Happy Mother’s Day from Upinngil

​Dear Upinngil Patron,

Happy Mother’s Day! With two children under three (and under foot), we love our mother’s for all they do. Share some Upinngil love with your mother. We have new, stunning variety of petunia called Raspberry Ice (see photo below). For those of you excited about the start of our pick-you-own strawberries, this twice monthly newsletter is the first place where we will announce the opening day of pick-your-own Strawberries. We have already received a number requests to know when the Strawberry season will start. We love the excitement and enthusiasm and our best guess at the moment is the middle of June. Stay tuned!

A mama hen with her chicks patrols the Upinngil back yard

For our die hard fans of the Upinngil premium salad mix, we will be harvesting our first batch of Spring Salad Mix this Saturday. The first cutting is particularly tender and succulent. You will be able find it, washed and bagged, in the milk fridge by 1pm on Saturday.

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Mother’s Day ideas from Upinngil:
Hanging Baskets (continue to grow and blossom throughout the summer, sending out a cascade of flowers)
Bee Balm (made by Upinngil: sunflower oil, beeswax, and water, no fragrances, no preservatives)
A Farm Stand CSA Share (see attached Flier for details)
Ceramics made by Upinngil’s resident artist Isaac Bingham

   
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What’s on the Farm Stand this weekend:
If you’ve purchased your CSA share you can use your Upinngil swipe card with it’s built in 20% discount for any and all Upinngil produce, vegetable, and flower starts. If you haven’t yet purchased your CSA share, come on in and we’ll get you signed up.

Produce:
Asparagus
Bok Choy
Kale
Chives
Parsley
Rhubarb
Vegetable Starts:
Cabbage
Lettuce
Chard
Kale
Tomatoes
Broccoli

Flower Starts:
Sweet Alyssum
Snap Dragon
Marigolds

Herb Starts:
Parsley, Mint, Basil
Rosemary, Oregano, Sage
Savory, Chives, Catmint, Lavender

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What to Look Forward to
Our premium salad mix will once again become a regular part of the weekly harvest. The plan is to harvest on Tuesdays and Fridays, starting next week, after our first harvest this Saturday. Our Sungold Cherry tomatoes plants are looking great, while the earliest tomatoes are still several weeks off, it looks like we may have our Sungold tomatoes ready by strawberry season, a first!

Please don’t hesitate to email or call with questions. Throughout the week we post breaking news on the right hand side of the website: the latest baked goods fresh out of the oven or salad mix fresh out of the Hoop House.

We look forward to seeing you in the coming week,

The Upinngil Crew

—
Upinngil
http://www.upinngil.com

2017 CSA Shares now Available

Dear Upinngil Patron,

   

  Looking back to last year, in our CSA Newsletter from mid-March 2016, you can read about the sweet sound of spring peepers, the end of maple sugaring, and green pastures. This year, now late March, we have no sign of peepers, snow on the frozen ground, and we’re still collecting sap! What a difference a year makes. It’s what makes farming so interesting and challenging, the ever-changing transitions from one season to the next.

 Fortunately we have our Hoop House which has been performing better than ever, thanks to detailed soil amendments we made last fall, and careful management by salad mix guru Simon Eaton. We were harvesting twice a week in March until that cold weather returned, and it looks like we’ll be able to return to twice a week harvest next week. In the mean time, we always plan to harvest salad mix at least once a week, getting it washed and bagged into the Farm Store by 1pm on Tuesdays. This weekend we’re buying bagged spinach to fill the gap until we can return to twice a week harvests.

 Looking forward to the Spring which always does arrive, even if late, we have our 2017 CSA Shares available for purchase in the Farm Store.

• Visit www.upingil.com to find the CSA brochure and sign-up form

 Also this weekend, our all-star cow Tidbit, top perform and boss of the herd, is due to calf. If you want to come visit that calf, as soon as it’s born, follow our twitter feed which can be found on the home page of the Upinngil website (www.upinngil.com).

 We are still collecting and boiling sap, the Maple Sugaring season continues. This we week bottled the first of this year’s Maple Syrup and you can find it in the Farm Store this weekend. We are a small sugaring operation with a little less than 200 taps, and in a good year we produce somewhere between 30 and 40 gallons. We sell about three times that amount in our Store throughout the year, thanks to our local supplier Round Mountain Farm in Northfields, MA. Our own Upinngil Maple Syrup, bottled in glass, usually sells out by mid year, so come and get it while you can!

