14th Week of the Summer CSA Season: Week of September 10th

Sep 7

This Week’s Availability

This week we will have

Greens: baby lettuce, spinach, arugula, green curly kale bunches, lacinato kale bunches, rainbow chard, brussels crowns, bok choi
Roots: red beets, carrots, new yellow potatoes, new red potatoes
Alliums: onions, garlic, scallions, garlic scapes, shallots, leeks
Fruiting Crops: slicing cucumbers, Japanese cucumbers, heirloom tomatoes, beefsteak tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, roma tomatoes, tomatillos, shishito peppers, sweet Italian Carmen peppers, red bell peppers, jalapeno peppers, spaghetti squash, husk cherries, zucchini
Herbs and Miscellaneous: parsley, rhubarb, celery, broccolini

We listed several items available for bulk purchasing at wholesale pricing on the online platform. This week we have beefsteak tomatoes, garlic scapes, garlic, onions, brussels crowns, and frozen elderberries, 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.

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

*King Arthur bell peppers ripening, photo by Taylor Morneau*

*cherry tomatoes coming in from the harvest, photo by Adam Ford*

Farm News

Seeding continues in the propagation house for more plantings of winter greens. We removed the first 4 beds of tomatoes from the Trunchbull to prepare those tunnel beds for transplanted winter greens. We are slowly getting the cured onions cut and stored in mesh bags in the root cellar. Bryan continues to mulch all the things, and Ryan builds compost piles during all his “free time,” roughly translated as “when Kara could use some help getting the kid circus to school on time.”

We removed the tops to all the brussels sprout plants this week, which has the dual purpose of forcing the plants to put energy into make big brussels sprouts instead of continuing to grow upward, and also to harvest the delicious cooking green that we call brussels crowns. If you are new to our CSA, or haven’t tried these in past years, we highly recommend them. They can be used like collard greens, and they taste like brussels sprouts. A favorite way to prepare them in this house is to slice them into thin, thin ribbons, and sauté with garlic, olive oil, and salt, and just eat a pile of that deliciousness.

Speaking of deliciousness: I definitely recommend jumping on the broccolini this week. It is perfect, tender, and tastes divine. We have been enjoying it by melting some butter in a pan, crushing a few cloves of garlic into the butter and sauteing that for a bit. Then adding whole broccolini stems and florets, and lightly sauteing those to a bright green, but not overcooking. Sprinkle with salt, and then enjoy the garlicky, buttery goodness of broccolini. Enjoy the entire plant: the stem is like baby asparagus, and should not be discarded.

Next week we will continue to pull out plants from the tunnels to make way for greens. There are still cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, roma tomatoes, beefsteak tomatoes, heirloom tomatoes, snack peppers, carmen peppers, bell peppers, celery, and basil in the tunnel, but bed by bed, we will remove them for the next season of salads.

Last weekend when we were away in Pennsylvania at that farm we first started a CSA at, I ran into a CSA member from our first year of running an operation down there, and it was a delight to catch up over her memories of our first year growing a production garden in 2009. We often feel gratitude for you all, the CSA that keeps this place humming, but connecting with her gave me some extra levels of gratitude and joy, thinking about all the people (there are so many!) who have believed in us over so many years to grow their veggies. We are grateful for all of you who help make this farm possible.

Have a great week,

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

Weekly Recipe

Garlic Soup