Winter Provisions Box
With short days, cold mornings and quiet nights, winter has arrived at Lost Creek Farm. The garden and forest are resting before awakening again in spring, and after a busy summer and fall, we’re taking a little down time ourselves. But this season is still full of activity. We’re gearing up to tap our sugar maples for syrup and preparing for our early spring plantings. In the farmhouse kitchen, Amy’s baking delicious loaves of sourdough bread, we’re cooking with preserves from the harvest season, and thinking about the year ahead.
We’re honored to share a piece of this special place with you in our Farm & Forage Provisions Box! In this season’s box, we’ve included items that mean a lot to us, our families and our community: hand-crafted snacks, pantry provisions, and artwork inspired by time-honored mountain traditions. On the webpage below, we’ve pulled together a few recipes, recommendations and stories, so you can share the experience of winter at Lost Creek Farm.
Starting Snacks
Communion Wafers with Smoked Hot Peppers
These crispy, savory crackers were made by Mike’s grandmother, Betty Williams in the basement kitchen of Emmanuel Baptist Church, where elders were known to break out into song as they cooked extensive meals and baked wafers for Sunday service. Though Mike didn’t attend church with his grandma, he snacked on plenty of these wafers, and we serve them frequently during our Farm & Forage Supper Club events. We added a slightly spicy kick, thanks to ground, smoked chile peppers from our garden.
VIDEO: Learn to make communion wafers at home!
from the FOREST
West Virginia Maple Syrup
Each February, we tap a few sugar maples around our farmhouse. Our own operation at Lost Creek Farm is incredibly small, yielding just enough syrup to use throughout the year in our on-farm dinner series. But we’re lucky to have good friends in the maple business! Trevor and Cheryl Swan of Hillsboro Maple Works in Pocahontas County produced the maple syrup we’ve included in this month’s box. We’re thrilled to partner with them, and we think you’ll love the syrup they produce!
Link: Visit Hillsboro Maple Works to learn more and purchase their delicious maple syrup.
seasonal seasonings
Pumpkin seed and sumac seasoning blend
After the pumpkins and squash from the garden are processed and preserved for winter, there are plenty of seeds leftover. While we love to roast them and enjoy some seedy snacks, we also grind the seeds and incorporate them into a special seasoning blend with wild sumac. Our pumpkin seed and sumac seasoning blend is a wonderful addition to meat dishes like baked chicken or fish, but our favorite use is in a vinaigrette. The blend adds body and flavor to a simple dressing of oil, vinegar, mustard and a small amount of sweetener, like honey or maple syrup.
for breaking bread
Amy’s dried sourdough starter
Remember the early days of the pandemic, when it seemed everyone was baking sourdough? We were baking plenty of loaves in our kitchen during that time, and we still are today. Amy’s dried some of her special sourdough starter, which can be easily rehydrated and used to get your own bread routine at home. It does take a little work and consistent attention at first. Refer to the materials included in your box, and check out some of Amy’s suggested online resources:
Recipe: Basic Sourdough Loaf from King Arthur Flour
Link: Tara Jensen’s Essential Bread Tools
Recipe: Sourdough Chocolate Chip Cookies
Recipe: Classic sourdough pancakes or waffles
for the table
West Virginia Buckwheat Flour
Grown and milled by Arbaugh Farms in Greenbrier County, the West Virginia buckwheat flour we’ve included in our winter box can be transformed into a number of classic, comforting cold-weather dishes! Since we’ve included maple syrup in our winter box, it’s hard not to suggest buckwheat pancakes. The recipe on the packaging is for a quick and simple risen pancake. If you’d like to get more adventurous, try fermenting some batter to make classic sour buckwheat cakes, a true West Virginia staple! If pancakes aren’t for you, add a small amount to pie dough or homemade pasta dough for added complexity in flavor and texture.
something sweet
Wild Chicory and Chocolate Fudge
We both inherited countless recipes for popular wintertime sweets. For Amy, her family’s chocolate fudge recipe tops that list. It’s a true classic during the holidays and throughout the winter months. For the Farm & Forage Provisions Box, we’ve added a few personal twists to the Dawson family recipe. Wild chicory, whose roasted and ground roots have a lovely coffee-like flavor that pairs quite well with chocolate. We rounded out the flavors with some dry roasted Virginia peanuts and West Virginia salt from the Kanawha Valley.
hand-carved, hand-printed
Maple Syrup Block Print
We’re inspired by the history of maple sugaring throughout the mountains of West Virginia. Many decades ago, Amy’s ancestors made maple syrup here on the farm, hanging metal collection buckets from hand-carved wooden spiles. Mike’s original hand-carved, hand-printed blockprint in our winter box pays homage to the rich history of maple syrup making at Lost Creek Farm, a tradition we’re proud to carry on each winter.
hand-carved, hand-printed
Original Blockprint Notecards
For generations, Amy’s family has raised Hereford cattle on the land we now call Lost Creek Farm. The herd that roams our meadows was here long before we arrived. Personable, curious and interactive, they’re good creatures to inhabit the farm with. It’s nice to see them on snowy mornings from the farmhouse, and we hope folks will enjoy seeing them when you send a hand-written note on Mike’s hand-printed blockprint notecards.