Food in the winter…

Transitions are always bittersweet. The end of the growing season is always welcome in that it offers us a break from the long hours and heavy lifting, both literal and figurative. We always miss the energy of the season and the satisfaction of having all of you so happily take home your share each week. The romance of not having to harvest 200 pounds of greens, 600 pounds of carrots, etc. each week and instead starting the day by the fire listening to the radio is pretty alluring right now though. The great part is that by March we’ll have dreamt up another year; raring to go again, just waiting for the snow to melt.

More Food… It has been a great year and the harvests of many crops were beyond our expectations. Two crops in particular did so well that we are offering all of you a pre-Thanksgiving distribution of potatoes and butternut squash. Everyone who would like can come to the farm on Tuesday evening November 23rd between 5 and 7 pm or Wednesday November 24th between 9 and 11 am and pick up 4 butternut squash and a 4 lb bag of spuds.

Eggs… Many of you have asked where you can get our organic pastured eggs this winter. After much interest from all of you we have decided to offer a winter egg share. Once a month from December until May each share will get two dozen eggs packaged and ready for pickup here at the farm the first week of every month. Like the vegetable CSA, we would ask for your prepayment for the whole winter. The price of the share will be $54 (6 months x 2 dozen @ $4.50/dozen) which is a bargain for organic eggs from any source. If two dozen isn’t enough for your family, buy two shares! We guarantee our eggs will stay fresh and tasty all month as they are not washed, like eggs in the grocery store. Washing eggs removes the outer coating on the shell, allowing air and moisture in the egg to escape, and bacteria to enter. Unwashed eggs can be kept for 3 weeks without refrigeration safely if they are not washed and many weeks more if refrigerated. We often sell eggs to folks leaving for sailing trips who have no way to keep them cold. Our birds will spend the winter housed in the greenhouse with access to the outdoors everyday and a diet supplemented with fresh hay and or alfalfa silage to keep their yolks packed with omega 3’s and bright orange. We need at least fifteen of you to make this plan work so let us know soon!

Winter Farm Share? Well this is the first week without a farm pick-up. Do you miss us yet? Maybe, maybe not, but we have an opportunity for you to continue your connection with this farm and with great Maine produce over the winter. Our friends at Wolf Pine Farm in Alfred, Maine will be delivering a winter share to the farm every three weeks starting Tuesday, November 16th. The winter share has vegetables but also adds great local produce like frozen berries, dry beans, grains and even specialty items like sea salt and honey. This is their second year of offering a winter share and they have been able to partner with great farms from all over Maine to provide a diverse, high quality share that will keep you excited about local food even in the dead of winter. For more info and a sample share description follow this link http://www.wolfpinefarm.com/foodWinter.html

Our superstar farm apprentices leave this week, taking with them hands-on experience, spreadsheets of data and strong backs to start the dreams of their own farms somewhere out in the distance. We had a great group this year and I hope all of you enjoyed chatting with them each week. We’re lucky to have Bethany and Jacinda with us this winter to help with sheep as they plan their next moves. Jacinda is going to spend January on a farm in rural Brazil! Both of them will be available for baby-sitting as well (our kids love them) if any of you are looking (bethanylallen@gmail.com and jacinda.martinez@gmail.com). Adrien and his partner Giselle are looking for some farmland in the area and Emily is headed to Wolf Pine Farm in Alfred, Maine to help with their winter CSA.

Thanks for all of your surveys. We have been reading through them and looking at all of your suggestions. Having your ideas fresh in our minds as we make budgets, seed orders and hiring decisions over the next couple months helps guide towards an even better farm for next season.

CSA sign-up for 2011. Many thanks to all of you who have signed up for next year’s share. It’s been a great year and we hope to make next year even better. Your commitment to a share this fall helps us plan for the coming season. By signing up now you also get on our winter payment plan which divides the share cost over three payments in February, April and June. As always, payment in full is great too.

