4th Week of the Fall CSA Season: Week of November 5th

Oct 31

Written By Evening Song Farm

*field after harvesting storage beets, photo by Adam Ford*

This Week’s Availability

This week we will have:

Greens: green curly kale, lacinato kale, rainbow chard, caraflex cabbage, green cabbage, bok choi, arugula, baby lettuce, spinach
Roots: red beets, yellow beets, carrots, watermelon radish, red potatoes, yellow potatoes, French fingerling potato, sweet potatoes, daikon radish, Gilfeather turnip, rutabaga, red radishes, parsnip
Alliums: garlic, yellow onions, red onions, shallots, leeks
Herbs: cilantro
Miscellaneous: fennel
Fruiting crops: serrano peppeers, aji rico hot peppers, delicata squash, butternut squash

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

*carrots about to head through the root washer, photo by Adam Ford*

*yellow potatoes harvested, and to be sent through the washer before storage, photo by Adam Ford*

Farm News

Almost all of the storage crops are in from the field, and as soon as we repair the barrel washer, we will get them all washed and put away for the season. The garlic is planted and this week we will get it all mulched for the winter. The team got a great start on field cleanup that will give us a little jump on the spring: removing trellises, stakes, ground covers… all things we usually frantically pull out in the spring when we want to start planting, but this year’s sunny, mild fall weather has allowed us to do more outdoor work than usual, and we will take it!

A common question around here this time of year is, “So are you slowing down now?” Until the pandemic years, we hustled through production year-round, attending winter farmers’ markets with greens and storage veggies for 52 weeks a year. The first decade+ of starting this farm, we relied on year-round income through farmers’ markets and 4 seasons of CSA to make ends meet, but once we dropped markets when the pandemic hit, we realized we could have a lot more agency over our CSA seasons than we felt in the past. As our crew developed into a mostly long-term crew that has been with us for years, it became clear that most folks who work here—ourselves included—prefer the seasonal rhythm that a traditional vegetable operation could provide: slower winter months to breathe deeply and replenish ourselves from the high energy output of spring, summer, and fall.

So over time, we dropped the winter CSA season, and started the spring CSA season earlier, and ran the fall CSA season later to absorb some of that ancient winter CSA schedule. But having that time between the fall and spring CSA season allows us to catch up on a lot of the more invisible work of running this operation. So yes, this time of years begins to allow a slow down for the operation, and allows our team to feather into their own winter schedules or other jobs, rest, and travel. And meanwhile, the responsibilities for Ryan and I shift. I don’t generally feel the “slow down” per se, but I feel a change in what I am managing. And being in touch with this question, and seeing how this operation has evolved towards a slow down for some aspects, has made us talk a lot about creating our next 10-year plan for the farm.

When we started farming, we did a lot of strategic planning, and analyzed and revised those long term plans every winter to adjust for how things were actually going. The confluence of parenting and shifting from being a beginning farm to a somewhat established farm, has made the necessity for that regular strategic planning feel less urgent. But turning 40 can provide some amount of an invitation to look ahead…. In 10 years we will be 50 years old, and we hear that it’s pretty common for farmers to hit 50, and feel totally burnt out and drastically cut back their farm operation, perhaps more than if there was a gradual adjustment to shift towards more sustainable work goals. Can we use these 10 years to re-envision what Evening Song Farm looks like in the long term? Because in many ways it’s still running on the fumes of our 25-year-old energy, and that doesn’t feel sustainable in the long term. So there’s a rambly answer to, “things slowing down now?”

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)

Roasted Yellow Beet Hummus

This recipe is always a huge hit when we have friends over.