In Your Box
Basil
Beets
Cabbage
Chard
Lettuce (Romaine)
Summer Squash
Broccoli
Kale
Turnips
Side note: Organic flower bunches for sale in cooler!

Featured Veggie: Broccoli
Broccoli is one of my favorite vegetables because of its excellent flavor and nutritional qualities. A half cup serving of broccoli provides enough vitamin C to meet the USDA’s recommended daily requirements. It is also rich in dietary fiber, carotenoids and has one of the highest protein contents of any other vegetable.

Broccoli is in the Brassica family along with its siblings cabbage, kale and collards. Plants in the Brassica family thrive in cooler climates, which makes it a little bit tougher to grow here in the central valley. While this warm spring has been great for the development of many of our crops, Broccoli prefers weather that is much more mild. As a result this will likely be our only broccoli harvest until the fall.

There are a number of ways to enjoy this tasty veggie. Try broccoli raw paired with your favorite dip (such as humus or pesto) or broken up into smaller florets and added to a salad. Broccoli is also great steamed or boiled and tossed with a lemony vinaigrette. For a real treat bake broccoli in the oven to give it a little extra crunch.

Recipe: Roasted Broccoli Florets With Two Dipping Sauces

Dates and Notes
Fun on the Farm (for families and kids!)
Saturday, June 9, 2012 9:00am - 12:00pm
Meet the farm animals, take a walk to the River and discover all kinds of leaves you can eat, bake focaccia with fresh herbs and veggies, plant chive hairdos, create herb bouquets, and much  more
Please register  through the Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op or call 916-868-6399.

Soil Born Farms’ Summer Day Camps start June 18!
The summer  day camps are a wonderful opportunity for young people to make the connection between food, health and the environment, and learn more about what it takes to bring food from the farm to their table. Learn more.

Farms News
by David Rothschild

“If we throw mother nature out the window, she comes back in the door with a pitchfork.” 

~Masanobu Fukuoka

Technically it is still Spring  according to the calendar, but it sure feels like Summer out here on the farm. If you ask the plants they might not give you much of a verbal response, but they do offer some visual cues. All of the leafy greens and root crops in the field have been sizing up at an incredible rate. We started to harvest our Summer squash in the middle of May! Our cucumbers are sizing up nicely and I’ve even found a few that are ready to eat through some careful searching. The potato plants are starting to flower, and there is fruit set on the melons, tomatoes and fruit trees in the orchard. I don’t want to go around spreading rumors, but if this hot weather sticks around expect to see some of those crops in your CSA boxes and at the Saturday morning farm stand soon!

If the plants don’t give you a satisfactory response, just ask one of the chatty farmers here at Soil Born what season it is. Sure we could talk your ear off about what it is like working in this heat, but the real indicator that summer has arrived is how busy we have gotten over the last few weeks. This time of year there is never a shortage of work. As you all know the CSA and farm stand have started again. We are also making weekly deliveries to the Sacramento Natural Foods Coop, and just last week we participated in our first farmers’ market of the year at the Natomas Farmers’ Market. Come out and find us there on Saturday mornings from 8 am to noon at 3671 North Freeway Boulevard.

Days like Monday with some surprise showers and cool weather remind us that it isn’t quite Summer. After all, I guess it is still Spring for a few more weeks.