CSA Week 16, 2020 -last week for everyone but Saturday

CSA Week 16 (Week 15 for Saturday folks)

 

How did we get to the last week? Especially in the year that will never end 😉

Saturday deliveries will have another week to make up for Independence Day …so it is still only week 15 for you. To state it a different way, if you get your CSA on Saturday, at any location, there will be a delivery next week. 🙂

For those who signed up for an additional 2 weeks, see you at the same Bat time on the same Bat channel.

This week you MAY have celeriac, apples, onion, hot peppers? peppers? potatoes, winter squash (I think butternut), broccoli and probably some other kind of cole crop

This is straight from last year’s week 16, but there’s some good info worth repeating:  There will not be any gourds in your box…so if you find something hard and squash-like, it probably is. Be sure to check out our website for lots of pictures for ID help if you need it. The red kabocha squash, aka, Sunshine, are the bright orange-red pumpkin looking ones. Sometimes there are green streaks in the flesh, particularly near the skin; no worries, it is completely fine and delicious to eat. I’ve written about green on veggies before – I think we get nerved up about green because we are not supposed to eat green potatoes right? The green in/on a potato is an indicator of solanine, which occurs naturally in potatoes in small doses, but when exposed to light long enough, can develop into toxic levels (think nausea, confusion). The green is actually part of photosynthesis and represents chlorophyll, but that can only happen with light…so you know the solanine levels are higher. Peeling slightly green skin off removes the solanine and makes the taters fine to eat, but I would toss a potato that was all green – why risk it? BUT, green in squashes and carrots and other non-solanums (nightshades) is just chlorophyll, fine to eat, and not potentially toxic. Hope that helps :^}

Did I write about celeriac! It is mostly referred to as celery root, But when I study it, it is more like a swollen stem like kohlrabi. Yes, there are a bunch of hairy stems coming out of it, but most of it grows above ground, unlike most every other actual root vegetable. The celeriac stems are useful as flavoring in stock, but you will find them very fibrous, and not pleasant to eat. The bulb part, once cleaned up, is quite nice. Yes, you can eat it raw, but it is especially good roasted, mashed, stirfry….it is a natural with other tubers and roots, as well as apple! It is pretty high in potassium, which is nice too.

If you really have no idea what to do with your celeriac, try cubing it and cooking it with your potatoes. Then mash up and season. It will add a nutty, celery flavoring to your mashed. OR, cube up with any other roots or tubers you have and roast at 400 until tender. It cooks about the same as beets and potatoes, so keep your sizes similar for even cooking.

One of our members said she has been roasting her delicata seeds, as you would pumpkin seeds and they are great! I LOVE roasted seeds too 🙂

This is from our friends at Grand Maple Farm in town. Roasted veg is so satisfying this time of year…and you can heat up the kitchen a little without turning the thermostat up (many of us native New Englanders try to get through October without turning the heat on ;))

Maple-Glazed Root Vegetables

Peel and cut 3 lbs of your favorite root vegetables – carrots, potatoes, parsnips, beets, etc – into 1/2″ pieces. Toss with 1/2 cup of olive oil, 1/3 cup of maple syrup, 2 chopped garlic cloves, and salt and pepper to taste. Spread on baking sheet and roast in 400 degree oven until tender, about one hour.

 

Last Week’s (last year) Stuffed Delicata

The girl child was quite insistent on stuffed Delicata on Sunday, below is how it transpired:

• 2 delicata
• bunch kale, washed, stemmed, chopped medium-fine
• 1-2 leeks chopped or small onion
• 1 cup cooked quinoa
• 1 lb ground pork or beef
• 1 red pepper small dice
• 2 cloves garlic minced
• S & P

