In Your Box

Salad mix (spicy!)

Kale
Chard or Collards
Beets
Turnips
Broccoli
Oranges

Grapefruit

What’s in that tasty, tender, bag of salad mix?
Spinach
Tatsoi
Arugula
Mustard
Mizuna
A variety of lettuces
This mix of greens can be enjoyed raw or cooked like a braising mix to calm the spice down.

Recipe: Beet and Turnip Chips

Farm News
By Jared Clark

“Into our inner being the richness of the senses pour. The cosmic spirit finds itself reflected in the human eye, which ever must renew its strength from out that spirit source.”                  

- Rudolf Steiner, Calendar of the Soul   

At long last Spring is officially here! With open arms we welcome the equinox, the brief equilibrium it brings, and we are looking forward to the warmer, longer, and lighter days ahead!

You all may wonder what we have been up to these past few weeks with our break from the CSA harvest. The two week break from harvest gives us the time to catch up on organizing our work areas, completing a few improvement projects, and doing some much needed field maintenance on the last vestiges of over wintered crops.  We have indeed been busy and we have completed planting our new orchard, which includes over 400 trees encompassing over three acres of land!  We also found some time to get the tractor into the fields and prepare some land for the first Spring plantings.  We have direct sown beets, carrots, turnips, chard, kale, and collards into the fields.  Soon we will transplant lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kohlrabi, tomatoes, and onions.  Potatoes, cucumbers, and summer squash will follow.  

With the deluge of rain we have received lately we are a little behind on tractor work and plantings as both activities depend on soil moisture. As for now we are waiting for things to dry out a bit before we can get back into the fields.

With Spring comes a sense of renewal. The long anticipated rains have come and quenched our deep sandy loam soil.   The crops and pastures are growing again and the energy of life in all of its myriad forms surrounds us.  

As a farm staff this sense of renewal is epitomized by the arrival of this years apprentices!  We welcome five new members to the Soil Born team who have committed to a season of farming and learning with us here at the American River Ranch.  From left to right in the picture below we have Amanda, Aimee, Chris, Becca, and David.  

For the past two weeks our apprentices have hit the ground running and have helped us catch up, with a quickness, on all manner of projects around the farm.  This talented group of young people have provided the extra energy we need to meet the challenges of the ever growing workload of the Spring.  We educate while producing, we produce while educating, all towards the end of a healthier food system for the future!!

Featured Item-Salad Mix
The salad mix in this weeks box comes from the Farm on Hurley Way. Eric Hart and Sarah Barnes, as second year apprentices, have moved on from the ranch and taken on the responsibility of running their own farm!  In less than two months Eric and Sarah have already started to transform the Hurley farm with their vision and hard work! They have introduced ducks into the farm organism and they have been busy at work pruning the orchards and tilling and shaping beds for early plantings.  We all look forward to the diverse array of vegetables they will provide for the CSA and Farm stand this season!

Our New Interns