Dear 2009 CSA-ers,
The Food Odyssey is about to begin! Despite the cool spring and some farming screw ups on Jim's part ( of which you will soon hear), we will be starting the season on time next Wednesday.
Directions to all three pick up locations are on our website
huntersgreens.com. Be sure you put both 's' s in the address, or you will get something else. Click on the large red type "Hunters' Greens pick up points details and directions". Those coming to the farm should ignore the direction "we'll meet you in the garage." Instead, you will find your share in a cooler in the parking area in front of the garage.
For those of you new to the drill, your share will come in a damp pillow case. The next time you come to pick up, you will bring your laundered pillow case from your last pick up and exchange it for a full one. Members failing to properly complete this exchange will get a frowny face next to their name in our records. If you are sharing a share under the every other week pick up, you don't have to bring your pillow case until you come to pick up again, don't worry about the other week, we have it covered.
NEXT WEEK'S SHARE
We expect to have our succulent spinach next week, some green onions, some mixed salad greens, radishes, and an assortment of cooking greens in the mustard green family, and possibly some "green garlic". We may offer some of last year's potatoes as an "extra". An extra means you can take it or leave it as you please. It is not counted in the weekly value of your share.
FOOD SAFETY
We often give a little lecture about food safety at the beginning of the season. We go to considerable lengths to assure the safety of your food supply. As small local growers the link between your safety and our livelihood is very intimate. But disaster can strike anywhere, and scientists aren't exactly sure of all the ways food borne ilnnesses can find their way into your food. And so we ask you to be our partners in assuring your food safety. If we are both alert, nothing should slip by both of us.
This is particularly appropriate this week as we are offering "baby" salad greens. Usually, we pass up this enterprise because of the risk associated with it, but the cool season slowed us down and this is what we have. Here at the farm we have been dining on thinned greens (roots and all) for a few weeks, and Jim has developed some techniques for cleaning them that might make you salad tastier and add a safeguard.
We expect your greens will come fairly dry and unwashed. Jim has been refrigerating them this way until he is ready to serve them. So the first trick is not to dump the bag out upside down, which will put clumps of dirt on top of your greens. Instead, lift the greens out a handful at a time, leaving most of the clumps at the bottom of the bag. From the bag place the dry greens in a colander and then gently shake it over the sink, more clumps will shake through the colander. Once again, don't turn the colander over and dump it out. Lift the greens out and set them aside. You can now empty the larger clumps left in the bottom of the colander out.
Now we're ready to rinse the greens. Jim usually rinses a handful at a time under running water and places them in another colander or on a towel. He might do this a couple of times. Dirt likes to hide between the leaves of whole plants.
This method minimizes soaking your greens in dirty water, which we believe is one of the ways the big salad green growers got into trouble. If you feel you must wash greens by bathing them in a bath of water, the recommendation is that the water be less than ten degrees colder than the greens, as a larger temperature gradient can cause contaminants to cross the cell walls of the produce.
Once again, we work hard to make sure their won't be bad stuff in our dirt, but given the pathogens floating around these days, it is wise to error on the side of caution.
For some more entertaining reading about the farm and a host of other topics visit our blog, which is under the "notes" button at
huntersgreens.com.
