1st Week of the Fall CSA season: Week of October 26th

Oct 21

Thanks for joining the Fall CSA season!

The first newsletter of each season is a lot of verbose information. But it answers a lot of common questions, too: Try to read the information in this newsletter.

*view of the barn field, photo by Adam Ford*

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.

*small winter greens growing in the tunnels for later harvest, photo by Adam Ford*

*last bit of row covered peppers for frost protection, photo by Adam Ford*

CSA Balance Due

If you haven’t already paid, your balance is due this week. 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.

Important note: the new software system shuts off the ability for folks to order a delivered bag when payments are a couple weeks late.

The “balance” display on your CSA dashboard isn’t as intuitive as I would hope. If you have questions about your balance for the season at any point, just reach out.

*brussels sprouts growing in the field, photo by Adam Ford*

*some have headed up, and some are still sizing up, photo by Adam Ford*

CSA Nuts and Bolts Reminders

At the barn….

If you pick out your veggies at the barn, CSA hours are Wednesdays and Thursdays from 9 am to 8 pm.
You do NOT need to put in a veggie order to pick out your own veggies at the barn. You just show up on Wednesday or Thursday and pick out what you want.
If you ever want to order a bag for delivery one week instead of coming to the barn, just shoot us an email so we can change your ordering capacity on the software platform, and then you are good to go!
If you miss a week of veggies, feel free to make that up whenever you want. We just ask that you keep track of your makeup items yourself.
You can buy extra items at the barn by leaving money in the cash box at the CSA sign in area.
If you pick up your veggies at the barn, you may also see some other products (maple syrup, 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 CSA veggie items. (If you use a check you can still make it out to Evening Song Farm.)
To get to the barn, our address “48 Nice Road, Cuttingsville VT.” Then pull up to the barn, and go up the ramp, and the veggies will be displayed in the display cooler on your right.

If you order a bag for delivery….

Click on the button that will bring you to our Farmigo CSA store to place your weekly order.
Ordering closes at noon on Tuesdays for Wednesday bags and midnight on Wednesday for Friday bags.
You can change your pickup location and day any week by signing into your account: Find the “summary box” over to the right. Next to the Pickup/Change box, click on either “permanent,” if you want to change spots for the foreseeable future, or “next delivery” if the change is just for this week. Select the spot you want your bag to go to, and hit save. (If you just select “next delivery” the following week it will revert back to your original pickup site and day.) Click here for a quick video on how to change your pickup location or day.
If you want to skip a week and save those items for later, click on the “delivery hold” tab under “My account,” and enter the dates you will be skipping. Then choose a date you want to make up those items. When that week rolls around, the system will allow you to order double items. (If you need to change that makeup date, just email us, we are happy to make that change.) If you completely forget to order or put a hold on, one week, reach out to us with the date you want to make them up so we can manually put those items in for future access. Click here for a quick video on how to skip a CSA week.
NOTE: If you order a delivery bag, right now the software system can’t handle making up a couple items here or there: only all in one week unless you pick out your veggies yourself at the barn. If you can’t make up a week’s worth of missed items all at once, feel free to pick up your veggies from the barn for a couple weeks (without pre-ordering) and take a few extra each time. Just keep track of your missed items as you make them up. (If you have never been here, we are less than a mile off Route 103, on the way to Ludlow or Rutland…. so not terribly off the beaten path for an occasional trip.) Or you can mention in the comment of your order one week something like “please add 2 bags of lettuce for make up items.”
Substitutions: Use the comment section of the ordering to list a substitution preference you would enjoy being packed in case we don’t have one of the items that was ordered on the day we harvest/pack. We make the vegetable availability list for the newsletter almost a week earlier on our best guess of what will be ready to harvest by the time your delivery day rolls around, and many environmental factors throw those best guesses out the window sometimes! If you don’t mention a preferred substitution, and we aren’t able to harvest something that we thought would be available, we will substitute something we think is a “greatest hit” and universally enjoyed by folks. We have been handwriting on each bag when a substitution occurs so folks don’t think their bag was mispacked, but we will eventually phase that step out of handwriting substitutions.
You can buy extra items or bulk items when you put in your normal (pre-paid) weekly order. Click on the “veggie store” and “bulk” lines on the left of the store to purchase additional items.
If you pick up your bag at one of the delivery spots, just keep in mind that they aren’t stored in a cooler after we drop them off. The veggies keep just fine for a few hours out of a cooler, but it’s best to pick them up that day instead of letting them continue to sit out overnight.
The CSA software system we use send out several automatic reminders, and sometimes they are confusing. Email us if you ever have a question.
If you don’t place an order one week, and you havne’t put a “hold” on your account to schedule them for later, you will get an auto email from us asking if you actually want to still place an order for this week. Don’t feel bad about being “late” ordering veggies: we love getting veggies to people, and this automatic reminder system works well for us.

