CSA report: Landisdale Farm, week 10

Saturday, August 09, 2008

Traditionally, CSA shares tend to get a little bigger this time of year - crops are really growing out of control.  Weirdly, the share from Landisdale Farm has gotten smaller.  Maybe they’re having some sort of crisis on the farm that I don’t know about.

Here is what’s in the share for this week:

• two small heads of butter lettuce
• 4 cucumbers
• 2 onions
• a couple handfuls of fingerling potatoes
• one sugar baby watermelon
• 6 white peaches (there were 7 but one of them was so rotten we threw it out immediately)

Coincidentally, last year when we were with Lancaster Farm Fresh’s CSA we also received a sugar baby watermelon in the share this week, along with many, many tomatoes.  We haven’t seen any tomatoes in the Landisdale Farm share this year, although I hold out hope: one of their main specialty crops is allegedly heirloom tomatoes.

I now have over a dozen onions in the kitchen from the CSA share this Summer.  Some of them from the earliest shares are starting to get a little soft, so action is now required.  Kevin had a great idea a few months ago to make caramelized onions in advance - I’m going to make them and can them using this tutorial.  I will also can the peaches right away, because the fruit we get from the CSA share tends to spoil within 24 hours.

The lettuce, as usual, will likely end up on the compost pile.  I tried to give it away to Naomi this morning (she met up with me at Clark Park to pick up my spinning wheel) to no avail.  Shouldn’t all the lettuce be bolting by now?  Speaking of Naomi, she sent me a recipe for watermelon gazpacho for the sugar baby melon that came in the share.