Late June Harvest

The summer heat here in Montana has made the veggies on the farm kick into high gear. The greenhouses and field gardens are bursting with flowers, herbs, and veggies.

Thursday's harvest here on the farm brought the CSA members a full box of mixed lettuce, dill, parsley, garlic scapes, radishes, turnips, spinach, carrots, braising greens, sunflowers, baby beets, and fennel. Baby beet greens can be steamed or tossed into a stir fry, and the following is a recipe for Shaved Fennel Salad from Super Natural Everyday by Heidi Swanson.

Shaved Fennel Salad

If you're using a knife to prep here, do your best to slice things very, very thinly - not quite see through thin, but close

1 medium-large zucchini, sliced into paper thin coins
2 small fennel bulbs, trimmed and shaved paper-thin
2/3 cup / .5oz/ 15g loosely chopped fresh dill
1/3 cup / 80ml fresh lemon juice, plus more if needed
1/3 cup / 80ml extra virgin olive oil, plus more if needed
fine grain sea salt
4 or 5 generous handfuls arugula
Honey, if needed
1/2 cup / 2 oz/ 60g pine nuts, toasted (I used almonds)
1/3 cup / 2 oz / 60g / feta cheese, crumbled

Combine the zucchini, fennel and dill in a bowl and toss with the lemon juice, olive oil and 1/4 teaspoon salt. Set aside and marinate for 20 minutes, or up to an hour.

When you are ready to serve the salad, put the arugula in a large bowl. Scoop all of the zucchini and fennel onto the arugula, and pour most of the lemon juice dressing on top of that. Toss gently but thoroughly. Taste and adjust with more of the dressing, olive oil, lemon juice, or salt if needed. If the lemons were particularly tart, you may need to counter the pucker-factor by adding a tiny drizzle of honey into the salad at this point. Let your taste buds guide you. Serve topped with pine nuts and feta.

Serves 4 to 6.

Prep time: 10 min