5th Week of the Summer CSA season: Week of July 5th
So many beautiful days we’ve had, photo by Adam Ford
CSA Balance Due
If you haven’t already paid, your balance is due. You can pay online through your account, mail a check to Evening Song Farm 48 Nice Road, Cuttingsville VT 05738, or 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. You can also email or call us to pay with EBT.
Baby lettuce mix is really good right now, photo by Adam Ford
Beginning last year we started planting some colorful and beautiful grain corn with our winter squash, photo by Adam Ford
This Week’s Availability
This week we will have garlic scapes, purple kohlrabi, basil, parsley, green cabbage, radishes, red beets with greens, salad turnips, pea shoots, baby arugula, baby lettuce, spinach, baby bok choi, scallions, fresh oregano bunches, mini romaine head lettuce, green curly kale bunches, lacinato kale bunches, rainbow chard bunches, zucchini, broccolini, slicing cucumbers, Japanese cucumbers, and fresh carrots.
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 Tuesdays, Wednesdays or Thursdays to pick out your items yourself.
If you have any trouble using it to order your veggies this week (or change your pickup location, or skip this week, or anything…) reach out to us. We are here to help.
This unique flower, eremurus, is one of my favorites. Photo by Adam Ford
Flowers on the bean plants…green beans will be ready to harvest before long! Photo by Adam Ford
Did you know?
We love getting everyone their veggies! If you order a delivered bag, but forget to get your order in before the store closes, you will get an automatic email asking if you want us to pack an order for your delivery day, with instructions on what to do. We want to assure you, that if you forget to order and reply to that auto email, you are still rocking at life! You are still a wonderful CSA member and person! Life is busy, and full, and wild, and you don’t need to feel bad if you get a reminder to pick veggies for the week. We have developed an easy system on our end to collect extra orders, and we will confirm we got that late order. You’re doing great!
Farm News from Ryan
It was a fun and busy week around here this week…here’s a photo tour from around our fields and greenhouses!
Katie and Katie harvesting carrots. Photo by Adam Ford
We gather the unmarketable, or ‘farmer’ carrots at the end of the harvest and enjoy them in our own kitchens! Photo by Adam Ford.
Bunches of beautiful carrots getting cleaned up to go our for CSA. Photo by Adam Ford
Rows of elderberries in full bloom. These plants produced prolifically in 2019, but not at all since then. We will see how this year goes! Photo by Adam Ford.
Tomato fruit set is prolific this year. Was it the bumblebee hive that helped pollination? Timely pruning? Better nutrient management? Favorable weather? It can be hard to figure out how to replicate success! Photo by Adam Ford
Kara and the kiddos on Shunpike Road. Photo by Adam Ford
Our friend Peter took the metal roof off of this building, which previously provided cover for a bread oven years ago. We plan to rebuild the bread oven in a different spot, so our bees are in this space now. The giant mound of foliage to the left of the structure is an overgrown grapevine…I hope to prune it back and allow it to run over the frame of this building. Photo by Adam Ford
These beds of bok choi and radishes are overcome by the fastest spreading weed on our farm, which was introduced around 2018 by a few seeds in our potting media. Oakleaf goosefoot is similar to many other fast-growing annual weeds, but it has an extremely fast turnaround from seed germination to setting seeds that makes it easy to set seed among vegetable crops. Following the harvest of these crops, this field will be rested to ‘flush’ all the weed seeds that these plants are producing right now. Photo by Ryan Fitzbeauchamp.
Melon plants are growing! Photo by Adam Ford.
Galen harvesting lettuce. Photo by Adam Ford
Milkweed—one of my favorite wildflowers. Photo by Adam Ford.
I’m delighted that my Dad was able to bring some of his honeybee hives here for us to manage. This hive, somewhere along the way, became queenless: it needed the introduction of a laying queen to be able to continue to lay eggs for the hive to survive. The white plastic in between the wooden frames to the right is a small cage protecting a purchased queen bee. This new queen was protected by the plastic cage for 48 hours so that the worker bees in the hive become acclimated to her pheromones, and accept her as their own queen. In about a week, we’ll check to make sure that this new queen is laying eggs: if all goes well she will lay thousands of eggs in the coming weeks to build up the hive’s worker bee population. Photo by Ryan Fitzbeauchamp.
Our milking goat Bella is another farm-related hobby. Bella makes about a quart and a half of milk per day year round for our family...not too much, not too little! Photo by Adam Ford.
Wishing all a beautiful week,
ESF Team: Ryan, Kara, Molly, Katie, K2, Taylor, Vanessa, Galen, Cindy, Sky and Soraya
*A CSA member astutely pointed out that we may wish to consider adding our children’s names, Sky and Soraya, to the ESF team sign off. This is a great point. Especially in the summer but all times of the year, our kids make many contributions to keep this farm running. They are engaged helpers, keep the workplace energy positive, and bring a lot of endurance and attention to detail to their favorite tasks: harvesting zukes, squash, and cucumbers for Sky, transplanting for Soraya.
Sky transplanting baby romaine, photo by Adam Ford
Soraya cannot get enough time in her bee suit, checking on the bees, Photo by Kara Fitzbeauchamp