Westfield Area CSA Blog

Garlic Scapes

Garlic Scapes

For those of you familiar with the CSA, these curly beauties are a welcome friend.  For those new to the CSA experience, this may be one of your first “experimental” vegetables.

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Garlic Scape Pesto

Garlic Scape Pesto

Pesto is a great way to use the garlic scapes in our CSA shares!  For ½ pound short pasta such as penne, add about 2 Tablespoons of pesto to cooked pasta and stir until pasta is well coated.  You can also freeze your pesto for use later in the year – try freezing it in an ice cube tray to make small handy pesto portions. (more…)

Summer Squash Strata

Summer Squash Strata

This lasagna-like dish can be made with any of your summer squashes and makes a great addition to any 4th of July party.  From the cookbook “Simply Organic”.  Serves 12.
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Circle Brook Farm

Farm News – June 16, 2025

Hello Folks, This week’s share will be fairly similar to last week’s – we are still heavy on the greens and have an abundance of English(shell) peas. We will begin to have more sugar snap and snow peas by next week. (more…)

Hakurei turnips

Hakurei Salad Turnips

Hakurei turnips are a Japanese salad turnip.  They are sweet and much softer than a regular turnip, and rarely need to be peeled; just wash and trim the root ends.  The leaves are also edible but should be eaten within 1-2 days.  Wrapped tightly in plastic, the turnips can be stored in the refrigerator for up to 1 week. (more…)

Sautéed Hakurei Turnips With Turnip Greens

Sautéed Hakurei Turnips With Turnip Greens

Japanese baby turnips are tender, sweet, and juicy as can be.  By taking advantage of both their leaves and their bulbs, this easy and delicious recipe from seriouseats.com requires very few other ingredients, allowing the turnip flavor to shine through.  Because the cooking process is divided into two steps (blanching and sautéing), the turnip bulbs come out beautifully browned, while the greens stay plump and tender.  Serves 4 as a side dish. (more…)

Southern-Style Collard Greens

Southern-Style Collard Greens

There are many delicious ways to cook collard greens, but this is best-known way to do it in the South – low and slow in a stockpot (or slow cooker) with plenty of bold, smoky ingredients to amp up the flavor of the greens. This recipe from Southern Living Magazine takes a few hours to simmer, but only requires a few minutes of hands-on cooking time. Serves 10-12. (more…)

Vegetable Fritters

Kohlrabi Fritters

If you’ve still got those funny looking bulbs staring you down on your counter, here’s a new take on kohlrabi.  I’ll admit that for 6 years of the CSA, I never dared try them.  This recipe made me a convert.  They will never go on the swap table again! (more…)

Circle Brook Farm

Farm News – June 9, 2025

Hello Folks! Well, here we go – the moment you have all been waiting for! I apologize for the delayed start, but the dry spring and late arrival of my crew set us back a bit. We have been working hard for you, racing to get ground prepped, seeds sown and seedlings transplanted, in between the bouts of rain. April was dry, which gave us a chance to plow and prepare fields but quickly required moving irrigation around the fields to germinate the seeds and keep tender young plants alive. (more…)