So the 2020 CSA season has come to an end for everyone. Thank you for participating.
If you signed up for the extended CSA, you will be collecting your bag at the same Bat Time, Same Bat Channel as you have been on the following dates::
Sunday October 11 and 18
Monday October 12 and 19
Tuesday October 13 and 20
Wednesday October 14 and 21
Thursday October 15 and 22
Friday October 16 and 23
Saturday October 17 and 24
If you signed up for Still Life Farm Winter CSA, then you will hear from Curt and Halley directly about your pick up and any other directions they may have.
Brussel Sprouts heads up for continuing CSA members!
Here’s hoping the above pictures show the difference between sugar pumpkins and the Sunshine red kabocha squashes. Use them interchangeably! Decorative as well as useful! If you have a kabocha, you will find the flesh to be brighter orange and very thick and creamy when baked and pureed.
Recipes
Winter Squash Basics
There’s more than one way to cook a winter squash…but I still find baking the easiest and most reliable method. This advice is to folks just gearing up with their winter squash exploits: carefully (yes, I know they are all hard, so be aware of where your fingers are) cut your squash in half and scoop out the seeds. If you are cutting a butternut in half, you need to do it lengthwise because the seeds are only in the bottom bulbous part. Place cut side down on a lightly greased baking sheet and bake at 350 until easily pierced with a fork (20-45 minutes, depending on size and variety). You can bake a winter squash whole, but pierce the skin all over, as once in a rare while the squash will explode all over your oven. Once cooked, you can scoop out the squash and use in any recipe calling for mashed squash. I have been known to microwave the small squashes, like Delicata or Sweet Dumpling, for a few minutes, until they feel like a baked potato, then cut open, scoop out seeds (HOT) and eat out of the shell/skin. Again, be sure to pierce the skin before cooking.
When I bake squash, I tend to do more than I need, freezing the leftovers. I generally measure the mashed squash into containers or bags, mark the amount on the bag, toss in the freezer, and then it is ready to go for muffins, cheesecake, leftovers…
If you are feeling very industrious, or have dwarves around (On Golden Pond reference), pick through the seeds, removing strings and bits, spread out on a greased baking sheet, lightly salt, and bake at 350 for about 10 minutes (until golden brown) You can even do this in your toaster oven. These are a great snack and are also perfect for garnishing your squash soup!
*Worst way someone ever advised me to cook a butternut: boil the whole thing in a pot of water until done. Yeah, ’cause I was going to catchup on ironing the underpants, and de-frosting the downstairs freezer!
Farm Dirt
Below is last week’s “Farm Dirt” in case you wanted a recap 🙂 A couple updates, though: Yes, there will be gleaning, I will send out an email to all this year’s CSA members, regardless of whether you are extending the season or not. Extra thankful the chimneys were clean because when we lots power on the 7th I was still able to cook up bacon and some apple pancakes, as well as heat a hot water bath to warm a rat for Dijon, Faith’s Ball Python…so everyone ate, LOL.
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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
