Red Fire Friday
Friday was an exciting day, it was the first delivery of our new CSA veggies from Red Fire Farm. Being a huge food geek, I was excited for days before this and was counting down the days until the delivery. For the less geeky, a CSA is community supported agriculture – a local farm that sells shares of their harvest to the local masses. You usually pay up-front for a whole season of vegetables which helps the farmer cover his costs and minimize his risks. Paying up front takes the whole ‘money thing’ out of the equation and lets the farmer deal with what he does best, farming.
Springtime in New England pretty much means greens. I was fully expecting a meager allotment of green things but I was not disappointed this week. Most of the usual suspects made an appearance: leaf lettuce, bib lettuce, field greens, and spinach for the greens as well as turnips and radishes for the early root crops; a few herbs, chives and cilantro rounded out the week. As an added bonus, my fruit share was also filled with a nice large quart container of the seasons first strawberries.
Here’s a look at the bounty:
Assorted Salad Greens
Spinach
Strawberries
And my nemesis, radishes.
Now I don’t dislike radishes but there always seems to be an abundance of one item that a CSA gives out every week. In San Diego, it was oranges and radishes. We probably got 20 radishes a week for 6 months. Really, after about a month of these, you run out of ideas and start hiding them in your friend’s refrigerators. I stand by my statement for now – Radishes, my nemesis.
(I’m trying something new with them, maybe it will come out, maybe it won’t. We’ll see in the future…)
That is really cool. Good luck with your radishes!
We had our first CSA pick up last week. Looks about the same as yours, except no strawberries, and we had overwintered scallions. Strawberries this week, though! I look forward to radish tips. I never know what to do with them after the first salads.