2017 CSA Shares Available for Purchase:

Over the years we’ve had customers use CSA shares in many unique ways. Some people purchase them as gifts for other people: wedding gifts, birthday presents, house warming gifts for new residents of the Pioneer Valley. Other people maximize their strawberry picking by purchasing a CSA share with it’s 20% discount on produce and applying it to hundreds of dollars with of berries for freezing and jam. But most people become regulars, getting a taste of every part of the season, from the pick-your-own peas in the spring to the pick-your-own raspberries in the Fall. We love you all!

Attached to this email you’ll find a sign-up sheet for your CSA share.

Our CSA program has become a vital part of our diverse farm, providing just enough extra income to pull us through the winter months and rev-up for the growing season. This extra income helps us buy our seed for the coming year, make improvements to equipment, and most importantly it helps make it possible for us keep our team intact through the winter months. Thank you! Here are this year’s CSA highlights:

• A swipe-able Upinngil card: When you purchase your CSA share you will receive a card with your balance loaded on the card. Simply pick out your produce, bring it to the check-out kiosk, enter your items, and swipe your card. Your transaction will be automatically recorded and your remaining balance will be displayed.
• Flexible buy-in options: Rather than a fixed CSA share amounts, when you purchase your share this winter you can select an amount that best suits your budget and family size starting at $200 (see chart attached for some recommended share sizes).
• 20% Discount: No matter what amount you decide to load on your Upinngil CSA card you will receive a 20% discount in exchange for your early commitment and deposit.
• More Produce: Every year we continue to improve our growing methods to provide a consistent offering of quality seasonal produce on the Farm Stand. And we continue to build relationships with other small local growers to provide more variety and greater consistency.
• SNAP Benefits CSA Share: For the first time, in collaboration with the new Healthy Incentives Program (HIP), Upinngil will be offering a CSA Share option for individuals and families receive SNAP benefits. See attached flyer from HIP for more details.
• Visit www.upingil.com to find the CSA brochure and sign-up form

          

Now Hiring:

Do you know a young person looking for something to do in June? We are currently accepting applications for our Strawberry Picking Crew. We typically hire between 5 – 8 high school or college students for the three week strawberry season, and the two who prove themselves will stay on for the whole summer.  See attached job description and application.

What to Look Forward to:

  Our tomatoes are started in pots, this year by Elaine Morley of Couch Brook Farm, a lucky decision this year as we’ve had such a cold March. Elaine’s heated greenhouses will give our tomatoes the best start.  The sugar snap peas will go in the ground in the next week or two! Keep an eye out in the Farm Store for Upinngil’s Pig Share flyer for 2017.

Please don’t hesitate to email or call with questions.  Throughout the week we post breaking news on the right hand side of the website: the latest baked goods fresh out of the oven or salad mix fresh out of the Hoop House.

We look forward to seeing you in the coming week,

The Upinngil Crew

The Upinngil Team and Holiday Gifts

Dear Upinngil Patron,

 

 With winter upon us and the cold settling we’re excited to have our Hoop House full of tasty delicate greens, which we’ve been harvesting on Tuesdays. In this end of year newsletter we want to take the opportunity to introduce you to the Upinngil Team.  Below you’ll find a little blurb on each of our six year-round employees. Following that we have a few examples of holiday gifts unique to Upinngil, a chance for you to share your love of the farm with family and friends, including the new Upinngil Gift Card/Member Card. Also, starting on the 1st of December we now have a device for accepting EBT/SNAP cards (Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program), if you are a SNAP family or know a SNAP family please spread the word.

 

The Milk Price increase: You may have noticed by now that we increased the price of plastic milk gallons to $7.50, it’s been four years since our last milk price increase. In that time we’ve managed to delay a price increase by focusing on energy and labor efficiency/savings: installing our solar array, purchasing our plastic containers in bulk, renovating and streamlining the the dairy facility. Our goal with pricing is threefold: to keep Upinngil sustainable for generations to come, keep product affordable for our most local community here in Gill, and pay our employees a living wage. 

