tomatoes and cucumbers in the Trunchbull. As we harvest out the cilantro, lettuce, salad turnips and bok choi from around the tomatoes, then all the walkways will be covered with landscape fabric like they are on the left, photo by Adam Ford — tomatoes and cucumbers in the Trunchbull. As we harvest out the cilantro, lettuce, salad turnips and bok choi from around the tomatoes, then all the beds will be covered with landscape fabric like they are on the left, photo by Adam Ford

This Week’s Availability

This week we will have spinach, baby lettuce, mesclun mix, scallions, pea shoots, radishes, salad turnips, arugula, cilantro, baby chard, baby kale, rhubarb, head lettuce (red, green, and mini-romaine), and strawberries*!

*Strawberries are a fun new crop we’re growing for the first time this year. To make sure that everyone can enjoy them, strawberries are limited to 1 item per CSA share. If you love strawberries as much as we do, follow the Yoder Farm on facebook to learn when their pick your own days are happening as the season progresses.

We will also have garden plants available for one more week at the barn as CSA items. But this is the last week, so don’t miss out if you are counting on them!

CSA Bag Delivery Order Form

Fill out the delivery form by noon on Tuesdays.

CSA pickup and delivery days and times

carrot tops growing in the Chocolate Factory, photo by Adam Ford — *carrot tops growing in the field, photo by Adam Ford*

CSA Balance Due

If you haven’t made a payment plan, your CSA balance is due. Feel free to reach out to make a payment plan or if you do not know your balance. 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 from Kara

(Optional bonus reading)

This week’s most exciting news is the ripening strawberries. This is the first season we have ever tried growing strawberries for our CSA. It’s part of our new theme to try even more exciting and special crops since we are only a CSA farm now, and no longer attend farmers’ markets. We are growing strawberries differently than the traditional method. Last August, we bought 2,500 runner tips from a Canadian strawberry nursery: these are the little tips of strawberry plants that a mother plant sends out to propagate itself. We plant these runner tips in trays in our propagation house, and they get automatically misted to keep the leaves from drying out until roots start to grow. Then we plant these rooted strawberry plants on landscape fabric in September, and cover them with row cover over the winter until they start blooming in the spring. The spring was the tricky time…we need to keep them bundled up on cold nights to protect the sensitive blossoms from frost, but we also need to keep them uncovered during the day to allow pollinators to do their work on the flowers. Our team spent a lot of time moving row cover on and off of these strawberries! But they do produce much earlier in the spring season than traditional strawberries. They also taste truly amazing…we hope you enjoy the little treat that they are!

This is Sam pulling a giant (heavy and wet) piece of old greenhouse plastic over 4 layers of heavy duty row cover over the strawberries this spring, to protect the tender blossoms from temps in the low 20s.

The team worked hard this week continuing to get more things transplanted: so many melons, more shallots, brassicas, and finally the last of the tomatoes. We jumped into a few weeding projects before they get ahead of us, and also stayed on top of trellising tomatoes. Ryan finished the field prep for the future pick your own flower garden area, and we hope to transplant that this week. And this week we plan to get the tomatillos and husk cherries transplanted in the field.

This is a detail oriented, busy, full time of year on a veggie farm. We are hustling all those plants in the ground, but also trying to stay on top of early weeds to prevent bigger projects down the road, and making sure we are observing early signs of plant disease or challenging pest problems. Ryan recently observed a small, but worrying presence of cabbage maggot which live in the soil and eat the root of stem brassicas (broccoli, cabbage, etc.) We haven’t experienced that pest before, and it’s important we address it early to not only have a successful yield of those crops this year, but also have the ability to grow stem brassicas in future seasons. We are lucky to have robust resources through UVM extension, as well as our statewide veggie farm list serv to learn how other growers deal with emerging issues, so I have no doubt Ryan will have an effective plan to address those little root eating buggers soon!

Have a great week,

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

Weekly Recipe: Spring Quiche