4th Week of the Summer CSA Share: June 22-25

Garlic should be scaping soon, photo by Adam Ford

This Week’s Availability

This week we will have zucchini, summer squash, carrots, salad turnips, radishes, garlic scapes, rhubarb, scallions, baby bok choi, green curly kale, lacinato kale, baby lettuce, baby arugula, mesclun mix, pea shoots, and mini romaine heads.

What are garlic scapes? They are the flower tops of garlic plants that we harvest when they make their first curl. That forces the garlic plant to put its energy into creating a large bulb underground. They can be used as garlic, or raosted to be like baby asparagus, or used in pesto.

Fill out the delivery form by noon on Tuesdays.

anyone planning to grill Romaine this week? photo by Adam Ford

watering in a later season planting of cukes, photo by Adam Ford

Farm News

(Optional bonus reading)

This Wednesday is Evening Song Farm’s birthday. Eleven years ago, on June 23rd, we closed on our first little property on a bend of the Mill River down on Route 103 in East Wallingford. We were still running a CSA in Pennsylvania at the time, and would commute up here as we could squeeze it in to start cover cropping, amending soil, and building infrastructure for the following growing season. Most farmers gave us the wise suggestion of not trying to run a farm in one state, while starting a farm in another, but we didn’t really believe in the limits of our bodies in physical space back then. I remember we sometimes had to drive our first farm truck up and back to move bigger pieces of borrowed equipment from farm neighbors in Pennsylvania, since that was our current farm community. And that truck was absolutely the type of truck you buy as a 20-something new farmer with a minimal budget. (Big Red couldn’t go over 50 mph because the steering column needed replacing, and the truck was hard to keep straight above that speed. Don’t worry, we don’t make absurd decisions like that anymore….. I think we still had some holdover “invincible” mentality from those ancient teenage years.) We often talk about how our inexperience was an asset back then, because we just didn’t have an understanding of the risk we were taking… taking out a mortgage on land that had only been a hay field for at least many decades prior, with only a year experience under our belts running our own CSA. With the experience we have now, we would not advise people in our situation to try to start a farm that way, but we got lucky many times over, and feel grateful to be where we are now, growing food for so many supportive CSA members alongside a crew of wonderful farmers. Happy eleventh birthday to the project of Evening Song Farm!

The extension cord was too heavy for Ryan to carry…. photo by Adam Ford

I hoped the lacinato would harvest itself, but was disappointed, photo by Adam Ford

This week the team worked hard to play catch up on many projects. So many beds were weeded, leeks were finally transplanted, fall broccoli was seeded, tarps were moved, bugs were squished (I always apologize to them for being in the wrong location… I am not built for squishing bugs…), flowers were planted, tomatoes were trellised, and leftover plants were donated to 3 area food shelves.

And the highlight of last week was that we were the lucky recipients of NOFA-VT’s sweet and generous program to thank farmers around the state for their hard work feeding the community. They set up their wood fired pizza truck in our backyard on Friday afternoon to treat our crew (and several other area farms) to wood fired pizza made with our tomatoes from last year, basil pesto from last year, and this year’s fresh veggies. It was so fun to watch the team get thanked in this very fun way. They rock, and NOFA is on to something… appearing at farms around the state with a mobile pizza oven!

The NOFA pizza crew, Evening Song Farm, Squire Family Farm, and a slip and slide, selfie by Molly

Have a great week,

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

This recipe is super fun, packed with delicious, nutritious spring treats, and a great way to use the entire carrot plant. (Just avoid it if you are breast feeding: Carrot tops suppress milk production in lactating mammals.)

summer fennel! we usually only grow fall varieties, but the theme this year is trying lots of spectacular things we haven’t done before, photo by Adam Ford

ah, the tomato wait it on…. photo by Adam Ford

transplanted celeriac… a slow and steady full season crop, photo by Adam Ford

future baby lettuce mix, photo by Adam Ford

this will be your red cabbage this fall, photo by Adam Ford

covered eggplants to keep potato beetles off them, photo by Adam Ford

the season for strawberries is over, but this is what it looks like with the bird netting pulled over them, photo by Adam Ford

school’s over and now there are two kids to “help” us farm, photo by Adam Ford

Bella getting milked… She is such an important part of our family: providing all our milk, yogurt, paneer, ricotta, and mozzarella cheese, photo by Adam Ford

Sam power harrows the old pea shoot beds, photo by Adam Ford

we can reuse any plant trays or cups you got from us this year, photo by Adam Ford

Zeah and Bulo figuring out who gets to graze on the new pasture, photo by Adam Ford