As we prepare for the week to come, Thanksgiving seems to have snuck up on us again. We are so grateful for the opportunity to grow food for our community, here in this place. And the amount of food, as well as the amount of community, still amazes us a bit.

We’ve been fascinated by winter growing since we started with our quarter-acre garden back in Missoula, browsing Eliot Coleman’s “Winter Harvest Handbook” for what seemed like really out-there possibilities of fresh, cold-hardy winter greens. We are grateful to have had the land, the space, the slowly-growing infrastructure, a handful of winter-growing colleagues in the region, and hungry people eager for local produce, all of which have helped us develop and grow closer to a year-round farm.

Just a few short years ago we were over the moon to have carrots, potatoes, and a token bit of baby kale and salad to offer people in the farmstore for the week of Thanksgiving. It’s amazing now, as we debate where to fit the frilly spicy mustard greens, to have more than 8 kinds of greens available (we counted), all shelves stuffed full along with plenty of back stock in the walk-in coolers and three coolers stuffed in the farmstore.

Part of what that means for all of you is that your holiday feasts, as well as your basic daily meals, can include quite a bit of locally grown produce this fall and winter. Part of what all this growing for winter eaters means for us in this particular fall is that, with our new food-shed space not finished, our old farm shop is rather over-full of storage crops, to the point where we can’t use it to work on some of the projects needed to finish the future storage space.

The solution to this problem is one of the best type: it seems that, collectively, we can eat our way out of this jam! Whether you stock up for a special holiday meal this week, or just for your daily feasts, we’re offering a Thanksgiving-week special on a big box of good heavy food. The details and a sign-up link are here, but the quick summary is that a $40 box gets you about 40 lbs of food, a combination of winter squash, potatoes, onions, beets, carrots, garlic. By signing up for this now, to pick up on Tuesday or Wednesday of this week, you get a good deal on some long-storing crops, help us open up space to move, and help us get the maximum amount of food out to everyone through the farmstore this week, too. And don’t worry, if you aren’t up for the big box, you can shop for just exactly whatever fits your needs, at the farmstore. It’s still open all the time, and we are working on keeping the shelves full.

Finally, food for thought: in addition to all the small farm dramas and struggles we’ve been focused on in our little 10-acre corner of the world, we’ve been trying to follow along with bigger issues, from global climate talks to Hamilton’s growth and development plans. Far more complex than an over-crowded shop space, we know local eating — and preserving well managed farmland — is only a small part of the solution to these challenges. We are left with more questions than answers, and a constant feeling that we need to be doing more—more to recognize and reduce our energy and carbon footprint, more to educate and advocate for the importance of agriculture and working land as part of a resilient community, and more to make our farming world - with ourselves and our neighbors more resilent. We are, again, grateful to be in this work of growing food, building soil, and connecting to people.

We hope this week brings you some extra coziness and comfort, time to think, extra flavors, and time with loved ones. And regardless of how you celebrate or not, we recommend working some winter squash into your week….our favorite squash pie/ custard recipe is below. The farmstore will be absolutely loaded with squash for you to bake with.

Thanks for being a part of the farm.

-Mary and Noah, SweetRoot Farm

Winter Squash Pie: For one 9-inch pan of pie or custard:

• 2 cups cooked winter squash of any type with bright, dense flesh (our favorites for pie are Salmon River squash, Red Kuri, and Sunshine; sometimes we combine one of those with a true pie-pumpkin like New England Long Pie or Winter Luxury) *

• 2 eggs

• 1 cup of milk, half-and-half, or coconut milk

• optional: 2 tablespoons of maple syrup or honey, or 1/3 cup sugar. (This assumes starting with relatively sweet squash—adjust depending on your taste, double the sweetener may be needed to get the super-dessert-sweet flavor many people are used to) .**

• 2 tsp pumpkin pie spice blend, or 1 tsp cinnamon, and 1/4 tsp each of ground ginger, ground nutmeg, and a small dash of ground clove (adjust to your taste). Substituting 1-2 teaspoons of fresh grated ginger is lovely, too. Experiment to find your best combination.

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 375. Place all ingredients in a medium-sized bowl or large glass measuring cup. Mix until smooth with an immersion blender, wire whisk, or manual egg-beater. NOTE: If you need to do a lot of tasting and adjusting, it is best, for food safety, to mix the eggs in last after settling on your sugar level.

Pour mixture into an un-greased pie pan or pie crust and bake approximately 45 minutes, or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. For best taste and texture we try to let it cool to room temperature, or chill before serving. We do not always succeed.

If you like how it turns out, we highly recommend doubling the recipe next time and have one pan left over for breakfast.

*To cook your squash: Cut in half, scoop out the seeds, and bake, face down, on a large pan with a little bit of water in it (half-cup or so put in at the start should do the trick). The Lower Salmon River Squash, like Hubbard squash, have a thick skin. This makes them excellent storage varieties, often lasting well into the next summer. It does make them a little more work to get into, but it’s worth it. Tips for opening hard-shelled squash: resist the urge to use a big thick butcher knife just because this is a big job. I prefer to use my smallest paring knives for opening squash, because the thin blade slips in easier, not needing to create as large of a space. Work your way around it slowly with the small knife, or use the small one to get started, then get the big knife in. Alternately, drop the squash on the floor a few times to get a good crack started, then work out from there. When you have it open, scoop the seeds out (feed them to chickens if you have them!) and bake, face-down in a pan with a little bit of water, at 350-375 for 30-45 minutes, or until the flesh pierces easily with a fork.

**We like to eat this dish as breakfast food with yogurt, as well as for dessert, and quite often we don’t add any sweetener at all to squash custards unless we are taking them to share with others.