Dear CSA Shareholders,

Today's share should have included:

One and three quarters pounds sugar snap peas
One pound fingerling potatoes
6 carrots
a medium romaine lettuce (if your romaine was smaller you got a small red leaf lettuce too)

SNAP PEAS. We hope everyone knows by now that you eat the snap peas, pod and all.  Just snap the stem and pull the string off the top edge and they're ready to eat (after you wash them of course).  We're starting to have larger quantities so here are a few ideas for using more of them.

The April, 2008 Sunset Magazine notes you can eat them raw, stir fry them with garlic, blanch, chill and eat them with dip or make a salad of blanched and chopped sugar snaps and asparagus with halved cherry tomatoes, vinaigrette and parmesan cheese. (you could probably skip the blanching).

We have done some experimenting with substituting them for regular peas or beans in various recipes. Diane always begs Jim for "new peas and potatoes" when the sugar snaps come on, which Jim assumes means snap peas and "new potatoes" in a white sauce or light gravy.  We may add some onions or garlic to the sauce/gravy, or maybe some ground turkey or cheese to make it a one dish meal.

We've substituted them in the Mexican green beans and potatoes salad recipe we use.  It's made up of boiled potatoes and raw or blanched snap peas marinated in an oil and vinegar dressing and garnished with chopped cilantro leaves.

We've tried creating the peas and cheese salad recipe that one sometimes sees at salad bars, basically snap peas chopped in three  and cubes of cheddar cheese with a ranch type dressing.  You can add carrots and salad onions, or whatever else you think works.

FINGERLING POTATOES.  Jim and Diane have never eaten, much less grown fingerling potatoes before (too rich for our blood).  Brenda gave us some seed potatoes this spring, so we planted them and here they are.  She says they are rich and creamy.  She says they are too rich for potato salad, because they compete with the other flavors.  That's about all we can tell you, so you're on your own.

CSA PRIMER PART III:  FARMERS AND WEATHER

Some folks who hang around farmers complain that all we talk about is the weather, and we're usually complaining.  To this particular farmer stereotype, we plead "guilty as charged."  Now, with Diane it's just that she seems to enjoy complaining, but for your average farmer, it has to do with the fact that we live and die by the weather, and we're always anxious about what it will bring.

Jim, on the other hand is beginning to settle down about it just a little, as he rounds the half century mile post.  After fifteen years of farming and a lifetime of gardening on the western slopes of the Cascades, he has gained confidence that no matter how much it rains in the spring, within a few weeks of the start of summer it will stop.  Also he is increasingly certain that no matter what kind of weather the Pacific winds bring us, some kind of vegetable will thrive in it.

So, now rather than standing in the middle of it all and twirling, as he often did in his first few years of farming, he has found that he can rely on the weather to tell him what to do next.  We have developed a kind of routine based on when it last rained.  If it stops raining for one day, we know that by afternoon, we can begin any mowing that may need doing on the property.  If it stops for two days, we can begin hand weeding without pulling up pounds of mud with the weed (recently we learned that tap rooted weeds are good for pulling when the soil is still quite wet, as the tap root seems to slide out of the mud when you pull the weed, without breaking off).

After three days, we can begin to cultivate with light power equipment.  After about a week, we better start watering.

We've learned to start watering everything we can a few days before a heat wave is forecast.  That way, everything is watered up and prepared to handle the drying heat.  If we wait, we are fighting the heat and evaporation trying to get things watered.  Watering during the heat wave is one thing that is likely to get Jim out of bed before sun up.

Then when it rains after a long dry spell, the first thing we do is declare a day off.  Once we've had our day out, if it continues to rain, we get caught up on seeding flats for transplants, which can be done in the rain.  If it's a long rainy spell, Jim might do some writing.  And if it's a really long rainy spell, Jim might even get around to catching up on equipment maintenance.  The wise farmer makes sure his or her equipment will be ready to go when the sun comes back.  It is a sign of how much rain we had this spring, that Jim was actually pretty well prepared when the sun came out.

As we learn to use the weather as a guide to our tasks, and to know that on a diversified farm, we have spread our eggs into many baskets, the anxiety of the weather begins to ease, and we can wax philosophically that every kind of weather is good for something.  But, of course, if the weather doesn't change in three days, Diane will begin predicting our impending doom.  Ah, but don't we all love her sense of drama.

That's all for this week, folks.  Until next week---

Bon Appetit.