6th Week of the Spring CSA season: Week of April 5th

Apr 1

*Green curly kale is especially tender this week, photo by Adam Ford.*

*Galen washing the kale, photo by Adam Ford*

*kale in the wash tub, photo by Adam Ford*

This Week’s Availability

This week we will have spinach, green curly kale, baby kale, baby chard, baby lettuce, claytonia, mesclun mix, parsley, red beets, yellow beets, carrots, onions, daikon radishes, watermelon radish, kohlrabi, and red and yellow potatoes.

*carrots, onions, and beets are now sourced from Juniper Hill Farm, also certified organic

Click here to order your veggies for a delivered bag

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 Wednesdays or Thursdays to pick out your items yourself.

CSA pickup and delivery days and times

*beets and bok choi waiting for transplant, photo by Adam Ford*

Farm News

Big news that we have been sitting on for a bit, waiting for the official go ahead to start talking about it: Evening Song Farm has been selected as one of 12 farms nationally to participate in a project in collaboration with the newest military branch, the US Space Force, to develop vegetable growing methods in hostile climates for eventual food production on Mars!

As we have mentioned in a few newsletters, Ryan has been participating in a climate change fellowship through the University of Maine to study the effects of climate change in food production in the Northeast. Part of that fellowship provided an avenue for interested participants to apply for the C.A.F.É. M.A.R.S. (Cultivating Agriculture For Eventual Martian Applications, Realtime Study.) We were pumped to jump on this opportunity, since ya know, it’s not looking that good on the whole save-Earth-from-climatic-destruction thing, so it felt like a good idea to start developing food production for other planets.

The first phase of this project will involve the construction of a large structure next to our existing high tunnels that will mimic hostile growing conditions inside. (The US Space Force is responsible for the construction of this building, but we will still be able to eventually name it after a Roald Dahl reference like our other tunnels. I’m thinking along the lines of Danny, Champion of the World for this one. Name is still being workshopped, and we are open to suggestions.)

We will spend the next two years working closing with scientists from NASA, the US Space Force, the University of Maine, and the University of Montana to grow spinach and potatoes in the new structure. (Each particpating farm is focusing on only 2 crops the first two years. If those crops grow well, we can experiment with more in the next few years. I’ll need garlic on Mars, so I am pushing for that.) The current scope of the project that we have signed up for is a 10-year commitment. Year 7 and 8 will see eligible farmers on the Evening Song Farm Team training with NASA to be able to actually travel to Mars. Year 9 and 10 will include traveling to Mars and starting cultivation both on the surface of the planet, as well as in one of these specialized buildings, like the one they will install here this summer. We will be able to share more about this project as the season unfolds, and there will undoubtably be some great pictures as the new structure goes up. In the meantime, below would be this week’s “Farm News” section if I was not typing this newsletter on April 1st. (Happy April Fools!)

I just have to give a shout out to the green curly kale this week. It’s at an especially tender stage as the plants are getting ready to start attempting to set seed in a few weeks. Before that happens the leaves get sweet, tender, and lovely, and we try to eat it as many different ways as we can. (My youngest kiddo is more advanced than me, because she loves just eating the leaves straight from the plant.) The weekly recipe below is for kale chips, which are always fun. But also use the internet to enjoy a rubbed kale salad… one of my favorites has a dollop of guacamole added to it, and it’s such a bright, light, creamy wonderful salad. And if you don’t already, you can use kale in any of your favorite spinach recipes…. I make saag paneer and spanakopita with kale, especially this time of year.

This week the pellet furnace arrived for the propagation house, and Cindy and Ryan got right on setting it up. They decided it would be easier to remove some of the plastic on the end wall of the prop house to move the unit inside, and after getting it all set up, they are finishing up all the electrical wiring for it. We hope to have it up and running sometime next week. The plants are looking great in there right now, but we are excited to give them some extra backup with the new heat source.

The team started catching up with some chickweed weeding in the tunnels. It’s so much easier to get to it before the plants get so big. Seeding continues many days each week to keep prepping all the transplants we use this spring. The newly potted up tomatoes are looking great in their larger cups, and I can’t believe it will only be a few weeks now before they get transplanted into the tunnels.

Lots of plants that we are done harvesting from were removed from the tunnels this week…. plantings of mesclun mix that have had all the re-harvests we can get from them. We cut the plants at the very base, instead of ripping the roots out of the ground and losing all that precious soil on the roots. (Even shaking off the soil from the roots would take too much soil from the tunnels over time.) Our goats (and our neighbor’s cows) love this time of year, getting to munch on all the tender, green plant debris, as they eagerly wait for new spring pastures. Once those plants are removed, the beds either get seeded or prepped for the new transplants right away.

Have a great week,

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