Blog

Summer is officially in full swing on the farm with our CSA program(community supported agriculture which is already on week 4!) My family is hard at work making this program successful. Fred, my dad is the grower and owner of Sang Lee Farms was the one together with my mother Karen who started this program about four years ago. Over the past four years we have grown tremendously increasing in numbers and drop sites over the years. For the year 2010 we have over 400 members who pick up on the farm for our local CSA program, in Dumbo Hill Brooklyn, Crown Heights Brooklyn, Jerico Long island, or Brooklyn Bridge drop sites. As an example of a full share some of the items you would find in your June 2010 CSA boxes could be as follows:1 head of Red Oak Leaf Lettuce, 1 seedless Greenhouse Cucumber, 8 oz. of Sugar Snap Peas, 1 bu. of mixed Carrots, 1 bunch of Mixed Radishes, 1/2 pint of Raspberries or Strawberries, 1 head of Green Boston Head Lettuce, 3 pcs. of Baby Bok Choy and 1 head of Red Romaine. If a box full of those goodies doesn’t get you excited I don’t know what will! The middle of June brings some of the first outside field harvests of our head lettuces. The combination of cool nights and sunny days the head lettuces are of great quality across the board on all the varieties. For the Salad lovers out there, we have a great mix of soft leaf Boston Head and Red Oak Lettuce and the 'Fresh Crunchiness' of the Green Romaine. Hopefully it will keep you happy for most of the coming week. June is also a time of heavy plantings. We have completed our summer squash transplanting and will start our mixed sweet melon transplants this week. We are trying a few new varieties which are different types of seedless watermelons and will let you know the progress of those as we get into the middle of the summer. Sadly the only thing we will be missing are our delicious strawberries since it is now the end of the season, happily we are starting to see summer raspberries starting which will leave me satisfied for now. As promised from time to time I will introduce some of the Lee family’s favorite recipes, and this month I want to share one for squash blossoms! The weather continues to be great for our summer squash crop and accordingly, one of the results of healthy plants is a number of extra blossoms on each plant. We harvest these without any detriment to the yield or production of our summer squash crop that hopefully will follow in a few weeks. Simply fry them in some vegetable oil after dipping them in a mixed batter of 50% wine and 50% flour. For the real chefs out there, stuffing them first with crab meat, ricotta cheese, or chevre ( soft goat’s cheese and my personal favorite) like that just makes them that much more tasty. They are also great cut up fresh as a colorful garnish in salads too! On that note, I will leave you to enjoy the fresh start of early summer! Bon appétit!