For every CSA member…

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 bigger issues. And we also love if you make up that bad veggie in future weeks. (If you order a delivered bag, put a note in the comment such as “adding an extra item of lettuce for a bad leek item last week.”) Our goal is that you get wonderful food each week.
If you feel like you need to adjust your share size, you can either do that yourself on the Farmigo account, or reach out to us, and we can do it for you. Our theme is flexibility, and we love when it works for you to get veggies this way.
Did you know….. that all the weekly recipes are stored and searchable by veggie or season here?!
If you are totally new, or just have questions, check out this CSA guidelines page to answer more questions, or just reach out to us!

*work on the new building continues, photo by Adam Ford*

*frosted flower plants, photo by Adam Ford*

This Week’s Availability

This week we will have husk cherries, shallots, celery, leeks, seed garlic, fall kohlrabi, cilantro, baby lettuce, spinach, baby bok choi, green curly kale bunches, lacinato kale bunches, red beets, yellow beets, carrots, garlic bulbs, purple and white daikon radishes, baby kale, mesclun mix, green napa cabbage, serrano peppers, watermelon radish, brussels sprouts, green cabbage, and red and yellow potatoes.

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 Wednesdays or Thursdays to pick out your items yourself.

CSA pickup and delivery days and times

If this is your first time ordering with the new platform, and have any trouble using it to order your veggies this week (or change your pickup location, or skip this week, or anything…) reach out to us. We are here to help.

*(last week’s) CSA display, photo by Molly Hornbeck*

*frosted flowers, photo by Molly Hornbeck*

*Yellow beet heart, photo by Taylor Morneau*

*open field and beautiful sky, photo by Galen Miller*

Farm News

(Farm news is all bonus content, no essential information in this section)

This was a long newsletter already just getting all the information out there for the season, so we will keep this week’s farm update brief:

This week we have been continuing to break up garlic heads to prepare for planting, and we got a jump on planting the first couple of beds! Ryan has been cruising around the farm on the tractor setting tarps out at fields we will cover for the winter… areas that are harvested too late in the season to establish a good cover crop, as one way to prevent erosion during the fall, winter, and early spring seasons. We started our bulk beet harvest, to get them out of the field before rodents find them. This year we grew some fantastically large red beets, they are super fun to harvest. (See delightful picture of a Katie’s face-sized red beet below.) Bulk root harvests are fun, because we run them through the large barrel washer, and then let them dry before packaging them up for winter storage. Our first barrel washer was pedal powered, much smaller, and most importantly, a price tag we could afford in our first year of farming. That first design was pretty cool, and it was fun to have someone ride a stationary bike to wash root crops, but we can also wash a much larger volume significantly faster with the model we use these days. Next week we will likely finish up garlic planting and keep pushing on all the fall harvest for storage.

Have a great week,

ESF Team: Ryan, Kara, Molly, Vanessa, Cindy, Taylor, Katie, Galen, K2, Sky and Soraya