Persephone Farm

Sustainably Grown Vegetables & Flowers – Indianola, Washington

News: CSA

Subscriber Orientation & First Pickup June 1

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Wednesday, June 1 5:30-7:30 pm

Hors D’oeuvres • Lots of New Information • Garden Tour • First Produce Pickup

CSA subscribers: You are invited to bring your family and join us for an evening at the farm. See your summer vegetables growing! Taste a leaf of sweet Fennel or sour Sorrel as you stroll the fields. (No dogs please. Our chickens and peacocks are free-ranging) It is quite important that at least one member of each subscriber household attend. After this meeting, our pickups will be on a self-serve basis and must run smoothly for everyone to get his/her share of the just-harvested bounty.

We’ll explain the system at the orientation, as well as sign you up for bread, cheese or egg shares, or other delectable additions to our own farm’s harvest, if you’re interested. Each of these is an add-on to the CSA, a delicious way to support local producers, and an opportunity to collect an even more abundant basket each week.

Your first vegetables of this season will be ready for you to take home. The distribution will come at the end of the evening for new subscribers. Returnees may pay their balance, grab veggies and go if you like. Bring a bag or box to carry your bounty down the driveway. Please park on Midway or in the designated pasture area halfway up the drive. Our parking area at the orientation site is limited, please, to those who cannot make the 100-yard walk up the hill.

Your final payment will be due at the orientation. Most full shares have already paid a $250 deposit—the balance is $400. Split shares sent a $150 deposit and have $350 remaining. Checks should be made payable to Persephone Farm.

Rebecca, Louisa, Bill and our apprentices are very excited to see this program starting for another glorious season. We look forward to meeting all our new subscribers and seeing the familiar faces of friends and neighbors.

PERSEPHONE (Greek Goddess of Spring, Flowers, and Rebirth)

Wild and Fancy Salad Greens – Oh yes!

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Persephone Farm's Wild & Fancy Salad Greens

Persephone Farm is very proud of their salad greens. Rebecca considers them their “signature product”, the first (and most unique) offering the farm produces. She says…

“We started the mix way back in 1991, before the baby salad green craze was even a notion. One thing I like to say about our Wild and Fancy salad mix is that it was never meant to be merely a platform for dressing (as is the case with so many bland dumbed down salad mixes these days.) We strive to have an exciting mouth feel, a variety of flavors, textures and leaf shapes in every batch. We painstakingly comb the fields for wild crafted ingredients in every picking. Some of these are: chick weed, lambs quarters, wild amaranth, (lemony) sheep sorrel, purslane, wild cress, cheese weed, and dandelion greens. It is my belief that these plants offer us nutritional and medicinal benefits not often found in cultivated crops. They are here in symbiosis with us humans, co-evolving to benefit both plant and animal species. Not to mention that they offer unique and special flavors not found in commercial mass produced greens mixes.”

Oh yes! I can testify, this is very tasty stuff—so many textures and flavors of green goodness. A light dressing of olive oil & lemon juice, a bit of shaved Reggiano Parmesano on top and viola, that’s serious good eats (as Alton Brown would say). Oh, you can try to forage around your own yard (I have), but it’s so much easier to pick some up from Rebecca at the Bainbridge Farmer’s Market or better yet, become a CSA subscriber.

Persephone Farm’s Wild and Fancy salad greens are served at many fine restaurants, among them The Four Swallows, Hitchcock, The New Rose Cafe at Bainbridge Gardens and The Port Gamble General Store. Subscribers often get a bag in their weekly share and can add-on extra salad greens if they choose. Buon appetito!

Fields of greens (wild & fancy)

Spring is just over the horizon!

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Bill has written a new post at The Season he describes the pre-spring activities on the farm and explains the CSA model. Most importantly, he say’s that spring is just over the horizon. We’ll it can’t come soon enough, this winter has been harsh, wet and cold. The mention of planted pea shoots gives me hope. I look forward to a bountiful season of fresh veg from the farm. And so it’s time to sign up for the 2011 CSA.

Fava Bean Bonus

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As Persephone split share subscribers, we got a bag of fat fava beans for the second week in a row. These are mysterious, possibly magical beans. Until last year I only knew of fava beans as the side dish favored by Hannibal ‘The Cannibal’ Lecter in the oscar winning “The Silence of the Lambs“. Creepy! Don’t let that turn you off to fava beans, turns out they are delicious and it’s a treat to get them fresh from the farm down the street. A bit of googling and chatting with apprentices, Caitlin and Greg inspired my fava bean lunch…

Fava beans with Walla Walla onions
Fava Beans with Walla Walla Onions

Fava Beans with
Walla Walla Onions
Shell the beans, drop into boiling water and boil for 2 minutes. Drain the water and, so you can handle them, rinse a bit with cool water. Then remove the outer skin of each bean. Just pinch the fat end of the bean and cut the small end with a paring knife. Pinch a bit more and the bright green inner bean slides out. Easy enough. Although you can eat the outer skin, the inside is the good stuff. Heat up a bit of good olive oil, add some sliced Walla Walla onions (also in this week’s box) and gently saute until they soften a bit. Add the fava beans and heat them up. Then you’re done. I added some of Judith’s fresh chèvre, and salt and pepper (oh and some Parmesean cheese too). It was lovely.

Here’s some more info on fava beans. Did you know they were the only beans Europeans ate before they discovered America and all its legumes? So says this NPR article by Bonny Wolf.

CSA orientation

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All of our subscribers are requested to attend our  CSA orientation on Wednesday, June 2 from 5:30 until 7:30 at our farm in Indianola. Important information regarding how our CSA operates and how to pick up your veggies  will be covered in a presentation.  You will be asked to pay the balance of your share, and will be given the opportunity to sign up for add on shares on a first come first serve basis.  You will pick up your  bag of delicious food at our farm orientation, note, no pick up at the Johnson farm the first week.  You have an opportunity to look around the farm and meet our new interns.  To make the whole thing even more enjoyable, we will provide farm fresh appetizers.  We are looking forward to seeing you there.