Shared Harvest CSA

Come visit the farm and see for yourself.

Two special opportunities for shareholders to visit in May and June:

Mark your calendar, because Picadilly is hosting a Spring Open House this month, on Saturday, May 18^th from 10-1pm. Enjoy farm walks, visiting, and planting in the Pick-Your-Own Garden. We hope to see you then!  After that, we’re on for a Strawberry Shortcake Concert with the Family Folk Chorale, on June 15^th.

More news from Picadilly farmer Jenny Wooster:

Spring is in full swing, and your farmers have hit the ground running—the first of the beets and carrots have been tucked into the warming soil, and the first kale, scallion, and summer leek transplants are (I imagine) stretching out their roots after six weeks in greenhouse trays. We’ve also just finished the potato-parade, a three-days-long jamboree during which we planted eight varieties of potatoes in around 42,000 feet of row. Permeating it all has been a sense of anticipation and wonderment, that with any luck, (plus some thoughtful care) those tiny seeds will transform into pounds and pounds of food!  For me, this humbling awe is truly what characterizes spring.

In other farm news, this week our main-season crew assembled in-full to start work on the farm. Adding to the roster of Picadilly veterans, we have Sarah Loomis, Jeffrey Thomas, and Elliott Kent. Sarah and Elliott are both local talent, each having grown up in neighboring towns, and Jeffrey hails from Arlington, MA. All three will be crucial to the success of this season, and we’re delighted to have them on our team this year.

Elsbeth at the Cambridge Farm Share Fair

Stop by and say hi!

Elsbeth will be telling people about Shared Harvest at the Harvest Co-op Arboretum store,
3815 Washington St, Jamaica Plain MA

Harvest Co-op Market – Member Appreciation Day and CSA FAIR
Wednesday, March 27, 3-7 pm

Shared Harvest Farms are planning, buying supplies and planting now for our late fall and winter meals.  So let us know if you’d like a share!  Sign up by May 15 to give them peace of mind and receive a significant discount on your share price.

Signup for either Shared Harvest or a summer share at the Farm Share Fair and get a bonus bag of goodies, including seeds for your garden.

Thurs. March 14, 5:30-8:30 Cambridge College, 1000 Mass. Ave., Cambridge.  First 25 people to sign up for a share get an extra baggie of goodies from the Fair organizers and sponsors. http://www.farmsharefair.com/

from Jenny Wooster at Picadilly Farm on Friday March 8–already seeding some veggies that will be in the winter share come November!

looking forward a couple of weeks in the Picadilly greenhouse

“Officially, spring begins in two more weeks. Here at the farm, it began the moment we dropped that first seed into potting soil in the warm greenhouse. That was Tuesday (“Evergreen” scallions, approx 24,576 seeds planted). Since then, four of us have planted out three varieties of leeks, plus all of the onions (approx 99,600 seeds planted). A morning of delicate seeding today – hoop house tomatoes, celery, celeriac, rosemary, and other herbs. Over the next few weeks, we’ll keep filling up the greenhouse with emerging green life, matching our pace to the melting snow and receding mud. At just the right moment – we’ll know when it arrives – we’ll oil up the plow, tickle the earth and tuck some spring crops in the ground. Here we go!

“Once again, our hats are off to you for buying our harvest this season. Your early support, combined with your ideas and suggestions, certainly help us at a logistical level to determine what and how much to plant. Beyond that, we value your support throughout the growing days, hoping for the best and cheering us on through the struggles. Thank you!”

And, they’re already planning some events to entice you to visit–May and June are exciting times to visit the farm! 

“While you are welcome to come and visit the farm anytime, we’re planning two events right around the start of the harvest season. Come out on Saturday, May 18, for a Spring Open House and Planting Day. Then on June 15^th, the Arlington-based Family Folk Chorale will perform their fourth Picadilly Concert, followed by homemade strawberry shortcake. Easy, simple fun, all ages and abilities are welcome. We’ll be in touch with more details as spring unfolds.”

Since November, our living room has been accented by a large, attractive pumpkin from Riverland Farm. It’s slightly flattened shape and tan color has earned it the variety name “cheese pumpkin” since it resembles a large wheel of cheese with a tan rind, not because of any flavor association with cheese.  Anyways, this pumpkin has been sitting quietly in our wood-stove heated living room all winter, appreciated as decor as much or perhaps more than food.  It was not treated with the usual “keep in a cool, dry location” storage advice for winter squash.

So, it was with trepidation that I finally sliced the cheese pumpkin in half, figuring I would salvage whatever part of it was still okay by mixing it into a soup with other winter squash remnants from our fall Shared Harvest distributions and perhaps some carrots and sweet potatoes to add flavor and body.

And voila!  Beautifully firm, super moist, totally intact!!

Not only did it survive 31/2 months in my warm living room, but the seeds were happily sprouting inside with no detriment to the flesh.

After scraping out the seeds (I wonder if these sprouts would grow pumpkins true to type?  I don’t have much space in my garden for growing huge pumpkins, so into the compost bin went the seeds…perhaps they will volunteer anyways…), I put the two halves face down on buttered cookie sheets in a 375 deg. oven with a tray underneath to catch juices. About an hour later I scraped the nicely cooked flesh out of the now wrinkly, limp peel, that peel that had so stoutly protected the precious flesh from rot, intruders, and dessication since November.

Instead of hiding the pumpkin among many orange vegetables, I decided to showcase it’s bright orange flesh, complementing white beans (Maine grown from Charley Baer) and corn (shaved and frozen from Busa Farm in September), and shallots (Picadilly grown) in a nice chili.  Here is the recipe.

