2nd Week of the Summer CSA Season: Week of June 18th

Jun 14

that gorgeous golden field is a cover crop that was tarped and killed in place to serve as a mulch to transplant directly into…. it’s amazing to see how well vegetable crops grow in the undisturbed root system of a cover crop. photo by Adam Ford

This Week’s Availability

This week we will have fresh beet bunches, fresh carrot bunches, scallions, cucumbers(!!), broccolini*, salad turnips, bok choi, radishes, baby kale mix, pea shoots, spinach, arugula, baby lettuce, baby romaine heads, rhubarb, sugarsnap peas**, and strawberries***.

*The first harvest of broccolini is mostly florets instead of the customary long, tender stems that usually grace the florets. That’s because for the first harvest, we cut pretty high on the plant to encourage the plants to create myriad shoots. So these florets will look more like broccoli, but the broccolini florets are a bit looser and more tender than a broccoli head.

** If you order peas, add your preferred substitute in the comment section in case they aren’t quite ready.

***Because of the labor intensity of harvesting strawberries, they are equivalent to 2 CSA items. We grow them as an exciting addition, but we aren’t able to harvest a large amount them: most weeks they will be limited to 1 pint per CSA share. If you love larger volumes of strawberries, the closest pick your own strawberry operations we know about are Wood’s Market Garden in Brandon and Yoder Farm in Danby.

Click here to order your veggies for a delivered bag to Ludlow or Rutland

Farm News

We are mentally preparing our brains for a week of temperatures in the high 90s next week. (Wednesday is predicted to hit 97!) That’s hot. Just out of curiosity, I looked up the average June temperatures in Vermont, and it’s apparently in the mid to upper 70s depending on the site I looked at. But what are average temperatures anymore anyway? With climate chaos, can we really plan around historical averages anymore? (For example, our last frost this year was in April! Whereas, when we moved here in 2010 we were told by locals to plan for a last frost as late as the first week of June.) In the farming world, we talk about and wonder how food production will continue in the future with these high temperatures. And I think of other regions of the country where the heat is much higher and for a longer duration of the growing season. We only have to take mindful precautions for excessive heats days a handful of times a year right now, whereas farm workers throughout the country deal with 90+ degree days far more often than we do, and often in much more dangerous conditions: fewer water breaks and shade, longer work hours, etc. Thinking about working this upcoming week just makes me think that it’s more of a preview of what the future holds for farm work. We feel lucky to be working in the more moderate climate of Vermont at the time being. And we are thankful for the abundant groundwater we can access through our drilled well, and for mulched and healthy soil that can hold onto a lot of water even through hot dry spells.

And meanwhile, lots of great work got accomplished this week. The team seeded the fall broccolini planting, and transplanted brussels sprouts, and the late round of tomatoes. They also continued keeping up with tomato pruning and trellising, and mulched and weeded many areas around the farm. We are rocking it!

Last spring, after several years of seeing our early cucumber plants become decimated by cucumber beetles, we finally attached insect netting on the roll up sides of our high tunnel. It was amazing! Beautiful cucumber plants that kept growing beautiful cucumbers. However, the fine mesh of the netting significantly reduced the airflow from the roll-up sides, and on a sunny summer day the heat and humidity inside the tunnel were almost unbearable to work in, and the tomato plants suffered an early season demise from accelerated disease spread thanks to the humidity. This year, having learned this tip from another farmer, we purchased new netting with slightly larger holes: small enough to exclude cucumber beetles but hopefully large enough to allow for more airflow. This week Cindy and Evan swapped out the netting, just in time before next week’s expected temperatures in the 90s, and just in time to cover our second planting of potatoes with the old netting, before the Colorado Potato Beetle can find the emerging potato shoots to lay its egg clusters. It feels so good to be able to get to do all the things that need doing at the moment.

Have a great week!

-ESF Team: Ryan, Kara, K2, Cindy, Galen, Katie, Taylor, Vanessa, Bryan, and Evan (and Sky and Soraya)

Beet Jerky