Employee Showcase: The Upinngil Team

Upinngil founded in 1989 by Clifford Hatch and Patricia Crosby. Clifford is from a long tradition of faming, the Hatches and Lymans having settled and farmed land in around Granby, MA since colonial times. In 1988 the family moved to Tricia’s childhood home on Center Road in Gill with their two children Sorrel and Rhys (Malcolm came along nine years later.) The farm has grown and evolved much since then. In 2007 Sorrel came back from college breathing new life into the farm, and the team has grown almost every year since then. Sorrel and Isaac were married in 2013, and now live with their two children at the big farm house attached to the farm store. Upinngil now supports six year-round employees. We’re extremely proud of our current team and want to make sure all of you, our customers, know how vital each team member is to the working of the farm. This way the next time you pass one of us in the store you might have a name to go with a smile. From left to right:

 

August Bingham “Bam Bam,” has been with the farm for two years. Job description: rabble rouser

 

Isaac Bingham “The Door Man” has been with the farm for four years. Job description: infrastructure improvements, carpenter, milks cows, makes cheese, ceramic artist and chainsaw sculptor, helps Sorrel with product and lay-out design, customer relations, communication, volunteer coordinator, writes the Upinngil newsletter. Also known as “Action Man.”

 

Jodie Stafford “The Nanny-Baker” has been with the farm for seven years. Job description: Jodie bakes Upinngil’s Little Red Hen bread, cookies, muffins, and scones, working with Sorrel to develop new recipes and bakery products. Jodie has become part of the family, she’s Auntie Jodie to young August, and offers invaluable help to Sorrel juggling the kids, placing orders, managing the store, bottling milk, and helping customers.

 

Simon Eaton “The Man for All Seasons” has been with the farm for seven years and has become Clifford’s right hand man. Job description: evening cow milker, production manager for Market Garden and Hoop House, winter salad harvester, strawberry season crew leader, drives tractor, plants and cultivates field crops, maintains equipment, manages potato cave, assists with the wheat harvest, and manages milling and grain sales.

 

Kelli Clemens “The Shopkeeper” started this spring as a morning harvester and was a perfect fit. We’re thrilled to be able to keep her on part time for the winter months. Job description: manages the Farm Stand, in season harvesting the morning veggies and summer salad mix, helps Simon with the strawberry crew, washes bottles, packages cheese, and increasingly more involved with sales and store management.

 

Sorrel Hatch “The Farmer’s Daughter” has been with the farm for 29 years (since it’s founding when she was four years old). Job description: Sorrel is the linch pin that holds us all together. Many distinctive features of the farm Sorrel conceived, developed and then taught to employees: the Little Red Hen Bakery, the Market Garden, the Farm Stand, Upinngil’s much sought after salad mix, the CSA program, the chickens and their many magical moving coops, Upinngil’s self-check-out and honor system, the pick-your-own flower garden. Sorrel works non-stop juggling her two boys and all that is Upinngil, which at this point can’t be done without the support team we now have.

 

Everett Bingham “Bit-a-Budha”(as his big brother named him) has been with the farm for seven months. Job description: being cute

 

Clifford Hatch “The Engineer” has been with the farm for 28 years. Founder and Owner. Cliff and Tricia still live on Center Road where he raises the calves and keeps a flock of chickens. Cliff has had the vision and fortitude to see the farm through the early days before our valley was excited and supportive of local agriculture – from the original business of Finnsheep and Apiary, trying to support a family selling at farmers markets – to today’s location at 411 Main Rd with the Farm Store and it’s three distinctive products among many others: Milk, Strawberries, and Wheat. Cliff manages and oversees all aspects of the farm: the planting, cultivating, and harvesting of the field crops, tractor driving and equipment maintenance, payroll, bookkeeping, herd management, cheesemaking, and still insists on milking cows every Sunday morning. During the precious moments he’s not farming (usual during the winter months) you’ll hear his “whistle blowing” above the store running his model trains.

 

Sarah Porrovecchio “The Cow Wrangler” has been with the farm for three years. There’s some debate whether she should be called the cow wrangler or the cow whisperer, in any case she does both. Job description: morning milker, manages cow health, breeding and calving, bottles milk, makes cheese, maintains and rebuilds fences, manages pasture rotation and mowing, tedds and rakes hay. How she manages to get it all done never ceases to amaze us.

 

Eileen Palumbo (not pictured) “The Activist” has been with the farm for one year. Job description: tends to the Farm Store, stocking, organizing, customer service, helps Clifford run the Strawberry U-pick, bottle washing, and a tremendous help to Sorrel managing the store. We look to Eileen to keep us all informed on the latest progressive issues. 

