Week #5. Final BiWeekly/A group box.

Who grows your food?

From left, Ben, Pollo, Steve, Aly, Simone, Ken, Maggie, Beth and Ava.  MIA that day, Ari, Madelline and Ida. 
The crew picks collard greens for this week’s delivery.  From left, Maggie, Madelline, Ben, Aly and Ida.

Let’s acknowledge the group working hard to grow good quality produce for you.  Our farm is staffed by a group of experienced farm hands and managers, plus me and Steve.  These individuals have worked for us from one year to 27 years.  They know so much about growing good produce. 

We all enjoy the work (or aspects of it) but the recent weather has been rough; too hot for us, too hot for the crops.  We are grateful for the rain that fell this week, as many storms had passed us by, and grateful that it came relatively gently, unlike other storms in the area. Wash your lettuce with extra care this week.  It has grit from the storms.

Strawberries are finished.

A string of 95 degree days, followed by heavy rain, ended our strawberry crop.  They are too delicate for that.  I am sad that we don’t have berries for the CSA boxes this week, but that gave us time to pick lots of peas for you instead.  I am happy we could offer multiple u-picks for you to pick for yourselves.  It was a nice field. We’ll be back with berries next year.

A woodlot for the woodlot

The maple trees are growing!

The new woodlot is a mix of hardwoods (in protective tubes) and conifers (without tubes).

I planted many new trees and shrubs this spring.  Seventy-two trees in a new woodlot, plus 35 flowering shrubs near our east border.  The shrubs will be beautiful in spring.

The woodlot is more functional.  The woodlot protecting our house and buildings was damaged in a February 2024 tornado, the first February tornado in Wisconsin.  Fortunately, the tornado just missed our buildings, greenhouses, etc.  Its path across our farm (and neighboring farms) was evident in downed trees in each fence line. 

It was weeks before I realized that the woodlot behind our house had sustained damage too.  Basically, the funnel must have picked up, gone over the top of the woodlot and house, then came down again out in the fields.  It came so close to our house!  One day I looked up and realized that I could see daylight through the trunk of every tree, near its top.  Across the woodlot, each tree had a gap at the same angle and same height.  Every storm since brings down more trees or snaps them at the damage line.  There are some healthy trees in there but the lot has been greatly thinned.

It was time to plant a new woodlot to protect the remaining woodlot.  I planted a mixture of conifers and hardwoods, with lots of sugar maples for future maple syrup gathering.  Also, hackberries, basswoods, serviceberries and a few oaks, all species that do well on our farm.  This is fun for me.  I think it will be more fun if we have steady rain, so I don’t have to spend so much time watering.  Protecting, mulching and watering the trees takes as much time as planting, but are all essential for survival.  This is a longterm project.

Thanks for reading,
Beth

Veggie List & Veggie Notes
Week #5, June 26, 2025

– Weekly shares
– BiWeekly/ A group

Sugar snap peas, 0.8 lb
Snow peas, ~1/2 lb
Zucchini &/or Zephyr yellow squash, 2.5 to 3 lb
Collard greens, 1 large bunch
Cucumbers, 2
Romaine lettuce
Kohlrabi, 1 large
Basil, 1 small sprig
Scallions, 1 bunch

Next week’s box will probably contain snap peas, green cabbage, cucumbers, zucchini & squash, snap peas, kale, basil, scallions and more.

Snap peas and snow peas – See photo below, to tell them apart.  Both require stringing.  Snap off the stem end and pull the string down the concave side of the pod (the inward-curing side).  Throw away the string and eat the pod.  The thicker pea pods might have a string along both edges. 
Storage: Refrigerate.

Collard greens – These grew well in the recent hot weather.  Strip out the tough midvein before cooking, like you would with kale.
Storage: Cover and refrigerate.

Cucumbers – We have been waiting for these! 
Storage: Store at room temperature for a few days or refrigerate in the warmest part of your fridge.  Cucumbers get chilling injury if stored too cold.

