6th Week of the Spring CSA season: Week of April 10th

Apr 6

*anyone eager for some fresh summer pesto? give these babies a little more time…. photo by Adam Ford*

This Week’s Availability

This week we will have garlic, green cabbage, yellow potatoes, carrots, beets, daikon radishes, Gilfeather turnip, rutabaga, claytonia, mesclun mix, green curly kale, baby kale mix, rainbow chard, spinach, arugula, pea shoots, and baby lettuce.

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

*before the new round of snow, photo by Adam Ford*

*the previous piles hadn’t all melted yet, photo by Adam Ford*

Farm News

Hey, hey, more snow! As I type this, our farm notes show that we did a major outdoor seeding on this date last year, so we are glad Ryan got a big outdoor seeding in a couple weeks ago between snows. He peaked under that row cover this week before this new snow, and there seems to be really good germination across the board, so that is encouraging. When we first started growing in Vermont 13 years ago we were overwhelmed at a late snowstorm smothering seeds in darkness; now we know that these hardy greens are quite happy to wait in the cold darkness and resume their growth when the snow melts and the sun shines. It is hard to believe though, as I look out at over a foot of heavy wet snow blanketing the fields, that these greens will start being ready to harvest in less than 4 weeks.

Meanwhile the tomatoes in the prop house are looking great and right on schedule to transplant into the first tunnel in about 2 weeks. Sugar snap peas are germinating in their cells in the prop house and we are eager for an excellent stand of peas this year. (This is a crop that we seem to often struggle with, and only get one or two pickings from, rather than the several weeks we would hope from a crop that we put so much effort into with trellising. Fingers crossed.) The pellet furnace that we use for heat in the prop house has been having some issues recently, and the flip side of avoiding the burning of fossil fuels in a prop house, means interrupted sleep to deal with fixing pellet furnace problems. On a night with multiple trips out to the prop house, like last night, it’s easy to understand why almost every greenhouse operation relies on fossil fuels. We had more stamina to wake up for baby plants when we started farming, but after becoming parents with plenty of disrupted sleep, it feels a bit excessive to also be woken up for plants, ha.

This weekend is the start of the nearly 3-month long installation of this year’s Climate Farmers’ Stories exhibit. The first stop for this exhibition is at Billings Farm in Woodstock. The installation will move throughout the state during the year, and I know at least one event is being planned for a Rutland location and possibly a Ludlow location, and I will share that information when I have it. This project has been put on by Vital Communities to pair artists with farmers to visually tell the stories of climate work through agriculture. The installation displays beautiful visual art, audio interviews, and great story boards discussing climate issues that farms interact with. Our farm has been involved in this project for the past year, and it feels like a good way to increase the visibility of agricultural climate work.

Over the past few years, as we have put an increasing effort into climate issues through farming, I have been thinking about how participating in a CSA program inherently makes you a part of the climate solution. Yes, we are growing veggies for you to eat, and we are also expanding no-till methods to preserve soil and capture carbon, collaborating with various researchers and non-profit organizations to develop novel climate friendly growing practices, managing the surrounding forest for climate resilience and biodiversity, and establishing habitat for beneficial insects and other pollinators: all of this is intertwined with our farm’s vegetable production practices. Yes, you are paying us for vegetables, but by supporting this CSA program, you are also investing in climate solutions in your local community: the place where we have the most power to influence change. This reality has made me think about rebranding what we are actually offering the community… Are you signing up for a “small share” or “level one climate services”?

Next week we will be doing another big round of seeding, and if this snow melts and the fields dry out enough, we will be doing a lot of work to prep outdoor plantings!

Have a great week,

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

Weekly Recipe

Garlicky kale mashed potatoes