Wash the squash – delicata skin is quite edible and so you want to have that option dirt-free. Carefully halve the squash the long way, scoop out the seeds, arrange in a baking dish. In a large skillet, cook the ground meat. When the meat is almost cooked through add the garlic, leek and pepper, stirring around for a minute or two. Add the kale and if your skillet is not large enough, add it in batches until it cooks down and add more. Once all the veggies look tender (it was like 5-6 minutes), remove from heat, stir in the quinoa, adjust seasoning. Stuff the waiting squash with the filling (I had enough filling left over for another squash which I cooked for breakfast with an egg…but it would have frozen nicely too for the next stuffed something), cover dish with foil and bake at 375 until the squash is tender, 30-40 minutes. If you are a cheese hound (me) once the squash is cooked, remove the foil, sprinkle with cheese and bake a few more minutes until it’s melted.

Yummy!

 

Kale Hash

Spaghetti Squash with a Greek Flair

Pumpkin Muffins – use any squash

Butternut and Apple Casserole

Pumpkin Risotto

Squash Tian

Don’t forget potatoes come in many flavors: vanilla, grape, pink 🙂

Oh it is so pretty out! The Swamp Maples are already dropping leaves, but the other Maples are turning, some the Ash are like Merlot, while our big Ash is turning golden with maroon low-lights. Kirsten and I drove back from Framingham the other day and oohed and aahed around every turn. I am excited for the Harvest full moon rising tonight and that we will have a second Harvest Moon this month. Blue Moon alert! Seems fitting for the year.

Arthur saw a bear in one of our fields the other day. He honked at it, LOL. You’ll be glad to know the chimneys finally got cleaned so we are safe to start one up the next cold morning. You may recall we had several families of Chimney Swifts nesting in them this summer. Normally we would have had them cleaned in the early Spring, when the heavy burning was over, but with all that was going on, we missed our chance – and the early discount too! Well, better to save a species that has suffered serious declines in population than to save a few bucks (okay, it cost me like $50/chimney, but still). We love our wildlife! Hey, the Giant Asian Hornets can KTFA. They are trying to trap them in WA and if they catch one alive, they will put a tracker on it and find the colony. So that’s good. I’m thinking about the car phone in Miami Vice and wondering how we got to now, when we can put a tracker on an insect. I realize the word giant is in it’s name, but still.

Personally, I enjoy when you come to the farm, as it is the only time many of you and I get to see each other and I do like to put a face to the name/email 🙂 We will be offering our annual gleaning but, hopefully, it won’t be for a while yet. I will send out an email when it is imminent. New to gleaning? “Then she left, and went and gleaned in the field after the reapers.” Gleaning is the act of collecting anything that might be left behind after the main harvest. The first hard frost kills any tender crops here in New England, so we harvest as much as possible before then. In spite of all our efforts, there are always a few peppers or tomatoes left on the plant, or squash and potatoes (not the green ones ;)) laying on the surface. For several years now we have invited our CSA members (only) to glean before the killing frost. Some things will survive and if the weather doesn’t completely suck, we can continue to harvest greens, lettuces, broccoli, cabbages, dig carrots and such well into November. A few years we have even harvested broccoli and Brussels in December!

Stay tuned for gleaning!

A lot of our winter storage crops we need to sustain the year round markets are stalled due to weather. First we had drought, then we had heat, and then back into drought. We cannot water everything here on the farm, either because we actually have no means of irrigation or because we have to pick and choose what we can use limited water on. We did get some rain the other day, and hopefully the weather will hold out and the storage cabbages, kohlrabi, carrots, beets, radishes, etc will size up for harvest. In these times, we are more aware than ever about the importance of having lots of food in storage so we can feed some of the state.

