6/4/25 Welcome New Members, Logistics
We have 23 new members joining us today for a June start! Our CSA is now back to having a waitlist. For those of you new in this third and final wave of the season, but also those of you who joined in April or May… please, please don’t hesitate to reach out with questions.
How to communicate with your farmers and CSA?
Farmer Elizabeth is primarily responsible for running the CSA. Field Manager Sarah helps support and Leo and Amaia pack and delivery boxes. If you email charlie@singingfrogsfarm.com you’ll get one of us. Please reach out to us regarding produce and farm related questions. We want to connect. If you have an urgent question such as “I’m at the pick-up site and my box isn’t here, what do I do?” please text or call Elizabeth at 707-536-7170. If you have questions about your payment, and the logistics of the CSA such as you want to change your order please reach out to our friends at Farmhand who run that side of the CSA and are experts (working with dozens of CSAs) via email hello@gofarmhand.com or text at 707-595-9859.
What to expect in your box?: Each box contains 6-8 items. While every week is different, our basic CSA box recipe from which we expand and contract is based on whatever at the peak of harvest during that week and season, and may include a lettuce, a cooking green, a root crop or brassica, something else heavy, an herb and occasional fruit. It is always what is seasonally coming out of the fields.
Rotations
Rotations are an important way for us to manage crops in the fields and get you the freshest produce. A rotation in our CSA happens for a few different reasons:
1) Split between two different groups: Sometimes, like today with Broccoli, we have crops at different levels of maturity and we want to harvest at peak maturity for you. If our planning required us to have exactly 160 heads of a Brassica like Cabbage, Cauliflower or Broccoli on a single date, then we would have to plant well over 500 Brassica plants since some come ripe early, some late and some get hit by gophers. We tend to aim for growing around 250 to 300 heads of Broccoli (or Cauliflower, or Cabbage, etc) for our CSA. With this lower total quantity, we rarely can get enough ripe all at once, and so spreading out the harvest over two CSAs allows us to grow larger, more flavorful Brassicas for each of you… with the remainder of the heads going to our Farmers’ Markets. Last week Family boxes had Broccoli (we only had a few) and today Classics have Broccoli and Family are getting Cauliflower.
2) Some crops we plan a rotation, like Summer Squash & Cucumbers. We have to harvest these crops three times a week but we know that you don’t want Summer Squash every week of the summer so we do about every other week and manage that with a rotation. We have been doing this with Parsley and Basil also the last few weeks and eventually plan to do with Strawberries and Cherry Tomatoes.
Usually rotations are between those of you picking up in Santa Rosa vs West County, however with more Family boxes this year, we are starting to do more Classic vs Family rotations. We like coding with the colors above so you can more quickly find which rotation is yours. Families will also get additional items (as listed).
We try our best, and have a high level of success, in making sure the rotations make their way around for fair balance. We do recognize that Family Boxes have more diversity than Classic and also Weekly members will have more diversity than Every-Other-Week. This CSA is designed primarily as a weekly box, we offer every-other-week as a convenience.
A plug… we also do offer Add-Ons. Friday you get the email with what’s in the box and at that time you can start shopping for add-ons to bulk up your box with just the items you want more.
Produce Notes & Recipes
This Week’s Box
Leaf Lettuce Mix
Red Curly Lettuce Head
Brassica: Broccoli (Classic) OR Cauliflower (Family)
Kale: Curly (Santa Rosa) OR Red Russian (West County)
Cucurbit: Cucumbers (Santa Rosa) OR Summer Squash (West County)
Herb: Parsley (Santa Rosa) OR Basil (West County)
Family: Napa Cabbage & Kohlrabi
This is a big week for Lettuce, particularly because the Red Curly Lettuce Heads are huge! The Lettuce Leaf Mix hopefully gives you a little to mix. I might eat the Leaf Mix first as the head will keep longer. Remember the more you can prep and wash and store your light greens on Wednesday night (or soon after) the better they will last (and also the easier it will be to grab one of those big leaves of curly lettuce to quickly put on your sandwich or … It will mean you get more veggies easily into your diet.
