Woo! The first pick up! We are excited here too, but the start of CSA comes with a certain amount of trepidation and anxiety: there is the organizing the membership for the season (there’s a lot of you), making a massive excel sheet, with a tab for ever pick up location, make sure all your information gets onboarded to mailchimp so I can send out reminders, etc, etc, it all lends to a certain stress level in the office. BUT, to be honest, the planning Glenn, your farmer, puts in to ensuring wonderful produce week in and week out, picking and packing the bags, loading up the trucks, lists on lists – it’s a lot more complicated than what I do in the office! And, of course, there is the constant worry about the weather, which is 100% out of our control, yet we worry none-the-less.
BUT, we love what we do! Not the stress and worry, but the growing and sharing of great fruits and vegetables with you. There is a pride in what we do… growing the perfect head of lettuce, picking the first peas in the state, harvesting early potatoes, and, of course, hearing positive feedback from our customers. It is important to try to understand some of the things that go on behind the scenes so you might be more empathetic when something doesn’t go quite as planned or when we cannot accommodate a special request.
Summary of the above: we are still merely humans 🙂
Now that we’ve got that out of the way…
It is so hard to know from week to week what will be in the box. It is best to treat your CSA bag/box like a grab bag, be delightfully surprised when you unpack it and THEN mastermind your your menu for the week. There will never be any bananas or avocados in the share, so pick up the exotics when you are at the store.
Every week I will try to let you know what you MAY have in your bag, but there are no guarantees. 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 on Thursday, but by the following Tuesday, they could be ready to go! Sometimes I I end up finding out about these occurrences from you, LOL, and I write 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/or you can check out this page.
This week you should have strawberries, PEAS (most snap peas and purple snow peas) lettuce, garlic scapes, and spinach!
Use garlic scapes in anything you would like to add the fresh flavor of garlic to. The whole thing is edible, though you may find the end where we snapped it off the plant is a tough like the base of asparagus.
We grow a lot of lettuce: We seed about 5000 lettuce plants every 10 days to ensure a summer long supply for CSA and markets. We also grow hydroponic lettuce which supplies us over the winter and early Spring, but we grow year round as because we have such a following for it. 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), 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). Pro tip: Wash your lettuce when you get it, pack loosely with toweling in a plastic bag and store in fridge…if it is ready to go when you are, you will use it up every week.
Peas! Unless something changes, both types of peas you receive are fully edible, pod and all. DO NOT SHELL the snap peas. If you are unsure, just eat one, the snap pea will chew up perfectly, an English shell pea will be a fibrous mass. Once you have determined what you have, enjoy them raw, stirfry, steam…
Recipes
Disclaimer: 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”. We have many impressive CSA members who post amazing things on their blogs and social media. If anyone want to share, please include us @stillmansfarm on Insta or FB and I will pass along.
Do you have your own food blog? Let me know so we can link you.
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”.
The initial purpose of the weekly letter (24 or more years ago) was to include a recipe or idea for what’s in the box. Those recipes appeared on a half of an 8.5×11 🙂 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.
Simple dressing for greens:
2 Tb vinegar (your choice), s & p, and 1 tsp Dijon whisked together or shaken in your cruet; then whisk in 6 Tb olive oil (or shake until well mixed). A clove of garlic or a few garlic scapes minces is always welcome. Alter to fit your mood. If you are new to our farm, you will realize that our greens have flavor and are interesting without heavy dressing. By all means, use your favorite dressing – I’ve got at least one Ranch loving grandchild and a couple who put a half gallon of Briana’s Caesar on everything, it’s all good!
Farm Dirt
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 and I are your farmers, while he is the expert grower, I am in charge of the finances, the desk work, inventory, and other behind the scenes stuff. Many of you know Glenn’s daughter Kate, the farmer at Stillman Quality Meats, and her two boys Trace and Jaide who might be anywhere; son Curtis and wife Halley, the farmers at Still Life Farm and their son Kipling; youngest son Reid and his fiancé Kirsten who have are working on the farm and running their own business of making kale chips, kraut and kimchi; and youngest daughter Faith, headed for her senior year in HS and piling up college info on her desk as I type.
We all work together to have the best CSAs and market offerings in Massachusetts!
Garlic scapes, those freaky curled green things in your bag, must be removed as part of good garlic growing protocol. We need to prevent the garlic from blooming so the energy goes into growing the bulb. The strawberry crop is delicious so far, but ours is a short season. Our goal is to get you at least one box, and if we can swing a second, we will!
Wildlife: It’s about the birds! As always, Glenn is super excited about all the barn-swallows in the barn and now carriage shed. He grew up with them at his father’s dairy and loves their flying skill and striking appearance. The first Bluebird nestlings have fledged and the second nesting us underway. There is hardly a place on the farm where you won’t hear their cheerful chortling. Unlike the gorgeous Cedar Waxwings which seem to know where to plague the choicest fruit, in the summer Bluebirds are mainly insectivores. In the Fall, they eat a lot of fruit and love the Winterberry. This year we have our returning 2 pair of Baltimore Orioles, three pair Red Breasted Grossbeaks, and other sweet Finches and such feeding there 🙂 Our Mockingbird lost his wife in the road and has yet to find another one. Until she lost her, they spend a great deal of time at the suet too. If you are a birder, be sure to bring your binos when you visit the farm. There is always something good to see.
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, peas, chard or kale, beets? radishes?
