1st Week of Winter CSA: Jan 27–29

Meme by Molly, photo by Adam, mood by Bernie.

Thanks for Joining the Winter CSA!

Every first week of a CSA season there is a lot of important information in here to read about how to get your veggies. This newsletter contains essential information about limits on greens availability, what vegetables you can expect, barn pickup hours, and order deadlines/pickup locations for delivered bags. The link to fill out an order form for delivered bags is at the end of all this information. Even if you don’t read most newsletters, read this one.

Two of the high tunnels under snow, photo by Adam Ford

What Veggies Will Be Available During the Winter CSA Season?

Our winter CSA will primarily offer storage vegetables, with the addition of some greens. For most of the winter CSA share, we will have limited greens available. We anticipate having some some spinach, kale, parsley, chard, pea shoots, and mesclun mix available throughout the share, but for most weeks, availability will be limited. For most of the winter CSA, we will limit the number of greens each CSA member can select to make sure they are available for everyone. The limits will be noted in each newsletter, on the online order form, and on the display cooler door in the barn if you pick up here.

You can expect to find full availability of carrots, red and yellow potatoes, red and yellow beets, red and yellow onions, and watermelon radishes through the entire winter CSA share. We’ll also have red and green cabbage, celeriac and garlic for the beginning winter CSA season. We will also make certified organic sweet potatoes available as CSA items from Juniper Hill Farm. (We will not have limits on the storage veggies.)

If it’s important to you to have a particular type of green available every week, or if you’re mostly interested in the winter CSA for the fresh greens and not so much for the storage vegetables, we recommend waiting until the spring CSA when we will have a much wider availability. We realize that some people get a CSA share just for the greens, and it’s no problem if you prefer to just wait until the Spring CSA season when they will be more abundant. If you want to opt out of the winter CSA, fill out this short form.

Can I just order your greens from your online store or pick them up at any of the several retail places that carry your veggies? Excellent question. No, during this time of limited greens availability our greens will only be available for the CSA. Our online store, the Rutland Co-op, Singleton’s General Store, Plew Farm, and Squire Family Farm will still be carrying our root veggies, but all the greens are reserved for CSA members until we have enough growing to remove limits on greens to the CSA.

Sky helping with wood for next year’s wash station heat.

How to Get Veggies During the Winter CSA Share?

All online orders are due by noon on Tuesdays. Harvesting winter greens requires many factors to be just right, so we need the flexibility to know exactly what we are harvesting as early in the week as possible.

Oh no, I missed the order deadline! No worries. (I would probably miss it pretty often myself.) You are welcome to come to the barn on Wednesdays between 9 am and 7 pm to pick out your veggies. Or send us an email, and we will pack whatever we are able to deliver. It just might not include any greens if the many harvesting conditions don’t allow after the order deadline.

Pickup at the Farm: The display cooler will be set up to pick out your veggies from 9 am to 7 pm on Wednesdays. Shunpike Road can be narrow during the winter months, and slippery on actively snowy days. If you are not comfortable coming to the farm any week, consider getting a pre-packed bag at either Stewart’s or Pierce’s in Shrewsbury, or in Ludlow or Rutland. We will try to make a note of Wednesday’s projected weather each week in the newsletter. (So far it looks like it won’t be snowy this Wednesday for pickup.)

Pickup at Pierce’s Store in Shrewsbury: Fill out the weekly order form by noon on Tuesday and pick up your bag from Peirce’s Store on Wednesday between noon and 6 pm.

Pickup at Stewart Maple Marketplace in Cuttingsville: Fill out the weekly order form by noon on Tuesday and pick up your bag from the Stewart Maple Marketplace on Route 103 on Friday between noon and 5 pm.

Pickup ta the Rutland Area Food Coop in Rutland: Fill out the weekly order form by noon on Tuesday and pick up your bag from the co-op on Wednesday or Friday between noon and 7 pm.

Pickup at Knight Tubs, Pools, and Spas in Ludlow: Fill out the weekly order form by noon on Tuesday and pick up your bag from Knight Tubs between 2 and 5 pm on Wednesday. They are curbside only, so call or knock when you arrive, and they will bring your bag out.

All of these pickup spots love supporting their community, like offering us this favor to use their spaces. If you have any trouble getting your bag, let us know.

Aerial view of the entrance to the farm, photo by Adam Ford

This Week’s Availability

This week we will have yellow onions, red onions, garlic, celeriac, yellow beets, red beets, carrots, red potatoes, yellow potatoes, watermelon radish, green cabbage, red cabbage, sweet potatoes, mesclun mix and green curly kale.

