This week will mark the end of our 2019 Winter CSA, and Spring Share will pick right up next week on March 12th & 13th, 2019. If you haven't registered for your Spring Farm Share, you may sign up online or in the farmstand this week. Thank you so much for your support throughout the Winter Share—and here’s to the Spring that you are making possible! With one foot at the edge of Winter and the other dipping a toe into Summer, Spring is probably the most diverse of all seasons for the CSA. Things go from root to leaf to fruit over the course of three months, and all the while, you farmers are behind the scenes setting the vast majority of the entire year into motion. I cannot stress enough how thankful I am for those of you who take up the charge and support our farm outside of the main summer harvest, especially with such the challenges that this particular Winter tossed our way. Winter may be a season of dormancy, but I like to think that we have all of you Winter CSA members to thank for all of the crops that your membership made possible when we're all eating crisp and juicy things in the seasons that follow.
Best,
Katie
Read moreWILD HARE WEEKLY WINTER #7/8
Loving those clear skies, but ooooooo we are feeling that chill in the air. As you can see from all of the happy ladies pictured above, we took some time out on a sunny day at the end of last week to move the October flock of hens out into their new digs out in the field. This oooold raspberry patch has sat fallow for many years, so after the ladies work their magic on this patch for a while, we hope to bring it back online for brassica crops by 2020. It is worth noting that since moving these girls out into the field, we’ve found three tiny eggs in the nest boxes. There are three hundred in this flock, so it isn’t much in the grand scheme of things. But it is an early reassuring sign that Spring is on the way! That and the two cubic yards of seedling mix that just arrived in our driveway. This could be a big seeding week at the farm, and I couldn’t be happier about it. My cup also runneth over knowing that many of you out there have already signed up for your Spring Shares and beyond. I cannot express to you how much this helps us out as your farmers. Those pallets of potting mix, chicken feed and shipments of seeds come with sizeable pricetags and a whole lot of implied effort, but there is great peace of mind in knowing that we’re about to do incredibly hard work for great folks like YOU. If you haven’t signed up for your Spring Share yet, there’s still time to do so online or in the farmstand this week.
The ingredients that we’re putting on the CSA tables this week are standards by this point in the year--standards being a glorious euphemism for “same veg, different day.” I get it, and I’m right there with you peeps. I’m not even going to tell you what I would give for a gem lettuce salad right now. Which is why I have assembled a list of recipes to share this week in hopes that you, like me, might be inspired to try something familiar in a slightly new sort of way. Don’t worry. I’m not signing you up for molecular gastronomy—just jazzing up those standards a bit. For example, a traditional Potato-Leek Soup might get a late season glow-up with the addition of other roots, or with a plant-based version that incorporates smoked paprika, or dream big, ditch the soup altogether and enjoy a Potato Leek Pizza instead. Savory Roasted Pears? Yes please! Same veg—different way!
Best,
Katie
Read moreWe’re back at it this week, and WOW. What a beast February has been, and what an amazing group of people you all are out there. I cannot thank you enough for the outpouring of understanding and kindness that flooded my email inbox and popped up all over social media after we had to close up last week. If your faith in community needs restoring, look no further than the people who are bagging up their farmshares alongside you this week. Thank you for being a part of this CSA.
While the weather was busy being unpredictable last week, we were getting the Spring & Summer CSA Signup info posted online and preparing for the arrival of 75 additional day-old-chicks, hatched on Valentine’s Day <3. We’re already thinking ahead to this time next year, when we hope to be a little less tight on eggs. If all goes according to plan (ha), these girls will be a JV or second string of players for team Wild Hare. Winter time leaves us contemplating many of the “coulda, shoulda, woulda” scenarios like these, given that much of what we’re experiencing in the here and now was set in motion a year or more prior. In spite of the fact that he spent so many days shaking snow from them, Mark is going to crunch the numbers and see what it would take financially and structurally to get a bit more leafy green stuff under hoop houses a year from now as we try to become more and more self sustaining with every year. We have to make changes gradually and affordably, but thanks to your extreme patience and support, we have every good reason to consider what year-round farming looks like for us in 2020 and beyond.
If it didn’t catch your eye on social media, Ashley Rood of Rogue Farm Corp interviewed Mark and I for an article that is part of a series called “Changing Hands” for Capital Press —A Full Root Cellar, Hard Earned: Wild Hare Organic Farm. This week, we’re going to pull something truly lovely from that root cellar—vibrant and delicious Purple Daikon Radishes. I’ve been holding onto these bright and beautiful babies for when the depth winter had really set in, knowing that they’d provide a much needed pick-me-up at some point. The snow finally disappeared over the weekend, revealing the snowstorm’s damage to the first round of harvest on the Purple Sprouting Broccoli. Meltdowns come in many forms. Gorgeous radishes help. Sunchokes do too—you can read on about them below, along with this week’s recipes.
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