Important notes for CSA during Thanksgiving week

Veggies will be available to pick out from the barn on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday this week. (Tuesday is a bonus day for this week.)
We will still deliver to Ludlow and Rutland on Wednesday and Friday this week.
If you normally receive a delivered bag, but want veggies earlier than Wednesday this week, please feel free to come pick out your items from the barn this week on Tuesday.
The Rutland Co-op will have short hours on Friday, closing at 4pm. If you order a bag for Rutland Friday delivery, this week you should plan to pick it up before 4pm that day, or switch to a Wednesday deliviery this week.
If you normally get your weekly veggies delivered on Friday, but want to switch it to Wednesday this week, you can do that: Before you place your weekly order, go to your “My Account” dashboard page, find the “Summary” box on the right, and click on “Next Delivery” where you see “Pickup I Change” and select the Wednesday for your location. (This will automatically switch back to Friday for next week.) Or send me an email and I can make any changes for you.

This Week’s Availability

This week we will have:

Greens: baby lettuce, spinach, green curly kale, lacinato kale bunches, bok choi, green cabbage, mesclun mix, and mini head lettuce
Roots: carrots, yellow potatoes, rutabaga, red beets, chioggia beets, watermelon radish, daikon radish, and Gilfeather turnip
Alliums: onions, garlic, shallots, and leeks
Fruiting Crops: delicata squash and Tetsukabuto squash*
Herbs and Miscellaneous: Painted Mountain corn

*Tetsukabuto is a less common squash that is one of our favorites. You like butternut? Tetsukabuto is like, “hold my beer.” It has a dark green, hard skin with a bright orange, very sweet, incredibly flavorful flesh. It’s touch to cut in half, but when you do, you can cook it upside down and roast it like butternut halves and then scoop out to use anyway you would use mashed, roasted, squash. One of our favorite ways to use it is to peel the skin (with plenty of patience), and chop the squash into cubes. Then we toss those cubes in olive oil, salt, and spices, and then roast them. They are excellent as is as a side dish, or on a green salad or grain salad.

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

*This outdoor lettuce will become food for soil organisms now that it has given us multiple harvests, photo by Adam Ford*

Farm Thoughts

Often on Thanksgiving week, we reflect on our gratitude for the ability to manage a cool small farm with the support of a committed CSA (you). Our farm is only possible in the context of a community that wants to be a part of it. Your support of this farm allows us and our team to take good care of this land, to grow food that nourishes all of us and those we share meals with, for those of us raising children to offer them a connection to their food and the cycles of water, nutrients, and life that sustain us. In the past few years my gratitude for the work we do has become so much more radiant in my lived experience, as the stress and fear of our early years farming yields to a steady gratefulness for the gift of being alive in the mystery of life, shaping and being shaped by this land that, like ourselves, has such astounding capacity for resilience and generosity.

We love imagining all the Thanksgiving tables all these vegetables will make appearances on this week…. Mashed potatoes blended with mashed parsnips and rutabaga, green salads, roasted Tetsukabuto squash cubes, balsamic glazed beet salads, braised miso carrots, creamy daikon dip, garlicky everything… We hope you all have a nourishing meal. Thank you for being a part of this CSA program.

With gratitude,

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

Daikon Dip

This is a fun dip recipe that we got from a CSA member last year. It’s a great, simple appetizer for the Thanksgiving table, or as a spread on leftover sandwiches. If the spice level is high from the daikon and fresh garlic, you can add a splash of maple syrup to round it out.