Thanks for joining the Spring CSA Share! We look forward to a fresh and tasty spring of great veggies.

How To Use This Newsletter

Each week, usually in this order, the newsletter will have:

A list of the vegetables available
A button to click if you’d like to have your items packed and delivered
A button to click for a reminder of the different pickup and delivery options each week
Any random reminders or information
Farm news
Weekly recipe

We understand life can be busy and chaotic— it is for us!— so we keep the important information near the top in case you can’t read a newsletter each week. The farm news and recipes are just bonus content if you want to know more about what goes on here.

If you are totally new to our CSA, start by reading this brief explanation of how to get veggies each week. If you still have questions, give us a call or email and we’ll make sure you know how it works.

*baby chard re-growing, photo by Adam Ford*

CSA Reminders

If you pick up your veggies at the barn, you may also see some other products (maple syrup, eggs, bread, and certified organic grass-fed beef) from neighbor farms. You can purchase those items as extras, and leave payment in the cash box at pickup. These aren’t interchangeable with as CSA veggie items. (If you use a check you can still make it out to Evening Song Farm.)
If you have to miss a week of veggies, feel free to make that up whenever you want. We just ask you keep track of your makeup items yourself.
If you miss the order form window for a delivered bag any week, send us an email, and we will confirm that we added it to the packing list. We LOVE when people actually get their veggies.
We appreciate hearing from you if you ever get a bad veggie or it goes bad faster than expected. We learn from it, and it helps us catch issues that may be more than just your veggie. And we also love if you make up that bad veggie in future weeks. Our goal is that you get wonderful food each week, so you shouldn’t ever be stuck with a bad veggie.
If you feel like you need to adjust your share size, let us know. Our theme is flexibility, and we love when it works for you to get veggies this way.

little baby Tokyo Bekana (the bright green leaf in the mesclun mix) emerging for a later mesclun mix planting… This season we are focusing on broadening the varieties of things we grow, and one thing Ryan is excited about it growing two different ty… — little baby Tokyo Bekana (the bright green leaf in the mesclun mix) emerging for a later mesclun mix planting… This season we are focusing on broadening the varieties of things we grow, and one thing Ryan is excited about it growing two different types of mesclun mix: this mild one we have been growing for years, and a nice and spicy mesclun mix for folks who want a stronger bite in their salad! Keep on the lookout this spring for the two different mixes. Focusing all our attention on CSA instead of also doing farmers markets is allowing us to put more energy into these types of produce expansions. We are pumped. Photo by Adam Ford

This Week’s Availability

This week we will have yellow onions, red onions, red beets, carrots, red potatoes, yellow potatoes, fingerling potatoes, watermelon radish, sweet potatoes, mesclun mix, spinach, green curly kale, chard, baby kale mix, pea shoots, and parsley.

*As we run out of storage veggies during winter and spring, we buy in certified organic root veggies from area farms to supplement the greens until the late spring bounty kicks in. Right now we have veggies from Laughing Child Farm (sweet potatoes), Full Moon Farm (carrots), and Juniper Hill Farm (potatoes, onions, and beets.) We will only source certified organic veggies in these scenarios. It’s a positive arrangement for all farms so that we can focus on greens production during the winter months, and these farms have an additional way to share their root crops.

If you are coming to the farm to pick out your veggies from the display cooler, you don’t need to use the order form below.

CSA Bag Delivery Order Form

Fill out the delivery form by noon on Tuesdays.

Note for Ludlow deliveries: You will continue to get your bag from Knight Tubs for the first two weeks of the spring CSA. Starting April 7th, the Ludlow pickup location will be on the side porch of the Okemo Mountain School.

Need a reminder where all the CSA pickup and delivery day and time options are?

CSA pickup and delivery days and times

Ryan holds a flowering Tokyo bekana plant from an older mesclun planting at the top of the tunnel. Our tunnels have an 8 foot elevation difference from one end to the other because we farm on a substantial enough slope and these tunnels are long! Th… — Ryan holds a flowering Tokyo bekana plant from an older mesclun planting at the top of the tunnel. Our tunnels have an 8 foot elevation difference from one end to the other because we farm on a substantial enough slope and these tunnels are long! The top of the tunnels always bolt faster than the bottoms because of how heat rises, and cold air sinks. Even with fans, there is only so much we can manipulate the air in the tunnels. But the flowers are cute, and we throw them in our own salads when we get the chance because they are fun and taste fine!

Planning a garden for the summer?

Are you planning a summer garden? We grow certified organic herb, flower, vegetable, and some fruit starts for your garden. Click below for our online plant sales to pre-order spring plants for your garden.

