*Frosty carrot foliage, Photo by Adam Ford.*

This Week’s Availability

This week we will have:

Greens: baby lettuce, green curly kale bunches, lacinato, rainbow chard, pea shoots, green cabbage, giant green cabbage, bok choi, brussels crowns, brussels sprouts, green leaf lettuce, romaine lettuce, bronze buttercrisp lettuce, spinach
Roots: red potatoes, yellow potatoes, red beets, yellow beets, carrots, baby carrots, parsnips, watermelon radish
Alliums: scallions, yellow onions, red onions, sweet onions, fresh garlic bulbs, shallots, leeks
Herbs: sage, parsley, thyme, cilantro
Fruiting crops: shishito peppers, jalapeno peppers, ripening sweet green to red Italian Carmen peppers, aji rico red hot peppers, green Italian peppers, butternut squash, delicata squash, spaghetti squash
Miscellaneous: fennel

Crop Report

There are so many great quality vegetables in the early fall season: green curly and lacinato kale are excellent, as are baby lettuce, spinach and carrots. This first week of the fall CSA is our first distribution of winter squash, including butternut, delicata, and spaghetti.‍ ‍When I was a young kid, my dad grew an overwhelming amount of winter squash in his garden one year, and he did his best to make good use of it by imploring his family to eat as much squash as possible in the ensuing months. Needless to say, I developed a viceral aversion to the smell and texture that hasn’t yet completely left me. So I hope the winter squash may be more pleasing for all the lovers of winter squash out there than my childhood remembers, ha!

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

*Looking towards the valley on a frosty morning, photo by Adam Ford*

Farm News

Thanks for signing up for the fall CSA season! We love your dedication to seasonal fresh veggies, and honestly, this time of year still has quite an array to choose from.

We have been appreciating the sunny, mild weather so far this fall because it makes our outdoor work so much easier, especially harvesting all the fall root crops. This week looks like more of a mixed bag, weather-wise, but that is fall farming!

I try to keep the newsletter brief the first week of a new season because there is so much information about how the CSA works. If you didn’t see it in the email, this info below is a summary of CSA nuts and bolts for new members or for folks who like refreshers:

If you pick up at the barn:

To get to the barn, our address “48 Nice Road, Cuttingsville VT.” Pull up to the barn on the right, and go up the ramp, and the veggies will be displayed in the display cooler and tables. Find your name on the check off sheet. (Let us know if you can't find your name, or if it's not the share size you planned for.)
During the fall CSA season, the veggies are set up in the barn on Wednesdays and Thursdays from 9am to 8pm. (Not Tuesdays, like summer.)
If you miss a week, please feel free to make up those items when it works for you by keeping track of the items you miss and making them up when you want.
You can buy extra items at the barn by leaving money in the cash box at the CSA sign in area. (If you use Venmo for those extra purchases, make sure your Venmo transaction goes through.)
You may also see some other products (bread, yogurt, cheese, pizza, coffee, veggie burgers, eggs, blueberries, and certified organic grass-fed beef) from neighbor farms. You can purchase those items as extras, and leave payment in the cash box at pickup. These aren’t interchangeable with CSA veggie items. (If you use a check you can still make it out to Evening Song Farm.)
If you have any accessibility issues when picking up your veggies, please let us know so we can support you. Try our cell phones (802-342-4304 and 802-585-7045) if you need immediate assistance while you are there and no one is working nearby. Or send us an email with general accessibility suggestions. We want vegetable acquisition to be easy and joyful.

If you place a weekly order for delivery to Rutland or Ludlow:

Each week, you log onto your dashboard to select the items you want in your bag that week. You will receive a confirmation email of your order if the order went in successfully.
You can order extra items any week, and at checkout, it will prompt you for payment only for the extra items that are more than the CSA size you signed up for.
If you don't receive a weekly email for some reason, you can always go to our website and click on the "CSA Member Login" button on the top right to order your veggies. Also, all weekly newsletters are posted on the website under the "CSA" tab, with the "Weekly CSA Newsletter" subheading.
If you miss a week you can place a "hold" on the week you will miss, and schedule a makeup week. Create your hold for a day before and after the delivery day, otherwise you will get auto email reminders to place an order. (If you need help with that, feel free to reach out.)
You can change your pickup location any week by signing into your account and finding the "summary box" over towards the right.
The online platform shuts off at noon on Tuesdays for a Wednesday delivery, and midnight on Wednesday for a Friday delivery. (An auto email goes out after those deadlines pass to collect any orders that you may want to place if you didn't get to place an order online. Don't feel bad if you get that email-- we love getting you your veggies!)
You can use the comment section when you place your order to list a preferred substitution in case we aren't able to harvest something on your weekly order. (We do our best to make a guess of what we can harvest 4 to 6 days before we harvest and pack, so sometimes something on the order form may not actually be available on packing day. Nature keeps us on our toes.) If you do not list a preferred substitute, and we aren't able to harvest an item on your list, we will substitute it with something that is generally popular.
Keep in mind that bags delivered to Rutland and Ludlow are not in coolers once they are dropped off, and the delivery sites are doing us a favor by providing space for bags. Make your best effort to get your bag the day we drop it off. Bags arrive in Ludlow by 1pm and are on the side porch of OMS. Bags arrive at the Rutland Co-op by noon on delivery day, and they are open until 7pm. (Sometimes, but not all the time, any bags not picked up by the end of the day get moved into their drink cooler when they close up. When you do make it to the co-op to pick up if your bag isn't still on the racks in the hallway, ask someone up front to find it in their cooler for you.)

For all CSA members:

We appreciate hearing from you if you ever get a bad veggie. If you pick up at the barn, please feel free to take an extra item to make up for a bad item. If you get a delivered bag, mention it in the order comments, and list an extra item we can pack to replace it. Similarly, if you get a packed bag and it's missing an item, let us know so we can make that up. Thanks!
If you want to adjust your share size, you can do that yourself on your Farmigo account, or reach out to us, and we can do that for you. Our theme is flexibility.

Thank you and have a great week,

-ESF Team: Kara, Ryan, Vanessa, Taylor, Katie, Galen, Leah, Natalie, Cindy, Amelia, Morgan, Kim, Kelly, Hannah, and Grandpa Jim the delivery guy (and Sky and Soraya)

Usually we put a recipe in each week that features something available that week, but the first week of every season, I like to point out to folks that we have an archived recipe page on the website where you can search for past recipes by veggie (or key word), so feel free to check that out below:

Archived Recipe Page

1st Week of the Fall CSA season: Week of October 14th

This Week’s Availability

Crop Report

Farm News

LAST (20th) Week of the Summer CSA Season: Week of October 6th

Evening Song Farm