*rutabaga harvest, photo by Taylor Morneau*

CSA Balance Due

If you haven’t already paid, your balance is due this week. You can pay online through your account (with a card or e-check ACH payment), mail a check to Evening Song Farm 48 Nice Road, Cuttingsville VT 05738, leave a check or cash in the CSA cash box at the barn, send money with Venmo @eveningsongcsa, or use EBT. It’s very cool to pay in smaller chunks, just let us know what your payment plan is. Unless you email us with your payment plan, or set up a payment plan on the Farmigo dashboard, please pay for the entire season now. It saves us valuable farm work time to have payments at the beginning of the season or on a planned payment schedule. Thank you!

If you are able to pay with a check, e-check, cash, Venmo, or EBT, it saves us a considerable amount of money compared to card transactions. We know that it’s necessary for some folks to use a card, so don’t feel bad if you have to use that option. Thanks!

This Week’s Availability

This week we will have yellow beets, red beets, yellow potatoes, red potatoes, mesclun mix, baby kale, baby lettuce, arugula, baby bok choi, green curly kale bunches, lacinato kale bunches, garlic, seed garlic, poblano peppers, jalapeño peppers, green serrano peppers, shallots, leeks, carrots, Painted Mountain grain corn, brussels sprouts, watermelon radish, daikon radish, spinach, pea shoots, endive, mini Romaine heads, broccoli, green cabbage, rutabaga, and Gilfeather turnip.

If you do any bulk preserving, now is a great time to snag jalapenos or serranos, (both $6/pound) in bulk if you use any for fermenting, hot sauce, pickled jalapenos, jalapeno jelly, or whatever! Send us an email if we should put anything aside for you.

If you are looking for seed garlic for your garden, we have German Red and German White seed garlic available for $12/pound. Reach out if you want any.

Click here to order your veggies for a delivered bag

Ordering closes at noon on Tuesdays for Wednesday bags, and at midnight on Wednesdays for Friday bags.

You do not need to fill out the form if you plan to come to the barn on Wednesdays or Thursdays to pick out your items yourself.

CSA pickup and delivery days and times

Farm News

This week we got about half the garlic planted, and hoping to get the rest in next week. It was gorgeous garlic planting weather this week with mild temperatures to push thousands of cloves into moist soil. Next week’s weather looks a bit more traditionally cooler, so our fingers might be a little less enthusiastic to finish up the planting, but it will get done!

The crew also got in one of the storage beet harvests. This particular planting was from a marginal area in our field that is a bit lower than other areas, and stayed wetter this season, creating significant yield reductions. We will be doing some minimal earth moving around that field to help water drain a bit better from that spot, so that in really wet seasons, (like this year, and probably most future years), that area of the field can also grow things well.

We are trying to start picking away at the weeding in the high tunnel so that the winter greens get to stay ahead of the weed growth. It’s been hard to carve out time for it amidst the bulk storage harvest and garlic planting.

We had our first frost last week, but tucked in the few things that we wanted to protect with some row cover… I don’t think we have ever harvested hot peppers in November before, but it looks like it might be possible early next week. (Gotta celebrate the culinary joys that come along with climate crisis induced season extension!)

Sometimes folks asks what we are cooking with the veggies we grow… We have been doing a lot of fermenting in our house these days… fermented hot sauce, curtido, and kimchi with all the “farmer quality” napa cabbage in the field. (Most of our napa got decimated by cabbage worms, which has been a true bummer. But we have been cutting the top half of all the munched heads off, and fermenting everything for a winter of probiotic deliciousness.) While I am writing this newsletter I am eating my favorite breakfast bowl: kimchi, with a little extra fermented hot sauce on top. (We make our kimchi with only a small amount of hot peppers because we are lucky that our kids love kimchi, but only if we add our own heat separately.) If you are new to fermenting, the internet is a wealth of knowledge with recipes and tips for success. And we have found that most things ferment really deliciously with the appropriate ratio of veggies to salt, so go wild, and get creative.

Have a great week,

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

Best Roasted Potatoes Ever