Order Garden Starts

CSA Balance Due

Payment for your spring CSA share is due this week unless you need a different payment plan. (And please reach out to us if you need a different payment plan, we are happy to do that.) You can mail a check to Evening Song Farm, 48 Nice Road, Cuttingsville, VT 05738, leave cash or check in the box at the barn, use this link to pay online, or call or email us to pay with EBT.

Farm News

Welcome to the spring CSA season! We love this time of year. The greens are growing wildly and we tend to eat things like spanakopita, saag paneer, spinach fritters, parsley pesto, spinach popsicles, pea shoot vinaigrette, chard waffles, kale chips, and really any way we can cram an enormous amount of fresh greens onto one plate. There is really no other time of year we indulge this hard on greens, because the rest of the year they are either not as bountiful or there are so many other delights (during the summer season) that greens have to share the plate with other treasures.

Our grow room continues to be full with cute little summer plants. The heated table in the propagation house—where we grow the seedlings that get transplanted into the field—is nearly full, and we are eager to start the next project of expanding our propagation house. Not only will we have to build the extension, and reskin the entire structure, but we also will be rebuilding the end wall, building new tables for all the new space, and also creating more plastic roll top structures (from the old plastic that will get replaced) on those new tables to keep the plants well tucked in.

If you have been a part of the winter CSA season, you will know I was doing weekly agricultural highlights for Black history and women’s history month for February and March. So I will wrap up that pattern with one more highlight on women in farming this week. It’s been hard to find historical stories of women in agriculture, not because they haven’t been a part of the agricultural world, but because their stories probably weren’t told. I’m lucky to farm in the 21st century, when women farmers are a much more visible and bigger part of this industry. So this week, I wanted to highlight some of the wonderful networks of women farmers that I have been lucky to participate in during the past decade we have been farming in Vermont.

Back in 2011 I was able to participate in a pilot program called Vermont Whole Farm Planning for women farmers that was a collaboration between the Northeast Organic Farming Association, UVM, Holistic Management Institute, and the USDA. It was a year of classes, farm visits, planning, and individual work with a mentor to enhance farm decision making processes and planning. I spent that year learning alongside about 2 dozen women farmers in the state, with several more experienced women farmers as mentors. It was tremendously helpful for our farm business and planning structure, especially as we rewrote a new business plan to rebuild after Irene. And it was also empowering and inspiring to work with so many other women operating farms around the state. Having that opportunity was not only essential for our business, but it helped me feel more at home in my job as a farmer.

In 2018, I got to participate in a leadership development program for women farm owners that was sponsored by the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board and the Northeast Organic Farming Association. The farm planning program above was geared towards beginning women farmers, but this program was for women who have been doing this for awhile. It was a year of meetings, trainings, and farm visits to develop our skills specifically as employers, but also an opportunity to connect with other women around the state who also juggle similar challenges I have had, especially as I had kids. I fondly remember one lively discussion during a lunch break where we were all sharing the different farm jobs we had each figured out how to do while wearing and breastfeeding a baby. Tractor work—> no. Seeding in the greenhouse—> yes. Washing veggies in the wash station—> no. Unloading a van and setting up a market display—> yes. Rolling out (or fighting) row cover—> no. Writing a CSA newsletter—>yes. It was an essential support to connect with so many different women of all ages to learn from each other’s farms and businesses.

One of the reasons we originally moved our CSA to Vermont was because we saw all the ways various organizations and service providers in this state made it a realistic place to build a food business. The fact that all these organizations have prioritized workshops and trainings like this for the women farmers in this state speaks loudly to how Vermont wants women to farm. Any number of these farming women I got to meet through these programs are a worthwhile highlight for a women’s history month post. It’s cool we have so many women rocking the farm world in this state.

Have a great week!

-ESF Team: Kara, Ryan, Molly, Cindy, Grace, Sam, Taylor, and Katie

some of our fields are peaking through the melting snow…. All of the ones in these pictures have gorgeous stands of cover crops which is such a joy to observe as a farmer. The first winter after Irene was an especially abnormal winter, very little s… — some of our fields are peaking through the melting snow…. All of the ones in these pictures have gorgeous stands of cover crops which is such a joy to observe as a farmer. The first winter after Irene was an especially abnormal winter, very little snow, and very mild. So un-wintery that we were plowing (and swimming in the river) in early March! It was a real gift from the universe to have a mild winter so that we could prepare new land early enough in the season to continue having a CSA that first year after the storm. And now every spring we compare where we are at in any given March to that March from 2012. Still plenty of snow to leave the fields alone for awhile right now, and as much as we love swimming, certainly none of that yet either! photo by Adam Ford

Weekly Recipe

We’re working on creating a recipe index on this site so that you can easily search and browse the recipes that we share. Eventually all the historical recipes will be there. Below is the button for this week’s featured recipe for a delightful spring salad.

Get The Recipe