Turkey for Thanksgiving. If you are looking for a locally raised turkey The Turkey Farm in New Sharon is still taking orders. These are naturally raised pastured birds and the best part is they deliver right here to the farm the day before Thanksgiving (the same day as our squash potato pick-up!). Check out the website for more info… http://www.theturkeyfarm.com/

So Long Till Next Year…

With orange leaves and frosty mornings we come to our last week of the season for the CSA. It has been a great year and we are so thankful for mother nature giving us a great stretch of weather and for all of you sharing this trip through the farm season. In the modern, busy, and choice-laden world we live in, I find it amazing that so many of you are excited to commit the time and money to come to the farm each week and be given your menu, in the raw. That sustained commitment from all of you is the foundation for this community supported farm. From all of us farmers, we sincerely thank you.

Survey… We appreciate the 130 responses to our survey so far and hope that many more of you will be able to respond in the next week. So many of the great details of what happens here each week are the result of suggestions from years past. We really do look hard at your opinions and ideas when we begin planning for 2011 (next week). http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/3GT5H2N or grab a paper copy at pickup and hand it back.

Bring Boxes, Bags, Porters. We are planning on loading you up this week with many things so please come prepared! More bags, boxes and family members to help tote will be needed!

Rutabaga and Parsnips. The fall root line up is complete with rutabaga and parsnips. If you are perplexed about either –think roasting. $00 degree oven, chopped into one inch pieces, tossed in oil/butter and you are ready to roll. Check the website for more detail and ideas. http://crystalspringcsa.com/archives/category/recipes/rutabaga

http://crystalspringcsa.com/archives/category/recipes/parsnip

No justice, no peas. With all of the gifts we were given this year there has to be a martyr. Our planting of fall peas has fallen to a sudden 25 degree night last Tuesday. Peas are a hardy bunch but when the temps dip suddenly and severely they have no time to acclimate and they get burned. This is why we grow fifty crops –we like the overall odds for success.

CSA sign-up for 2011. Many thanks to all of you who have signed up for next year’s share. It’s been a great year and we hope to make next year even better. Your commitment to a share this fall helps us plan for the coming season. By signing up now you also get on our winter payment plan which divides the share cost over three payments in February, April and June. As always, payment in full is great too.

What to expect in your share this week…

Lettuce            Potatoes            Rutabagas

Brussels Sprouts            Carrots            Sweet Potatoes

Kale                                    Chard            Winter Squash

Parsnips                        Chickories

Winter Work. As winter approaches we have a long list of projects to tackle. The first in the queue is putting a new roof on the CSA barn. CSA member extraordinaire Phil Dostie is leading the effort to help with this along with support by longtime CSA member & friend Mark Wild of G.M. Wild Construction (gmwild.com). We are planning to strip and re-roof the barn Halloween weekend. If you would like to lend a hand (we need lots of on the ground help with shingle gathering) shoot me an email and I’ll sign you up.

Turkey for Thanksgiving. If you are looking for a locally raised turkey The Turkey Farm in New Sharon is still taking orders. These are naturally raised pastured birds and the best part is they deliver right here to the farm the day before Thanksgiving. Check out the website for more info… http://www.theturkeyfarm.com/

Sweet as Sugar

Remember last week’s newsletter, when I talked about the sweetening effects of frost on many of our crops? Well this week you will be taking home Brussels Sprouts that endured our first hard frost of the season. We had twenty-five degrees here this morning (Tuesday) and will be pressed to have enough time for them to thaw enough to harvest before the Tuesday share is ready at two o’clock. I won’t have enough time to taste test these beauties before all of you arrive today, but I’m betting they will be the garden equivalent of marshmallow fluff. I can’t wait. There are a couple of sprouts recipes on the website for those that need a friendly entry point for this sometimes maligned vegetable http://crystalspringcsa.com/archives/category/recipes/brussels-sprouts

Some good compliments for Brussels sprouts are butter, olive oil, nuts, mustard, the whole onion family, parsley, oregano, caraway and curry spices.

We are giving you the stalk that the Brussels grow on because it’s fun and helps keep the sprouts fresh. When you are ready to use them just pop them off the stalk and jump in. The stalk can be composted, given to vegan dogs or used in your next stickball game.

Next week will be the last week for 2010 Share!

