I always forget how things pick up in March! I don't know it's the angle of the sun, the energy of the sap flowing through the trees, the first birds returning from their winter sojourn (I saw a red winged blackbird and a killdeer this week!) - BUT - it's really starting to feel like spring!

We've been hard at work flipping beds in the tunnels to plant spring crops like lettuce mix, sweet turnips, salad greens and we are even doing a trial of early spring carrots! It will still be about a month before we can get into the field, so the tunnels keep us busy and our hands dirty!

I was thrilled to see an amazing amount of worms when forking the beds on our tunnels this week. Thousands and thousands of active worms are happily digesting the fungus that is happily digesting the high-carbon compost (read - lots of very small, composted wood-chips) creating food for our crops. Our goal as organic farmers is to improve our soil, not just through chemical means, but by literally increasing the diversity and activity of life in our soils to provide nourishing food for our crops, which will then nourish our community. It is a labor of love, but the positive results are so fundamentally satisfying - I wouldn't have it any other way!

We've also been hard at work in the greenhouse, seeding our leeks, onions, celeriac for next fall, as well as our first frost-tolerant crops to transplant out this spring: spinach, bok choy, kale, scallions, lettuce, beets and chard and of course the pea tendrils and micro greens we will be eating in the next few winter shares!. Our team (Kerry, Lindsay, Joella and Mary) have all been with us for at least two years now, and their prowess in the greenhouse shows. In the last few weeks we have seeded more than 600 trays!

As I mentioned earlier in the season, we are a little tight on storage produce, so we are growing more greens to make up for that. To help make it though the end of the season, we are reducing some of the choice in the share (but we have been SO happy to provide full choice up until this point).

In this week's share everyone will get:

2 pounds orange carrots

1/2 pound spinach

1/4pound+ pea tendrils

+5 more items of your choice

We have an abundance of the crops that are in everyone's share, and they are very tasty! You will still get to choose 5 additional items for your share. If you really need a substitution, you can request one via email, but we've got some great recipes to help you use all these tasty vegetables up! If you haven't tried pea tendrils yet, they are literally baby pea plants with a mild snap-pea flavor. You can eat them raw in salad, lightly stir-fry them, toss them in pasta or put an egg on a pile of them (recommended to me three times by different CSA members).

Also, as advertised earlier in the share, we have purchased some additional produce to make sure we have enough/offer more choice. We added beets, yellow onions and green cabbage and red cabbage from Brookford Farm in NH this week. They are an organic/biodynamic farm.

THE RED CABBAGE IS HUGE. Honestly, if I had known it was so big I wouldn't have bought it. In order to not lose money on it I need each head to count as 3 items (yea, they are that big, some are over 8 pounds!). They are in fabulous condition, but need to go to a loving home that really adores red cabbage!

Also, check out this yummy breakfast of sweet potato/potato hash (a chopped up, leftover, failed attempt at french fries), eggs and spinach!

Gotta fuel up to grow all this food!

SHARE CUSTOMIZATION



Please use the button below 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.

SPINACH & CHICKEN SKILLET PASTA WITH LEMON & PARMESAN

We made this super simple skillet dinner last week and used both of our giant 1/2 lb bags of spinach in it. Loved the lemon - makes me think of spring!

PEA TENDRIL, POTATO, AND SNAP PEA SALAD

My favorite way to eat pea tendrils is straight out of the bag (usually on my way home from CSA pickup) or lightly dressed with whatever dressing I have on hand. If you're feeling fancy, though - this is a killer salad.



CARROTY MAC AND CHEESE

We made this twist on mac & cheese a few weeks ago with some of our carrots and it was a big hit! The carrots get grated up and look just like shredded cheese (just in case your kids are like mine and are not a fan of cooked carrots).

VEGETARIAN VEGGIE WRAPS WITH DAIKON AND CARROTS

Once you get all the veggies chopped up, this meal comes together in minutes!

SWEET POTATO SALAD

This salad has sweet potatoes, red onion, feta cheese and craisins with a honey mustard vinaigrette and can be served warm right out of the oven or cold right out of the fridge if you want to make it ahead or for leftovers.

SPANAKOPITA TRIANGLES

This is a great recipe to make with the whole family. These delicious little triangles are fun to make AND to eat.

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

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.

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