Next week is the fourth of July on Wednesday. We recommend visiting the Tumwater Farmers Market for a festive time. We’ll be there from 11-4 and the market is putting on quite a party, BBQ and more. We’re not taking the day off and neither can you! Well, you might be able to take a day off work, but please don’t skip your CSA pick up. We will be delivering shares as usual.
Friends, sometimes we make mistakes. Sometimes we can find out how or why and devise a plan for not making the same mistake twice. Sometimes we are baffled. But all the time, we know how to make it up to you. If you should ever find your CSA share to be lacking a certain item, or if a certain item seems somehow sub-par, please do not hesitate to let us know, so that we can get right to the part where we replace the item, or offer you some other really nice apology gift.
This week we start picking peas, and we expect to give some of you sugar snap peas and some of you snow peas. Both can be eaten whole, raw as a sweet snack or stir fried or lightly steamed.
Three years ago, one of our farmer friends told us about Hakurei Turnips. She swore that they were the best, most delicious, carrot-like, apple-like, radish-like but not spicy, crunchy sweet treat ever. We sort of believed her, and we had noticed them in the seed catalog photos looking attractive. We have a long standing aversion to white vegetables because we find it difficult to get them clean for presentation. We hate to put dirty vegetables out on display at the farmers market. With so many wonderful farms to choose from, we feel a need to set ourselves apart somehow, and beauty seemed as clever a route as any. We finally got around to growing some of these white globes and my goodness, she was right! We can’t get enough of them! Slice the globes and salt them for a crunchy snack while you chop the greens and saute them with garlic scapes for dinner. Turnip greens are so good for you, containing vitamins A, C, and B complex, and minerals potassium, magnesium, and calcium.
If you want to cook up a whole mess of greens with bacon or ham and beans, this is the week for you. You can cook up Collards, Kale, and Turnip Greens all in one batch that way.


This also might be a good week for you to try Collards, Kale and Turnip Greens separately and compare and contrast, finding the subtle nuances that can cause a person to prefer one over the other. I, myself, do not prefer any of the vegetables, rather, I am in the mood for one or another at times. This week’s Kale has several names, Lacinato, Dinosaur, Italian, Toscana all refer to the same dark green bumpy leafed cole crop. Kale is the highest in protein content of all the cultivated vegetables! Eat more Kale! Some people like to separate the stem from the leaf. The stems have more heft, take a little longer to cook than the more tender leaf part. Most anything you want to do with a Kale, you can also do with a Collard. Many people think that collards need to be cooked for a long time to be good, but you should experiment with different cooking times and see what you like. Lightly cooked collards are wonderful, and long cooked collards become silky smooshy in a pleasing way. I usually cook them until the rest of dinner is ready, or I’m too hungry to wait any more.

Atlas thought that some of you might be interested in this service:


atlas kitchens\' culinary wizardry is expanding to include CSA prep to its list of helpful tricks. the idea behind atlas kitchens is simply to help people eat. initially inspired as a personal chef venture, ak is ever evolving to meet the variety of needs individuals & families have in regard to food. in this specific case, atlas kitchens wishes to offer CSA prep to those who suffer from rotten CSA boxes due to lack of time or energy.
to inquire about availability or rates, please call atlas at 360.259.4747
or send an e-mail to atlaskitchens@yahoo.com
thank you.
atlas of atlas kitchens

Our chicken harvest went amazingly well on Monday. It was our best, most efficient and quick operation yet. Colin said that his new taller pens made for easy catching of the chickens, resulting in faster and less stressful grabbing for both farmer and poultry. Huge thanks to those of you who came out to buy those chickens. We ended up with just a few for our own freezer, having sold most of them. Thus far, poultry is our sole foray into animal farming, so we thought you might like a recommendation for another farmer to buy other meat from. One of our own CSA members has organic, grass fed beef for sale. You can learn more by going to www.localharvest.org/armstrong-zita-ranch.