Upic? You’ll notice the upic listing is absent from the newsletter. Last night’s frost was a doozy and really kicked everything out there. You are welcome to do some gleaning of herbs and flowers if you like. We are hoping that the snap peas will progress this week and we can let you into them next week…more on this next week’s newsletter.

Pumpkins this week and next! Starting this week we’ll be sending you home with pumpkins. We had a good crop of jack-o-lanterns this year so get ready to do some carving! There will be pumpkins available starting this week and the last week of the share as well. We should have enough for two pumpkins for each share with some extras for the kids.

Survey Time Continues! We’ve had almost a hundred survey responses, which is great but there are many more of you out there. It’s fine for family members/share partners to fill out their own survey. If you have come to the farm this year and eaten the share we want to know what you think. Please take a moment to fill out the survey online http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/3GT5H2N or grab a paper copy at pickup and hand it back.

CSA sign-up for 2011. Many thanks to all of you who have signed up for next year’s share. It’s been a great year and we hope to make next year even better. Your commitment to a share this fall helps us plan for the coming season. By signing up now you also get on our winter payment plan which divides the share cost over three payments in February, April and June. As always, payment in full is great too.

Spring Greens in 2011. With the addition of our new high tunnel we hope to start next years share in May with early greens distributions. Look for more info in our winter newsletters.

What to expect in your share this week…

Lettuce            Potatoes            Rutabagas

Brussels Sprouts            Carrots            Kohlrabi

Kale                                    Chard            Winter Squash

Asian Greens             Chickories            Sweet Potatoes

Winter Work. As winter approaches we have a long list of projects to tackle. The first in the queue is putting a new roof on the CSA barn. CSA member extraordinaire Phil Dostie is leading the effort to help with this along with support by longtime CSA member & friend Mark Wild of G.M. Wild Construction (gmwild.com). We are planning to strip and re-roof the barn Halloween weekend. If you would like to lend a hand (we need lots of on the ground help with shingle gathering) shoot me an email and I’ll sign you up.

Brussels Sprouts Cockaigne

(adapted from Joy of Cooking)

20-30 Sprouts halved lengthwise (cutting the stem)

4 Tablespoons butter o2 2 Tablespoons butter and 2 tablespoons olive oil

3-4 cloves of garlic, crushed or minced

2-3 tablespoons grated parmesean cheese

Warm the butter/oil in a skillet over medium heat and brown the garlic. Remove the garlic and add the sprouts cut side down. Cover and cook for 15 to 20 minutes until tender. Remove to a dish and top with cheese.

Brussels Sprouts with Butter and Toasted Nuts

(adapted from the Joy of Cooking)

3 Tablespoons Butter

1/4 cup chopped, toatstes nuts (walnuts, hazelnuts, almonds or pecans)

1 pound of Brussels sprouts (about 2 cups)

With a knife make a shallow “x” on the bottom of each sprout (this helps them steam evenly). Steam them for 10-15 minutes, remove from heat and cut each sprout in half. While these are cooking toast the nuts in a dry skillet until they smell fragrant. Melt butter on medium heat until it begins to bubble and add brussels and toss evenly to coat. turn carefully for 3-5 minutes and remove to a dish. Top with nuts and serve.

Frosting isn’t Just for Cake

What’s in Upic?……

Flowers      Herbs         Cherry Tomatoes

Frost arrived this past weekend without much fear or fanfare. The “official” fall frost date for this part of Maine is October 1, based on data from the past 30 years, so everyday beyond this date is a gift. Overnight freezes really do their damage on our light greens crops, lettuce most specifically. The cold temps and the shortening days will be a factor in texture, flavor and storage of this crop from here on out. The silver lining of the frost is that all of the heartier greens like kale will sweeten up in the cold.

In addition to better kale, the frost has also opened the floodgate to a whole host of other crops that need that kiss of ice to sweeten. Look for Brussels sprouts, rutabaga, parsnips, turnips and snaps peas in the next couple weeks. We also have a southern crop that doesn’t like the cold to offer as well, sweet potatoes! These last few weeks of the CSA will be heavy…so please bring lots of bags.

