10th Week of the Summer CSA season: Week of August 9th

Aug 6

*Adam took a lot of fun pictures with his drone this week, and there are so many fun shots of the shapes and colors of the flower garden area… here is one of them, Photo by Adam Ford*

CSA Balance Due

If you haven’t already paid, your balance is due. You can pay online through your account, mail a check to Evening Song Farm 48 Nice Road, Cuttingsville VT 05738, or leave a check in the CSA cash box at the barn. It’s very cool to pay in smaller chunks, just let us know what your payment plan is. You can also email or call us to pay with EBT.

If you get an email reminder that CSA payment is due: make that payment, let us know when you will be able to, or let us know if the amount due seems wrong. It adds a lot of extra computer time to try to repeatedly follow up with folks individually, so this is a simple way to lighten our administrative work. (Some of the auto emails have been a little funky, so we are happy to answer those questions if you get a weird one.) Thank you!

*stripey heirlooms, photo by Adam Ford.*

Celery has been a fun addition for us this year. We love the freshness, using the leaves in salads, sauces, stocks, and sandwiches, and our kids are loving the simple snack of peanut butter boats with the stalks…. Are you curious why local celery is much greener than stuff you can buy in a supermarket? Conventionally grown celery is “blanched,” usually by hilling soil around the plant to keep the stalks from photosynthesizing. We love the green color and the greater nutrients available from the unblanched plants, as well as the more powerful celery flavor, photo by Adam Ford

We learned from some other vegetable farms to harvest celery like kale plants, removing a couple of the outer stalks of each plant, and allowing the plant to regrow. This allows us to harvest celery for a long season. If you find your celery gets soft as it sits in the fridge, it’s because the best way to keep it fresh is to chop the ends off it when you take it home, and stick it in a jar of water. To keep it even fresher, remove the leaves at home, and keep those in a separate plastic bag in the fridge until you use them, photo by Adam Ford

This Week’s Availability

This week we will have heirloom tomatoes, beefsteak tomatoes, grape tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, fresh shallot bunches, celery, fennel, garlic scapes, purple kohlrabi, basil, parsley, green cabbage, baby lettuce, green curly kale bunches, lacinato kale bunches, zucchini, summer squash, cucumbers, garlic bulbs, fresh onion bunches, carrots, and eggplant.

Our farm’s eggplant wasn’t able to grow after transplanting, so this week we are bringing in certified organic eggplant from our friends at Otter Point Farm. We’re lucky to be part of a network of small farms that are interconnected and help each other out!

Click here to order your veggies for a delivered bag

Ordering closes at noon on Tuesdays for Wednesday bags, and at midnight on Wednesdays for Friday bags.

You do not need to fill out the form if you plan to come to the barn on Tuesdays, Wednesdays or Thursdays to pick out your items yourself.

CSA pickup and delivery days and times

If you have any trouble using the online to order your veggies this week (or change your pickup location, or skip this week, or anything…) reach out to us. It’s easy to help.

*tomatoes in cue for order packing and CSA display, photo by Adam Ford*

*in the next few weeks this flower garden will start to go wild, photo by Adam Ford*

*baby lettuce field we are cutting from these days, photo by Adam Ford*

*can’t get enough of these overhead views…. photo by Adam Ford*

Farm News

Busy week, so our news will be brief, but enjoy the big photo tour below!

Garlic continues to dry well, the new equipment shed keeps moving along quickly, old strawberry plants are ripped out to cover crop that field, weekly seeding continues, tomatoes get trellised and pruned, many fields get tarps removed to use, and many fields get tarps on them when we are done harvesting them, and we continue to harvest thousands and thousands of pounds of food each week, surprising even us with how much goes in and out of the cooler each week.

Have a great week,

ESF Team: Ryan, Kara, Molly, Taylor, K2, Galen, Katie, Cindy, Miguel, Vanessa, Jake, Regan, (and Sky, and Soraya)

Fresh Tomato Sauce with Grilled Crostinis and Fish

Politically-flavored farm-musings warning…. skip this section if you prefer avoiding veggies with a side of politics:

Wherever you vote, don’t forget that Vermont has a primary election, this Tuesday, August 9th. For many reasons we are excited to vote for Becca Balint for US congress, but speaking with my farmer hat on, Becca has been attentive and interactive with needs of the agricultural community in Vermont during her time at the state house. Our society needs a major shift to address food production and access to better support the agricultural landscape, farmers, farm works, and consumers. The average age of American farmers is 57.5 years old, and we are retiring them faster than we are replacing them, for myriad reasons. Food can be expensive (and often out of reach) for consumers, and depending on the type of farm operation, the pay for farm workers ranges from unlivable (mostly reliant on temporary guest labor sources) to an hourly paid rate that still makes it hard for young farmers to save for their future. Becca Balint (and Jill Krowinski) hosted several small group meetings with farmers around the state a couple years ago to understand the challenges, needs, ideas, solutions, and stumbling blocks within the Vermont agricultural community. Her staff continued to make themselves available as those discussions continued outside of the first meetings, with these listening sessions informing agricultural policy. I want to send someone to Washington that takes the time to hear from small constituent groups like farmers, and who works hard to find collaborative solutions for all the intersecting issues that face our world these days. Go vote!