8th Week of the Summer CSA Season: Week of July 30th

Jul 28

*clump of alyssum in the scallion planting to provide habitat for beneficial insects, photo by Adam Ford*

This Week’s Availability

This week we will have

Greens: baby lettuce, endive, pea shoots, baby romaine heads, green cabbage, green curly kale bunches, lacinato kale bunches, rainbow chard
Roots: red beets, yellow beets, fresh carrot bunches, new red potatoes, yellow 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, roma tomatoes
Herbs: basil, bulk basil bunches, parsley
Miscellaneous: fennel, rhubarb

This second 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 heirloom tomatoes, 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. This may be the last week of blueberries. It’s been wonderful to see so many people harvesting blueberries during CSA pickup!

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

*clump of cosmos planted in the lacinato kale to provide habitat for beneficial insects , photo by Adam Ford*

Farm News

This week we transplanted some later season zucchini, summer squash, and head lettuce, mulched more areas, continued trellising tomato plants, and started the big garlic harvest. With over 30 items to choose from this week, this time of year we are mostly harvesting because so many, many items are ripe and ready to be picked. And we haven’t even started to have peppers or eggplant ripen yet! And this upcoming week we have quite a sizeable order to help fill the weekly Farmacy project share that we wrote about a few weeks ago, so it will be an even bigger harvest week than normal.

In our house these days we are eating a delightful amount of fresh, fridge pickles. I make a gallon at a time with the recipe below, keep them in the fridge for 24 hours and then keep the jar on the counter so kids think of eating one whenever they want. Even if they are out of the fridge for a bit and start a bit of their own fermentation, it just makes the pickle have a more complete flavor. So make yourself a gallon and have a wonderful, fresh grab and go snack on your counter.

This will also be the first week I start making tomato sauce for our winter pantry. If you like making sauce, we just added heirloom tomatoes and some plum tomatoes to the bulk purchasing list. As a farmer this time of year I feel like a squirrel scrambling to collect all our nourishment for the cold months!

It’s been a pretty busy couple days, so enjoy the photo tour below for farm news this week!

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

Weekly Recipe

This time of year we LOVE making simple fridge pickles. When I don’t have dill heads, I just use dried dill weed. I also add other herbs and seeds willy nilly… throw some whole peppercorns, coriander seed, celery seed, or anything else of your dreams to add to this recipe.

Simple Refrigerator Dill Pickles