This Thursday, a marvellous herald of summer happened. The Red Fire Farm CSA began. This marks the beginning of ‘local things growing enough to fill your tummy’ phase of the growing season.
We had already managed to enjoy fresh things from Allandale Farm, our own balcony garden, and a few farmers market trips over the past few weeks. But the start of the CSA season really signals the time of the year where lovely fresh things are really starting to come out of the fields. One of the important items coming from the fields: strawberries. Need I say more?
Last week, we went out to the new part of Red Fire Farm in Montague for some CSA coordinator training. We had gone out to Montague a year or two ago. Now things on the land are hopping compared to then. There are so many beautiful crops coming into bloom so to speak, and lovely farm developments, like a new packing barn, and updated cool storage. It was really quite impressive.
We got to pick our share of PYO strawberries while out there. A whole eight quarts. And what did we do? We ate them all in two days!
Also in the meantime, our own garden has been coming along, just like the crops at the farm. On a slightly, ahem, smaller scale.
Our garden report: Everything is doing pretty well. Some beer trapping for slugs and careful pruning for mold has averted some crises. For now.
And lastly, we’ve been harvesting a good amount of french breakfast radishes, salad Burnett and baby kale.
And now the CSA update:
Our first distribution was wonderful. The truck was on time, it only rained on us twice and there were so many familiar and new happy faces to receive the delicious goodness of farm fresh veggies. I have to say I really love getting to know new members and sharing the joy of seeing members from years past. It really puts the Community in CSA.
Our share this week was large and lovely. Quite impressive for the first week of June.
Theresa’s first order of cooking business was to make us a delightful dinner on Friday from these goodies.
We’ve been enjoying a few other farm specialties. We stopped at the Morse School Farmers Market today and picked up some meat from Kate Stillman, along with some english peas. We ate those in a lovely tea time snack.
Ah…. the joys of summer. I hope you are all enjoying the local bounty and nice weather too.