 

Holiday Gifts:

      

• Upinngil’s Own Wreaths and Swags: made entirely from compostable materials, balsam fir, winterberry, dried flowers, pinecones, and other natural materials. Categorized as “PRODUCE”. So a great way to use up any remaining money on your CSA card before the end of the year.
• Upinngil’s new Gift/Member Card: We now have a swipe-able Gift Card packaged in a holiday envelope. For regular customers, it can also be reloaded and reused as a Member Card. 5% discount if you load $100 or more with cash or check. The credit card company takes 2.75% of every sale, this is a way of diverting some that cost back to our customers as a savings.
• Upinngil Baking Mixes: This year our neighbor cleaned out her basement and gave us several boxes of old style canning jars. They cleaned up beautifully and we’ve packaged our signature Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookie mix in them for holiday gifts.
• Upinngil Gift Baskets: Make your own Upinngil Gift Basket. We have baskets, ribbon, tissue paper, decorative greens and cones – all complimentary – to help you put together a beautiful assortment of goodies for a loved one. Also makes a great “hostess” gift for the next holiday party you attend.
• Little Red Hen Baked Goods: Always happy to take orders if you have a favorite cookie, scone, muffin, or bread you want to share with your family!  

This week’s Farm Lunch:

Main Dish: Pot Roast with roasted veggies: A prime cut of beef, but from an older animal so started it at 7am in a dutch-oven, stewing low and slow in a broth of onions, red wine, rosemary, and tomato. Added turnips, carrots, cabbage, and squash for the final hour.   

Sides: Roasted potatoes. Gravy. Jodie’s Brioche rolls. Cliff’s Quatre-Vents cheese (like a double-decker Camembert!). Simon’s salad mix, lightly dressed (a very primo cut from the winter hoop house – growing really well this year!) 

Dessert: Freshly churned maple ice cream, still soft like a maple frosty. Very well received by the crew! 🙂

Farm lunch is a weekly, year-round tradition. Every Thursday Sorrel makes lunch for the family and employees. Next time you see us chowing down at the picnic table come over and say hi : )

What to Look Forward to:

The New Year is just around the corner, so that means keep an eye out for Upinngil’s annual End-of-Year Survey, an opportunity for us to hear from you. Every year the feedback we get through this survey helps shape Upinngil in the following year. It’s also time to start thinking about the 2017 CSA, sign-up will begin in February.

  

Please don’t hesitate to email or call with questions.  Throughout the week we post breaking news on the right hand side of the website.

We look forward to seeing you in the coming week,

The Upinngil Crew

Cold Night!

Brought in all the produce to protect from the cold: potatoes, pumpkins, squash, onion, tomatoes (still!), kale, carrots, radishes, bok choy, garlic  . . . .  Now we’re warming our toes next to the wood stove.

Here’s a great photo of the current Upinngil year round team: August, Isaac, Jodie, Simon, Kelly, Sorrel, Everett, Clifford, Sarah, (missing: Eileen).

Upinngil CSA Newsletter (Fourth Weekend in October)

Dear Upinngil Patron,

 

 With just over a week until Halloween, we’re your place for pumpkins! The dry summer made for a fantastic pumpkin (and squash) year. You can see our Best in Show prize-winning pumpkins on the Farm House steps. We save those prize pumpkins for their seed, which we’ll plant for next year’s crop. As you can see in the photo Upinngil team below we have a new heifer-calf born early Thursday morning, and as I type this another cow is in labor with a calf due any minute. Come visit the calves this weekend and help us with name ideas. We have a new outdoor calf pen just out the backdoor of the store.

 

 In the Farm Stand showcase below we share the produce you can expect to find at Upinngil between now and the end of the year, and if you scroll to the bottom you’ll find a photo of some educated pigs!

 

 A heartfelt thank you from the year-round team here at Upinngil. Left to Right: August, Isaac, Jodie, Simon, Kelli, Sorrel, Everett, Clifford, Sarah, and Calf, as yet unnamed : )

This week’s Farm Lunch:

Main Dish: Chicken in shiitake mushroom cream sauce

Sides: Squash-slaw and oven roasted Nicola potatoes

Dessert: Panna Cotta with raspberry Rhubarb sauce

 

Farm lunch is a weekly, year-round tradition. Every Thursday Sorrel makes lunch for the family and employees. Next time you see us chowing down at the picnic table come over and say hi : )

(recipe attached)

      

Farm Stand Showcase:  What to expect between now and December 31st!

