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This week we'd like to introduce Ali Price, a Root 5 Farm CSA member and local food educator. Ali provides group and private cooking lessons to folks in the Upper Valley. She's also an aspiring Health Coach and born and raised vegetable lover. This season Ali is creating a series of weekly recipes that work with the ingredients in her CSA box. Her recipes are clear and easy to read, with lots of step-by-step photos. We're excited to share these fantastic recipes with you on our website. Look for links in our weekly newsletter, or just check out Seasonal Recipes under the 'info' tab on our website.  Many people find that being a CSA member or shopping at the farmers' market and working with seasonal ingredients fosters a new approach to cooking. You can enjoy delicious meals and save time and money by adapting recipes to use what's freshly harvested and what else is on hand. Many recipes can be made successfully with substitutions or omissions, and vegetables are especially suited to this approach. When you're looking for a substitute, think about plant families. For example, main courses often call for at least one member of the onion family (scallion, onion, garlic, leek, chive, etc). Alliums can usually be substituted for each other with excellent results. Members of the diverse brassica family can often stand in for each other. Kohlrabi, for example, could fill in for broccoli or cabbage in a variety of situations, because their flavors and crunchy textures are similar.
Ali is working on a series of master recipes that use some basic staples and flexible combinations of vegetables and spices, rather than a fixed set of ingredients. Check out these delectable examples- Grilled Summer Vegetables and Simple Summer Bites.
If you want to learn more about keeping your produce fresh once you get it to your kitchen, check out the storage tips on our website. Not all vegetables should be stored in the same way. For example, did you know that the best way to keep basil fresh is in a glass of water on your counter top, not in the fridge? Or that if you take the tops off your fresh carrot, beet, and radish bunches and store the roots in a plastic bag in your fridge, they will stay crispy and keep for months? Or that tomatoes should never be stored in the refrigerator? Learn more about the ideal temperature, humidity, and expected storage time for different vegetables on our website.
We're grateful for a beautiful summer that's resulted in a bountiful harvest, and we're on track to keep delivering a diverse supply of our fresh, organic produce through December.  We're growing over 140 varieties of organic vegetables to satisfy every taste and introduce new ones. Right now we're harvesting five different varieties of tasty tender beans- green, yellow, burgundy, purple, and Italian broad beans.  The market table is full of color and variety with mountains of rainbow root vegetables getting taller, and summer squash, cucumbers, peppers, eggplants and tomatoes are all in great supply.  Our fall crops are starting to size up nicely. We've been keeping the irrigation running through hot and dry spells to cool off our fall plantings of broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, beets, lettuces, and herbs.  We're jumping with joy about our winter squash this season! Our field looks great, and we've got so many varieties that will be ready to harvest for Fall CSA Shares.  If you haven't already, sign up now for a Root 5 Farm Fall CSA Share. It's a great way to eat fresh, eat local, and eat healthy. Visit www.root5farm.com to sign up today! Fall Shares start on September 7th!  Harvesting and packing our CSA shares each week is so rewarding, as our hard work comes together in a delicious array of colors, flavors, and textures.
Last week John and Amir harvested beets on a rainy day...  ...and Benner seeded the next succession of salad greens with our trusty Planet Junior seeder.  We often let cover crops like buckwheat, vetch, and clover go to flower to provide a good source of nectar and pollen for our honey bees all season long.  Our potatoes are in full bloom right now and looking amazing. We have swaths of white, yellow, purple, and red flowers for each different variety of potato we grow.
Our winter squash is also in bloom and buzzing with bees. Each one of the flowers that are pollinated grows into a squash, one more reason to keep honey bees on the farm.  Also noteworthy, Ben dressed as a giant broccoli and walked on stilts in the Fairlee 4th of July Parade with this fine group of stilt walking vegetable people! Fun times!  |
Root 5 Farm
Danielle Allen & Ben Dana 2340 US Route 5 North Fairlee, Vermont 05045 (802) 923-6339 [email protected] [email protected] |
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