Spring CSA

Welcome Spring CSA Peeps!

My walk out to the barn this Friday morning greets me with snow melting off the south banking to reveal the first crocus shoots – it is happening!

This week’s bag should include the following: pea tendrils, shredded red cabbage, French Fingerling potatoes, potatoes, onions, Swiss chard, spinach, carrots, sweet potatoes and radishes.  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, to be cherished!

Do use your shredded cabbage as soon as possible, wrap up the chard and store in your fridge with the pea shoots and spinach. The carrots, radishes and apples should live in the fridge as well. Store the potatoes and onions in a cool, dark place – I mean, the onions would be fine on your counter, but might sprout in the light 😉

Spring CSA 2022 premier week!!  You are part of a relatively new wonderful family collaboration between Stillman’s Farm and Still Life Farm, joining forces to bring you a most satisfying 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.  

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 fold in your pea shoots, thinly sliced pear or apple, and some Parmesan.

A recent trip to the Mediterranean thrilled me for spectacular sights and every meal with an array of salads. For those of you who know me, you don’t need to ask if I enjoyed salad for breakfast –  the answer is YES! I love me some slaw – my standard dressing is oil, vinegar, dijon, celery seed, s & p – and it is equally good on cabbage, shredded radish, kohlrabi, whatever.  The Here’s 2 that were pretty much everywhere:

Cabbage Salad

• Shredded cabbage
• 3 tablespoons mayonnaise
• 1 tablespoon white sugar
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• salt to taste

Blend and coat the cabbage with the dressing. I enjoyed this just as well without the sugar 🙂

Moroccan Carrot Salad

• 4 carrots, peeled and chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, crushed
• 1 tsp paprika
• 1/2 teaspoon cumin
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp of sugar
• 2 1/2 TB olive oil
• 1 TB lemon juice
• Fresh parsley, chopped

Cook the carrots to al dente, coat with the mixture above. Wonderful warm, cold, or at room temp.

Little tidbits from the farms:

The vultures have been back for a few weeks now! Two days after we spotted the first one, it was zero degrees here – bet they were not expecting that…then we had snow. There’s clearly enough food for them on the roadsides, and the snow is melting today, so they are fine. We saw out first Red-winged Blackbird last week, but he must have sent word to the rest to stay back, LOL. It won’t be long before we have thousands of them migrating thought the farm. What a noise that is! Truly marvelous.

The dead of winter are big birthday months for the Stillman family, with us celebrating the birth of Kate, Curt, Reid, Faith, Jaide and Kip. It is kind of funny, because there is no free time on the farms in April and May, LOL!!!!!

Stillman’s Farm Dirt. The greenhouses are in full swing! Glenn spent the last week seeding of alliums (including 500 trays of onions!!!) and is pretty sick of leaning over the seeder, but today it’s pepper time!  The first of our amazing crew from Jamaica are arriving tonight (Friday) and just in time to catch us up filling baskets and pruning orchards. Speaking of orchards, it looks like the cold snap we had last month killed the peach blossoms, or at least the ones we have checked on. We do have some later varieties that we are praying survived the chill. To clarify, the trees themselves are fine, and will leaf out and need our care, whether they produce fruit or not – let’s all hope for fruit 🙂
If you are planning your gardens, we have lots in store for you later this Spring. I have the tomatoes updated online and will get to the peppers and eggplants next week. I will also try to update the actual lists of flowers, herbs, and other veggie transplants we will have available.

Still Life Farm.  Having just wrapped up Winter CSA, Curt and Halley are taking inventory of what is remaining in their vegetable storage.  Spring seeding has also begun for SLF.  They, too, have seeded their onions, hakurei turnips and  I am sure will be on to tomatoes soon. I need to ask Curt how many varieties of cherry tomatoes he grows now – 15? 20? They also experienced cold damage to their orchards and have their cherry trees to worry about, as well. I know there won’t be a shortage of husk cherries though, and so there will still be plenty of fun things from SLF to snack on, well, unless Kip gets there first 😉 He is a very fast berry picker! SLF farm can also be found at the wayland and West Brookfield winter markets.

Eat well & love your food,

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