We hope you are enjoying your produce from the first week!

We made a sugar loaf chicory salad recipe that was recommended by a CSA member (see recipe section below) and it was amazing! If you like complex flavor and bacon, this one is for you! We've also been roasting fingerlings, carrots and turnips, sautéing spinach with garlic and eating lettuce, radish and carrots in salad! Winter eating in New England is delicious! New this week in the share: Celeriac, Rutabaga and Peter Wilcox potatoes (a delicious blue skin/yellow flesh heirloom) from our friend Matt at Sparrow Arc Farm in Vermont. These potatoes are not certified organic, but they are grown sustainably - no chemicals!

We have a snow day today. Wow, I never knew how differently parents felt about snow days. I'm glad Harvey is excited to be playing legos and planning an outdoor adventure, but it does add a little stress to my day. Hats off to everyone else making it work today if your kids are out of school - and any other time you just make it work.

I'm really in love with how most of our vegetable fields are looking this winter. The above photos are of three different sections, each treated differently last fall, but in good shape for next year. This first, greenest photo is of winter rye. This grain was planted thickly in October, is obviously living through the winter, and will grow lush and dense next season. We will incorporate it in May before planting a summer crop (probably melons!). All the organic matter from the rye will be broken down by organisms living in the soil, which will become food for the melons! The exposed soil is where our carrots were harvested late. This soil received extra compost, and although we don't like soil to be bare over winter, it will be planted VERY early with spinach, lettuce, beets, peas, and other spring crops. We need some spaces that are ready to plant early, and some exposed soil on a vegetable farm is ok. The last photo, with the "dead grass" is actually oats which were growing lush in September and October, but cannot tolerate temps below 15 degrees and have died. Their dead bodies are literally holding minerals and nutrients which will be easily incorporated and digested by soil organisms, making this block easy to plant early as well!

I've been spending a LOT of time crop planning. I now have two years of data from these fields and the crop plan I started with was a best guess. It was a very educated guess, but not only did we move to a slightly different hardiness zone (I think where we were in Ashland/Holliston was about 6a/b, and we are in a 5a zone now), climate change is making everything different. I'm adjusting planting dates, using varieties that do better in our zone, and definitely using the data from our CSA distributions to grow more of what people want. The best part about offering choice is I can look back at records and see what ran out and why. We try really hard to not run out of items people want, but, we actually grow this stuff, and it's difficult to prevent crop failure sometimes.

I also purchased another farmer's spreadsheets and a course to help me use them. Dan Brisebois has been farming about 10 years longer than I have, has a 500 member CSA, and has created a complex spreadsheet system using google drive that will allow me to consolidate data, allow my team better access to all production information and record keeping and hopefully reduce my efforts when it comes to my annual renewal from our organic certification. It can be fun, I love 'the farming of the mind', but can also be tedious. I'm hoping this effort now will make the rest of the year (and future years) feel better for both me and my team.

Kevin and my Dad have been working on wash station improvements this past week. It feels good to be doing some refining of spaces, like putting all of our wash/pack equipment on castors so they can more easily be moved, and finishing some of the ceiling coverings so all of our walls and ceilings are washable.

Thanks for reading the update! Remember, if you haven't signed up for your spring, summer and flower shares, now is a great time!! You can chose a payment plan, or just subscribe and choose "pay by check" and either drop payment off at your CSA pick up, or wait until the time is right for you to pay.

SHARE CUSTOMIZATION



Please use the button in the email sent on Friday, January 20th to complete the customization form for your share.

Please complete the from by 7am Monday (I need lead time to plan/harvest/pack the shares)

There are instructions in the form - please email me if you have any questions. If you subscribed to the mushroom share the mushrooms will not be in your box - please make sure to pick them up in addition to your produce box.

Please plan to pack out your share at pick up if possible.

I know it might seem like just a box to you, but $2.75/box is kind of a lot when you add it up. Especially when these boxes can get many uses. To prevent waste, help us save some money, and double check that we packed your share correctly, please plan to pack your share into your own bags, or bring the box back at the following pick up. PLEASE DO NOT TEAR THE BOXES. These boxes are meant for multiple uses and do have the same structural integrity after they are torn. If you feel like the box is going to tear, stop what you are doing! Some day I will get around to taking a video of myself making and breaking down a waxed box to have on the website.

Recipes

Hi - Jess Girotti here. If you have a recipe that you love that you'd like to share with other members or if a recipe link isn't working for you, feel free to email me at jgirotti@live.com. (Please note that I can't re-print a recipe from a cookbook that isn't already online.) Don't forget to check out the recipe pages on the Upswing website if you need more ideas for your other veggies.

