Spring CSA

The first Spring CSA bag will include the following: pea tendrils, bok choi, carrots, French Fingerling potatoes, Beauregard sweet potatoes, shallots, and Bosc pears.  If you are eating with us for Spring CSA, you are really getting to the nitty-gritty of farm food and seasonal eating.  Eating local and seasonal during the early spring means lots of overwintered roots, apples, and squashes.  We have the additional luxury of greens coming out of our high tunnels and greenhouses, so cherish those!

Spring CSA premier week!!  You are part of a new wonderful family collaboration between Stillman’s Farm and Still Life Farm, joining forces to bring you what we hope will be a most satisfying, permanent addition to our varied CSA offerings. Family Farm Force! Pretty catchy, right? This weekly letter will be coming to your inbox the day before your pickup, and is also available at stillmansfarm.com/blog and stilllifefarm.wordpress.com.  Most of the letters will be composed by Halley Stillman, though Genevieve Stillman may jump in from time to time.

Coming up: apples, winter squash, cabbage, beets, turnips, greens

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 great, low effort 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.

For a quick delectable salad, whip together a dressing of lemon juice, Dijon mustard, shallot, EVOO, S&P, then fold in your pea shoots, thinly sliced pear, and some Parmesan.

Little tidbits from the farms:

Stillman’s Farm.  The greenhouses are in full swing! The major seeding of alliums (including 500 trays of onions!!!) is in the books for 2021.  This first seeding always seems to solidify the return of the farm season and sets everything in motion.  A newly purchased mechanical flat-filler is going to make seeding a lot more efficient this season.  A trial run of this machine proved it’s efficiency by filling 90 seeding flats in 15 minutes, a feat that might take a single person about an hour to accomplish manually.  This is not to cut down on our labor, but simply to reallocate those man hours to another area of the farm so we can feed even more people good local food.  The first group of H2A guys has returned from Jamaica and we are so happy to have them back, the farm always seems to hum along once our crew returns!

Still Life Farm.  Having just wrapped up Winter CSA, we are taking inventory of what is remaining in our vegetable storage.  Curt has begun to till up some space in our high tunnels to make more room for spring crops.  Spring seeding has also begun for us.  This week we will be seeding Curt’s famous cherry tomatoes in anticipation of summer!  We have also been busy working on plans for an extended storage barn/wash floor/pack floor that, when completed, will be a real game-changer for our farm!  We will keep you updated as the building progresses.  Tiny Kip is getting bigger and bigger, he spent the day the day in the greenhouse seeding onions with us!

Eat well & love your food,

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