The CSA Farmer and the Pyrotechnician

This week's distribution is a tribute to the pyrotechnicians out there. A CSA farmer must assemble a show of spring summer and fall vegetables, all in quick succession. Not at all unlike the show put together for us on the 4th of July-- just a little bit of a tighter schedule. Does the guy who lights the fuse stand back and watch the rocket go off? I doubt it. Just like us, that dude is running as fast as he can to light the next one, and the next one, and the next one, maybe ducking a near disaster here and there (like our emergency irrigation the last couple days) but he's not sitting back and watching the show. Watching this year's show I was struck with high empathy for this pyrotechnician, running around ground zero, with a veritable armegeddon going on overhead. Did he start small, like us, an amateur blowing up a few beer cans with his friends? When we were trellising peas too close together, was his Roman candles shooting too close to his neighbor's house? When we were scrambling to make up for a crop loss (like harvesting baby, baby potatoes last year) was he sweating it with his bic lighter trying to ignite another rocket while the audience yawned? So this one goes out to this guy, the pyrotechnician who will someday have the perfect show:
Crowd and kid pleasers!

Something entirely new to wow the crowds!

Rock solid standards of the pyrotechnic craft!

Something interesting that resembles something else, though we're not quite sure what!...

Varieties that dazzle us!

and colors!

And more...
This Week:
Lettuce (two types: red leaf, and "deer tongue")
Rainbow Chard
Kohlrabi
Broccoli
Peas
Parsley
Mibuna Greens

The Lettuce is really hard to keep from "bolting" in this heat (and without irrigation in our far fields), so we are distributing two varieties. Kohrabi is a wonderful vegetable; our friends claims it to be their 2 year old son's favorite vegetable. It is every bit as delicious as the thick stem of juicy broccoli, but with less fibers and more flavor. Grill it, sautee it, grate it over a salad raw. This is the last of the peas enjoy the ones that are not too big! ... and now, that entirely new vegetable, the Mibuna. This is like Mizuna which we had two weeks ago: it is a salad green, but can be cooked too. It is not spicy like arugula, but it has a great flavor of its own. And it looks beautiful!
Our ground zero:

Blessings on the Meal
John