*aerial of top of the barn field, cover crops above the kales, photo by Adam Ford*

This Week’s Availability

This week we will have leeks, brussels sprouts, butternut squash, green kohlrabi, red beets, yellow beets, chioggia beets (pink and white striped), rainbow mix of daikon radishes (red, purple, and white), watermelon radishes, onions, shallots, carrots, rainbow carrots, garlic, seed garlic*, green cabbage, red and yellow potatoes**, sweet peppers, poblano peppers, painted mountain flour corn, jalapeno peppers, serrano peppers, red and green napa cabbage, broccoli, baby bok choi, salad turnips, green curly kale, lacinato kale, brussels crowns***, cilantro, arugula, baby lettuce, spinach, mesclun mix, pea shoots, spicy greens mix, baby kale, parsley, tomatillos, husk cherries, frozen cherry tomatoes****, and frozen heirloom/beefsteak tomatoes****!

*Seed garlic is the same garlic that has been available for CSA, but we set aside the largest heads for seed: these larger cloves will grow bigger garlic than smaller ones. We generally plant our garlic seed around October 15th and mulch thickly with straw. We will have two varieties available: Music (4-6 huge cloves per head) and German Red (8-10 large cloves per head). Garlic can be planted as closely as 6 inches apart, but 12 inches apart will grow larger heads. If you select it on your order form and have a variety prefence, make that note in the comment section. (Or if you prefer purchasing a larger bulk amount of seed garlic instead of an item’s worth, the seed garlic is $14 per pound.)

**Sourced from Atlas Farm, certified organic.

***Brussels Crowns? Brusels crowns are the tender tops of brussels sprouts. THey taste like brussels sprouts, but work like a cooking green. They are my favorite cooking green of this time of year. If you have every loved making a shaved brussels srpouts salad, or finely chopped brussels sprouts to bake and have cripsy little strips of brussels sprouts, you can try those same recipes with these tops. Also, this week’s recipe features them in a simple side dish.

****Frozen tomatoes?! During the summer we vacuum seal surplus tomatoes. The cherry tomato bags are a pint’s worth, and they are 1 item each. The larger tomatoes are 2 1/4 pounds of a mixture of heirlooms and beefsteak tomatoes in each bag, and they are 2 items per bag. These taste wonderful… a reminder of summer… but they are only good cooked. We use the cherry tomatoes blistered in pasta dishes and we use the tomatoes stewed or in sauces.

CSA Bag Delivery Order Form

Fill out the delivery form by noon on Tuesdays.

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

Please make a note that the Ludlow delivery spot is now at Four Seasons Sotheby’s International Realty from 1pm to 5 pm.

Bulk vegetables available for processing

When we have bulk amounts available with veggies, we like to pass along our wholesale prices to CSA members in case you want to do some processing. Below are the current wholesale prices for certain veggies. If you are interested in getting a bulk amount of anything, send us an email. Thanks!

Spinach: $8 for a 1-pound bag, $22 for a 3-pound bag, and $35 for a 5-pound bag

Green Curly Kale: $14 for 5 bunches, $24 for 10 bunches

Lacinato Kale: $14 for 5 bunches, $24 for 10 bunches

Garlic: $12 per pound

Seed Garlic: $14 per pound (German Red and German White available)

Jalapenos: $6 per pound, $25 for 5 pounds

Serranos: $6 per pound, $25 for 5 pounds

wash station side of the barn.. that wooden barrel with the hose attached on top of pallets is the barrel root washer… what we send all the potatoes, carrots, beets, daikons, and watermelon radishes through before they air dry, get packaged up, and stored in the root cellar, photo by Adam Ford

CSA Balance Due

Payment for your fall CSA share is due 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 or F2F coupons.

Farm News

Last week the team dug, washed, and packed all the fall and winter storage carrots, and started on the daikon radishes and watermelon radishes. One of my favorite fall food projects is fermenting different flavors of shredded veggies to enjoy throughout the winter. (Our kids call sauerkraut and kimchi “shredded pickles,” and they will definitely eat any pickle in any shape.) I am eager to make a batch of fermented rainbow daikon radishes, using the red, white, and purple in one batch.

The team also kept up with weeding the growing winter greens, and planted all the garlic for the season: about 11,000 cloves in total. We only plant the large cloves to hopefully grow nice, large bulbs the following year. We save the small cloves and plant them much denser, like scallions, to have an early crop of green garlic. But a new, super cool use for small garlic cloves was just introduced to me by Morgan, one of the farmers on the team: she will be planting small cloves in her garden to intentionally grow small heads of garlic for the beautiful, ornate, dried flower and garlic braids she has created in the past.

The fields that have been cover cropped are growing nicely. I took a walk with our goats to observe how they are growing and let them each get some sweet, tender munching on the cover crops while we strolled. It’s fun to see the health and vigor of the cover crops this time of year, going into the winter season when we want everything covered.

This is certainly the latest we have been enjoying a frost free fall harvest. Early on in farming, these subtle weather shifts would cause me a lot of internal stress. I couldn’t help but experience every unseasonably warm day as this loud megaphone in my head screaming about the looming climate crisis… And although there’s still a climate crisis, and it’s only getting worse, a while back I shifted to enjoying the warmth, reveling in October swims in the lake, sleeveless foliage hikes, and nights out camping well into the school year. So as weird as it is, I have been really been loving harvesting hot and sweet peppers nearly up to Halloween.

Have a great week!

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

This Week's Recipe: Brussels Corwns and Sweet Peppers