Welcome to your second winter-farm week, members. We hope you enjoyed your first week of veggies, and are ready for more.
As I sit down to write this well after dark on Monday, I can hear Noah running a planer, a sander, table saw and occasionally the chop saw as he pushes towards the finishing steps of this final chicken barn. If you remember last week’s pick-up, the barn was barely framed up, so there has been a lot of progress, but there’s still a ways to go. The chicks are getting impatient to be split between the two barns, as they are growing larger every week. It is also embarrassing to admit, as I was telling Sabrina as we finished packing members’ root bags this evening, that this is, if you count every awkward coop, the tenth chicken housing we have built in our time together. That’s not embarrassing, I guess, just the fact that for ten out of ten generations of chickens, we have uniformly, every time, had time pressure from the poultry that were to be housed in said building—either arriving in the mail, outgrowing their brooders, or for some reason needing a home ASAP. You could call it a tradition or a bad habit, I’m not sure which. Honestly, we’re trying to reform. On the whole, chickens over the years have gotten vastly easier, and we’re working on new, better traditions.
This week’s theme might be the funny combination of embracing traditions and forging new pathways. We are, like many, forgoing many of our normal Thanksgiving traditions and travel in order to keep everyone as safe as possible this year. We’ll miss seeing family, telling stories, playing games, and being forced to take some time away from working. But it’s been a good opportunity to ask what traditions we adapt or re-create in different form, here in our tiny farm household (farmhold?) of three. We’re planning minimal farm work (just the chicken feeding, egg collections, and covering/ uncovering of crops in the tunnels), a walk in the cold morning with the dogs, and a lot of the day spent preparing and enjoying foods the farm has grown. We’ll try to talk to family who are distant, and maybe I’ll recruit Sabrina and Noah to a round of my family’s long-time favorite game, Banangrams. We haven’t solidified the menu, but my reaction to not being with family seems to be to double down on making all the favorite foods. There will be pickled beets, and there is a good chance the pie to person ratio will be 1:1. We’ve tried to build this weeks membership share in a way that lets you create a plethora of delicious veggie dishes to complement whatever type of feast you decide on.
As Noah and I are notoriously bad at celebrating holidays, it’s a big responsibility to be left to our own devices for Thanksgiving. As we continue in our winter-farm membership theme of gratitude and challenge, we challenge you this week to create a new twist on some your traditions. Maybe you’re adapting them to current circumstances (my niece and sister worked out the best way to play Bananagrams by Zoom, if anyone needs tips), maybe you are preparing a wholly different type of meal but keeping the giving of thanks; maybe you are bringing difficult topics of history and justice to the table; maybe you are calling up that great-aunt to get the recipe for her special dish, and to just connect; maybe you are releasing yourself from all expectations and eating your spinach and carrots straight out of the bag while absorbed in a new book. Whatever it is, we’d love to hear about it, and we hope that the food from the farm can be a part of it all. We’ll be here working on our habits and traditions, too.
Keep reading to learn what’s in this week’s share, get lots of recipe ideas, and start your meal planning!
With gratitude and winter spinach,
Your winter farmers: Mary, Noah, and Sabrina
What’s in the share this week:
Yukon Gold potatoes. We saved these specifically for you for this week, to have the best mashing variety in case of traditional Thanksgiving feasts. They are also a great one for soups (try a potato-kale soup with sausage, or a creamy potato soup made by blending leftover mashed potatoes with a good broth, some cream or yogurt, some sautéed garlic and onions, your favorite cheese and lots of black pepper).
Salad Turnips: the bag of little white round roots are not radishes this week, but the much milder cousin, salad turnips. We like to just snack on these raw, so consider slicing or quartering them and serving them alongside carrot sticks with your favorite dip. Or slice or grate them onto salads. They also stir-fry and roast nicely, so the options are endless!
Carrots: you may get some purple and red carrots in your mix this week. We upped it to 2 whole pounds this time because the carrots are so versatile for eating raw in many forms, or for roasting with other roots, throwing into vegetable soups, or as a special side dish, honey glazed carrots (recipe courtesy of partners at The O’Hara Commons….you can substitute non-flavored honeys too, of course).
Cylindra beets: First, yes, they are supposed to be shaped like that. This variety of beet grows long and narrow, instead of round, which does make them look funny but is actually a beautiful asset when cutting them up, as you get uniformly sized slices. Try them simply steamed, roasted with butter, or for a special bright sweet-tart side, try the refrigerator pickle recipe below, adapted from the big-batch canning that we do when we have time. You’ll have a hiatus from beets next week as we make room for other items, so you can also save these up for next week if you’d like. The quantity in this week’s share should make a batch of the beet pickle recipe below.