 Upinngil is open year round. The Farm Stand, weather permitting, will be open through Thanksgiving. If you’re a CSA member, your Upinngil CSA swipe card will continue to work through December 31st 2016. For the remaining weeks of the year you can expect to find salad mix, winter squash and potatoes which you can use your CSA card to purchase. Upinngil-made wreathes and swags will appear in early December and can also be purchased with your CSA card.

Some details:

• Salad Mix will be harvested on Tuesday and and Fridays for as long as we have it outdoors, then there will be a gap as we wait for our winter mix (just planted) in the hoop house to mature hopefully by early December.
• In order to fill our “greens gap” we hope to have other local greens alternatives from Wingate Farm, Queens Greens, or the Kitchen Garden
• We are still doing our winter squash special, “Fill a basket for $20,” we’ve been told it’s the best deal around, and a lot of the specialty squashes are going fast. So if you want buttercup, delicata, or acorn squash, better come and get it soon! We still have tons of butternut squash, we’ll probably have it to sell all winter.
• Our potato harvest was tiny compared to past years, blame it on the drought. Thus our potatoes are smaller than usual, and we don’t have very many. We’ve already sold out of three of our six varieties, remaining varieties are Chieftain, Russet, and Nicola. If you want Upinngil Potatoes for your thanksgiving meal, get them now and store them in a dark place (room temp is fine if just a few weeks).

         

On the Farm Stand this weekend:

  Everything on the PRODUCE screen of the register (also listed below) is available for purchase with your CSA Share.

• Pie Pumpkins and Jack O’Lanterns
• Winter squash (Buttercup, Butternut, Delicata, Acorn Jester, and Spaghetti squash)
• Shiitake Mushrooms (find them in the milk fridge)
• Heirloom Tomatoes
• Red Slicing Tomatoes
• Sauce Tomatoes (easy sauce recipe attached)
• Garlic
• Swiss Chard
• Kale
• Beets (Kitchen Garden, Sunderland)
• Turnips (Kitchen Garden, Sunderland)
• Carrots
• Cabbage (Kitchen Garden, Sunderland)
• Peppers
• Onions (Jebb Webb, Greenfield)
• Salad Mix (find it in the milk fridge on Tuesday & Fridays)
• Spinach (Kitchen Garden, Sunderland)
• Parsley
• Cilantro
• Baled straw (time to start thinking about fall mulching, and garlic planting)
• Potatoes (in farm store)

 Upinngil’s heritage breed Berkshire hogs can be found if you wander out the backdoor of the Farm Store and follow the farm road out just over the hill. You might find Isaac and young August reading aloud to these happy hogs.  August has decided that the pigs should be literate. This is the third book we’ve read to the pigs in the last month, August insists!

What to Look Forward to:

We’ve planted the winter salad mix in the hoop house after adding lots of organic soil amendments as recommended by the UMass soil testing lab. We’ve planted our favorite variety of spinach, claytonia, and red leaf lettuce, and we’re excited about trying out a couple new varieties of green leaf lettuce. Hopefully we’ll be able to pick the first tender greens in mid-December.

  

Please don’t hesitate to email or call with questions.  Throughout the week we post breaking news on the right hand side of the website.

We look forward to seeing you in the coming week,

The Upinngil Crew

Upinngil CSA Newsletter (4th Weekend in August)

Dear Upinngil Patron,

  We have a lot to cover in the newsletter which is no surprise as it’s late August and the Farm Stand is groaning under the weight of our bountiful harvest! Below we highlight a quick “how-to” pickle recipe and some of our more unique crops from what we call the “Odd Garden.”  The pick-your-own raspberries are in full swing and they are very popular.  The raspberry patch is open 8am – 7pm, same as the Farm Store hours, but with its growing popularity we recommend coming early for better picking and even better: a weekday morning. We’ve had numerous customers coming on weekday mornings and picking 12+ pints at a time in roughly 1.5 – 2 hours.

Upinndills: (From cucumber to crunchy pickle in 24hrs)

• Fill mason jar with 3/4 cup of apple cider vinegar
• Add 1 generous tablespoon salt (or 1 T. +1 t. kosher salt)
• Add pickling spices of your choosing (dill seed, dill weed, or pickling mix)
• Slice cucumbers length-wise
• Pack sliced cukes into mason jar
• Fill jar the rest of the way with water
• Cover, shake, and put in refrigerator for 24hrs
• Embrace the crunch!
• Use the same formula on any leftover raw veggies in need of a home (such as: beets, carrots, radishes, zucchini, snap peas, etc.)

