Greetings HeartEye Village CSA members!  You know, one of the more fun aspects of being a farmer is that sometimes a crop will just jump out and surprise you.  Like this week we suddenly had cucumbers!  First there were none, and then suddenly there were a bunch all fully ripe staring us in the face!  It’s kind of magical in a way…  We have A LOT of squash and basil for you this week. The method that we have been using to prune the Basil has done its job by making this wonderful edition to our lives incredibly prolific.  So its pesto time!

Enjoy!

Tracy

Greetings HeartEye Village CSA members!  Summer squash is here!  We are happy to report the summer squash plants are in full gear, no longer just idling along.  And what happy little squashes they are, sweet and good-natured!  We’ve had some great changes in the garden this week.  The zinnias started blooming and we are starting to see tomatoes forming on the vines!  The tomato plants seem thrilled to be alive and appear to be doubling in size nightly.  And in anticipation of the abundance of crops we hope to continue to have, we encourage anyone interested to sign up for the Food Preservation Workshop on the 31^st.

We also have one favor to ask of you all.  We need everyone to take a few minutes to do a little hokey-pokey magic dance during the upcoming full moon in order to make sure we do not become victims of the GH PLAGUE that is occurring all around the region now.  I’m not going to actually write out the word for the GH’s (just as a sort of precaution), but I will tell you that they can be described as “a hopping insect” the name of which sort of rhymes with “show-stopper.”  We have done some biological pest-control mitigation but we don’t think that asking everyone to do the hokey-pokey is an excessive precautionary measure.  Thank you!!!!

Enjoy!

Tracy

Greetings HeartEye Village CSA members!  Variety, variety, variety!  That is what this week’s box is all about. We are still waiting patiently for the true hot weather items but in the meantime we’ve got a fantastic array of crops for you.  One thing is that we have more garlic that it ready. Yahoo!  You can use this fresh or dry it and it should last most of the way through the winter.  We have kept the Minutina separate from the lettuce mix this time. You can mix it into your lettuce mix if you want to add “flair” to your salad (so I’ve heard), but I would think that it would also be GREAT chopped up with Beets, balsamic and goat chevre or gorgonzola (please see the recipe from last week).

Enjoy!

Tracy

Greetings HeartEye Village CSA members!  Ahh….the beauty of early-mid-season harvest.   How about those Turnips, huh? Have you tried them raw yet, just like candy I say!  Well, I hope you kept your Squash Blossom recipes from last week because boy do we have blossoms for you now.  You can turn your kitchen into a gourmet restaurant with the presence of these blossoms.  I’ve added another recipe below but I think they’d be great toasted and then put in an omelet or a frittata.  If you did not keep your recipes from last week let me know and I’ll e-mail them to you.  So, we have an abundance of blossoms but the squashes themselves are playing hard to get…  So we have “Hint of Summer Squash” this week as they work themselves up to full production mode.   Also, just to let you all know sometimes we have to divide things up over time between half and full shares.  For example, much earlier this season the full shareholders got Rhubarb and this week the ½ shares are getting Rhubarb.  If you aren’t getting something in your box this time around be assured that we will have some for you later in the season.  We also have a few tart cherries for you.  I actually like these just raw, but they are a bit tart for most people.  So, being as there aren’t really enough to make a whole pie, we recommend you make a sauce that could be used for ice cream, angle food cake or just by the spoonful.   Half share holders (or full shareholders if they still have their Rhubarb from several weeks ago) could possibly make a cherry rhubarb pie.  That sound good to me!

Enjoy!

Tracy

Greetings HeartEye Village CSA members!  Well, here it comes… Things are really starting to produce now, as indicated by the massive amount of Turnips you are all getting this week.  Actually, one reason that you are getting this quantity is because we don’t have the farm stand open yet, and so those poor little extra Turnips wouldn’t have had any place to go if not in your CSA box.  And next week there will be Summer Squash!  Yep the growth rate on everything has really kicked in in the last couple of weeks, a sure sign of mid-summer abundance upon us. We have a couple of very special treats in the box today, Squash Blossoms and Garlic!  Now there aren’t a huge number of Squash Blossoms as yet but we will try and include them whenever we can.  The Garlic is an early succession that kind of got forgotten about last year but apparently still felt something for us and produced nicely.

Enjoy!

Tracy