Pumpkins are coming! Whatever you do don’t buy pumpkins for Halloween. Starting next week we’ll be sending you home with pumpkins. We had a good crop of jack-o-lanterns this year so get ready to do some carving! There will be pumpkins available starting next week and the last week of the share as well, so if you are splitting there is no need to cut the pumpkin in half! We shoild have enough for two pumpkins for each share with some extras for families with many kids.

Cabbage crisis. More cabbage this week. This is a really great red cabbage that is some of the best we have ever grown (new asian slaw recipe on the website). A CSA member brought to our attention that on the other side of the world in South Korea there is a major cabbage shortage as heavy rains have caused a crop failure. The country is in a panic as cabbage (napa cabbage) is the main ingredient of kimchi, a fermented dish that they eat with every meal. We don’t know how good we have got it. Here’s a report from NPR that gives you an idea the depth of this problem. http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2010/10/06/130373720/cabbage-shortage-leads-to-kimchi-crisis-in-south-korea

It’s Survey Time! Every fall we ask for your thoughts about the CSA with our annual survey. This is the time to let us know where we are doing well and where you think we could do things better. You are the community support in this farm’s Community Supported Agriculture and we value your thoughts and suggestions. Every year we add to and adapt everything from the varieties we grow to the hours we are open for pickup based on your ideas. Please take a moment to fill out the survey online by following this link… http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/3GT5H2N or grab a paper copy at pickup and hand it back.

CSA sign-up for 2011. It’s been a great year and we hope to make next year even better. Your commitment to a share this fall helps us plan for the coming season. By signing up now you also get on our winter payment plan which divides the share cost over three payments in February, April and June. As always, payment in full is great too.

Spring Greens in 2011. With the addition of our new high tunnel we hope to start next years share in May with early greens distributions. Look for more info in our winter newsletters.

What to expect in your share this week…

Lettuce                 Potatoes       Celeriac

Cabbage               Arugula        Carrots

Kale                     Chard          Leeks

Asian Greens       Chickories   Kohlrabi

Winter Squash     Beets            Sweet Potatoes

Crystal Spring Farm Lamb. Order your whole or half lamb processed as you like and fill the freezer for the coming winter. Ask us for information.

Asian-Flavored Coleslaw with Rice Vinegar and Ginger

1 tablespoon sesame seeds

4 cups thinly sliced Napa or Red cabbage (from about 1/2 large head)

1/2 cup thinly sliced green onions
3 tablespoons rice vinegar
2 tablespoons peanut oil
1 tablespoon minced peeled fresh ginger
1 teaspoon oriental sesame oil
1 teaspoon sugar

Stir sesame seeds in small dry skillet over medium heat until light golden, about 3 minutes. Set aside.

Combine cabbage and green onions in large bowl. Add vinegar, peanut oil, ginger, sesame oil, and sugar and toss to blend. Season to taste with salt and pepper. (Can be prepared 2 hours ahead. Cover and refrigerate. Toss before continuing.) Sprinkle with sesame seeds and serve.

How to Love Celeriac

Fall is here without a doubt. We adjusted our start time for the crew from 6 to 6:30 am this week because at 6 it’s dark! Last Friday was cloudy as we went down to harvest and had to start cutting “big” things like cabbage and chard that were easier to make out in the dim light than arugula and tatsoi. In addition to the waning light, the temperature swing these days from the mornings just above freezing (and soon just below) to the bright afternoons of sixty and sixty-five degrees are pretty glorious. Having such change just in a few hours makes each day seem like a season change unto it self.

You’ll find celeriac in your share again this week. We snuck this one in on you last week without much fanfare, but it does deserve some attention. Celeriac, otherwise known as celery root, is the hardy and hard working cousin of the dainty and, in my opinion, less friendly celery. Where celery has its place adding foundation flavor to soups casseroles and the like, celeriac refuses to be pigeon holed and, because of its starchy sweetness and mild flavor, can go with almost anything this time of year. Having been tortured with peanut butter & celery as a child I am not in love with celery but give me celeriac along with almost anything in your share and I can make a meal.  What do we do with this vegetable around the kitchen? First remove the ends with a sturdy knife and continue to peel the whole root until the rough skin is gone and only the off white interior remains. At this point anything is possible. You can grate it onto a salad and dress with a mustard vinaigrette; cube it and boil with potatoes and then mash it together with the spuds for savory mashed; toss with oil or butter and roast it with beets and carrots; slice into soups for all the flavor of celery and something to fill up your spoon as well. Check out the website for more recipes: http://crystalspringcsa.com/archives/category/recipes/celeriac

