Spring CSA

Howdy Spring CSA Peeps!

Finally some Springy weather!

This is a wonderful bag! you should find cabbage, sweet potatoes, scallions, leeks, kalettes, Natascha Gold potatoes, pea shoots, Empire apples, Bosc pears, Rainbow Swiss chard, and some herb – likely thyme

Kalettes are my mother’s favorite, they are basically the kale version of Brussel sprouts (what I mean is they grow on a stalk like Brussels). My mother enjoys them quickly sautéed in good olive oil, garlic and a splash of water to steam a minute (covered). Natascha Gold are a gorgeous yellow fleshed Irish potato that we “discovered” a few years back. It is always funny to me that these other potatoes are referred to as Irish, when they originated in South America Oh, Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Store any greens in your fridge, if they are not wrapped, definitely put them in a bag or something to retain moisture. We notice greens grown indoors are a lot “softer” and are very prone to wilting. The roots and apples should live in the fridge as well. Store the potatoes and (when you get) onions in a cool, dark place – I mean, the onions would be fine on your counter, but might sprout in the light this time of year

You are part of a wonderful family collaboration between Stillman’s Farm (Glenn, Genevieve, Reid, Kirsten and sometimes Faith Stillman) and Still Life Farm (Curt, Halley and sometimes Kip Stillman), joining forces to bring you a most satisfying addition to our varied CSA offerings. Family Farm Force! Pretty catchy, right? This weekly letter SHOULD be coming to your inbox the day before your pickup, and is also available at stillmansfarm.com/blog and stilllifefarm.wordpress.com.  

We will see you in TWO WEEKS for your next bounty of Spring bag. The schedule is also on our website calendar.

Pea shoots!

This week’s featured item is pea shoots!  Pea shoots are literally the delicate edible tips of the pea plant.  This is a wonderful crop that we are able to cultivate in our greenhouses throughout the winter.  They have a beautiful sweet pea flavor that evokes all the happiness of spring.  Enjoy them stir fried, steamed, folded into soft scrambled eggs, or raw in salads…they are a nice source of iron, vitamin C and fiber.

I LOVE them piled on top of a grilled chicken sandwich (any sandwich)!

For a quick delectable salad, whip together a dressing of lemon juice, Dijon mustard, shallot, EVOO, S&P, then toss with your pea shoots, thinly sliced apple, and some Parmesan. We also enjoy a salad of pea shoots and spinach with shredded daikon.

Recipes.

So, we have been blessed with a very bountiful harvest of sweet potatoes this year…knowing this translates into eat more sweet potatoes, I thought I better try to find you a new recipe to use them up.  This past holiday, I was gifted a copy of Vegetables Illustrated cookbook by a thoughtful CSA member, and it is filled with good stuff!  Here’s a new sweet potato recipe that could go into the regular dinner rotation.

Sweet Potato Biscuits

• 2 ½ pounds sweet potato, unpeeled, lightly pricked all over with fork
• 2 T cider vinegar
• 3 ¼ cups cake flour
• ¼ cup packed dark brown sugar
• 5 t baking powder
• ½ t baking soda
• 1 ½ t salt
• 8 T unsalted butter, cut into ½-inch pieces and chilled, plus 2 T melted
• 4 T vegetable shortening, cut into ½-inch pieces and chilled

*I cooked 2.5# of potatoes and had plenty of extra, you could get away with 2#.  I also am not fancy enough for cake flour, so just cut back a bit on the amount and used traditional flour.  And I don’t have shortening in the house so subbed more butter. Everything came out fine.

1. Bake or microwave your sweet potatoes until very soft.  When cooked, immediately cut potatoes in half.  When potatoes are cool enough to handle, scoop flesh into large bowl and mash until smooth.  You need 2 cups mashed for the recipe.

2. Adjust oven rack to middle and heat oven to 425 degrees.  Line rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper.  Process flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in food processor until combined.  Scatter chilled butter and shortening over top and pulse until mixture resembles coarse meal.  Transfer flour mixture to bowl with cooled potatoes and fold in with rubber spatula until incorporated.

3. Turn out dough onto floured counter and knead until smooth, 8-10 times.  Pat dough into 9-inch circle, about 1 inch thick.  Using floured 2 ¼- inch round cutter, stamp out biscuits and arrange on prepared sheet.  Gently pat dough scraps into 1-inch-thick circle and stamp out remaining biscuit.  (You should have 16 biscuits in total).

4.  Brush the tops of biscuits with melted butter and bake until golden brown, 18-22 minutes.  Let biscuits cool on sheet for 15 minutes before serving.

Little tidbits from the farms:

Stillman’s Farm Dirt. Plugging and chugging in the greenhouses! Everything is growing and looking good and the crew got so much transplanting done this week. We had a little setback in that wind storm – the plastic tore off the cow barn and was completely shredded, loudly flapping and making everyone crazy and even more stressed. Blessedly it did not rain in the time before we were able to acquire a new 40’x100′ sheet of plastic and recover the barn. The last thing we needed was a cold March rain on the new calves. So it is all good! I realized after I had published the last letter that a snippet about our awesome workforce arriving from Jamaica lingered at the end of a paragraph rewrite. That was not the case. Our housing approval for the guys was delayed 3 weeks while we had an additional stove installed. Of course, getting an electrician to run a new 220 line and install a new appliance is not something we could accomplish overnight. For what it is worth, we have had the same number of men occupying that space since we built it 20 years ago…but now we need 2 full ranges for the one person cooking dinner, sigh. To be clear, this was the MA Department of Career Services holding everything up. Boothe called us from Jamaica very concerned none of them had been “called up” yet; when Glenn explained why Boothe exclaimed, “We don’t need another stove!” Anyway, hoping to hear soon that they are in fact coming and when. The good news is we are not falling behind schedule – TG we have a great local crew too!

Still Life Farm. Last of the winter markets wrapped up this week. Looking forward to a little less market time and a little more “on farm” time for the next month. We flipped a few rows of greenhouse crops – pulling out old and tired winter greens and seeding spring radishes, arugula, beets, and carrots. Curt separated his Achilles tendon playing basketball, so in for surgery this Friday – BUT (in typical Curt fashion) he managed to seed the greenhouse beets just before we left for the hospital. That guy loves farming!

Still Life Farm last Winter Markets – come visit!

• Wayland Winter FM is every Saturday (last day March 15), 10:30am-2pm, at Russel’s Garden Center located @ 397 Boston Post Road.
• Lunenburg Market, Sunday March 16, 12-3

Eat well & love your food,

Genevieve Stillman (Stillman’s Farm) & Halley Stillman (Still Life Farm)