It's time to sign up for our 2016 CSA Season! We're working hard to bring you an amazing array of organic vegetables fresh from our fields each week from May until December. We're offering the same great CSA options as last year. You can sign up for a 32-week Full Season Share from May to December, or a 16-week Summer Share from May to August. Remember, signing up for our Full Season Share offers you the greatest savings. You'll get 20% off comparable retail value for your produce!
Add-on Share Options We're pleased to continue offering our CSA members some fantastic products from our neighboring farmers. These products make a great addition to one of our CSA Shares to create more complete, locally-sourced meals. Sign up for your share of the harvest today! You can enjoy a wide range of delicious, healthy, high quality, local products, delivered along with your Root 5 Farm vegetable box each week. We'll continue to offer grass-fed beef from our friends at Shire Farm in Vershire, and heritage breed pork and pastured chicken from Hogwash Farm in Norwich. We also have Berry Shares and Sweet Corn Shares available. You can read all the details on our website and sign up online today! Vermont Farm Share Program We're committed to making good food available to members of the community in a wide range of economic situations. Root 5 Farm participates in the VT Farm Share Program sponsored by the Northeast Organic Farming Association. This is a cost-sharing program that offers financial support to limited-income Vermonters for purchasing a CSA share. Participants receive up to a 50% subsidy of a CSA share from Root 5 Farm. TO APPLY for a subsidized share, please visit NOFA-VT and fill out the application. Please also contact us and let us know that you are applying for a NOFA VT Farm Share.
TO DONATE, you can help to share the harvest by donating just $1/week to the Farm Share Program during your online sign up for your Root 5 Farm CSA share this season. Our final farmers' market for the winter is this Saturday 10-1pm at Tracy Hall in Norwich. This is your last chance until spring to stock up on our sauerkraut, kimchi, spinach, carrots, butternut squash, radishes, heirloom dry beans, onions, shallots, and garlic. There will be 30+ vendors at the Norwich Winter Farmers' Market on Saturday, offering a wide variety of winter vegetables, meats, baked goods, hot drinks, prepared foods, and unique crafts. The market is a great place for connections — to your food, to the winter season, to your neighbors and your community. We look forward to seeing you there! Our fields are frozen and snow covered so we've been busy in the office, putting together orders for seeds and supplies and setting up our field maps for the coming season. We have a long to do list for the winter months, this is our time to get organized and set up systems for the new growing season. It's hard to believe, but we're only seven weeks away from our first greenhouse seeding date in early March!
We're very proud to announce, after a 3 year process, we've conserved our 28 acre farm with the Vermont Land Trust! The conservation of the farmland will ensure it's always available and affordable for farmers, and the productive soils will forever be protected from development. Learn more about the Vermont Land Trust conservation process here. Stop by the Norwich Winter Farmers' Market this Saturday, January 9th, from 10-1pm. We'll have a selection of delicious winter greens available- kale, spinach, collards, bok choy, and Belgian endive! We'll also have four varieties of Powerkraut- original, carrot cabbage, purple cabbage, and kimchi. You can stock up on carrots, beets, radishes, winter squash, onions, shallots, garlic, and heirloom dry beans. We're especially excited about our first crop of Belgian endive, which we'll have available at the market on Saturday! Endives are crisp and bitter when raw, making them a great addition to brighten up salads this time of year. When cooked, endive's bright flavor softens into a mellow sweetness. Whether raw, steamed, grilled or braised, they're a versatile ingredient for your winter kitchen. Our CSA season finished off strong at the end of December with a wide variety of winter foods. We're so grateful to our CSA members for their commitment to Root 5 Farm and for joining us in the adventures of seasonal cooking and eating. We're already busy working out the details of the new season. Our 2016 CSA sign-ups will begin in February, so please stay tuned!
It's market time! We'll be at the Norwich Farmers' Market on Saturday 12/12 from 10-2pm. Note extended hours for the holiday market. There will be over 40 vendors selling fresh vegetables, meats, baked goods and unique crafts so you can feed your family, fill the pantry, and find gifts for the upcoming holiday season. Don't miss it! In preparation for the market we're busy packing heirloom dry beans, sauerkraut, kimchi, carrots, beets, sweet potatoes, onions, garlic, acorn, butternut, honey nut, kabocha, and delicata squashes. We're also harvesting radishes, spinach, kale, collards, thyme and winter savory. Winter is when spinach is really at it's best. We grow ours in unheated, high-tunnel greenhouses where it undergoes a freeze-thaw cycle almost every night. This concentrates its sweetness and creates a flavor that is complex and rich with minerals. Check out these recipes for two simple and delicious ways to enjoy sweet winter spinach: Leek and Spinach Soup, Spinach and Parmesan Egg Drop Soup. Our truck is packed with 120 CSA shares for Tuesday delivery and John double checks the list just before he heads out. In November and December, we use one of our greenhouses as a warm space to pack shares on freezing days. CSA shares are still going strong. Check out this week's selection: blue potatoes, baby carrots, winter sweet kabocha squash, garlic, sweet potatoes, spinach, and yellow onions. Here's a few of our current favorite winter vegetable recipes: Lime Cilantro Sweet Potatoes, Kabocha Squash Soup, Tri-Colored Roasted Potatoes.