What’s ahead for the farm? As we come into our last month of harvest we always have an eye ahead to next year. A large part of the process of preparing for the year to come is looking at changes large and small we can make to the CSA to improve what we do here for all of you. Next week we will offer our annual survey both online (new this year) and on paper. By filling this out you will supply the answers to our winter questions about changes to vegetable varieties, adjustment to pick-up times, what you most like about coming to the farm, etc. What we do here is very much a work in progress and you help us make the farm better and better every year.

One big change we will be making for the coming season is the addition of May greens. Our new high tunnel by the upic field will allow us to provide 2 weeks of greens during the month of May for CSA members. Greens may not seem that exciting right now as we enter week 19 of greens in your share, but next spring after the cold dark of winter…they will seem like gold.

CSA sign-up for 2011. It’s been a great year and we hope to make next year even better. Your commitment to a share this fall helps us plan for the coming season. By signing up now you also get on our winter payment plan which divides the share cost over three payments in February, April and June. As always, payment in full is great too.

What to expect in your share this week…

Lettuce            Potatoes                        Celeriac

Cabbage            Arugula                        Carrots

Kale                                    Chard

Asian Greens             Chickories

Winter Squash            Beets

Crystal Spring Farm Lamb. We have a great crop of lambs this year. Order your whole or half lamb processed as you like and fill the freezer for the coming winter. Ask us at pickup for more information.

Hand and Hand Feast. We have tickets at the farm for the Brunswick-Topsham Land Trust’s 25th anniversary celebration Hand and Hand with the Land Sunday October 17th from 4-7 pm at Frontier Café in Brunswick. Local Chefs and local farmers team up to make great food. What could be better? $40 per couple, kids are free!

Cabbage is a Vegetable

What’s in Upic?……

Flowers      Herbs         Cherry Tomatoes

Cabbage, cabbage, cabbage…Yes there is more cabbage this week. Hope fully not too many of you are cursing us humble farmers every time you open the fridge and see…cabbage. Here’s the reason we have had so many weeks of this hefty vegetable. The last week of August and the first week of September was the hottest and longest heat wave to span those days on the calendar in Maine history. This pushed our end of the season cabbage forward by many weeks. We plan our plantings for temperatures to be gradually cooling starting at that time and when the weather doesn’t cooperate…we have a lot of cabbage, all at once. While we did plan on giving you all of this cabbage, we didn’t plan on giving it to you in so many consecutive weeks. Look for take-home cabbage recipes at pickup.

There was a great article in the New York Times this past Saturday about Americans and their dreadfully low consumption of vegetables (cabbage is a vegetable). Amongst the many interesting points in the article (including carrot vending machines in the NYC schools) was that in today’s fast paced world, cooking vegetables is a substantial effort and this is the big stumbling block to increasing their role in the American diet. This hits the nail right on the head –eating well is an effort. By choosing to work with raw produce each week instead of opening boxes and cans is, all of you are bucking the trend and making an investment in your family’s health. Here’s the link to the article: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/25/health/policy/25vegetables.html?_r=1&hp

Tranquil Tuesdays and Frantic Fridays. Over the course of every season many of you who started out picking up on Tuesday slowing drift to Fridays. We want you to have flexibility in your pickup days but if you are finding Fridays to be too busy here for your taste you might want to try to switch to Tuesday, which is always much quieter.

CSA sign-up for 2011 begins this week. We will be taking deposits ($100) for next years CSA shares starting this week. These deposits help us plan for next year and support the farm through the winter months as well. By signing up now you also get on our winter payment plan which divides the share cost over three payments in February, April and June. As always, payment in full is great too. We will begin opening up shares to our waiting list starting art the end of the month so if you would like a share for next year please don’t delay.

