6th Week of the Summer CSA Season: Week of July 16th

Jul 13

*pick-your-own flower garden, photo by Adam Ford*

This Week’s Availability

This week we will have fresh beet bunches, fresh carrot bunches, scallions, slicing cucumbers, Japanese slicing cucumbers, basil, cilantro, fresh onions, broccolini, celery, new red potatoes, garlic scapes, pea shoots, salad turnips, bok choi, radishes, green curly kale bunches, lacinato kale bunches, rainbow chard, spinach, arugula, baby lettuce, rhubarb, sugarsnap peas, summer squash, green zucchini, costata romanesco zucchini, and some heirloom tomatoes.

*If you order a bag for delivery, please list a substitute if you order tomatoes. The first couple weeks that we harvest tomatoes, the yield is low as they are starting to ripen. We hope to have enough for everyone, but if we need to substitute, it’s helpful to know your preference. We promise soon we will be swimming in tomatoes.

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

*fresh onions…. we use the green tops like scallions! photo by Adam Ford*

Farm News

This was a big week for harvesting…in addition to harvesting the 25+ crops available for nearly 300 families who get vegetables through our CSA, we had some quite large harvests of vegetables for some other outlets for our farm. One of them is the Farmacy project, administered by the Vermont Farmer’s Food Center (VFFC). This is an amazing project that gives physicians who work with low income Vermonters the ability to prescribe a Farmacy CSA share to a person who’s health would benefit from access to fresh local vegetables and fruits. They distribute 250 shares in all, and this past week our farm provided 250 bags of arugula and 250 beet bunches for their members. We also harvested an additional 100 beet bunches that the VFFC distributed to senior centers in Rutland and Bennington. (With our CSA harvest as well, this week set a record at 407 bunches of beets harvested!) Those extra 100 beets were able to be harvested and distributed because Vermont Foodbank makes a meaningful amount of money available to senior centers and non-profit service based organizations who work closely with their communities to purchase vegetables and fruit from Vermont farms. What a win-win! We also harvested orders placed by The Salvation Army in Rutland, and Black River Good Neighbor and Senior Solutions in Ludlow, all funded through the same grants from the Foodbank. We also were able to donate to the Rutland Parent and Child Center some lettuce, cucumbers, and summer squash that we had in abundance.

Vermont is becoming a leader in its approach towards investment in its unique patchwork of farms of all different scales. This particular type of investment is so helpful for our farm because it provides a good wholesale outlet. For the organizations and individuals who do not have the flexibility of discretionary spending on food, it makes local food the option that’s more affordable than industrial-scale produce, grown far away from here, with chemical nutrients and biocides in place of healthy soil.

All to say, we are grateful to be a part of a big network of people and organizations partnered to make good quality food more widely available in the community. And we thank you for being a part of that network too! And we are especially grateful for our awesome farm team, who continues to work so hard through the heat to take such good care of this land that is so giving and abundant.

Have a great week,

-ESF Team: Ryan, Kara, Galen, Taylor, K2, Miguel, Katie, Vanessa, Evan, Bryan, and Cindy (and Sky and Soraya)

Simple Cucumber Salad