I hope you enjoyed a Thanksgiving full of good food, companions, and gratitude. The quiet of the day can give us a chance to stop and appreciate our good fortune but also all that goes into our fortune of good, healthy, delicious food. Lately, I’ve found I’m especially appreciative of people who are able to capture this gratitude in words and art. My friend Dave Madan (a shared harvest shareholder and founder/director of theMOVE) has created a short video with words from Martin Luther King that paints some of this picture.  In the reflective farm volunteer experiences coordinated by theMOVE, Dave gives people a real sense and appreciation for the many people and places involved in the food on our plate.

Dave Madan’s video

In case you’d like to learn more about and/or support the work of theMOVe, check out their webpage, www.getoutma.org     Here is a link to their campaign:  “Put a Kid on the Bus” — http://themove.chipin.com/put-a-kid-on-the-bus-2012

Weren’t we lucky to have such a pleasant day for the share pickup! And what amazing help we had from Doug, Jason, Erika, Amy, Lexi, and Dan!  And special thanks to Amy C, Christina B, and Suzanne P for helping magnificently with the exciting unload–those brussels sprouts bins are why they have forklifts, usually.

I hope you are enjoying your food!  My husband was inspired by the bounty of brussels sprouts–he immediately started popping them off the stem and made us scrumptious garlicky roasted brussels sprouts for dinner.

Speaking of brussels sprouts, we still have a few small crates left, so if you’d like to come by and get a few more stalks today (Sunday), they are on my porch (address in email).  I also want to encourage those of you who think you don’t like brussels sprouts to try these particular ones–they are so fresh and delicious that my neighbor’s 8 year old son commented, “Mom, I think I actually like them better raw!”
Here’s the official list of what was in the share yesterday:

From Cider Hill:  Apples

From Riverland:  Bok Choy
Brussels Sprouts
Cabbage Red
Cabbage Green
Garlic
Hakurei and Scarlet Queen Turnip bunches
Kale
Head Lettuce
Salad Mix
Sweet Potatoes
Purple Top Turnips
Butternut Squash

From Picadilly: Carrots
Gold potatoes
Parsnips
Onions
Kohlrabi
Acorn squash
Leeks, and watermelon radish
I will be opening up Extras orders for December in the next couple of days–Look forward to honey, bulk beans, bulk onions, and hopefully bulk apples, in addition to the cheeses, jams, and other veggies. Some of these make nice holiday treats and gifts. Thanks for all your patience with the Extras distribution.  Here’s a reminder to make sure you check out at the end of your order–if you don’t get a confirmation email of your order–it means your order didn’t go through, most likely.

Thanks and please do share recipes/experiences with your Shared Harvest veggies on the Facebook page or send them to me and I’ll put recipes up on the website.

Thanks again for supporting these wonderful family farms!

Jane

Shareholders are welcomed to join Picadilly Farmers Bruce and Jenny, this Saturday, October 27th, for an end-of-season celebration at the farm, from 2-6pm. Wear your work pants and we’ll put you to work for a POTATO DIG. We’ll load up the hay wagon with people and buckets, and head out past the pigs to the potato field. Then we’ll head back with buckets laden, and toss some spuds into the campfire. At 4:30pm, a few farm friends will play some music, and we’ll enjoy roasted potatoes with farm chili, followed by a sweet treat of s’mores. And if you haven’t been here before, Bruce and I will be happy to show you around. We hope you can join us at the farm this Saturday! Directions to Picadilly can be found at the farm website picadillyfarm.com

Thoughts on “Big Veggies” from Riverland.
With the first frost we are accustomed to seeing any remaining hot crops and many annual weeds die. This time while we were milling around on Saturday morning we saw sweet potato foliage that had turned completely black, sections of winter radishes with partially “burned” foliage, and our final plantings of broccoli and cauliflower all have a scorched tinge to the foliage. I’ve never witnessed broccoli and cauliflower so affected by a first frost. None of these crops in my estimation were actually damaged and the crops that are vulnerable to frost we diligently covered with row cover a day earlier which will keep them protected well into November. So no harm.. no foul… just a cold night that will sweeten the harvest. Many of the crops yet to be harvested will actually get sweeter as they convert their starches to sugars in effort to prevent freezing.
This year’s sweet potato crop was a bumper! Every time we picked another bed it seemed like the yield increased. They are large in size and large in volume. All said and done, by the time we tucked the last of the sweets into the greenhouse we’d pulled over 23,000#’s out of the field! As we were picking…when one of us would pull out a freakishly large sweet potato we’d hold it up for the others to admire. It got me to think about why this is…. Why are we so pleased with ourselves when we produce large vegetables? Is it America? After all we are known around the world for always wanting things bigger, better, stronger, and faster. Is it because they represent a high degree of fertility? You know what they say, the farmer that grows big vegetables must have….well…fertile soil (you thought I was going somewhere else with that right?). Is it simply a mark of achievement?…
Maybe the most basic answer is, if we are getting large vegetables off of the same land area as small vegetables then… the larger the vegetable the higher the yield and the more people we can feed per unit area. It is possible that factors into our psyche but there’s something ingrained deeper us, some primal mentality that these large vegetables appeal to. Something that transcends the grandeur of America, the fertility symbolism, the achievement of something difficult, or the yield…
While we are in awe of giant vegetables and all the charisma they posses… we are equally crushed when things turn out to be, well, less giant… For us…tiny beets, pencil thin leeks, and nubby carrots represent not only the opposite of what giant vegetables represent, but they also represent added time. The time it takes to fill a bucket with big beets is doubled when the beets are half the size. So on top of all these other factors…. maybe what we like best about big vegetables is that they are not small. Food for thought.
We hope you enjoy all the vegetables.. big and small.

On behalf of the farm crew Jason, Amanda, Dave, Andrew,

Your Farmers,
Rob, Meghan, and Cayden