*It’s this time of year…cloudy, damp, and cold, but still life emerges through the mulch, photo by Adam Ford*

Click here to order your veggies for a delivered bag

This Week’s Availability

This week we will have red beets, watermelon radishes, orange carrots (Juniper Hill), rainbow carrots (Juniper Hill), sweet potatoes (Juniper Hill) shallots, red and yellow onions (Juniper Hill), garlic, red and yellow potatoes (Atlas Farm), spinach, mesclun mix, baby chard, green curly kale, baby lettuce, pea shoots, flowering kale shoots*, claytonia, and frozen heirloom/beefsteak tomatoes.

This week there is a limit on baby lettuce to 2 bags per share.

This week there is a limit on mesclun mix to 2 bags per share. (This time of year when we are balancing the removal of winter greens for summer crop space while waiting for new spring growth of other greens, there are moments like this week when we may have just enough for everyone to have some of a particular green. But there are no limits on the other greens!)

*These are fun! They look similar to broccoli raab, and have similarly tender leaves, stems, and flowers. You can use the whole thing! (This veggie is truly divine and usually only available for a week or two. If you are curious about trying it, do it this week. We have been doing a quick and delicious sauté with it, at least once a day: chopped roughly with garlic, olive oil, lemon, and salt.)

Click here to order your veggies for a delivered bag

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

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

Farm News

More and more baby plants continue to be potted up: thousands of peppers, hundreds of basil plants, more tomatoes. And seeding continues as well. The biggest project in the prop house this week was starting all the seeding for the many seedling pre-orders. It’s super fun to imagine all the great gardens these plants will thrive in this year! We are starting to harden off the first round of transplants for outdoor planting, and beds are cleared out in the tunnel for tomatoes and cucumbers. One of my favorite aspects of this work is tending to eager summer plants like tomatoes ready for high tunnel transplanting, when winter makes a bonus appearance in the spring like it did Tuesday this week. It’s just really fun to enjoy the juxtaposition of different seasons, smells, temperatures, etc.

A year or two ago, we added a certification on top of our organic certification to also be certified with the Real Organic Project. This organization does really cool work, with the focus on maintaining the integrity of the organic label nationally. For example it requires animals to be pastured, not confined, and food to be grown in soil versus hydroponically. We appreciate their view on a more thorough approach to really healthy food, ecosystems, animals, and people. During this spring’s certification visit we learned about their Real Organic Friends program, which is a program that anyone can join (farmers and non-farmers) to support the Real Organic movement. Some of the perks of becoming a Real Organic Friend include online resources, participating in a book club around food issues, and this pretty cool annual online symposium that is hosted by a few “famous farmers,” that give presentations, and then there is time for live Q and A with the presenters. We have heard that members really love this event, with the opportunity to speak directly to big names (like Elliott Coleman) about anything from the organic movement to questions about your own gardening practices. Pretty cool. So if you identify as a gardening nerd, or are passionate about the food movement, you might enjoy checking out that opportunity.

Have a great week,

-ESF Team: Kara, Ryan, Molly, Cindy, Taylor, Vanessa, Katie, and Galen

This Week's Recipe: Grilled Carrots with Avocado and Mint

The recipe linked above was sent to us by a CSA member who served it for Easter, and it sounds like it will be one of my favorite dishes. If anyone’s mint patch is poking up some eager shoots, I recommend giving this a try!