Romaine lettuce – This batch has grit from recent storms and will need care when washing.  I recommend cutting them dunking in a basin of water.  Repeat with fresh water or until the water is clear.

Kohlrabi (pale green, round vegetable with thick skin and attached leaves) – Crunchy and sweet, kohlrabi is a great addition to salads.
Storage: Kohlrabi bulbs will store for a month in the refrigerator.
Uses: Kohlrabi are good peeled and eaten out of hand, or added to sandwiches, or added to salads. It makes a nice salad on it’s own. You can grate it, slice it, or cut it into matchsticks. It’s also good cooked.

Basil – We washed the basil very gently.  Expect to wash it again to remove grit.  This batch is tender and flavorful but showing all its life experience; cold weather under row cover, strong winds under row cover, strong winds without row cover, heavy rain.  You notice that I don’t mention hot weather.  It takes that in stride.  Next week’s basil is beautiful.

Sugar snap peas (left) and snow peas (right).

RECIPES by DEB

Caramelized Zucchini Pasta

From Grilled Cheese Social

This pasta is quite similar to smitten kitchen’s zucchini butter spaghetti in terms of ingredients, but rather than grating the zucchini (or yellow squash), the squash is sliced. Personally I think slicing makes a prettier dish, but grated or sliced, these recipes transform a pile of zucchini into a pile of pasta! The three medium zucchini called for add up to about 1 1/2 to 1 3/4 pounds of zucchini.

Kohlrabi Remoulade: A Fresh Take on a Classic Salad

From Umami Girl

Classically, it’s celery root that is cut into a julienne and dressed with remoulade sauce; here kohlrabi, which is crunchier and juicier, takes the place of the celery root. If you don’t have a mandoline, you can grate the kohlrabi or cut it into matchsticks with a sharp knife. For a more traditional and slightly orange-r remoulade, see this Serious Eats recipe.
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Easy Chicken Club Lettuce Wraps

From YellowBlissRoad.com

You could sub in purchased chicken- or not-chicken nuggets to fill these wraps if you like, or instead of making wraps, you could make a big salad with the same ingredients. The dressing provided here is a 50/50 mix of Dijon mustard and sour cream, great on a wrap, but if you go the salad route, I suggest jazzing it up a bit with some sliced scallions and basil from the box, and a few tablespoons each of red wine vinegar and olive oil.
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Chili Crisp Snap Pea Salad

From Munching with Mariyah

Combine the sugar snaps and scallions from this week’s box with a few pantry staples like chili crisp and sesame oil to create this crunchy salad (control the heat by reducing the amount of chili crisp or omitting). If you have cilantro from last week, it goes in the salad, or sub this week’s basil instead. If you don’t have any edamame in the freezer, just skip it and consider adding chopped roasted peanuts as a topping.
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Stuffed Collard Green Roll Ups Recipe

From LeelaLicious

Collard leaves are easier to stuff than cabbage, since they start off flat. These rolls have a ground beef filling, but you could sub any ground meat. There’s also bacon in the tomato sauce, which sounds delicious but if you don’t eat pork, at the point in the recipe where you set the collard rolls on top of the bacon strips in a skillet you could simply use butter or olive oil, then pour your favorite tomato sauce over.
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Sour Cream and Charred Scallion Dip

From The Kitchn

Forget the Lipton’s, make your next batch of chip dip with charred scallions! And as the recipe suggests, in addition to serving the scallion dip with potato chips, try it on veggies, like sugar snaps, snow peas, or kohlrabi sticks. You can also spread it on a sandwich or use as salad dressing.
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Scallion-Corn Muffins

By Colby Garrelts and Megan Garrelts for Food and Wine

Photo by John Kernick
Scallions and cornbread are such a great combination they go with just about any meal. We don’t have local sweet corn as yet, but frozen works just as well in this recipe. Note that although the pictures shows six muffins, the recipe actually makes 24. If you don’t need that many muffins, cut the recipe in half or freeze the extras.