Easy Sunrise

This time of year, it is easy to photograph a sunrise. I stopped in the turnout before the gate to Gorman Produce Farm (the Community Supported Agriculture farm I enjoy in the summer and fall) on my way to the grocery store last week.

There were no clouds in the sky to reflect the light but the silhouettes of the trees and the shadowy buildings were enough to hold my interest. I enjoyed the scene and thought about how the CSA has modified my shopping habits even when I’m buying my produce from the grocery store – some pleasant thoughts on a winter morning.

The temperature was in the 20s. I took a few pictures and continued to the store. I’ll try again next week when I am on the same errand. It will be a little a few minutes later. I’ll check the exact sunrise time for my location and adjust the time I leave the house just as I did for this picture.

When I got home – I already had my little celebration for the day to record (i.e. the sunrise over Gorman Farm).

CSA Week 6

I am not getting further behind as far as clearing out the crispers – but I’m not catching up either. This week I still had carrots, a full head of cabbage, some broccoli, and a few beet leaves left from the week 5 medium share….and it was another 2 bag share for week 6.

Starting in the upper left corner: collard greens (one of my favors for rolling up and cutting in small pieces for slaw), fennel (new this week…and I haven’t decided what to do with it yet), onions (not cured so have to be used relatively quickly – they had been out on a trailer beside the barn and were warm from the sun….very alive), beets (the beets will become fruit beety that will go into the freezer and I’ll eat the leaves in salads, the stems in stir fry), hiding behind the beet is a small bunch of arugula ( from the overage table since adds flavor to any salad), cabbage, 3 pounds of summer squash (all the zucchini is going for zucchini bread – some of which will be frozen), 3 pounds of cucumbers (I tried to get small ones and will put one in every salad until they are going), lettuce (this will have to be eaten before the beet and collard greens) as well the carrot tops (I have so many carrots…some of them will have to go toward carrot cake).

Whew! That’s a lot of veggies.

CSA Week 1

Our CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) started this week right on schedule; the last few weeks have finally gotten warm enough and dry enough for the veggies to grow very quickly since a week or so ago it appeared that the start of the CSA would be a week or two late. This first week included lots of green: kale, garlic scapes, chives, pac choi, mizuna, and lettuce (I got the red leafed variety just to break the green monopoly). The strawberries also added a nice color contrast. I like everything in the share this week – but the garlic scapes are probably the most ‘special’ because they are not generally available in grocery stores and they are only available for a few weeks; I’m already thinking about how I want to use all 8 of them in the next week!

I used a bin left from some greens bought at the grocery store (and already eaten) to store the veggies I washed right ways: chives, lettuce, and mizuna. The other veggies went into the crisper in the same form I picked them up from the bin at the CSA.

Then I enjoyed a serving of strawberries with coconut milk – my summer afternoon snack.