7th Week of the Summer CSA Season: Week of July 23rd

Jul 20

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

This Week’s Availability

This week we will have

Greens: baby lettuce, endive, pea shoots, green cabbage, caraflex cabbage, green curly kale bunches, lacinato kale bunches, rainbow chard
Roots: fresh red beet bunches, fresh carrot bunches, new red potatoes
Alliums: fresh onion bunches, fresh garlic, scallions, garlic scapes
Fruiting Crops: slicing cucumbers, Japanese cucumbers, pickling cucumbers, French filet green beans, yellow summer squash, green zucchini, costata romanesco zucchini, heirloom tomatoes, beefsteak tomatoes, cherry tomatoes
Herbs: basil, bulk basil bunches, parsley
Miscellaneous: fennel, celery, rhubarb

This first week of cherry tomatoes, you may receive a pint of sungolds, red cherries, rainbow cherries, rainbow grape tomatoes, or striped grape tomatoes. When they start coming in more prolifically we will list the separate varieties on the online platform.

The bulk basil bunches are larger bunches of basil the the bagged basil tops. They have some amount of flower tips on the stems to remove before using, and preparing the leaves for use will be more work than the bagged option, but you get more from the bunch.

We listed several items available for bulk purchasing at wholesale pricing on the “bulk” section of the online platform. (If you look to the left of the screen when you are on the store page, it should have an option to click on bulk items.) This week we have pickling cucumbers, garlic scapes, onions, cabbage, basil, zucchini, and summer squash available in bulk amounts if you do any preserving for winter. If you pick up at the barn and want to order any of those items in bulk, just send us an email and we can make that happen. Thanks!

Blueberries! Our blueberries have a beautiful crop this year, and while the berries are available we have a pick your own option available at the farm. If you normally get a delivered bag, but want to pick up your veggies here this week to pick blueberries, that is cool too, feel free to come out. They are $3.50/pint. (Not a CSA item.) If you want to pick a larger amount for your freezer, bring yourself a larger container, and they are $4/pound.

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

*beets in the field, photo by Adam Ford*

Farm News

It’s been a little over a week since the devastating flooding in northern Vermont, and fellow farms have been on my mind. This region of Vermont was incredibly lucky to not have a repeat of last year’s July 10th flooding. So many farms were planning a day of celebration to mark a year since they dealt with catastrophic flooding, but instead they experienced flooding and extensive damage again. Farming is hard without weather disasters. It feels like a kick in the face to add that to the mix. And what overwhelms me most watching farms deal with two shortened seasons in a row, is knowing how the frequency and intensity is only projected to increase. We sometimes say that we feel incredibly lucky that the loss of our first farm (in 2011 during Irene) was so complete: the river literally carved a new channel through our entire growing field made it impossible to rebuild in that spot. There was no amount of hard work and herculean efforts that would have made it possible to keep farming in that location. Having that complete loss made it a reality for us to move to higher ground, versus rebuild and experience the same disaster again. Whereas, most farmers we know who have been impacted two years in a row are going through the grueling effort or rebuilding and regrouping again. (And I feel pretty clear that I wouldn’t have the internal energy to rebuild a farm again, so hats off to my peers who are digging deep to find that resiliency.)

I have been participating in a committee with NOFA-VT (Northeast Organic Farming Association of VT) to create an organizing wing to expand their years of successful policy work, to specifically design a campaign to address any of the pressing issues facing agriculture, food, and communities in Vermont. We have been working through various options to put our energy behind, based on public forums, farm meetings, and community input. At this month’s meeting we kept honing in on finding a clear, concise action plan to support farms in the face of climate calamity. It is not possible for farms to continue to GoFundMe their way out of losing high tunnels, equipment, land, infrastructure, crop loss, with the frequency they are occurring to a substantial percentage of food producers in this food shed. Structural change is necessary if we want to be able to continue feeding ourselves in Vermont. Exactly what this structural change is are still just kernels of ideas, but I am grateful to be serving on this committee to be breathing energy into these essential issues.

Around here on this farm, things are going well at this point in the season: Last week we seeded transplants for fall kale, head lettuce, and napa cabbage, weeded a few spots around the farm, trellised half of the tomato plants that have gotten away from us, and kept up with all the various harvests. We are enjoying picking all the fruiting crops that are ripening: the various heirloom tomato varieties that are becoming ready, and the cherry tomatoes that are beginning their slow but inevitable crescendo to a few weeks form now when it will feel impossible to harvest all the ripe fruit. This week we hope to catch up on the other half of the wild tomato plant trellising, weed a few more zones, and start harvesting the garlic.

Have a great week,

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

Caramelized Zucchini Pasta