Here’s to some of our most demanding days of the year and the simple but delicious dinners that Spring vegetables make possible at the end of them. To quote Zack, who is pictured above harvesting Baby Bok Choy for Stir Fry Mix, between the Green Garlic and the fresh assortment of leafy greens and little roots, “the walk-in cooler smells amazing” heading into the week. I love it when that happens—when you can tell that a day’s harvest just sort of goes together—when we can tell how good a meal is going to taste when it comes out of the field. In between squalls of rain, the crew harvested their first batch of field-grown greens for the year and cleared one of our greenhouses of bunched Turnip Greens (with itty bitty turnips attached) and gorgeous Red Radishes. Farmers can flip houses faster than HGTV, and this week’s harvest is brought to you by our need to make way for tomatoes! By this time tomorrow, that same greenhouse could very well be mulched, irrigated and planted with Heirlooms before heading out into the field to plant all of the Cherries, Romas and a few Saladettes mid-week. And you can plant some too!

I hope you’re ready for Green Garlic, because thankfully—it is ready for you! I’m going to ring in this year’s season by dunking slices of Green Garlic Toast in my soup for dinner tonight. If you’re new to Green Garlic, welcome to your new favorite vegetable of the season. Bunched up, it looks a whole lot like its cousin the green onion, but it is indeed garlic through and through.  The aroma lets you know even before the flavor does. If left in the ground each stalk would eventually swell out into a fully mature bulb of garlic, but we pick it in its "green" state, because it is very mild, tender and brings out the best in so many other Springtime foods and meals. It gets bonus points, because it takes very little effort to cook, which we find extra helpful during the busy planting season.  So many good, last-minute meals start with a bit of olive oil, chopped Green Garlic and whatever random vegetables or proteins I've been neglecting in the fridge. Greens?  Into the garlic.  Nuts, Prawns, Tofu?  Into the garlic.  Potatoes?  Asparagus? Pizza? Grains? Pasta? Salads?  You get the gist.  It is the perfect base to just about any stir fry, happens to be amazing chopped up and mixed in with your burger of choice. Toss some in with the greens from this week’s Radishes, and you’ll have an incredible Springtime Pesto to spoon over your Pasta, Potatoes and such.

It is April, and the moving parts of the farm are move-ING. (And if they aren’t, Mark is probably in the shop trying to remedy that). Our crew has been doing a whole lot of seeding and planting, all while learning methods for trellising, irrigating, driving and using the John Deere tractor for transplanting. They even had a chance to work together to put a new cover over one of the chicken houses and a secondary “hoop-house within a hoop house” last week to protect all of the tomato plants from frost. For all of the gardeners out there, know that we should have the first of our vegetable starts for sale next week—we’ll watch the weather and post an update next Monday. We like to set you all up for success at home.