“Local things growing enough to fill your tummy” Time

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.

Some herbs from our balcony garden. Chive blossoms, chervil, sage, and parsley.

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?

Strawberries from Red Fire Farm.

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!

The rapidly disappearing strawberries.

Also in the meantime, our own garden has been coming along, just like the crops at the farm.  On a slightly, ahem, smaller scale.

Theresa in front of our garden plot at the Larz Anderson Brookline community Garden.

Our garden report: Everything is doing pretty well.  Some beer trapping for slugs and careful pruning for mold has averted some crises. For now.

Our first succession of large greens (chard and kale) are beginning to get big enough for some harvesting.

Our Lima beans are really taking off. We just hope our home-made bean pole construction is big enough….

And lastly, we’ve been harvesting a good amount of french breakfast radishes, salad Burnett and baby kale.

Theresa with a bowl of radishes and salad burnett.

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 CSA distribution ‘farmstand’. All prettied up for oncoming members.

Our share this week was large and lovely. Quite impressive for the first week of June.

Kohlrabi, Hakurai turnips, kale, green garlic, lettuce, cilantro, salad greens, braising greens, and spinach. Egg shares are on, and we got quarts of strawberries for our fruit share. Nom.

Theresa’s first order of cooking business was to make us a delightful dinner on Friday from these goodies.

Spinach feta pie with a lentil, mint and kohlrabi side salad. Super nom.

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.

Locavore tea time snack of Effies Oatcakes, Cranberry Ginger Chevre from West River Creamery, Peas from Stillmans Farm and Strawberries from Red Fire Farm. Served with a sparkling Rhubarb Rush from Bug Hill Farm.

Ah…. the joys of summer.  I hope you are all enjoying the local bounty and nice weather too.