I really cannot believe I am writing the last CSA letter of the season. (It is likely that I will not write a letter for the 2 week extension) I did not skip any weeks this year, as I am often wont to do, and keeping up with safety precautions and figuring out what’s going into the bag every week has made the time fly by, in a sort of tedious, exhausting fashion.  Plus, like many of you, we have a child still at home “in school”, a grandson to watch every Tuesday, a new puppy, a litter of kittens, blah blah blah. One of my favorite memes was “I was waiting for an extended period of time at home to deep clean, but now I realize that wasn’t why. LOL. Who’s with me? There is a lot that goes into running a CSA – it’s not just the weekly packing. We start planning for next season NOW. Glenn placed the  seed potato order yesterday and your 2021 garlic is here, ready to be planted. Straw has been purchased to mulch the strawberries later this month. The main vegetable seed order will be placed in deep winter and we will seed your first tomatoes in February. I file the paperwork for the first group of workers from Jamaica mid-December. Hard to imagine…they don’t come until March 1st. Meanwhile, over coffee, or wine 😉 we are constantly trying to make improvements to our CSA program offered. I welcome your constructive feedback about your experience, varieties you are interested in, delivery/scheduling, or anything else.

Do be on the lookout for your 2021 discount codes and don’t miss out on the early signup. The best early discount is usually by November 30th.

We count on constructive feedback from our members. Ideally this happens throughout the season, when we can make adjustments and accommodations. Sometimes people wait for the end of the year to tell me what was wrong or what they wished had happened…hard for me to do anything to make it right at that point. This year was different alright. We changed with the times and adapted the best we could. Hopefully, next year we may return to normal for us AND you 🙂 Understanding that even at one given location, we might have eight or so differing customer views on how we should be doing something and we tried very hard to accommodate everyone. Just know we are all in this together and we thank yo so much for your support and cooperation! We don’t normally get many complaints, I got a scant few this year – mostly about lines, sometimes about picking out one’s own fruit, or missing the “extras”. To recap from last week, we packed the extras for you this year to reduce/eliminate touches, as mandated by the state. We did relax where we could and let you grabs some hots and such.

We are very please with what we provided this season. There was uncertainty mid-way, but then our staff stared checking back with us, and so impressed with the amount of food in the bags every week. our retail staff checks up on us apparently and were adding up the value of the bags. Some of them were WAY over our ballpark. That makes us feel really good.

If you live near Boston or Worcester, you will be able to find us at all the markets until the end of October, Copley and JP ‘till Thanksgiving. Boston Public Market and Worcester Public Market run year round. The open days will expand I am sure, but for now, we are open at  BPM 10-6 Wed-Sat, WPM 10-6 or so Wed-Sun. Yes, you can find us at the New Braintree farm too.

Curt and Halley are busy taking Winter CSA signups. It’s a once a month delivery starting late October and you can read about their program here stilllifefarm.com/winter-csa.html

From all of us at Stillman’s, we are honored and blessed to grow food for you and thank you for being part of our family. YOU are part of our farm family. We sincerely hope you have eaten well this summer, and maybe learned something new about farming or vegetables, fruits, insects, birds, cooking, anything? Our long time members know it all already…one of these days I am going to have my “Farm Snob” shirts made for me and Halley wants one too. I will wager many of you reading this now qualify 😉

To our new members, who I am sure joined us to find safe harbor with good, local, safe, reliable food, we thank you. One positive outcome of this pandemic was our Commonwealth looked to herself for local answers, local food, local supplies. It is our fervent hope that this is not a one time deal and that the many who recently signed on to the buy local will continue to do so. We, and our fellow producers, are a resource for you. When the lockdown started, we not only reached out to our base  with produce bags, but worked with other producers to distribute food. So, you are on our list. We humbly ask that you remain on our list so we can continue to grow and work together to feed our growing Stillman’s Farm family. Again, YOU ARE part of our farm family.

We will see you next week if you signed up for the season extension. Some of you may have a winter CSA you belong to (like Curt & Halley’s awesome WINTER CSA), some may shop at winter farmer’s markets, some may have a plethora stashed away in the freezer or pantry, and some may go back to the convenience of the supermarket (wait, is it that convenient yet?). Whatever your circumstance, we wish you the best in eating well! Thank you again for supporting local agriculture!

Eat well,

Geneviève & Glenn Stillman   ~and the Stillman’s Farm crew