Week 5 - Honey Bees and Thunderstorms

Happy Week #5! This week marks the end of the first quarter of our CSA season. I hope that everyone has been enjoying their farm fresh veggies as much as we have!

We're one step closer to meeting one of our biggest goals for the season. Our cooler now has a cooling unit installed, and operational! This coming week, we should be able to finish it up.

We were also able to find the time to put our greenhouse back together, which is a huge relief and help! I'm looking forward to upgrading our seed-starting set up next season, but I'm grateful for some extra growing space nonetheless.

Our plants have been loving all the afternoon thunderstorms this week! And we've been appreciating the late afternoon cool-off. It makes working on the evening so much more pleasant!

A honey bee that I found visiting our cucumbers around lunchtime today.

Several cucumbers, in various stage of development. You might start seeing a few cucumbers in your shares starting next week. 

Ground cherries! Each of these green husks will turn pale brown and drop to the ground below when they're ripe and ready to eat! Hence the name, ground cherry! We still have a little bit of a wait, but they're coming!

My favorite shot of the day! Compound tomato flower. Generally, a flower like this will produce a very large tomato. 

Unripe atomic grape tomato. The darkness on the right-hand side looks like a shadow, but it's actually a really deep purple stripe. So pretty, already! 

More tomatoes! 😍

Our first broccoli floret of the season!

Rainbow chard is slowly getting closer!

Farm-Toddler, standing in front of one of our varieties of snow peas. They are loving their trellis!

Bonus picture! I made pizza! I've had the Bon Appetit Issue that this No Knead Pizza Dough recipe came in on my shelf for FIVE YEARS, and I finally made it! The hardest part is planning a day ahead. Other than that, this is the easiest pizza dough recipe I've ever used. This pizza is topped with mozzarella, yellow bell pepper, garlicky local mushrooms, our kale, and some of our homemade marinara that we canned last summer.

CSA shares this week will be receiving: Napa cabbage, kale, salad mix, summer squash, and fresh herbs.

Our first recipe for the week is a favorite of mine: Glazed Lemon Zucchini Bread. I adore zucchomo bread. It's easy, it's moist, and you can pretend like it's healthy, because, hey! There's vegetables in there! I love lemon in everything in the summertime, especially desserts! (And, okay, maybe I've eaten a slice or three of this for breakfast before.) This recipe is easy to change up, too! I love to add berries to this one. Take a cup of berries, (whatever you have on hand, fresh or frozen. I'm fond of blueberries!) toss them in a tablespoon of flour, and fold in gently, just before you pour your batter into the pan.

Next up is Asian Kale Salad with Ginger Peanut Dressing. It would be just a little less colorful, but you could certainly use some of your Napa cabbage in here and it would be just as wonderful. It would be easy to make this into a full-on satisfying meal just by adding some grilled chicken alongside.

I hope you enjoy your shares, and this week's recipes! We'll see you at market!