So dark in the tunnels after the snow… such a huge volume at once, it hasn’t all shed the roof yet. Growing left to right: spinach, green baby lettuce, green baby lettuce, red baby lettuce, newly seeded baby lettuce, claytonia, spinach. If you are as eager as me to know when baby lettuce will be ready to start harvesting again, we are estimating about 2 weeks, photo by Adam Ford.

CSA Balance Due

If you haven’t already paid, your balance is due. You can:

Pay online through your account with a card or e-check
Mail a check to Evening Song Farm at 48 Nice Road, Cuttingsville VT 05738
Send money with Venmo @eveningsongcsa (our profile has our logo pictured)
Email or call us to pay with EBT
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.

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.

This Week’s Availability

This week we will have spinach, green curly kale, baby kale, baby chard, claytonia, mesclun mix, parsley, red beets, yellow beets, chioggia beets, carrots, onions, daikon radishes, green cabbage, watermelon radish, kohlrabi, and red and yellow potatoes.

*carrots, onions, and beets are now sourced from Juniper Hill Farm, also certified organic

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

Farm News

Hope everyone fared well enough with last week’s snow storm. Our kids built forts, tunnels, and sculptures during the snow day off from school…. Meanwhile, our adventure was losing power during seed starting season. (That’s a big yikes for veggie farmers.) That might be our first time losing power during the time of year we have grow lights, fans, and hot water coils going to keep all our baby seedlings alive and well during this cold time of year. We are lucky because when we “lose power” we don’t actually lose power right away: We a battery backup that keeps electricity flowing, but only until they run out of juice, and then we are cold and in the dark, like everyone else. So when we get notified that we have “lost power,” we shut down anything non-essential: hot water in our home, lights, electronics, etc, so that we have a very low draw on the batteries, and can keep the light and heat going to the plant babies as long as possible… with the goal being that the power would be restored before the batteries run out of energy. And this time it worked, special thanks to GMP for working hard to repair all the issues that caused outages from this storm.

We finished transplanting the baby lettuce transplants under the green curly canopy this week. Now to just keep harvesting out the kale overstory in the next few weeks. Cindy and Ryan will likely finish installing the new cooler in the barn, and we will start potting up all the earliest tomatoes next week. Speaking of early seedlings, some folks have asked if the plant pre-order option is still active, and it is! If you keep a garden, you can order plants here. Everything is certified organic, and grown in peat-free soil. (Did you know harvesting peat is considered a non-renewable resource, and peatlands are a major carbon store on land? Peatland conservation is an essential part of our climate adaptation, so it’s important to us to use other potting media from renewable sources. The mix we use is primarily compost, coconut fiber, and sawdust, and it grows great plants!)

The last few winters we have been lucky to have the fields clear of snow by late March to get the first outdoor seedings of spring greens in the ground. I know we shouldn’t plan on that availability: late March is EARLY for this region to try planting much of anything outside. But with our ability to get into late winter beds without tractor field prep when soils are still too wet for that level of machinery, and the fact that we tend to need the growth of some outdoor greens to support the greens demand towards the end of our spring CSA season when the tunnels are mostly transitioning to hosting early summer crops, it will be interesting to see when some of this snow goes away enough to get some early plantings seeded out side. (I heard Rutland didn’t get as much snow this week, but if you live in the banana belt, as we call it, we got at least 2 feet up here…. apparently too much to seed baby arugula through, ha!)

Have a great week,

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

Weekly Recipe

I know I listed a daikon pancake recipe a couple weeks ago, and this would be similar, but, oh my goodness, so different, and so amazing…. it just had to be shared now!

Coconut Kohlrabi Fritters