this week’s arugula is as near to perfection as it gets, photo by Ryan

This Week’s Availability

This week we will have:

Greens: green curly kale, baby kale, spinach, baby lettuce, baby chard, green cabbage, arugula, kale rapini
Roots: red beets, yellow beets, large carrots*, watermelon radish, yellow potatoes, daikon radish, Gilfeather turnip, parsnips**
Alliums: garlic, scallions
Herbs: parlsey
Fruiting crops: frozen heirloom and beefsteak tomatoes, Painted Mountain grain corn

*This time of year when we start running out of some of the popular storage veggies, we bring them in from another certified organic farm, Juniper Hill Farm. Their carrots are a different storage variety, and they are larger and less sweet, but still a great carrot. I also tend to peel theirs for cosmetic reasons, while usually I don’t peel ours. Just a heads up, since we get A LOT of comments on how much people love the specific carrot variety we grow.

**Most of the spring dug parsnips have surface damage. It can be peeled off to a predominantly good parsnip. They will take a little more work to clean up than the ones we harvested and stored from the fall.

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

*cute little celery babies, photo by Adam Ford*

Farm News

This week the prop house completely overflowed! As expected, but it’s still a fun moment when we have to kick out trays and trays of things to harden off before transplanting. And as soon as we moved out about 100 trays, we filled those spots right back up with new seedings and repottings. Right now kale, chard, kohlrabi, fennel, bok choi, salad turnips, cilantro, parsley, napa cabbage, and some alliums have all been kicked outside as they toughen up in the wind and the cool. (And as we prepare beds for them!) Meanwhile, we removed a bed of spinach and claytonia from the tunnel this week to make room for next week’s tomato and cucumber transplantings. And Leah and Natalie mulched fields outside in prep for some of these outdoor plantings. We potted up small peppers, eggplants, celerey, tomatoes, husk cherries, and tomatillos into their larger cells. And we started the first rounds of plants for sale, and that is really what puts our propagation house capacity over the top. 6 years ago we extended the length of this greenhouse by 24 feet, which we are very grateful for.

I am eagerly watching the grass slowly green up and put millimeters on, because one of my spring joys is getting our dairy goats back on pasture. It usually doesn’t happen until early May, but I set up the first pasture this week in case the grass surprises me sooner. Despite not being back on pasture yet, these ladies are still pretty lucky to have a cornucopia of kale and spinach stems as we remove plants from the tunnels and seconds veggies as we sort storage crops. So the jury is out on whether it’s me or them that is more eager to get them back on pasture.

This upcoming week I will be away with our kiddos visiting family for their spring break, but the team holds down most of the day to day functions and Ryan doesn’t stop moving during April and May, so the farm will cruise along during a busy week while I gratefully snag some pre-season feet up time with my kids. What a gift to have an expansive team and sneak away from a veggie farm during plant starting season!

Have a great week,

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

Jingalov Hats

This is a recipe I posted years ago, and we love doing at least once in the spring with whatever greens and aromatics we have at the time.