19th Week of the Summer CSA Season: September 30th

Sep 26

*sunflowers at the end of a mixed veggie field, photo by Adam Ford*

This Week’s Availability

This week we will have:

Greens: green curly kale, lacinato kale, rainbow chard, head lettuce, caraflex cabbage, green cabbage, bok choi, arugula, baby lettuce, napa cabbage
Roots: red beets, yellow beets, carrots, watermelon radish, red potatoes, yellow potatoes, French fingerling potato
Alliums: garlic, yellow onions, sweet onions, red onions, scallions, shallots, leeks
Herbs: sage
Miscellaneous: celery, fennel
Fruiting crops: heirloom tomatoes, beefsteak tomatoes, roma paste tomatoes, green tomatoes, jalapeno peppers, shishito peppers, carmen sweet peppers, green carmen peppers, tomatillos, husk cherries, spaghetti squash

**The heirloom tomatoes are slowing way down, so we may have to substitute them for beefsteak or roma if you order them, so indicate your sub preference in the order form.

This week, you can order some items in bulk if you do any preserving. We listed bulk red carmen peppers, jalapeno peppers, beefsteak tomatoes, roma tomatoes, and onions. 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

*midnight roma tomatoes, photo by Adam Ford*

Farm News

Hooray for rain! We got over 2.5 inches here, enough to thoroughly soak the dry soil. Our farm is lucky to have a very productive well that has been able to irrigate our high tunnels and fields without running dry, so we’ve been able to get through the dry July, August, and September without much loss to the productivity of the crops we grow. But the rain was still so welcome.

On this week’s NOFA policy community organizing call this month, I learned that the water levels in Vermont streams and rivers this year have hit historic lows: Same levels as 2002, which were the lowest recorded levels since water levels started being recorded in Vermont in 1903. We all probably felt how dry it has been, not really needing that statistic to validate our lived observations, but it was wild to hear, that yes in fact, this drought has been extreme.

One quick and interesting way you can support the food shed is to fill out this quick survey. The National Drought Mitigation Center (University of Nebraska) collects data that is used for many things, including providing info to the Farm Service Agency for states to be able to declare a disaster declaration that unlocks funds for impacted regions for things like supplemental feed for livestock (since most farmers have been feeding hay at least a month or more early this season), trucked in water for irrigation, , funds for future water catchment infrastructure, etc. And you can fill that out just as a citizen. It took me about 5 minutes, and you just click on the drop down topics that you have input on and skip the rest.

Besides our attention to the moisture content in the soil, we had a great week removing most of the last beds in the tunnels and transitioning them over to winter greens. We are eager to get a jump on the bulk fall harvests before more opportunistic deer herds move through the veggies fields.

Have a great week,

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

Cream of Celery Soup

There is optional fennel in this recipe, but if you don’t like fennel, or we mis-estimated it being ready to harvest this week, leeks work wonderfully in place of the fennel in this recipe.