Morning Song Farm News

CSA Box, December 29/30, 2014 Darn cold out here this week, unlike the last two Decembers; this feels like winter. Neighboring Temecula got down into the high 20's last night I hear, and although warmer in Rainbow, it's still lingering close to freezing temperatures at night here; which may mean tree injuries. On the bright side, our deciduous fruit trees require SOME chill, and for two years we've had almost no plums. We should be getting a bumper crop this year.

Today's box is slightly different than yesterday's box because the Protein Crunchy Bean Mix wasn't ready yesterday. We'll move production back a day now that the nights are colder; so hopefully next week we won't have this disappointment. Lot's of mandarins now for a while! The leafy green in the center of the photo is Italian parsley. Super easy to grow, and a lot less strong tasting compared to the curly parsley varieties.

Nothing unusual here that would need identification. First week in December is late for our first Satsuma mandarin harvest. Plenty of limes for a while! The image here has only one beet, plenty more in actual boxes. And the long onion looking thing is a leek. I chopped mine up and used in a stir fry...using mostly only the root end and all of the white part of the plant. The top part is too tough.

This week's Large Garden N Grove CSA Box. Three herbs: cilantro, small sprig of rosemary and curly parsley. And the only unusual veggie this week is our beautiful dandelions in the bottom left of the image above. The first of the zutano avocados of the season, in large shares only this week. Yep, the hiatus of avocados have come to an end. With 500+ trees, and several varieties, (mostly Hass) we have avocados in our CSA boxes 9-10 months out of the year. By the time August-September rolls around and we're out of the fruit, many of our much appreciated CSA members are telling us they're OVER guacamole.

A typical fall CSA box. You'll also find something new from our sprout production facility. This is the first trial week, so if you have comments or thoughts about our newest addition to our sprout offerings: Protein Sprout Crunch. It's a tasty combination of lentils, spreckled peas, and green peas. A few boxes will see our sunflower shoots, but we haven't perfected the growth cycle to get the shoots to reach maturity on the CSA days. We're either too early or too late. We'll get it right soon!

Green beans for all our friends, and favas for Large shares, only. Lots of avocados, probably dancing on the edge of getting complaints about too many avocados this year. On the other hand, limes are hard to come by..despite our 200-tree count grove, it has been a particularly bad year for limes. Which might account for the ridiculous price for them in the store. Wholesale price for limes (if we had any) is over a hundred dollars a carton. The wind and fires out here are consuming are attention. Once again, just as we were scheduled to harvest our mulberries, they were blown to the ground.Unlike blackberries, mulberries fall off in your hand when they're ready to pick. That makes picking easy, but accidentally knocking off dozens of berries while reaching for that just-of-of-reach-really- big one..also easy. So when the winds pick up, it's over. Mulberry mulch for the whole grove. :/ This may be why mulberries haven't become mainstream yet.

Our Pakistani mulberries continue to offer up sparse yields after losing the early harvests to the high winds of April. This week, only large shares will see the unusual fruit. We're hoping to be able to offer everyone tastes next week, weather permitting. You'll note a clamshell this week of an odd succulent vegetable: that's our purslane. Grown for its nutritional value as well as its satisfying "crunch," this year's leaves seem to be more "lemony" that last year's. The stalks are just as tasty as the leaves. I've included a couple recipe ideas for this hard-to-find veggie this week.

Tiny quantity of our first harvest of heirloom artichokes, so we put them in Tuesday Large shares only. Hopefully next week we'll do Wednesday only. We're enthusiastic about these thorny gems: nutty, complex flavors, but  wow do they have sharp points. The kinder, gentler ones at the grocery store, unfortunately have taste and pointiness both reduced.

Super excited about our newest CSA box addition: our pea shoots. I guessed wrong on how many peas we'd need to plant to provide bunches for all, so only large shares receive them this week. We're also trialing sunflower shoots, which are really tasty, too!

Harvest shot for this week. We lost much of our early mulberry crop to unseasonably windy nights. Just such a disappointment to see so much of our beautiful fruit on the ground. Squeaked by with very small portions for all Large Shares this week from our earliest trees. We do have half an acre of later fruit coming in, and look forward to a less meager provisions.

We're just beginning to harvest our heirloom red beets this week, Large Shares are getting our thinnings, so that we can clean out the rows...allowing the rest to grow larger. There is Swiss Chard in all Large shares, that is missing from this photo.