This Week’s Availability

This week we will have:

Greens: baby lettuce, pea shoots, green curly kale, lacinato kale, rainbow chard, head lettuce, green cabbage, caraflex cabbage, spinach
Roots: red beet bunches, yellow beet bunches, carrot bunches, loose carrots
Alliums: garlic, yellow onions, sweet onions, red onions, scallions, shallots
Herbs: parsley, basil, sage
Miscellaneous: Rhubarb, celery, fennel
Fruiting crops: slicing cucumbers, Japanese cucumbers, pickling cucumbers, green zucchini, yellow summer squash, cherry tomatoes, heirloom tomatoes, beefsteak tomatoes, roma paste tomatoes, juliet tomatoes, jalapeno peppers, green beans, shishito peppers

This week, you can order some items in bulk if you do any preserving. We listed bulk heirloom tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, roma tomatoes, green beans, pickling cucumbers, and onions. (Do you love sundried tomatoes? Poke a hole in each cherry tomato, lay out on a baking sheet, and dry in your oven on the lowest temperature until they are fully dried, and this is FUN in the winter!) If you pick up in the barn, feel free to send us an email to order bulk items with the volumes you want, and what day we should have it ready in the barn, and we will give you your total and where to find it in the barn.

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

Farm News

We heard that this week a CSA member asked our team the great question of what all the different varieties of tomatoes are… so below are the names, pictures, and brief descriptions of what they are like to help you get a bit more acquainted with these little gems! (Name and description of each variety is below each picture.)

Rebel Starfighter: Every year we try a new variety on a whim, and this one knocked it out of the park. It’s juicy, but not soggy, it’s soft but doesn’t get too soft too fast, the inside texture is smooth and creamy, and the oozy seedy part almost like whipped boba, and the flavor is complex and multilayered, sweet, tangy, and something I can’t put my finger on. We will have to grow more of these next year!

Juliet: A mini roma, these little wonders are sweet and packed with flavor. Drier like a roma, they hold up well for days, so excellent for a hot summer picnic when you don’t want them to flop in your picnic basket, an excellent snack, great for sauce, sandwiches that don’t get soggy, and my favorite tomato to dry. We had planned to grow more of these this year, but seems like we had a labeling error on some of the plants, whoops!

Sart Roloise: Our friends at Muddy Fingers Farm in Hector New York introduced us to this variety last year, and it was such a hit, we grew more of them this year. Beautiful, striking yellow and purple coloring, the flavor matches the visual pleasure on this variety. Sweet and tangy, and tropical tasting, juicy, but firm enough for a sandwich, this is one of our favorites in the kitchen.

Darkstar: This dark purple heirloom is a popular favorite: a rich, heavy flavor with a sweet/tangy balance that tops the charts. Juicy, but still versatile to use for fresh eating and cooking. We have been growing this one for awhile, and it’s a staple for us.

Hot Streak: For many years we grew the variety “Pineapple” which we loved for its culinary prowess but would disappoint us time and again in terms of disease susceptibility, yield, and uniformity for a production farm. Enter Hot Streak, which filled that space of flavor that Pineapple brought to the table, but also had significant production improvement. This variety is tropical flavored, sweet, low acid, and just wonderful.

*GinFiz is another variety we grow that looks and tastes just like Hot Streak. It is slightly more juicy, and often has a slightly funkier shape that folks associate with an “heirloom”… sometimes I can’t tell them apart once they are harvested off the plants and in the trays!

Pink ID: This unassuming pink heirloom stays firm for a few days, is juicy, but not soggy, and has a wonderful sweet, relaxed, easy going flavor, nothing that kicks you in the face, but reliably delicious.

Be Orange: Similar to Pink ID in it’s ability to stay firm for a few days, and it’s level of juiciness, but more on the tropical flavored spectrum like Hot Streak. This low acid tomato is a favorite of mine for pico de gallo and bruscetta, holding it’s shape well and creating just the right amount of juice for a recipe like that. Sweet, mild, and fruity, this has been a staple for us for awhile.

Midnight Roma: A new (to us) roma tomato that had good reviews, so we gave it a trial spot in the roma row this year. We haven’t harvested them yet, they seem to ripen slower, but we are excited to try them! It is described as having a “rich concentrated flavor” and like other roma varieties, are excellent for sauce. I tend to use romas for everything: sause, salsa, pico de gallo, bruschetta, soup, pizza, sandwiches, fresh eating….

And then we grow a standard red roma and large red beefsteak tomato which I imagine most of you are familiar with.

Have a great week!

-ESF Team: Kara, Ryan, K2, Cindy, Taylor, Leah, Natalie, Katie, Galen, Vanessa, Miguel, Georgia, and Hannah (and Sky and Soraya)

Bruschetta