What to Do With Your Share---Week 4

Week 4 already. We are nearing the blending of the spring and summer seasons. We are continuing our harvest of the spring crops and tending to the growing and flowering summer veggies. Right now is when we have a convergence of the pea, strawberry, lettuce and garlic scape harvests. It is an amazing combination to enjoy while it lasts. Summer can wait.

In the Fair Share Farm 2013 calendar the photo for June is of several recipes that may just have their ingredients in your fridge. The sugar snap pea salad, broccoli pasta salad, and Asian cole slaw are all good choices.

Another suggestion is an oft-used home-made dressing of ours, creamy garlic. So good and even tastier with a few strawberries thrown in.

To help you alleviate the lettuce bonanza you are experiencing we have a final suggestion, wilted lettuce salad. Like any green, lettuce can be cooked. It is actually one of the easier greens to cook, as it is difficult to under-cook, and it cooks quickly.

Wilted Lettuce Salad
1 large head of lettuce (we used a romaine)
3 green garlic or garlic scapes
3 hakurei turnips or 1/2 cup julienned kohlrabi
1 tbsp olive oil or butter

Dressing:
1 tbsp of honey or 2 tsp sugar
1/4 cup cider vinegar
1/4 cup olive or other salad oil
1 tsp salt

1. Trim the top off the lettuce if needed. Trim off the bottom and fan the leaves under water to rinse out any dirt.
2. Heat the olive oil in a skillet and add the chopped garlic and hakureis. Stir and saute for 3 minutes.
3. Coarsley chop the lettuce head (you only need 4 or 5 slices to chop it up) and add to the pan. Add the salt, stir and cook for 3 to 4 minutes.
4. Take the skillet off the heat, add the dressing and toss.
5. Serve with crushed nuts or dried fruit as a garnish.

Cover Cropping
Feeding the soil is a full-time job, and this week more work was done in that department. The plastic of the high tunnel was removed to give the soil a breath of fresh air, and some rain on its face. We think that the sorghum sudan grass and cowpeas we seeded will germinate well, and add some much needed organic matter to the soil.

Taking off the high tunnel plastic

Meanwhile, we took a few last looks at our yellow clover patches before flail mowing them today, in advance of spading them in. A legume, yellow clover provides nitrogen to the soil, and takes in other nutrients and minerals.


Lorne strolling through the clover