CSA Balance Due

If you haven’t already paid, your balance is due. You can pay online through your account, mail a check to Evening Song Farm 48 Nice Road, Cuttingsville VT 05738, or leave a check in the CSA cash box at the barn. It’s very cool to pay in smaller chunks, just let us know what your payment plan is. You can also email or call us to pay with EBT.

If you get an email reminder that CSA payment is due: make that payment, let us know when you will be able to, or let us know if the amount due seems wrong. It adds a lot of extra computer time to try to repeatedly follow up with folks individually, so this is a simple way to lighten our administrative work. (Some of the auto emails have been a little funky, so we are happy to answer those questions if you get a weird one.) Thank you!

*beautiful cover crop in the foreground, photo by Adam Ford*

This Week’s Availability

This week we will have slicing tomatoes, paste tomatoes, grape tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, husk cherries, shallots, sweet onions, celery, fennel, leeks, cucumbers, garlic scapes, purple kohlrabi, basil, parsley, cilantro, poblano peppers, baby lettuce, spinach, arugula, pea shoots, baby bok choi, green curly kale bunches, lacinato kale bunches, red beets, new potatoes, zucchini, summer squash, garlic bulbs, and spaghetti squash.

The beefsteak and heirloom tomatoes are slowing down, so if you order a bag for delivery, we are labeling them as “slicing tomatoes” (to differentiate from the plums, grapes, and cherries) because we just won’t know what volume of heirloom versus beefsteak varieties we will have each day this week. But if you order “slicing tomatoes” it will be some combo of beefsteak and/or heirloom varieties.

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 Tuesdays, Wednesdays or Thursdays to pick out your items yourself.

CSA pickup and delivery days and times

If you have any trouble using the online to order your veggies this week (or change your pickup location, or skip this week, or anything…) reach out to us. It’s easy to help.

Fall CSA Sign Up

We finally have our Fall CSA season ready for sign ups. We do keep the fall, winter, and spring memberships smaller than the summer, and we prioritize space for returning CSA members, but try to sign up sooner than later. (The auto confirmation email you will get when you sign up for the fall share has a high likelihood of it being whacky…. we are still trying to get help from the software folks for the confirmation email to reflect the fall share, versus the summer share. So if you get a whacky auto confirmation that confuses you, either ignore it, or reach out with questions. If you get any time of confirmation email, it means you are signed up, and will hear from us about the fall share at the end of October.)

Farm News

Well, the downer of last week, was seeing the elderberry bushes loaded with clusters of fruit that were about 75% ripened, and then having birds pick the plants clean before we harvested them. That’s farming, though… a series of mini heartbreaks when you set expectations, ha! (As a friend told me years ago: expectations are pre-meditated disappointments.) We also had a bear rip apart one of our hives to gorge on larva. After having the bear visit, we realized that is who has probably been ravaging our melon patch this summer. We are always working hard to make sure the production area of the farm is situated within a biodiverse area that is a healthy home for wildlife, but I kind of also wish we could strike a working deal with the bears and birds and groundhogs and voles and deer and rabbits and everything else we want to live alongside, that we will keep protecting their living spaces if they quit snacking in our working spaces….

Besides those crop downers, we had a productive week: lots of weeding of fall crops (carrots, broccoli, lettuce, cilantro, spinach, etc), and removing old plantings from the tunnels (to prepare for winter seeding) and fields (to cover crop before winter.) Ryan is getting the tunnels ready to rent a soil steamer again this year, to use on the soil between the time we have all the plants ripped out and before things are planted for winter. We rented a soil steamer for the first time last year, and he was really pumped about the results on weed pressure in the tunnel we used it on, especially during the winter season. We have built up some aggressive winter weed pressure in the tunnels over time, so this was a big labor (and crop) saver. He is eager to do at least one of the other tunnels this year, if not both. It’s a big project to get the tunnels cleared and ready, and transport the giant steaming machine here, and then an even bigger project to do all the steaming, but it’s worth it to kill all those weed seeds in the top layer of the soil.

We have appreciated the rain we have gotten over the past week. It’s been a long and dry season, and our crop production has reflected the stress of the dry weather this year. And yet, we can’t help but still feel lucky compared to most places in this country, in terms of access to rainfall.

A little highlight I have been enjoying is finding all the monarch chrysalises around our gardens. Throughout the season, as we weed areas, we always leave the milkweed, even if it’s really in a bad location. We also have a bunch of great milkweed around our home garden. Over the past few weeks I have enjoyed watching the wholes in the milkweed leaves grow, as striped monarch caterpillars crawl around them getting fatter and fatter. Ryan even found one chrysalis dangling from the ventilation pipe from the root cellar next to the barn!

Big highlight was that our team member, K2, who broke her neck, back, ankle, and toes earlier in the summer in a mountain biking accident, was able to drive herself to the farm to visit this week, for the first time after getting approval to remove her cervical collar and walking boot. Her recovery is going so well, and it was a treat to have her walk around visiting. Go, K2!

Hope everyone has a great week!

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

PS- Shout out to all the educators our there: thank you for jumping into the new school year with all the magic and joy and diligence you bring to school… I hope you have all the caffeine of your dreams!

Weekly Recipe

Papalo Pesto

Papalo is a culinary herb in our pick-your-own flower garden in the herb section. (There is a sign there indicating it.) Unfortunately, this item is only available if you pick up at the barn, and wander into the pick-your-own garden to snag for yourself, but it’s such a fun flavor that we wanted to share a recipe for it for folks who haven’t tried it yet, and have the time to come here for their items. Papalo has an incredibly unique flavor, with hints of nasturtium, cilantro, citrus, and who knows what. Give it a shot!