato. This website had an interesting way of describing potatoes on the continum from waxy to floury.
  • Dried Herbs: A nice selection of bay leaves, sage, thyme or rosemary. Thanks to Linda at the Rogerson Clematis Collection for sharing their herbs with us this summer!
  • Winter Squash: This week you’re getting a French heirloom squash called Melonette Jaspée de Vendée. It’s the first time we’ve grown it, and I liked it’s smaller size and sweet flavor. It was also fairly productive especially given that last summer’s season started so late. It is a round buff-coloured (jaspée; after the crystalline stone jasper) fruit covered with a cantalope type netting. The texture is similar to a spaghetti squash. I cut them in half & roasted it cut side down on a cookie sheet with a bit of olive oil. We quartered the cooked squash and thought the flesh was sweet enough to serve with just a bit of salt & pepper.

Coming soon… Sprouting Broccoli!