Farm Stand Showcase:  The Odd Garden (fruit and veggies that are trending)

  Below you’ll find a list of some of our more unique and delicious fruits and veggies. From the yellow doll watermelon to ground cherries to malibar spinach, these are all items you will only find on your local farm stand until they become so trendy that the big supermarkets just have to carry them because of growing demand. So, be the first to introduce them to your fiends, ahead of the trend.

     Yellow Doll Watermelon: Sweeter than traditional red watermelon, we’ve been growing these for several years for a number of our customers who just can’t wait until they’re out of the field. All weekend we’ll have free samples in the store. Also, because we we are harvesting so many right now we’re running a special: buy one get one of equal size or smaller free!

        Ground Cherries: Also known as a “husk cherry.” Is it a fruit or is it vegetable? This tasty morsel truly challenges that question with its flavor a cross between pineapple, cherry and tomato! Grown on bush-size, tomato looking plants, you “pick” the husk cherry right after it’s fallen from the plant, off the ground. Pinch back the papery husk and enjoy. “It’s like opening a tasty little present,” says Jodi.

   Malibar Spinach: Spinach-like leaf that grows on a vine!  An edible vine from tropical Africa and Asia where it is widely used as a leaf vegetable. It tastes just like spinach but with the unique mucilaginous texture of okra. True spinach is near impossible to grow in the summer heat as it bolts too quickly, so we’ve begun experimenting with this malibar spinach. Currently only a pick-your-own crop, speak with someone at the farm store who will show you were to pick

On the Farm Stand this Weekend:

• Salad Mix (in the milk fridge, we will be harvesting Saturday morning)
• Cucumbers
• Ground Cherries
• Green Peppers
• Potatoes
• Sweet Corn
• Watermelon
• Slicing Tomatoes (red beefsteaks and heirlooms)
• Sauce Tomatoes (heirloom Striped Roman and Monica red paste)
• Sun Gold Cherry Tomatoes (we have tons and we’ve lowered the price from $4/pint to $3/pint))
• Swiss Chard
• Lacinato Kale
• Leeks
• Green Beans (grown by Jeff Webb, Greenfield)
• Apples (from Clarkdale Orchard)
• Summer Squash
• Zuchinni
• Basil (three varieties: Lemon Basil, Lime Basil, and traditional Genovese Basil)
• Hanging baskets (on sale!)
• PYO flowers
• PYO herbs

What to Look Forward to:

   Red roasting peppers are almost ready to begin harvesting and the first of the winter squash is just around the corner!  More Potatoes, more tomatoes, and we’ve now planted our Fall Crops including: beets, carrots, spinach, turnips, radishes and more.

Please don’t hesitate to email or call with questions.  Throughout the week we post breaking farm news on the right hand side of the website: new calves born, chicks hatched, or Salad Mix fresh out of the garden.

We look forward to seeing you in the coming week,

The Upinngil Crew

Your Chance to have a Say in the Future of Upinngil

Dear Friends of Upinngil,

 

   Happy Holidays from all of us at the farm. At the end of this paragraph there is a link to a short survey that we hope you’ll take the time to fill out.  It’s a survey to help us better serve our CSA share members and the wider Upinngil community. For those unfamiliar, Community Supported Agriculture is an opportunity for farmers and communities to collaborate with the goal to make more local food available for the whole community. In the winter when we have less opportunity for income, but have to make large outputs in preparation for the spring, the community can help us by buying shares for the coming season’s crops. The arrangement is mutually beneficial to both farmer and customer – for the season our fates are linked – we share in the bounties and the scarcities of the season. Upinngil’s CSA share program continues to evolve and we want to get your input to help us grow in the right direction.  The survey is anonymous. We will share the survey results in the January newsletter. 

 

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1vljWy7WCzdsTzWn3N_UiboCjBYqNVw6laoOEM3Gc0lo/viewform

 

This week’s Showcase:

Perhaps you’ve seen all the extra workers around the farm over the past couple of weeks. Well, Upinngil applied for and received federal and state grants to assist with funding for a large solar energy project.  Keep an eye out for the photovoltaic panels that will be blooming on the new barn roof some time in the next month. It will be a forty panel array!

