Spring CSA Week 1 | The newness of Spring
- 10th St. Farm & Market
- Apr 10
- 4 min read
Week 1: April 10 - 13
Welcome to the 10th Street Farm & Market 2025 Spring CSA! We are so excited to have you with us as we enter the warmer months and watch the farm fields spring back to life.
Whether it’s your first CSA share or your fifteenth, this time of year always feels fresh and full of growth. We wanted to use this first newsletter to highlight a few new things that are coming to 10th Street Farm & Market in the coming weeks and months:
New faces! We feel incredibly lucky to have Elisse farming with us again this year. She’s back for her third year on the farm, and having her firsthand knowledge and seasoned perspective working side-by-side with us every day is a privilege - we love having her here! And Tina, our transplant manager, is back as well, helping us lovingly seed thousands of baby plants over the course of the season. This spring, we’re excited to welcome two new members of our full-time crew as well: Ash and Maddie! We’re looking forward to having their experience and enthusiasm add to the farm throughout the year.
New paperwork! OK, this one is slightly less exciting, but it’s exciting for us! We recently gained recognition as a Minnesota Water Quality Certified farm. This program recognizes agricultural operations that pay attention to things like soil health, pollinator habitats, and nutrient runoff to ensure we’re nurturing healthy ecosystems, and we’re proud to have the stamp of approval. And beyond that, we have embarked on the process of becoming certified organic. We already follow all of the rules (and more), so hopefully it’s just a matter of filling out the (reams) of paperwork to become officially certified. Our hope is that the certification will help people who are new to our farm quickly understand the care, thought, and intentionality we put into how we grow our veggies.
New veggie! Last spring we laid the groundwork (literally) for our newest crop - and this year we’ll hopefully get our first taste of…asparagus! We’ll only get a single week’s harvest in the first year of the crop, but our hope is that the 300 crowns we planted last April give us lots and lots of tasty asparagus for years to come!
New ‘Patisserie’! One thing we’re constantly exploring is how the commercial kitchen, under Hallie’s guidance, can add to the 10th Street Farm & Market experience. This summer Hallie will be trialling something we’re calling “Saturday Patisserie” on select Saturday mornings - starting this weekend! From 8:30am-11am we’ll have freshly baked pastries and fresh brewed coffee, available self-serve in the market barn. We hope you can come by and check it out.
We hope you’re as excited for the spring as we are, and thanks again for being a part of the 10th Street Farm story!
Have a week full of new things,
Chris, Ashley, Hallie, and the 10th Street Farm Crew
Reminder: Please bring back your purple bags each week - we reuse these bags throughout the season and are running a bit low. If you have any in your house from previous seasons, please return them (judgment free!) Thank you!
In Your Bag This Week
Flavor Mix microgreens: Mild and tasty, these make an easy salad on their own or can add some color to any other salad. Try them on eggs or sandwiches – or anything, really! Store in a bag in your fridge.
Arugula or Cilantro microgreens: Zippy micros add flavor to pizza, tacos, pestos, sandwiches, eggs, and more. Store in your fridge.
Persephone Mix salad greens: Our fresh-cut blend of lettuce and cold-hardy greens. Store in a bag in your fridge.
Spinach: Spinach gets sweeter the more it freezes and thaws as the plant produces sugars to use as an anti-freeze to keep the plant alive. That means the best spinach you can eat is grown in a cold place! Use as a salad base, sautéed as a side dish or bake into a casserole. Store in a bag in your fridge.
Radishes: These beautiful ‘Rover’ radishes have great color, mild heat and satisfying crunch. Add to salads or sandwiches for a little extra flavor. Store in a bag in your fridge.
Celery: Crunchy celery shoots full of flavor - almost a completely different vegetable from the tasteless, water-filled stuff you find in stores. Store in a bag in your fridge.
Pea Shoots (full shares only): Sweet and crisp, these make a great addition to sandwiches, wraps, salads or can be lightly sautéed as a side dish. Store in a bag in your fridge.
Radish Shoots (full shares only): These beautiful purple and green shoots have a spicy taste and add a pop of color. Store in a bag in your fridge.
What should I make with what’s in the bag?
As always, our early spring bags are heavy on greens - that’s just what grows in this climate at this point in the season! But we’ve got the first high tunnel radishes in the bag, as well as some tasty celery alongside the greens and microgreens. Time for some grown up ants on a log? Or add roasted radishes to your salad like in this roasted radish & radish greens grain bowl or this super satisfying wild rice, roasted radishes, and smashed chickpeas grain bowl.
If you’re new to our microgreens, think of them like a versatile seasoning - a sprinkle on top makes almost every dish better! We love our micro arugula on pizza with a little oil and salt, or micro cilantro on tacos or nachos. But it’s also super easy to just toss them (or flavor mix, or radish shoots) into a salad for a little more flavor and texture. Similarly, full shares can chop up the pea shoots and mix them with spinach to make a really vibrant and interesting salad base (like for this salad with a honey-lemon vinaigrette).
If you've found a recipe you're loving, please send it our way. We're always looking for new things to cook and share with other members!
We wash everything in your bag but we wash them in bulk so some things may need an extra rinse at home. Thanks!
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