Spring CSA

Week Eleven of the Spring CSA will include a mix of the following: Salad Radishes, Swiss Chard, Apples, Asparagus, Asian Greens, either Cherry Tomatoes or another spring surprise.  If you have not yet seen cherry tomatoes in your bag, we plan to get you some this week.  If you have already had cherry tomatoes you will get another fun spring surprise veggie!  Please note that the weekly photo is not an exact depiction of what is in your share, but rather a reference image.

The 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.  

Weekly Featured Item: Asian Greens 

Asian Greens come in a variety of shapes and sizes, but they are all delicious and all have their own slight nuances.  You could find any of the following Asian greens in your bag this week: Bok choi, Tatsoi, Tokyo bekana, or Mizuna.  My favorite thing to do with the thicker ribbed varieties, like Bok choi or Tatsoi, is to sauté them up, either on their own or in a stir fry.  You can also shove them into your Ramen at the very end of the cook time.  Some of the lighter varieties, like Tokyo bekana or Mizuna, are amazing in hearty salads.  As a general rule, we include both these varieties in our mesclun salad mix.

 

Farmer’s Breakfast

This is the easiest breakfast in the world, you can sub just about any green you like for it, and it’s a good way to shed those extra winter pounds and get all your healthy greens in…

Ingredients

• EVOO
• S&P
• champagne vinegar or rice wine vinegar (something mild and sweet)
• shallot, thinly sliced
• farm eggs

Slice your shallot thinly.  Chop your preferred green into 1/2 pieces.  Pour a glug of EVOO into a frying pan (that has a lid).  Sauté your shallot until fragrant.  Add the greens in two parts, first add the stems and cook for a couple minutes, then throw in the more tender tops.  Season with S&P and a little bit of the vinegar.  Make little “nests” in the greens for as many eggs as you want.  Crack your eggs into the nests.  Cover frying pan and let cook until your eggs have reached the desired doneness.  Season eggs if desired.  Eat it and get to work!!!

 

#cookingwithStillmans

Don’t forget to play along with our friendly Spring CSA cooking competition.  Show us what your making with all that local food!  Take a picture and post it to your social media with the #cookingwithStillmans.  Every week a winner will be chosen at random and receive a fun farm prize!

The Week Ten winner of our #cookingwithstillmans challenge goes to @locallizardsvegankitchen for a beautiful presentation of glazed Hakurei Turnips!

Farm Dirt

Stillman’s Farm.  We started our first market in Jamaica Plain this past Saturday (find us there every Saturday, 12-3pm), and the first day at Copley is this Friday (find us there every Tuesday and Friday, 11-6).  The frenzy of planting continues, and the fields are filling up.  Tomato plants will be set out at the end of this week…you know what that means, summer is right around the corner!  If you are interested in plants for your own garden, the greenhouses in New Braintree are open, Monday – Saturday, 10am-3pm (1205 Barre Road, New Braintree, MA, 01531).  They are fully stocked with a wide assortment of veggies, herbs, flowers, succulents, and more.  Come out and grab all the plants your little hearts desire!

Still Life Farm.  Cherry tomatoes have been transplanted into the big greenhouse which will be their home all the way through the fall.  They look great!  Update on the squash in the other greenhouse.  The plants made it through a few cold nights and are thriving.  They are beginning to set lots of blooms which will soon turn into squash and zucchini!  This week’s project is onion planting.  Usually this project is done by hand, but this year we have revamped the water wheel transplanter and are hoping that makes the entire process less back breaking and quite a bit faster.  Bad news on the building project, we just found out that they can’t ship our steel building until late August.  That puts us way behind our grant deadline…whoops.  Kip was able to start daycare, just a couple of days a week, but that is giving Mom a little more time to catch up on farm projects.

Happy Mother’s Day to all of the very special moms out there!!! <3

Eat well & love your food,

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