As mentioned above we have a wonderful Cucumber crop (or crops) this year. We are currently harvesting from our early Nokya crop (these are the long, thin and spineless Asian cucumbers) but then we also have a mixed crop and we’re not totally sure what to make of them. They have a cross with an English cucumber and are spiny. So far they’ve been tasty and not bitter but we took a bit of a gamble with them from a seed company we love that grows some other amazing crops. We’re not quite sold on this one. Our third crop should start coming in soon and is also Nokya. You may notice some little brown scabbing on the fruit. This is from cucumber beetles. We use no sprays of any sort and through natural pest management are able to keep cucumber beetles in a reasonable balance. They do no harm, just peel it away and the interior should be good.
We don’t usually have recipes with cucumber because they’re usually gobbled down in sticks, slices or an salad. Enjoy!
Summer Squash is and will continue to roll in. We have our first three crops now outdoors but all of these are still coming from the hoop houses. If you’d like a write up of varieties look back to our May 14th newsletter (you can find newsletters on our Newsletter Blog). Because summer squash will keep rolling in on rotation we’ll just keep rolling out recipes. This one was loved by new members last June so I’m copying…
Grilled Summer Squash With Capers, Basil and Lemon Recipe (Serious Eats.com)
1 Tbs juice and 1 tsp zest from one lemon
3 Tbs extra virgin olive oil, plus more for brushing zucchini
1/4 cup chopped fresh basil leaves
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 Tbs capers, rinsed, dried, and roughly chopped
4 medium zucchini and yellow squash, sliced into 1/2" thick disks or quartered, lengthwise
Combine lemon juice, olive oil, basil, and capers. Whisk to combine, season to taste with salt and pepper, then set aside.
Light one chimney full of charcoal. When all the charcoal is lit and covered with gray ash, pour out and spread the coals evenly over the coal grate. Set cooking grate in place, cover grill and allow to preheat for 5 minutes. Alternatively, preheat a gas grill to high, covered, for at least 10 minutes. Clean & oil the grilling grate.
Using a pastry brush, brush zucchini with olive oil on both sides, and season to taste with salt and pepper. When grill is hot, add zucchini slices and cook, covered, until zucchini is well-browned on one side, 4 to 5 minutes. Flip slices and cook, covered, until zucchini is well-browned and tender, 3 to 4 minutes. Transfer zucchini to a serving platter, spoon vinaigrette over the top, and serve.
The Broccoli is very exciting this week… here’s a way we love it that’s super duper simple. Last night we had this with some beef fajita on the side.
Garlicky Lemon Broccoli (David Joachim & Rochelle Davis from Fresh Choices)
1 lg head broccoli, cut into florets (~ 5 cups)
Juice of ½ lemon
3 Tbs olive oil
2 cloves garlic, finely minced
½ tsp salt
1/8 tsp ground black pepper
pinch crushed red pepper flakes (optional)
Put the broccoli in a steamer basket set over a pan of simmering water. Cover and steam until the broccoli is crisp-tender, 3-4 min.
Meanwhile, squeeze the juice from the lemon into a large bowl. Whisk in the oil in a slow, steady stream until thoroughly blended. Whisk in the garlic, salt, pepper, and pepper flakes. Add the hot broccoli and toss to coat with the dressing.
This week's Cauliflower for Family’s is tinged purple and a little split. This weirds people out but is absolutely okay. The heat wave of last week made this happen. In fact, Farmer Sarah says she loves roasting cauliflower like this, it takes oil and spices better and get’s crispy.
Family’s also have Napa Cabbage & Kohlrabi that Classics had last week, check out last week’s newsletter with a Napa Kohlrabi Salad as well s Fermented cabbage write up.
Extra Shares
Flower Share: Light Sunflowers are the highlight! 🌻
Lettuce Share: Red Butter & Panisse Oakleaf Lettuce 🥬
Bunched Greens Share: 🌈 Rainbow Kale
Egg Shares: 🍳 We still have openings for Egg and also all the other Extra Shares… just email us.