 

 

The Farm Stand:

The Farm Stand is closed for the winter.  We still have potatoes, garlic, and salad greens for sale in the store (see photos from the greenhouse below).  The salad greens are in the milk fridge and potatoes and garlic behind the baked goods. Thank you again for all your support, this year we managed to keep the stand open longer than ever before all the way to Thanksgiving.

    

 

What to look forward to:

 We now have Upinngil-made, fully biodegradable wreathes and swags for sale in the store.

 

 

Please don’t hesitate to email or call with questions.  Throughout the week, we post exciting news, including what’s fresh out of the Upinngil bakery, on the right hand side our website’s homepage.   

 

We look forward to seeing you in the coming weeks,

 

The Upinngil Crew

 

The Greenhouse in December:

 

Fall Upinngil Newsletter

    Well we’ve had a very full few weeks with wedding day preparations, the wedding day itself, and a push to finish the greenhouse. A very exciting time around Upinngil.  A huge thank you to all the Upinngil patrons and the wider Gill community who helped with the preparations and joined us to celebrate that good hard work that is required of love, family (community) and the land. 

 

 This post is to reassure our CSA members who still have ticket shares to spend that the farm stand will continue to be open and full for weeks to come.  As it gets colder, some of the produce will be moved into the farm store, so don’t forget to check the milk fridge for salad mix, and the back corner of the store for all our varieties of potatoes. We’ve installed a light on the farm stand for those of you who can’t get here until closer to 7pm at night.  Boy, it’s getting dark early!

 

This week’s Showcase:

  Potatoes! We have a great selection of potatoes. You can find them in back corner of the store behind the bakery table. They can be purchased by the pound or in prepackaged sacks of 5lb, 10lb, 20lb, and even 50lb (special order).  We’ll be glad to help you carry them to your car.  Potatoes will keep through the winter if you store them in cool dry place, and come next spring if you still have a few left over you can plant them for your very own crop of potatoes. Below are descriptions of our varieties.  If you get to the store and can’t remember which are which please don’t hesitate to ask or look for the handy potato chart (see attached photo) in the store.

 

Nicola: smooth skin, gold flesh, rich butter flavor.  These are a farm favorite and are often compared to “Fingerlings” for flavor but bigger.

 

Russet: russeted skin, white flesh, high starch. They are the chef’s choice in the kitchen because of their texture. Cooked into a chowder they dissolve and thicken beautifully. Grated or sliced they will stick together when cooked into a “latke” pancake or “potatoes Anna”. Bake whole for a classic baked potato. Slice up for classic oven fries. 

 

Keuka Gold: yellow skin, yellow flesh, medium starch. Similar to “Yukon Gold” Keuka gold are the best for mashed potatoes.

 

Chieftain: red skin, white flesh, low starch.  Chieftain potatoes are the ideal potato for potato salad, also great boiled. Low starch means they have a waxy texture that resists crumbling. 

 

Adirondack Blue: medium starch, amazingly blue skin, blue flesh! Need we say more? 

 

Red Gold: medium starch, red skin, gold flesh. Early variety, low production this year, already sold out 😦

 

 

 

The Farm Stand:

    On the Farm Stand we have Sorrel’s award winning leeks, Red Russian kale, Lacinato kale, swiss chard, salad mix, beets, sweet red peppers, bell peppers, pablano peppers, hot peppers, radishes, parsley, dill, garlic, Nova apples from Coyote Hill Farm, and Kefir pears from Sue Kramer in Gill.  Also on the stand we have a wide selection of squash, see the last CSA newsletter for details on the different varieties: delicata, buttercup, acorn (Honey Bear, and Carnival), butternut, Long Island Cheese, pie pumpkins.  In addition you’ll find our Jack O’ Lantern pumpkins scattered around the yard.

     

 

  As you can see from the photo of the inside of the greenhouse we already have spinach, salad mix, and radishes going gang-busters in that warm humid environment. For anyone who’s interested we’d be glad to give tours of the new greenhouse, just let us know. 

   

 

 

Please don’t hesitate to email or call with questions.  Throughout the week, we post exciting news, including the arrival of new crops, on the right hand side our website’s homepage.   

 

 

Upinngil CSA – 2013

Upinngil CSA shares for the 2013 growing season are now available. Details and the sign-up form are on our website.  We have 50 shares available.

New calf!

Daughter of Nike, grand-daughter of Georgia, great-grand-daughter of Redwing, our very first cow. Name ideas?