Spinach: a full half-pound bag, so you have plenty for both salads and for cooking. Spinach is our favorite green for making hearty full-meal salads and we highly recommend saving some for late in the week, for leftover Thanksgiving salad: top it with roasted turkey, dried cranberries, toasted sunflower or pumpkin seeds, even leftover stuffing. Spinach is one of the greens that is really much happier in November than in July, so take a moment to notice the sweetness, the bright green, the cushy textures of this in-season winter spinach.
Kale bunch: for kale-potato soup, or massaged kale salads for the rest of your week, or sautéed with scrambled eggs. Kale, like spinach, gets sweeter with the frosts, so we think it’s especially good in the winter.
Spicy salad mix, aka Asian greens mix: If you like arugula, mustard greens, and salads with a little zip, try the bagged greens mix for this week straight up in a raw salad (you may need to chop or tear the leaves, as some are a little large). If you aren’t a fan of the heat, use the spinach for your raw green, and give this mix a light steam, sauté, or chop it into soup. Cooking takes the mustard-spice out of the greens, leaving you with a flavorful and much milder-tasting green. For something in between, make a pizza with peanut sauce instead of red sauce, diced leftover turkey or chicken, and chopped Asian greens tossed in sesame oil. Bake till crust is to your liking and greens are slightly crispy.
Pie Pumpkin: if yours is round and looks like it has a fancy little mesh net over it, you got a Winter Luxury pie pumpkin. If yours looks like we slipped you a vastly overgrown zucchini, you got a New England Long Pie pumpkin. Don’t worry, they really are both pumpkins, and both are delicious heirloom varieties. For either one, bake them by cutting in half, scooping out the seeds, and baking at 350-400 till the flesh is soft. Scoop it out and blend it, then use in your favorite pumpkin pie recipe. Or, for a completely different direction, either can work great in this recipe for pumpkin and chickpea soup.
Herb Packet: we didn’t quite make it to Scarborough with this one, but we came close. This week’s herbs include sage, rosemary, and thyme, dried on the farm this fall. We recommend using them all together as a blend: rub the sprigs between your fingers to separate the leaves from the larger stems, and crush into smaller pieces. Combine them all with softened butter and rub on your turkey if you’re doing that (or put them into the stuffing), or sprinkle them on some roasted veggies. Or, to bring a hint of traditional Thanksgiving spices to your salads all week, try them in this salad dressing recipe:
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 cup red wine vinegar
1 teaspoon mustard
1/8 tsp salt, or to taste
1/8 tsp pepper or to taste
1-2 teaspoons SRF herb blend (sage, rosemary, thyme, and by all means add parsley if you have it)
1 Tbsp chopped onion
1 small clove chopped garlic (optional, omit if not a raw garlic fan)
1 Tbsp cranberry sauce (also optional)
1 Tbsp honey or maple syrup (adjust to taste)
blend it all together with an immersion blender. With dried herbs, try to make at least an hour in advance to let the flavors blend.
Pickled Beets, Adapted from the Ball Blue Book Guide to Home Canning and Freezing
The original recipe was for much larger quantities for canning, but we’ve used this pared-down version to make small batches for throwing in the fridge, where they’ll keep longer than you’re likely to be able to resist eating them. This is a favorite holiday side dish, and one that can convince even the beet skeptics to try them.
1 1/2 to 2 lbs beets, cooked, peeled, and cut into bite-sized pieces (directions below)
1/2- 3/4 cups sugar (or equivalent in your favorite sweetener)
1 stick cinnamon
1/2 tablespoon whole allspice
3/4 teaspoons salt
1 cup vinegar
1/2 cups water
To cook beets: wash and drain beets, leaving the root tips on and a little bit of stem on top (if purchased in bunches). Cover with boiling water and cook until tender. When tender, drain off the water, run beets under cool water till cool enough to handle, then slip the skins off, and trim/ chop into pieces. Combine all ingredients except the beets, simmer 15 minutes. Add the cooked beets, and simmer another 5-10 minutes. Allow to cool, then jar up and store in refrigerator overnight or for several days before serving, to let flavors permeate the beets.
Final P.S.:
A note on packaging: one benefit we are realizing of packing these winter shares, vs trying to sell each item individually through the farmstore, is that ability to pack items together, to dose out beets or carrots in any increment, and to save a few rounds of plastic bagging. (we estimate that each week the shares are eliminating 100-150 small plastic bags from our flow). Of course, that does mean that your beets and carrots have been co-mingling, and we apologize if that is disturbing to anyone in your household. We should also mention, for your safety, any bags that are re-used have been stored for many weeks (most for months, actually) to ensure that they could not be carrying viable virus. If you want to return bags for re-use, please place them by the egg-carton return. The green bags can be composted, at home, or returned to the farm to compost.