Week 1

Hi everyone,

The season has begun! Your first delivery will arrive this week with a bundle of greens! I am writing this just after finishing a giant spinach and arugula salad. I always like to test everything before sending it out, especially new vegetable varieties.

Remember to leave a good sized cooler out if you will be away during the delivery window as the tender greens will need to stay cool and HOT weather is expected all week. As I wrote earlier, we planted a few rows of asparagus to be ready next season but decided it would be nice to locate some for the first delivery or two. We ordered a bunch of certified organic asparagus through Hackert Orchards in Ludington. They are picking it fresh just for us early Monday morning and again Wednesday night.

We won’t be attending any markets this week as we don't anticipate enough to bring after CSA delivering and a local café is interested in any extras. I will let you know as soon as we begin marketing. We are delivering to our Spring Lake market pick-ups on Thursday between 10:00 and 12:00.

I have started a recipe section on our web page and added a few recipes to go with this weeks produce at: grandsonsgardens.googlepages.com/recipes

In the box this week:

-Large bag of mixed greens
-Bag of arugula – Great for salad and pesto!
-Asparagus
-Baby bok choy and/or bag spinach
-Radishes ?
-Salad sprouts – we love to load them on salads, omelets, sandwiches.

- We have some rhubarb available if anyone is interested! Email me:)
- Please return mason jar with your box the following week.

Baby Bok Choy: is classified as a cabbage but resembles and grows like a lettuce. Try it in a salad or add chopped bok choy to a stir fry the last few minutes of cooking. See the bok choy salad recipe I added to the website.

Coming soon: strawberries, brocoli Raab, baby red skin potatoes, and scallions



Field notes from Russ:
My love for surfing is finally beating me up a bit. I think it has been a few years since I wished it would just be calm for a week, but as all farmers know, “you can’t control the weather.” Luckily we had a couple of calm days to get most of the transplants in, now there are only 400 to go. As always we are trying to go above and beyond, planting four times what we need of the summer favorites to deliver mid-summer baskets that are overflowing with beans, tomatoes, sugar peas, peppers, and obviously fruit fruit fruit.

Our newly planted transplants have been handling the weather extremes well. With the exception of a few hundred pepper plants that were stunted by the dry cold winds we had for a week in May. We are attempting to nurse those plants back to health, but just in case we planted a few hundred more and also started more in the greenhouse.

The orchard has been a drain on my time lately, luckily my beautiful wife picked up some planting slack in the garden. We are using only organically approved treatments in the orchard, making controlling certain pests a bit challenging. The great thing about researching organic fruit farming methods is the history I am learning. I think that the common misconception is that farmers 40+ years ago don’t understand what we consider organic farming today. Over the last six months I have been learning about effective organic treatments that work and have found most of my answers in the least expected places. Through my father, multiple other old-timers, and a handful of experienced organic orchard farmers, I have put together a list of treatments that are not only organic, but that have been proven effective and safe for many years.

Our apples right now look excellent, it seems the frost in mid My has not affected them. Our peaches and cherries got hit, but hopefully since we have less fruit on the trees the fruit will be larger. Blueberries this year look to have an unreal fruit set, we will know for sure in a few weeks…