*rainbow carrots at CSA display , photo by Adam Ford*

Click here to order your veggies for a delivered bag

This Week’s Availability

This week we will have red beets, white daikon radishes, purple daikon radishes, watermelon radishes, orange carrots (Juniper Hill), rainbow carrots (Juniper Hill), shallots, red and yellow onions (Juniper Hill), garlic, green cabbage, mini red cabbage, red and yellow potatoes (Atlas Farm), fingerling potatoes (Clearfield Farm), sweet potatoes (Junpier Hill), spinach, mesclun mix, and frozen heirloom/beefsteak tomatoes. Baby chard and baby kale need a week to regrow after last week’s harvest, and will return next week.

The frozen heirloom/beefsteak tomato bags are “2 items worth” and are delicious for stewing.

Did you know that sweet potatoes store best at room temperature? Being kept in cold storage for too long speeds up their decomposition. Keep them on your counter until you use them.

Click here to order your veggies for a delivered bag

Ordering closes at noon on Tuesdays for Wednesday bags, and at midnight on Wednesday 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 Software Updates

This is only relevant information for folks who order veggies for delivery. Folks who select their items at the barn can skip this information.

As many of you have noticed we continue to work through plenty of issues with the new CSA software. I am optimistic that within a few weeks, most of the little issues will be smoothed out. Part of the reason there has been such a high volume of things to tweak is that our CSA model is incredibly flexible (choose your veggies each week, miss weeks, make up those items, change your pickup day and location, add extra items, etc, etc….) While this platform is the most customizable of all the CSA platforms we researched, they weren’t designed for the level of choice and flexibility that we find important for the CSA that we run. Some things we have been able to get Farmigo to code in changes to so it works for our model, and some things we just have to shift to make things work with the constraints on their end. So, the important changes you should know about are below:

If you order a bag for a Friday delivery, the store closes on Wednesdays at midnight now. (If you order Fridays, you will still get an automatic email on Thursday after the store closes to see if you want us to pack a bag, or if you want to skip a week. This is an easy system for us to collect any “late” orders, so don’t feel bad about letting us know what you want after the store closes. We love getting your veggies to you!)
Now when you skip a week, you will select a date you plan to make up those missed items. (Once you select that date to make up items, you will have to send us an email if you need to change the date you want to make them up. That’s easy for us to do, so don’t hesitate to reach out.) The biggest change here is that you have to make up an entire week’s worth of items during one week. (The alternative on this system is that it charges folks retail versus CSA prices if it is set up to make up a few items here and there. We don’t want charges attached to making up items, so to work within the current constraint of the software platform, you make up a week’s worth in one week.) If it’s too hard to make up a full week all at once, you are always welcome to come pick out your items from the barn. The issue around getting all the items at once is tied to the online ordering system, but we are fine if you need to space out makeup items, by picking up at the barn. Or you can consider bulking up on things that store well when you have to make up items: garlic, onions, carrots, potatoes, etc.

Farm News

We continue to pack the seed starting room in the root cellar with baby seedlings. Soon, some of the earliest babies will be ready to transplant into the tunnels for later spring greens, salad turnips, and radishes.

We are finalizing crop plans for the main growing season, expanding on things we grow well, starting to accept defeat in things we haven’t grown well for many years and scaling them back, and most excitingly, planning out the pick-your-own flower garden for this season. We want to add some other non-flower items that could be fun to pick, too… like lunchbox peppers. These are hands down the best fresh snack, and a real treat that my kids can’t get enough of, so that would be fun to have hiding among this year’s flowers.

This month we are trying to soak up plenty of time with my brother and his wife who are visiting from Colombia. It has been fun for the kids to spend time with their aunt and uncle, and fun for us to learn about all the tropical fruits that we have never heard of that they grow on their farm near Villagarzón, north of the border with Ecuador. The most prolific crop they harvest is chontaduro (also called peach palm in English), a starchy palm fruit that you harvest by climbing 40 to 90 feet up the palm tree. We obviously can’t swap many harvesting tips— since we don’t have to don climbing gear to harvest the food we grow here— or really share any pest management tips— we have no experience with leaf cutter ants wiping out our gardens, and trying to create ant eater habitat to keep ant populations down! But it’s a lot of fun to learn about food production in different climates, and also fantasize about traveling with the kids at some point to pick their own bananas and mangoes. My brother will be heading back home to Colombia soon, but his wife Vanessa will be sticking around for the season and joining the Evening Song Farm team this year… who knows, maybe something about New England food production will be of use near the equator!

Have a great week,

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

This Week's Recipe: Fresh Spring Rolls