What to expect in your share this week…

Lettuce                 Potatoes                   Broccoli

Cabbage               Arugula                    Carrots

Kale                     Chard

Asian Greens       Chickories

Onions                 Winter Squash

When will it end? We will continue to harvest through the end of October, making Friday the 29th our last pickup day of the season.

Local Food Feast. The Brunswick-Topsham Land Trust will be holding a local food feast called “Hand and Hand with the Land” Sunday October 17th from 4-7 pm at Frontier Café in Brunswick. The event will celebrate the 25th anniversary of the land trust and celebrate their efforts to save open space and important agricultural land (like Crystal Spring Farm). Local farmers and chefs are pared together to create a seasonal menu and bluegrass music will round out the event. There will be activities for the kids run by Cathance River Education Alliance. We will be working with Henry and Marty’s restaurant. Tickets are $25 for adults ($40 per couple, kids are free) and will be available at CSA pickup, during the Saturday market and at the land trust office on main street.

Crystal Spring Farm Lamb. Starting this week we will have order sheets for whole and half lamb for your freezer. Talk to us a pickup for more details.

Squash and Napa

What’s in Upic?……

Flowers      Herbs         Cherry Tomatoes

Transition is in full bloom around here these days as the leaves are lightening, the nights are chilly, and we have both Napa Cabbage and Winter Squash in the share this week. We will be giving out the last round of tomatoes and peppers this week. It is always sad time, but the cycle of things coming and going seems to make everything taste better over the course of the year.

Napa cabbage is a great vegetable. We sometimes call it “cabbage light” as its flavor is more subtle and its texture much lighter than European cabbage. If you are unsure of what to do with this crop, start by treating it as you would standard cabbage. We often shred it into the last moments of a stir fry, just letting it wilt a bit. If you like to make stuffed cabbage the tender leaves lend themselves to the rolling process and make eating easy as well.

We start winter squash this week thanks to about twenty of you who came out to help us harvest this past Saturday. What a great crew! We had just enough kids to help their parents pass the squash into our 20 bushel bulk bins. By our estimate we gathered about 6000 lbs in about an hour and a half. The first variety we will see this week is sweet dumpling. This white and green squash is great roasted. Cleave it in half, scrape out the seeds, brush the cut side with oil or butter and cook skin up on a cookie sheet at 400 dgrees for 35-40 minutes. For those with a sweet tooth or reluctant children at the dinner table, turn the cooked squash so the cut side is up, brush amply with butter and shake/drizzle brown sugar, maple syrup or honey and set under the broiler until golden brown.

CSA sign-up for 2011 begins next week. We will be taking deposits starting next week for the 2011 season. A deposit of $100 will not only secure your share for next year but will get you on our winter payment plan. Having all of you sign up early is a great help to us by reducing the administrative duties next spring, when we are busy in the fields.

What to expect in your share this week…

Lettuce                 Potatoes

Cabbage               Arugula

Kale                     Chard

Peppers                Tomatoes

Asian Greens       Chickories

Beets                    Winter Squash

Sheep breeding has begun this week. We turned two rams out with the girls this past week and they seem to be going well. To monitor the process we make a paste by mixing pigment and vegetable oil together which is slathered all over the rams’ chest. As the ram mounts the ewes he leaves behind a mark on their hind quarter. We change the color each week and can then find out who has been bred when and how efficient the ram is doing his job. As you pass by the farm, look for brightly colored marks on the hind quarters of the ewes.

Fresh, the Movie. Fresh, a hopeful new film about our food system and, where it’s going and how to make it better for all humans. Showing at Bowdoin College Searles Hall, room 315 this Wednesday, September 22nd at 7pm. Here’s a link to the bowdoin calendar http://www.bowdoin.edu/calendar/event.jsp?bid=480229&rid=55410

More apples from our friends at Willow Pond Farm in Sabattus. Low spray macs, cortlands and pears along with the world’s best cider will be for sale at pick-up. Really, can cider taste this good or am I dreaming?

Bags. Please bring clean dry bags for your produce to pick-up…If you have extras bring them along to share.