CSA Week 1, 2019!

The first pickup is so exciting! Okay, it’s rather stressful for us because the questions ALWAYS is, when will it start? We make an educated guess, but since we still have not been able to control the cold and rain or find the Cassadine’s weather machine, it’s still just a guess based on our own historical records. This year has been cool and wet so far – we actually just had the first few days in a row of what is referred to as “growing weather”. If you are not sure what we mean by that, they are the days you want to eat your lunch outside, but possibly in the shade 😉 Glenn Stillman, your farmer, does endless amounts of planning and calculating, to ensure we have crops seeded, planted, pruned, cultivated and harvested all season. All, this planning starts in November – you should see his log books!

On my end, the organizing the membership for the season, scre I mean, playing around with Excel spreadsheets to track of who is picking up where, separate sheets for each location, etc, etc, which, in theory, is not a big deal, but it takes time, especially with changes that have to be made in the spreadsheet, as well as Mailchimp. Yes, you have probably figured out by now that I use Mailchimp as a emailing service; you will (if everything is working perfectly) receive a weekly reminder with CSA info, and if you are reading this, then it is working 🙂 It is good for you to understand some things that go on behind the scenes so you can be empathetic when something doesn’t go quite as planned or when we cannot accommodate a special request.

We both constantly worry about the weather, which is 100% out of our control, yet we worry none-the-less.

You are probably wondering why we even do this. Well, we love it!  Not the stress and worry, but the growing and sharing of great fruits and vegetables with you and also the challenge of growing the perfect head of lettuce, harvesting early potatoes, picking sweet fruit, etc. Glenn grew up dairy farming, but always kept a huge garden and sold the produce at the side of the road…he went to college out west but returned to Massachusetts to do what he loves most – growing. We are delighted you are growing with us!

Well, I’ll try to let the cat out of the bag before your pickup so you have an inkling about what produce to expect. BUT, for planning purposes, it is best to treat your CSA bag/box like a grab bag and be delightfully surprised when you unpack it and THEN mastermind your your menu for the week. There will never be any bananas or avocados, so you will never be overwhelmed with them 😉

The first few weeks are generally fairly light in weight and offerings, but you will find everything so new in the season that you should delight in the freshness of the greens and the sweetness of the peas -everything actually has flavor. There are no guarantees as to what will appear from week to week – even day to day. Too many times I find the harvest has split the week which means whatever I have written about might not be relevant. For example, the mustard greens may not have been ready when I wrote the letter, but a little hot weather and suddenly there are bunches going into the CSA! Sometimes I don’t even hear about this until after the fact, so I end up writing about it the following week. To remedy this a little, we have a beautiful online reference with pictures and recipes; if you get something you do not recognize, feel free to reach out right away, email or any social media is perfect, and check out this page.

Generally we wait until there are lots of berries to start the season. Not so this year. I already covered how cold and wet it has been, which is NOT growing and ripening weather (though the weeds seem to like it :^). This week you MAY have, lettuce, kale, swiss chard (red, yellow, white or multi), beets (Red Ace, Forono, Chiogga, Golden), mesclun or mixed greens and hopefully, strawberries. I also see the garlic scapes forming, so keep your eyes peeled for those curly, garlic smelling green shoots!

We grow a lot of lettuce: Believe it or not, we seed about 5000 lettuce plants every week to ensure a summer long supply for CSA and markets. Over the course of the season, you may see Boston (aka Butterhead), Romaine (classic smooth oval leaves with crunchy rib), Red Romaine (dark burgundy), New Red Fire (very frilly red leaf), Green or Red Oakleaf, French Batavia (a wonderful red tinged summer-crisp), Simpson (light green, very tender wavy leaf) and a frilly green leaf called Tropicana. In general, you can count on lettuce most every week, though even with that, there’s bound to be a week or two when there is a gap (back to that unpredictable weather thingy). Pictures of lettuce varieties here.

Most of you know this about me, but for our newbies – I cook with The Force. Many of my personal “recipes” are ideas to run with, not carefully measured out. I will endeavor to persevere and try to actually write down what I did for those who are less confident with “whipping something up”. Hey all you foodies out there, please send me your recipes to share!
There are lots of recipes and ideas right here on this blog; you can do a search by name; ie: cucumber, beet, salad, etc, by clicking on the magnifying glass in the top menu or in the blog “archives”.
Do you have your own food blog? Let me know so we can link you.

The initial purpose of the weekly letter (20 years ago) was to include a recipe or idea for what’s in the box. Clearly this concept has expanded to include more, BUT, the purpose of the recipe section remains: EAT WELL BY USING WHAT’S IN THE BOX! My goal is to keep it simple so you do just that.

