Another season comes to a close here on the farm. Our last pick-up will be one for the pantry with potatoes and winter squash leading the way. Read on for our bulleted list of how to store all of these year end items to enjoy into the winter months. By all accounts we have had a an exceptional year of produce and quite possibly the most pleasant in the past decade from the farmer’s point of view. We had regular rain, temperate temperatures, and no wild cards in the form of disease or pest invasions. Our farm crew was top notch this year, working hard since we started in the snowy fields in April. When all of this comes together all we can say is thank you.
We hope that you can make good use of all this food in the weeks or maybe even months to come. Fall, especially in the northeast where we know that darker days are coming, is the season of gathering. Bringing together all the ingredients we need to make the winter comfortable and warm. Beyond the food you bring home from the farm we hope that your weekly visits this summer can also be stored away and enjoyed again when the snow flies and the days are shorter. When our kids were little we read them a favorite book about a group of mice preparing for winter. These mice would gather nuts and seeds, straw and grass, storing all of it away in an old stone wall where they lived. All of the mice worked very hard at this except for one named Frederick who would be seen just looking out at the sunrise or studying the fall flowers. The other mice asked him what he was doing while they worked so hard. He replied “I’m gathering the suns warmth because winter is cold and the colors of the fall because the months ahead are grey.” As we all rush around filling our stores hopefully we can take a moment to gather up these lovely days and put them up as well.
How Do I Store these Vegetables?
- Beets, Carrots, Potatoes, Cabbage– Plastic bag with a hole or two (they are alive and have to breath a little) in a cold part of the fridge.
- Winter Squash and Sweet Potatoes– Pack loose in a box. Cool but not cold (60-55˚) and dry place with little air movement. A closet or garage with some heat is good.
- Onions– Cold in plastic bag. Keep them away from other storage items (or everything will taste like onions!).
Crystal Spring Farm Grass-Fed Beef Almost Gone
We have but two beef freezer packages left as this newsletter goes out. If you are thinking about this act now! Here is the description of what we are offering: Fill your freezer with Crystal Spring Farm Grass Fed Beef this winter. Our grass-fed and grass finished animals are raised on Crystal Spring Farm certified Organic pastures. Grass-fed beef is high in healthy Omega-3’s and cancer fighting CLA’s not to mention it tastes great. Family Freezer Packages are $325 for 45 pounds and come frozen and vacuum packed. This amount will fit into the standard size family freezer but without much space to spare. We ask for a deposit of $50 and we will be in contact with the date in December when your beef will be ready. Follow this link to make you deposit online.
Each package will include:
- Assortment of 10-14 oz steaks including Delmonico, Sirloin, and NY Strip
- Several 2-3 lb Roasts
- 1lb packages of Ground
- 1lb packages of Kebobs and Steak Tips
- 1lb packages of Stew Cubes
Reserve Your Farm Share for Next Year!
Many Thanks to all of you who have signed up with us for next season! We have had a great record turnout so far and will open up sign-up to our wait list later this week. If you have not signed up yet and are planning on it please do! We have an easy payment plan program to break up the cost of your share over the winter. Click here for the link.
What’s In the Share…
Carrots
Sweet Potatoes
Potatoes
Lettuce
Parsnips
Kale
Winter Squash
Onions
Brussels Sprouts
Cabbage
Here’s the secret to enjoying root crops this time of year. Turn on the oven. We like 400˚. Chop all of them to to a 3/4-1″ size. Toss them together in you favorite oil (olive, peanut and sesame are lovely). Add salt, pepper, rosemary, paprika. Lay them out in a single layer on a baking sheet. Roast them for 20-30 minutes. Turn them and leave them for 15-20 more or until soft and then enjoy. They will brown slightly and fill the house with warm smells.
Crystal Spring Farm Grass-Fed Beef
In the past year we have befriended a couple of local craft breweries and they have been sharing their “waste” with us which has offered us a solution to the winter feeding problem. Maine Beer Company in Freeport supplies us with spent grain, mostly malted barley that comes from their tanks after the wort from their many stellar brews is made. This wet mash has had most of the carbohydrate steeped out of it but is high in protein. Allagash Brewing in Portland has been taking delivered CSA shares for a few of their employees for a couple years. They occasionally have of malted grains come in that don’t meet their high standards or have been in storage too long to brew with. When this happens they need someone to take these odd lots, which is where we come in. The best part about having both of these breweries as friends is that their waste grains come together into a perfect feed for our piglets. Spent grain is low in carbohydrate but high in protein. Malted grain has very available carbohydrate but too little protein by itself. If we add these two together along with some essential vitamins and minerals we have a pretty good pig feed. This time of year we can also round out their diet with culled vegetables which will ensure that these little guys should have a happy and healthy winter here with us.
We are hosting a farm to table dinner Sunday October 19th with Rosemont Market and Bakery. The dinner will be made completely from Crystal Spring produce and meats with wine parings and a cocktail to sip during a pre-dinner farm walk. The butcher shop at Rosemont is where most of our lamb is sold and they have a very successful business in the Portland that is based wholly on quality local food. Here’s the 
harvest too early. We were resigned to having the farm crew spend a week on this crop when we got a call from longtime friend and farm advocate Rick Wilson. Rick is a teacher at Brunswick High and among other things teaches a service learning class to juniors and seniors. The focus of his class is to give high school students a hands on sense of the real world beyond the doors of the school as the class visits and works around the community. Two sections of this class came to the farm, had a tour and a question and answer session followed by a good hour of picking potatoes with the farm crew. During this time we were able to get most of the potatoes up and the students had a real farm experience. Rick had them write reflection essays which he shared with me. Here are a few notable quotes; “Crystal Spring was an experience like no other where we allowed to get our hands dirty”, “It (farming) definitely isn’t a career I’ll be pursuing though it was pretty cool” and “Crystal Spring Farm definitely gives a person a sense of place because the work that you are doing is for the people, and the people are also the reason that the farm exists today”. I followed up the kids visits to the farm with two slide and lecture sessions at the high school that gave more detail about how the farm works as a business. The whole experience was a grand success and it’s always comforting to hear that what we do here is “pretty cool”.