Rising River Farm
13208 201st Ave SW
Rochester, WA 98579 360-273-5368
contact@risingriverfarm.com
www.risingriverfarm.com
June 27 ***** Box 2
THERE WILL BE A REGULAR CSA DELIVERY ON JULY 4TH!!!!!!!!!!!
Hello,
Tuesday was a hot one! We started at 6:00 to beat the heat and ended the day cleaning garlic in the barn and setting up CSA boxes for Wednesday. Though it was uncomfortable for us in the heat, I welcomed it for the veggie’ sake. They needed a little kick-start after this past week of cool, rainy weather.
Peas: lots of peas this week! The snow peas are especially prolific this picking, so enjoy! Snow peas are a stir-fry staple. Add to it carrots, kohlrabi, scallions, garlic, and a nice peanut sauce over rice. Yum. They are also great in green salads, cold pasta salads, or on their own as a snack. Bring some to work to munch on or give them to the kids to tide them over while you are making dinner. The sugar snap peas are just starting to be ready. You may all get a sampling today (though I’m not sure how many pounds we ended up with). If not, you’ll see them next week. They will be mixed in with the snow peas in an effort to save plastic bags. Shell peas will be in their own bag. I am including a snow pea recipe on the back of this letter.
Pea greens (shoots). After 10+ years of thinning our peas and tossing the thinnings in the isle to decompose, we realized that we can actually eat these young, tender pea vines! In fact they can be found in Asian groceries and served at many Asian restaurants. This year we deliberately planted some to harvest small. Use your peas shoots tossed into salads or add them at the end to a stir-fry or soup. They have a crisp, clean, very “green” flavor with a hint of sweetness. You may only see them in your box once or twice. They are being harvested as I type, so I don’t know the final number. If you don’t see them today, you’ll get ‘em next week.
Dry Beans: We grew these last year and harvested them in the fall. We have been saving the seed and replanting these for a long, long time. The varieties are Pinto, Calypso, Hidatsta Shield Figure, and Swedish Brown. They all cook at the same rate and can be used for burritos, stews, or a variety of other bean dishes. We recommend soaking them for at least 8 hours before cooking. Save out a handful of seeds to plant next May. Kids love planting beans and seeing how one seed can turn into 30 or 40. Dry beans should be planted in mid May to avoid late frosts, yet still have a long enough growing season.
Parsley: We grow Italian (flat leaf) and traditional curly leaf. You will get one or the other today, and the other one next week.
Chard: This is the large green-leafed bunch with either red or rainbow colored stems. We grow mostly Ruby Red chard, but also a little rainbow colored stuff called Bright Lights. They taste essentially the same. Chard is cousin to beets, one being bred for amazing leaves and the other for a sweet, round tap root. Chard and beet greens can be used interchangeably. Use them for what, you may ask????? Chard and beet greens cook down a lot like spinach and can be used in lieu of spinach. Look on page 34, and 36 of your farm cookbook for a few ideas. It is good just steamed then add a little butter or a vinaigrette. I sometimes add small amount to salads.
I think all the other items in your box are easily identifiable. Call or email if you have any questions.

Salad. Some see salad as boring and insubstantial- an obligatory vegetable serving to go along with the main meal. Lately, we have made salad our main meal. Rip up a few varieties of lettuce and add spinach, kale, and/or chard if you have them. Slice up radishes, carrots, kohlrabi, and scallions. Add one or all three types of peas. Toss in small amounts of fresh cilantro, dill, and/or parsley. In small bowls on the table, lay out a variety of roasted nuts or seeds (walnuts, almonds, or sunflower seeds) for crunch and protein. You can add tuna or chicken to make it even more substantial. Raisins, parmesan and/or feta cheese also make nice additions. Heap your plates high with roughage and sprinkle on a little of everything, then add the dressing of your choice. Our kids even like it because they can add whatever they want to it and all the choices are good. Salads are an attractive dinner option when it is just too hot to cook..

A word about rotating crops in the boxes.
For various reasons, not all the boxes are exactly the same every week. Sometimes there is only enough of a given crop for half of the folks, so half of you get it one week, and half of you will get it the next. Also, there are some crops you don’t want to see every week so we rotate them around. If we mention a crop in the letter and you didn’t get it that week, you’ll see it the next.
We pack the boxes by pick-up site and keep careful track of who gets how much of what when, so it will all even out in the end.