We hope you all are as excited about the upcoming cold front as the farms are. This time of year when things start to heat up a bit the farms experience a "bloom" of insect and pest activity and it can be quite challenging to find the time and enthusiasm to go out there day after day and fight the organic pest management battle... but this little weekend cold front will really help out our side and keep the populations at bay for just a little while longer. 

Small shares:

Choice of dino kale, curly kale or spigariello from French Farm
Baby bok choi from our fields
Choice of watermelon, french breakfast, red round, or purple daikon radishes from French Farm
Salad mix from French Farm
Carrots from Worden Farm
Choice of potted oregano, marjoram or creeping thyme herb plant from Kitchen Garden Herbs
Zucchini from Worden Farm

Large shares:

Choice of dino kale, curly kale or spigariello from French Farm
Baby bok choi from our fields
Choice of watermelon, french breakfast, red round, or purple daikon radishes from French Farm
Salad mix from French Farm
Carrots from Worden Farm
Choice of potted oregano, marjoram or creeping thyme herb plant from Kitchen Garden Herbs
Zucchini from Worden Farm
Extra baby bok choi from our fields
Cherry tomato pint from Worden Farm
1 spring onion from French Farm

How on point is Chris' salad game this season!? Besides growing the heck out of some salanova butter lettuce Chris has been trialing some very cool new varieties of "open gene pool" lettuce seeds from Wild Garden Seed which is where all the colorful purple and speckled leaves are coming from. An open gene pool seed mix is basically a big old mix of lettuces that are cross breeding with each other at the seed farm to constantly create new varities on their own. The seed farmer exerts some control over their characteristics by doing things like encouraging the extra colorful, strong or flavorful varieties to propagate themselves more freely (mostly by removing the undesirable varieties before they go to seed) so when Chris bought a nice big package of "island gem camouflage mix" he didn't know just exactly what would come out of it but he knew they would be beautiful, variable and delicious. 

Spring onion season is a fun one for us because they are really the only type of onion that can be successfully grown here during our winter growing season! The storage onions with the papery outside you buy at the store need a full season of long summer days followed by some cold and then some time curing in a dry chilly place before they taste and look like the onions you recognize. But farmers in South Florida can buy "short day" fresh onion varieties and after a grueling 150 days of weeding, watering and watching... viola! fresh spring onions. You'll notice your eyes don't water as much when you cut these, thats because they haven't cured and their flavor is more mild, which makes them great for use raw. 

If your crisper drawer is filling up with little leftover orbs like turnips and radishes and the idea of wasting them is stressing you out, you can pickle that! We regularly pickle all of the radish varieties and it couldn't be easier... they are a great "gateway veggie" if you are interested in learning how to lacto-ferment vegetables. Heres a really useful blog post about lacto-fermenting radishes, check it out and give it a try. Tiffanys secret tip to getting them to taste a little bit more like the pickles at the store is to add a splash of apple cider vinegar (the living kind, with the mother in it) when youre making your brine... that way the vinegary flavor that we are all used to with shelf stable pickles will be present, but your pickles will still be living and super good for your gut!