9th Week of the Summer CSA Season: Week of July 21st
Sky and Vanessa head out to the fields, photo by Adam Ford
This Week’s Availability
This week we will have:
Greens: baby lettuce, bok choi, pea shoots, green curly kale bunches, lacinato, rainbow chard, green cabbage, caraflex cabbage, green head lettuce
Roots: new red potatoes, new yellow potatoes, salad turnips, red beet bunches, yellow beet bunches
Alliums: scallions, chives, onions, garlic scapes, fresh garlic bulbs
Herbs: sage, parsley, basil tops
Fruiting crops: zucchini, summer squash, slicing cucumbers, green beans, first tomatoes!*
Miscellaneous: rhubarb, broccolini, fennel
*The first tomatoes are ripening! The first week is always a question mark as to how many we will be able to harvest, but soon they will really start producing. This first week if you order tomatoes for your CSA, you can add a note in the comments if you prefer getting a pint of cherries tomatoes or a pound of slicing tomatoes because we are hoping to have enough for everyone between the two types, and if you don’t indicate a preference, we will pack what we have. (And the system will limit you to just ordering one per share.) Soon we will be swimming in tomatoes!
Crop Report
This week the green beans are ready to harvest and look amazing. The head lettuce and the baby lettuce are also highlights this week. For those who didn’t see cucumbers in the barn last week, the plants went through a temporary lull in fruit set but will be abundant again this week. The beautiful onions have begun to dry down and can store fine at room temperature. We hope that there will be enough tomatoes this week for everyone to get an item’s worth, but if we do run short rest assured that the plants are loaded with ripening fruit and the full tomato abundance will be upon us very soon.
Fog listing from the valley, photo by Adam Ford
Farm News
It was a productive week on the farm, with a lot of catch-up on weeding and mulching. We enjoyed seeing so many barn pick-up CSA members picking bouquets in the flower garden.
This week we were heartbroken to say our final goodbye to Echo, our beloved companion since he was an 8 week old puppy in January 2011. Many CSA members who have picked up at the barn may remember Echo, sprawled out on the ramp to the barn on CSA pickup days as people had to step over him to get to the veggies. He had the sweetest disposition, somewhat of an otherworldly soulful energy, and he connected with many people over the years. He loved wandering around the farm checking in on all the different work jobs happening every day. He kept the field rodents, ground hogs, rabbits, and deer at bay. I remember when he killed his first field rabbit, his eyes looked at me like, “Oh no! what did I do? That was instinctual and I think important to the farm, but I am a gentle love bug and I am struggling reconciling my doggie instincts with my big heart.” We are already seeing the effects of have having no dogs patrolling the veggie fields, and may need new strategies asap. He always loved helping to clean up the baby goats when they were born… One of our goats, Bella, would often birth 4 babies, and I think she was ok with the help of an extra tounge to dry off her newborns, even though he was technically a predator. (Our goats asserted their hierarchy above our dogs long ago.)
We found him at a rescue near Montpelier after months of visiting shelters to find the right companion for our farm. We originally had plans to pick up his sister from the littler of rescued puppies, but when we arrived, we saw him off to the side of the ridiculously cute, roudy puppy pile of his litter mates… he was just kind of calmly doing his thing on his own away from the scrum, and there was something about his energy that felt like he was the one to come home with us that day. It was tough to have a have a tiny little puppy in the winter without a full warm dog coat, so those first few months, he spent a lot of time tucked into my heavy Carheart jacket when we were outside for longer periods of time. As he grew up, I think his bigger size was a bit confusing for him as he tried being a lap dog much longer than you would expect a larger dog to try doing.
Echo was with us when we had to evactuate the first farm during Tropical Storm Irene. It was a stressful event for all of us, and the three of us suppoorted each other’s nervous systems through the chaos that followed. I navigated about 2 years of a debilitating Lyme disease infection that kept me couch bound, and having him snuggled with my deeply fagitued, brain fogged body was an immense support. He was a calming presence for us during the draining years of rebuilding a farm in this new location, while moving back and forth every day between the old and new location. He was an exceptionally gentle house mate when our newborn kiddos arrived. And he loved adventurous romps through the woods, sometimes bounding behind our cross country ski tracks for hours in the winter, and joining me on section hikes of the Long Trail on my birthday each spring. He made friends with everyone, because he was just a giant ball of love.