MASHED TURNIPS WITH CRISPY SHALLOTS

This recipe calls for yellow turnips (rutabagas) but I frequently swap out the white spring turnips for it. If there's someone in your family who isn't crazy about turnips, just swap out half of the turnips for potatoes to tone down the turnip flavor.

SOUTHWEST WINTER SLAW WITH ROOT VEGGIES

Slaw is a great way to use up root veggies too! Carrots, turnips, rutabaga, beets, and celery root are all delicious in here and will give it a different twist depending on what you decide to use.

RED ONION MARMALADE

Fellow CSA member, Judy Salerno, has recommended this scrumptious sounding marmalade. It keeps for 2 months in the fridge so it's a great way to make those red onions last. I can imagine using this on sandwiches, steak, chicken or in a grilled cheese.

CARROT MUFFINS

Muffins are our go-to breakfast around here and this week I think I'll make carrot muffins. This one from King Arthur looks like a winner!

EASY CLASSIC ROASTED ROOT VEGETABLES

January is a super busy month for me so I've been trying my hand at prepping my meals over the weekend. This weekend I'm making up a big batch of these roasted veggies and using them as a side dish one night, in a mac and cheese another night and tossed with pesto and served over barley for lunches. They'd also be great over polenta with a little goat cheese or in a calzone. So many options!

CARROT GINGER SOUP

This is my favorite carrot soup. I have some of that amazing ginger from summer in my freezer and I recently learned that you can reheat soup in the instant pot from frozen in no time, so I'll be making a double batch and freezing some for later.

SUGARLOAF CHICORY EGG & BACON SALAD

Rachel Mekelberg sent this recipe over and was raving about it! Did you know that Sugarloaf chicory is also referred to as "pain du sucre" which is sugarloaf in French?

Below is the contents of the first email sent in December

Hello and thank you for subscribing to our Winter CSA!

Your dedication to eating locally, year-round, and supporting our mission of creating a farm that is sustainable not only for the environment, but also for the people who work here (read: year-round employment) is recognized and appreciated.

Plus, you get things like extra sweet winter carrots, spinach, and lots of nutrient rich, hearty roots for warm winter cooking. If you are like me, the colder it is, the more you want to eat, and having healthy food that is fun to cook with is a great excuse to eat well.

Of course, you know this. It's why you signed up, but I just wanted you to know that you are seen and valued and we will do our best to make your winter share experience enjoyable!

IMPORTANT DETAILS

See your individualized emails for details on your share dates or you can view the full schedule here.

CUSTOMIZATION

On the Friday before each pick up we will send an email with a form for you to customize your share. Because of freezing temperatures, we pack everyone's share and hand boxes out of the heated truck to protect the produce. If you forgot to customize your share, we will pack you a farmer's choice share.

MUSHROOM SHARES AVAILABLE

After great success this fall, we are again partnering with Fat Moon Farm to offer a mushroom share this winter!

Enjoy certified organic mushrooms with your winter vegetable share! Pick up one pound of mushrooms with each share.

Grown by Fat Moon Farm in Chelmsford, MA, you can expect a wide variety of very high quality, gourmet mushrooms including oyster, maitake, shiitake, and lions mane.

Visit the Fat Moon Farm website for more information!

https://fatmoonmushrooms.com/pages/types-we-grow

The photo above is of a winter share from 2018. We used to do distributions just once/month in winter, but got feedback from customers that storing so much produce was overwhelming, so we switched to every-other week. This gives us a chance to give you more fresh greens (yum!) and keeps your fridge and pantry from feeling too packed.

2022 was the hardest growing season we have ever experienced. The extreme drought made growing storage crops incredibly tricky. We have enough, and we have plans to purchase from two other certified organic farms to supplement if we fall short on some storage crops: Red Fire Farm out in western Massachusetts and Brookford Farm in New Hampshire. We will also have potatoes available from our good friend Matt at Sparrow Arc Farm in Vermont. We love "local", but "regional" is really a more rational goal for a sustainable food system. If produce is offered from another farm, it will be labeled as such in the customization form.

Each week we will include recipes with the customization form so you can select items based on what you plan to prepare. I will include an asterisk next to items that would be helpful for the farm for you to eat, either because we need them to get used up and or because we have an abundance. Carrots will always have an asterisk this winter! Red onions, too. And sweet turnips (good sliced in salad or roasted)!

Your Farmers,

Brittany, Kevin and Harvey