6th Week of Winter CSA: March 3–5
snow rake against the barn, photo by Adam Ford
This Week’s Availability
This week we will have yellow onions, red onions, yellow beets, red beets, carrots, red potatoes, yellow potatoes, watermelon radish, sweet potatoes, mini mixed roots, mesclun mix, spinach, kale, and parsley.
Woohoo, we can raise the weekly greens limit a bit this week! Each share size can take 1 more than they have been able to in past weeks:
Mini shares: 2 greens item
Small shares: 3 greens items
Medium shares: 3 greens items
Large shares: 4 greens items
Super shares: 4 greens items
You do not need to use the order form if you are coming to the farm to pick out your veggies from the display cooler.
All delivery days and times are provided as a reminder at the bottom of the newsletter.
Planning a garden for the summer?
prepping potting soil to germinate tomato seeds, photo by Adam Ford
tunnel be in transition: the bare looking beds have been direct seeded, and there are transplanted and harvested greens in the other beds, photo by Adam Ford
Farm News
(Feel free to stop reading anything below here.)
Wow! I am having a really challenging time these days with our website.. unfortunately, I somehow deleted another newsletter that should still be visible. Stay tuned as I recreate the news for this week’s newsletter! (Unfortunately they are never as thorough when I try to recreate them from memory!)
This week I seeded 720 tomato plants! These will be the first 4 rows that will be the first flush of the earlist tomatoes. It’s a ways off still, but putting those seeds into dirt in the grow room feels like summer is on its way to enjoy tomatoes with names like Solar Flare, Gin Fiz, Cuba Libre, Rebelski, Jackpot, Manero, and Be Orange. The team wrapped up the week by seeding trays and trays of early beets into the grow room and transplanting more salad turnips, baby lettuce, and baby bok choi into the tunnels.
It’s March! For Women’s History Month I will be highlighting women in agriculture each week. And to kick it off, I have to start on a personal note, and highlight an influential woman farmer in my own life.
I first met Liz Martin, who runs Muddy Fingers Farm with her husband Matthew, when she was my camp counselor at Journey’s End Farm Camp. I returned to work as a counselor alongside Liz years later, before she and Matthew started running the garden program at the camp. I wasn’t interested in production farming at that point in my life, but watching Liz cultivate delicious and impressive yields for campers and counselors was inspiring, and planted a little seed in my brain. Liz and Matthew eventually started their own farm operation, first on borrowed land, and then on their own (while I was only graduating high school.)
Over the years we witnessed the effort it took for Liz and Matthew to find land, build infrastructure, develop growing spaces, establish a CSA, and grow their community. They were also first generation farmers, and seeing Liz as a smart, tenacious, skilled farmer made me believe it was possible for other first generation women farmers to dream big as well. Ryan was a super champ to originally agree to my wild idea of starting a CSA, and then the even more ambitious goal of finding our own land to continue farming. And it may have been less likely if we didn’t have their example to emulate.
Throughout our time as farmers, we have benefitted from Liz and Matthew’s insights to production methods, variety selection, organic certification, no- and low-till farming practices, farmer burnout, CSA management, and really any farm or business decisions. We originally modeled our farm after theirs, intending to remain a small, two person operation. Tropical Storm Irene necessitated expansion to achieve a full recovery. But even as our farms have developed differently over time, we still find tremendous support and wisdom in their mentorship.
Liz continues to inspire me to balance my role as farmer and community member as she somehow finds time to farm and foster parent, serve on her select board, provide farming presentations, coordinate a market, and serve as a board member on a market.
Representation matters in helping cultivate dreams. It was hard for me to gain all the skills I needed by working on other farms, because it’s easy to for women to be overlooked on farms. But I watched Liz learn on the job as she ran her own farm, and it made me believe that was possible for me, too. Here’s to hoping that all future women farmers have a Liz Martin to pave the way for them!
(And if you are ever vacationing in the Finger Lakes region and need some exceptional produce, check them out!)
Recipe of the Week
We’re working on creating a recipe index on this site so that you can easily search and browse the recipes that we share. It’s a work in progress, but we will be posting our weekly recipes there from here on out. Here is a link to this week’s featured recipe for Savory Waffles.
Have a great week,
-ESF Team: Kara, Ryan, Molly, Katie, Grace, Taylor, Cindy, and Sam
Taylor pulling transplants from the grow room to put in the tunnels, photo by Adam Ford
Molly loading a wholesale order, photo by Adam Ford
Liz Martin, of Muddy Fingers Farm with carrot legs in their wash barn, photo courtesy of Muddy Fingers Farm
kale leaf on rice hull mulch, photo by Adam Ford
snow moving tools for the mini farmers, photo by Adam Ford
How to get veggies during the Winter CSA Share
All online orders are due by noon on Tuesdays. Harvesting winter greens requires many factors to be just right, so we need the flexibility to know exactly what we are harvesting as early in the week as possible.
Oh no, I missed the order deadline! No worries. (I would probably miss it pretty often myself.) You are welcome to come to the barn on Wednesdays between 9 am and 7 pm to pick out your veggies. Or send us an email, and we will pack whatever we are able to deliver. It just might not include any greens if the many harvesting conditions don’t allow after the order deadline.
Pickup at the farm: The display cooler will be set up to pick out your veggies from 9 am to 7 pm on Wednesdays. Shunpike Road can be narrow during the winter months, and slippery on actively snowy days. If you are not comfortable coming to the farm any week, consider getting a pre-packed bag at either Stewart’s or Pierce’s in Shrewsbury, or in Ludlow or Rutland. We will try to make a note of Wednesday’s projected weather each week in the newsletter. (So far it looks like it won’t be snowy this Wednesday for pickup.)
Pickup at Pierce’s Store in Shrewsbury: Fill out the weekly order form by noon on Tuesday and pick up your bag from Peirce’s Store on Wednesday between noon and 6 pm.
Pickup at Stewarts Maple Marketplace in Cuttingsville: Fill out the weekly order form by noon on Tuesday and pick up your bag from the Stewart Maple Marketplace on Route 103 on Friday between noon and 5 pm.
Pickup at the Rutland Area Food Co-op in Rutland: Fill out the weekly order form by noon on Tuesday and pick up your bag from the co-op on Wednesday or Friday between noon and 7 pm.
Pickup at Knight Tubs, Pools, and Spas in Ludlow: Fill out the weekly order form by noon on Tuesday and pick up your bag from Knight Tubs between 2 and 5 pm on Wednesday. They are curbside only, so call or knock when you arrive, and they will bring your bag out.
All of these pickup spots love supporting their community, like offering us this favor to use their spaces. If you have any trouble getting your bag, let us know.