Plan on lots of salad this week and next! At our house we do a lot of large salads topped with a little protein as fast and satisfying summer meal.

Basic Salad Dressing

• 1/4 – ½ C Apple Cider Vinegar
• ¾ C Light Olive Oil or other salad oil
• 1 t Dijon mustard
• 1 t honey
• 1 T diced shallots or onion
• Dash salt & pepper to taste
• 1-2 T fresh chopped herbs: basil, thyme, oregano, parsley, marjoram, rosemary, garlic etc

Combine all ingredients except oil in a salad size bottle and shake. Slowly add olive oil while whisking or in increments separated by shaking to make a smooth dressing.

*Note:  You can substitute Apple Cider Vinegar with White Wine or Rice vinegar or do ¼ C AC Vinegar with ¼ C balsamic vinegar. Get creative with vinegars and herbs and enjoy!

This week’s lovely new beets are perfect boiled and served with their own greens.

Spring Beets with their Greens
Prepare tops by removing them from the beet root, at this point, while they are still in my clutches, I dunk the tops in a water bath to clean. Shake the excess water, trim off any stems you find excessive, and set aside*. Prepare beet root (trim what needs to be trimmed, scrub, no need to peel), cut in half or quarters. In a suitable size pot to hold the beets and greens, barely cover beet roots with water, add salt if desired, cover and simmer until fork tender 10-20 minutes. When tender, add the greens and cover, steaming greens 2-4 minutes. Remove from heat, drain and season with butter and vinegar.

*You can chop your greens or leave them whole, either way is perfect.
*NOTE:Beets need longer cooking later in the season.

Enchiladas with Beet Greens and Goat Cheese
Beet and Beet Greens Gratin
Swiss chard fritter
Spinach Salad with Goat Cheese and Beets

Faith and Glenn Stillman…Who is YOUR farmer?

Farm Dirt is the section I try to include a little bit about what is going on at the farm. This is also where wildlife sightings and other musings appear. If you are new to the Stillman’s family: Glenn is your farmer, I (Geneviève) am the desk jockey/writer-of-this-letter/farmer’s wife, Kate Stillman, daughter and the farmer owner of Stillman Quality Meats, Curtis, son and his wife Halley, farmer owners of Still Life Farm and Lost Towns Brewing, Reid, our youngest son who attends Framigham State, and Faith, youngest daughter who you will see in many pictures involving amphibians and snakes. We all work together to have one of the best CSA and market offerings in Massachusetts!       

At the farm, the garlic scapes are developing and will be removed in the coming weeks to encourage proper growth of the garlic. The green, perfectly looped stems look quite interesting and are a yummy addition to anything you like with garlic! The winter was very hard on some of our perennial crops like the raspberries and hops. In spite of the cold wet weather, Glenn and the crew have worked tirelessly to get prepped and planted: The tomatoes have been uncovered from their protective fabric, and the peppers and eggplants look strong right now. The corn is getting tall and there is good bloom on the peas. Keep your fingers crossed (prayers too!) for some nice, calm, drama free weather for the 2019 growing and harvesting season.

Wildlife:

We’ve got one BIG bear lumbering about on the farm! We know we have a sow and her cubs, but by the size of the prints Glenn saw this week, we have a boar who has Sasquatch size feet. Some of you may recall a few years back we had a bear eating our corn. I wanted to get a picture of it and asked Glenn, “When do you think the bear is eating the corn?” To which Glenn responded, “Anytime he wants.”

We love birds and spend a considerable amount of time building houses and developing habitat for them. The Barn Swallows are multiplying and I can see baby heads sticking out of the nests. This year we have 3 nests in the big barn and at least 1 nest in the ‘silver barn’. They are miraculous flyers and can be seen scooping up bits of mud from the rain puddles to build and reinforce their nests! We always have a Catbird family in the American Cranberrybush Viburnum, but this year a second family has made a nest right  next to the house in a Rhododendron. Yesterday I observed a multitude of Goldfinches and Indigo Buntings feeding in the peach orchard – they looked brightly colored Easter eggs in the trees! There’s way more birds to talk about than that, but I’ll stop there for today.

Thank you for supporting agriculture. We encourage you to become part of the farm and be connected to your food and farmer; visit, check out the crops, sample in the field, picnic, watch the birds, amphibians, and insects!    

Eat well, Geneviève Stillman
Next week: strawberries, lettuces, chard, kale, garlic scapes, fennel?…