Who is ready for some lovely leafy greens? The greenhouses are popping, and we've got to start freeing up room for the next round of planting. So, we have another leafy week ahead with Baby Barese (an Italian Chard variety that looks like Bok Choy), Dandelion and a mix of Mustards (including actual Bok Choy) that will make great stir fries, spicy salads and more.

Weeks like this can be a whole lot to take in after months of heavy roots and squash, and finding uses for new greens can feel really intimidating--especially when we start tossing around adjectives like bitter and spicy. So I, Farmer Katie, would like to offer you some of my tried and true, unsolicited advice. Here goes! Yes, you can comb through your cookbooks and search the web far and wide to dig up specific recipes for preparing specific greens in very specific ways. As a food enthusiast, I support this wholeheartedly if that is the type of approach that works for you. But, while I am that person a great deal of the time, I am by no means that person every day or even every week. I know--there goes my mystique. So, here's what happens with greens most frequently in our house:

Another Spring has arrived, and thankfully, the seasonal cues are all there--rushing to work with the soil on drier days, scrambling to plant in the field between squalls, finding the first few tiny pullet eggs from the youngest flock, seeing the propagation houses fill up with seedlings, and falling prey to the allure of extended daylight. We're suckers for some sunlight, but those morning frosts are sobering reminders of the variable arc of the coming months. Spring is our most diverse season of the year, with one foot in winter as we ease out of March and another toe stretching out toward Summer by May. We'll work our way through the last of the overwintering crops and enjoy the first signs of new growth. A whole lot can (and does) happen in Springtime, so I hope you enjoy watching it unfold how it may over the next ten weeks on the farm and at your tables.

The first tender cuts of Kale Raab are ready!
...however, this is anything but the first harvest from these plants. Every year, we seed and more than fifteen thousand plants to get us through four seasons of harvest. The big bunches of Kale we see in the main season give way to smaller leaves in the Fall and Winter for Braising Mix, and at about this time in late Winter/Early Spring, we get to treat ourselves to the flowers, aka Kale Rapini or Raab.