5th Week of the Winter/Spring CSA season: Week of March 16th

Woohoo! We started transplanting this week: Katie, Molly, Vanessa, (and Taylor and Kara, not pictured) transplanted cilantro, baby lettuce, head lettuce, baby bok choi, and salad turnips in the understory of the kale in the right two beds. They grow well interplanted that way, and then as the spring keeps getting springier, the kale starts growing taller, trying to set seed. At some point we take a final harvest of the kale, and remove the plants, and usually at that point, the understory of these new plants has filled out the beds, and just like that we are able to grow multiple rounds of crops at the same time, photo by Adam Ford

This Week’s Availability

This week we will have red beets, 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), spinach, mesclun mix, baby kale, baby chard, tokyo bekana, claytonia, and frozen heirloom/beefsteak tomatoes.

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

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.

recently seeded greens in the empty looking beds, photo by Adam Ford

Echo hunts for voles up and down the rows, photo by Adam Ford

future building…. it would be cool to be able to snap our fingers and have this magically turn into lumber, photo by Adam Ford

bags on their way for delivery…. sometimes we get lucky and everything fits in a smaller car than the big delivery van, photo by Adam Ford

CSA Software Updates

There are none this week! Woohoo! I just had to leave this section in for myself, to celebrate that maybe I am getting a hang of how to use this!!

Farm News

First round of spring plants are in the ground under the kale canopy of the Chocolate Factory. It was a joy to get my fingers back in the dirt planting actual plants into actual ground. The kids joined us after school one day, and Soraya promptly started by helping weed the chickweed out of the spinach and searching for worms. She absolutely loves bugs of all kinds, but especially worms and slugs. She is still in the stage of wanting to bring them along on adventures for us, and it’s hard to explain, that actually these great worms want to stay right here in the moist soil. (Am I sure they don’t want to go sledding with me?!)

Tomato seedlings are growing, to be transplanted in about 6 weeks, and we’ve put a lot of attention into our propagation house to get it ready for spring. Our first seeds will be planted in there this next week: lots of onions, shallots, celery, and leeks.

Have a great week,

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

tunnel field in snow… I wonder if we will have another warm end to March where we get some early greens in the ground outside, photo by Adam Ford

do you know what this is a picture of? photo by Adam Ford (decomposing lacinato kale)

Ryan driving trays of transplants from the grow room to the high tunnels for transplanting, photo by Adam Ford

The beautiful shapes and patterns of decomposing vegetables… this is the remains of a Napa cabbage. photo by Adam Ford

This year’s potential experiment flop: these leeks were meticulously weeded and mulched all last summer in hopes of overwintering for a spring harvest. They suffered from insufficiently anchored hoops, row cover torn by wind, and cold winter temperatures with little snow cover. It’s still possible that they will put on some new spring growth and be harvestable later this spring….we shall see! photo by Adam Ford

proof that our kids are Vermonters even if I am not

peaking at these little treasures that might bear fruit as early as the end of May, photo by Adam Ford

and ice is often the star of the winter shape show, even if it’s just a humble mud puddle, photo by Adam Ford

hot peppers left in the field provide some fun color among all the gray and white and brown in the fields this time of year, photo by Adam Ford

Sky inspecting what pruning needs to be done