This winter he started slowing down, and the quieter times of loving senior dogs were beautiful despite knowing that our time together might not be much longer. His absence has been felt loudly these past few days, especially since now both of our dogs are gone... It’s been almost 16 years since I have had to clean dropped food off the floor, and those little changes are the moments that feel disorienting. We love all our animals, and have appreciated their space in our family, and saying goodbye to Echo will take some extra time. We had a particular connection with him that felt very different from any pets we have had before…
In honor of Echo this week, snuggle up to someone you love, look everyone you see deeply in the eye, and tip over the compost bucket to see what kind of partially decomposed food treats you can find. And to indulge my heart, there are copious amounts of pictures of Echo throughout the years below…
Have a great week,
-ESF Team: Kara, Ryan, K2, Vanessa, Taylor, Katie, Galen, Leah, Natalie, Cindy, Georgia, Amelia, and Hannah (and S.ky and Soraya)
I do not like licorice flavor, so it always impresses me that I am into fennel. (I should caveat that by saying I like fennel when it is cooked… I find that chewing on the raw stalks like Ryan does is a little too licoricey for me.) I use fennel almost anywhere that I use sauteed onions. And it is especially fun sliced thin on pizza. The other night we used one of those frozen Goodman’s American pies, and topped it with thin sliced fennel and garlic scapes when we baked it, and then topped it with fresh basil when it came out.
freshly seeded late summer greens, photo by Adam Ford
loading the van, photo by Adam Ford
sunflower against a wild fire sky, photo by Adam Ford
nasturtium, photo by Adam Ford
Cindy at work cutting lumber in the new barn, photo by Adam Ford
Natalie and Georgia weeding the pepper plants, photo by Adam Ford
sunflower, photo by Adam Ford
Echo at about 8 weeks old, warm and cozy in my jacket, photo by Ryan
Echo as a puppy with his English Mastiff cousin, Nellie, photo by Kara
“Is this my person or my dog bed?” photo by Ryan
These boys are tired after a long day of farming, photo by Kara
“I think actually this is too much snuggling, thank you” photo by Ryan
“You guys, this used to be a field of garlic… My humans are pretty bent at how now it’s a moonscape” photo by Adam Ford
“Want some veggies… Just gotta step over the very intimidating dog I am” photo by Adam Ford
“Yeah, I was featured in a wedding procession” photo by our friends’ wedding photographer
“Here I am photo bombing my humans’ wedding picture with their college friends, even though I didn’t go to college with them” photo by Terrance McCormack
“My humans took a lot of selfies with me”
Doggie throne
“I snuggled a lot with the mini humans”
“I loooooved fresh chicken poop” photo by Adam Ford
“I liked keeping an eye on my mini humans”
Hunting in the tunnels was a favorite past time, photo by Adam Ford
Phoebe and Nina, Photo by Adam Ford
Echo auditioning for role of farm dog, trying out butternut squash, Photo by Ryan
Echo was just a ridiculously cute and sweet puppy, Photo by Ryan
OG ESF walk home, photo by Liz Yoder
skiing with a puppy, photo by Jeanmarie Fitzgerald
“Oh the indiginity of shoving an excellent treat deep into a bone” photo by Adam Ford
“Yay, snow! Now it’s hard to see how completely destroyed the first farm is! Now it’s a winder wonderland moonscape!” photo by Adam Ford
“This lady is kind of obsessed with me.” photo by Adam Ford
“They made me dress up to be in the wedding procession and I not sure how I feel about that”
“And here I am the morning after their wedding, in my favorite spot on the couch, but I am less hung over than my humans, though it looks the other way around”
“Because that’s what millenials do with their pets”
He had a great smile, photo by Adam Ford
“And I ran a LOT with my canine friends” photo by Adam
“And harvesting my own carrots” photo by Adam Ford
“I liked keeping watch on everything” photo by Adam
Multitasking: hunting for rodents and ruining row cover at the same time! photo by Adam Ford
Old man on the porch this week, photo by Adam Ford