This week’s greens limit:

• Mini shares: 1 greens item (1 bag of mesclun mix OR 1 bunch of kale)

• Small shares: 2 greens items TOTAL (1 bag of mesclun mix AND 1 bunch of kale, OR 2 of mesclun mix, OR 2 of kale)

• Medium shares: 2 greens items TOTAL (1 bag of mesclun mix AND 1 bunch of kale, OR 2 of mesclun mix, OR 2 of kale)

• Large shares: 3 greens items TOTAL (1 bag of mesclun mix and 2 bunches of kale, OR or 2 bags of mesclun mix and 1 bunch of kale)

• Super shares: 3 greens items TOTAL (1 bag of mesclun mix and 2 bunches of kale, OR or 2 bags of mesclun mix and 1 bunch of kale)

You do not need to use the order form if you are coming to the farm to pick out your veggies from the display cooler.

In the winter, we often bring one of our scales into the tunnels for harvest. Unlike the summer, we try to harvest exactly what we need each week for CSA. This way we can maximize what we have available each week during the months when greens production is slowest, by not overharvesting anything each week, photo by Adam Ford.

Winter CSA Payments Due

The balance of your winter CSA payments are due January 27th, unless you created a payment plan. If you need to create a payment plan, that’s not a problem, just send us an email. Send us an email if you want to use an EBT card. You can leave a check in the cash box at the barn, mail it to Evening Song Farm, 48 Nice Road, Cuttingsville VT 05738, or use this online payment link. Small shares are $160 (cash or check) or $164 (card). Medium shares are $200 (cash or check) or $206 (card). Large shares are $240 (cash or check) or $247 (card). Reach out if you are unsure of your balance. Thanks!

Thinking Ahead to Spring CSA

We also anticipate having to create a wait list for the Spring CSA share, so we encourage anyone who wants to do that season as well, sign up for the spring share now, before it turns into a wait list.

All the essential tools of our support staff, photo by Adam Ford

Farm News

(Feel free to stop reading anything below here. This is all an optional insight into what is going on around here.)

Whew! That was so much information, so I will keep our farm news short this week to minimize the overload.

Our grow room tucked inside our root cellar is full of seedlings to plant out in about 1 or 2 weeks. It’s fun to have such a bright, warm, vibrant space to walk into this year. The tender, little, seedlings are even more exciting than a tunnel of mature winter greens. Those are hearty, hardened winter heroes that are already accustomed to the cold, dark weather. But the plants in the grow room are still pampered little sprouts with plenty of light and warmer temperatures. They will go through a hardening off phase before heading to the tunnels, but even then it will be quite an adjustment to be planted into near freezing soil and significantly below freezing air temperatures. Plants are totally amazing.

Our “big straw mountain” (as our kids call it) covered in snow, waiting to be used for mulch next season, photo by Adam Ford.

Much of our brain is focused on climate change and the current and future mitigation efforts we will do on the farm and for the community. This summer we will finally be the expansion of our solar array system that we had been planning for all summer last year. We were extraordinarily lucky to be the recipients of NOFA-VT’s farmer of the month award in September that provided a portion of the cost of making that solar expansion. In addition to that project, Ryan has been participating in a Climate Adaptation Fellowship, coordinated by the University of Maine’s Climate Change Institute, for farmers in the northeast to study climate projections as they relate to agriculture. Part of this program is developing a comprehensive farm mitigation plan and then providing outreach for the northeastern agricultural community. He may take over some of the upcoming newsletters to write about what he has been learning.

We hope everyone is doing as well as you are able during these especially challenging times. Farming requires us to be relentlessly hopeful… hoping that seeds will germinate, plants will grow, rodents won’t completely destroy plantings, water will be available in the right amounts... operating with that hopeful mentality towards growing food every day translates to how we approach the world outside of here. We know it’s been tremendously hard for everyone in different ways, but we have a great deal of hope that our communities will be resilient as we work hard through the transformations we need to get us to the other side of these times in a better place than we were before.

Have a great week

-ESF Team: Kara, Ryan, Molly, Sam, Cindy, Taylor, Grace, and Katie

Sometimes the kids and I play at this creek by the driveway. Ice makes the most gorgeous art.

Roasted Sweet Potato and Celeriac with Cabbage

• 1/2 pound sweet potatoes, cut into 1/2-inch cubes

• 1/2 pound celeriac, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch cubes

• 1 small head of red or green cabbage, core removed, finely chopped into thin strips

• 2-3 garlic cloves, crushed

• 1 small onion, sliced into thin strips

• 2 TBSP

• 1/4 tsp allspice

• 1/4 tsp nutmeg

• 1/2 tsp smoked paprika

• 1/4 tsp cayenne

• 1/2 tsp oregano

• 1 tsp lemon juice

• salt and pepper

Toss the sweet potato and celeriac cubes in olive oil with a little salt and spread on a baking sheet. Bake at 400 until they have lightly browned, tossing halfway through. Meanwhile, sauté the garlic and onions in olive oil until they are fully cooked. Add the cabbage, allspice, nutmeg, smoked paprika, cayenne, oregano, and lemon juice, and cook until the cabbage is fully wilted. Set these aside. When the roasted sweet potato and celeriac are ready, mix everything together and serve warm. This is great on it’s own, but leftovers can be added over pasta, in a quiche, in a frittata, as filling in an empanada, in an omelet, on pizza, or into a soup!