I swear I spend half of my time complaining about weather on
this website, but this week I have good reason.
Monday night we got some serious hail. Typically we experience 30-45 seconds of hail
when the weather front first comes through, but this time it just kept coming
down for a good ten minutes. You’ll see
evidence of this on the produce like white blotches on the peas where they took
a hailstone or greens with healed over holes.
Some of the best advice I got from my mentor on whose farm I
apprenticed was “if you get hail, don’t even look at the plants for a couple
days.” Even though hail inflicts a lot
of damage, it’s amazing how quickly the plants recover.
Now, today, I’m sitting in our kitchen writing this because
our power’s out after a major streak of lightening tried hitting our house
while a rain poured on my head out picking peas. I can’t even fill the tanks to harvest and
wash produce. But desperate times call
for desperate measures, so I fired up the PTO generator just to make some
coffee.
In the box:
- Snap peas: fatter peas, which are edible pod, so don’t try shelling. You'll see these white marks where hail hit, but I've been eating a bunch in the field and I think they are fine.
- Snow peas: the flat ones
- Kohlrabi: see recipe below
- Red Sails red leaf lettuce: the leafy red green
- Radicchio: the small round red green. It is often mixed into a mix of other greens in a salad. It's got a pretty strong nutty, bitter flavor, so it's not for everybody.
- Small Romaine lettuce
- Broccoli
- Green cabbage
- Basil
- Cilantro
- A couple sweet onions (Alisa Craig variety)
- First cucumber of the year
Honey-Mustard Kohlrabi from St. Paul Farmers Market Cookbook
2 cups kohlrabi, peeled and sliced
2 T olive oil
2 T honey
1-2 T Dijon mustard
Steam kohlrabi until tender, about 10 minutes. In a bowl, mix together oil, honey, and
mustard. Taste and adjust for
flavor. Toss with cooked kohlrabi. Makes 4 servings.
