I love going over to the organic farm on Friday mornings. There’s a bit of a sense of adventure — you never really know what the farm share will be this week — and even in the midst of all the neat orderly rows of garden, there’s always room for a few wonderfully colorful wildflowers.
Wildflower
This week’s share was a very far cry from those first couple of shares where the students spent some time apologizing for the fact that the weather had affected what could be planted and sowed. As I walked over towards the shed this week, there were great bins set out for squash and onions, and a sign saying to take FIVE squash and three onions.
Squash and onions
I decided to be as adventurous as possible and picked five different types.
Five squashes
With the helps of some friends online, I was able to identify them as five types of zucchini: top light green is a Magda zucchini, middle left is a Floridor zucchini, on top (yellow with green tip) is a Zephyr zucchini, middle dark green one is a Raven zucchini, and the lighter green one at the bottom is a Revenue zucchini.
Next to the table with all the squash was a table with large baskets of greens.
Greens table
They had two from the brassica rapa family — basically non-heading Chinese cabbages — that can be added to salads or sauteed in olive oil and garlic, called Vitamin Greens (or Vitaminna) and Tokyo bekana .
Vitamin greens
Tokyo bekana
Plus there was what the label said was mustard greens, but I hafta say — they don’t look like ANY of the photos of mustard greens I can find online. Instead they were exactly the same size, shape and texture as the bristly greens we’ve gotten in weeks past called spectrum greens or stir-fry greens. (Since those appear to be generic names for a variety of greens, that’s not necessarily inconsistent, but…)
Mustard greens?
And as if three big baskets of greens weren’t enough, the sign said to take TWO baskets of EACH type of greens!!
And that was just outside. Inside there was yet another head of cabbage, more bunches of leaf lettuce and more leeks.
Leaf lettuce
Leeks
So, here in week 8, we are a far cry from where we were in, say, week 1 — and rather than having to buy more veggies to get through the week, I am now looking everywhere for ways to freeze and preserve these goodies rather than have them go to waste!