Early November has been beautiful in its own way, with frosty mornings giving way to brilliant sunny harvest days. We're continually chasing the sun at the end of our work day, wishing for it to stay around just a little longer and keep us warm. The afternoon sun shines under our hat brims, and it's only 3 o'clock! Our fields are still so green with cover crops of rye and vetch, oats and peas, and clover. We plant a variety of cover crops in the early fall to protect the soil from erosion and build nutrients in the off season while we take a rest, phew! We're excited to be improving our irrigation system this fall. Benner and Micah have been surveying to establish new buried water lines and hydrants. Micah has become an expert with the backhoe, digging 4' deep trenches to stay below frost line. We'll be at the Winter Farmers' Market at Tracy Hall in Norwich this Saturday from 10am-1pm with a full spread of roots, greens, winter squash, and herbs for your Thanksgiving table. Also, don't miss our newest batch of kimchi and sauerkraut! Wishing you a very happy Thanksgiving from our crew to yours!
The unusually warm weather this week was such a pleasant surprise. Our shitake mushroom logs are now covered in beautiful mushrooms, a final spurt of growth before the real cold sets in. We're bringing them with us to the Norwich market on Saturday to share with you! We move indoors on Saturday for the start of the Winter Farmers' Market. Stop by between 10am-1pm at Tracy Hall at 300 Main Street in Norwich. We'll have a full table of fresh herbs, carrots, beets, turnips, kale, spinach, arugula, lettuce, brussels sprouts, cabbage, onions, garlic, leeks, radishes, winter squash, sweet potatoes, plus the last of our ginger and turmeric! Fall CSA Shares are going strong, full of a wide variety of vegetables and herbs. This week we harvested leeks, Red Russian kale, napa cabbage, lettuce mix, and rosemary. We also packed red beets and sweet potatoes. Our high tunnels are full of beautiful greens that will be ready to harvest for December CSA and markets. We have row cover ready to pull over the beds to protect them on cold nights. While the daytime temperatures are still above freezing, we're out in the fields harvesting the last of our cold hardy salad greens, leeks, brussel sprouts, kale and cabbages.
Many people are surprised to learn that we can grow ginger in Vermont! This was our first foray into growing this incredible rhizome, and we've had great success! We started the seed pieces in our greenhouse on heat mats in early spring. Then we planted one experimental bed in our high tunnel. It's slow growing and takes the full season to size up, so we just started harvesting beautiful "young" ginger in early October. The fresh young ginger we grow here in Vermont is juicy and plump, with a pink blush. It's mild and tender enough to eat raw in salads, and it has an almost translucent skin that doesn’t need peeling; you can practically rub it off. We have a few ginger storage tips and recipe ideas here. Belgian Endive is another unusual crop we're experimenting with this year. This crop is unique because we direct seed in the early spring, grow the plants all season long, and then harvest the roots in late fall- but after all that work, it's still not ready to eat! We store the roots like carrots and then force them later in the winter to grow tender leafy "chicons". We think Endive will be a welcome off-season leafy vegetable that will add diversity to our market table and CSA shares. Last week we harvested our amazing late season green cabbages, each head weighs 15-20lbs! We brought 2,000 lbs of cabbage to the Food Venture Center to make our first batch of certified organic sauerkraut for the new season. Chop, salt, pack, wait! The kraut takes several weeks to ferment before we begin packaging for sale at market. We have a new batch of Spicy Kimchi that's ready for market this Saturday. We grew the napa cabbage, carrots, scallions, ginger, garlic, onions, and cayenne peppers for our own small batch handcrafted seasonal Kimchi! It's deeeelicious! Come try a taste at the market! Bundle up and stop by our final outdoor markets of the season through the end of October: Chapman's in Fairlee on Friday's October 23rd & 30th, 3-5:30pm. Norwich Farmers' Market on Saturday's October 24th & 31st, 9-1pm. In November we move indoors for the Norwich Winter Market in Tracy Hall. October is an amazing time to eat local seasonal foods; we have a wide selection of tasty roots, winter squash varieties, plenty of fresh greens and herbs, brussel sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, potatoes, leeks, ground cherries, tomatillos, and hot peppers all available at our markets. Plus where else can you get local ginger, sauerkraut, kimchi, and fresh eggs?
We hope to see you at the market! Delicata is one of our favorite early season winter squash varieties because the skins are tender and edible. It's easy to slice and roast in the oven and it has an incredible sweet flavor. In the early fall, we also love to roast Spaghetti Squash and then serve it with chopped fresh tomatoes, garlic, olive oil, and fresh herbs. We wait for a few weeks to start selling our longer storing varieties like Butternut, Acorn, Red Kuri, and Grey Kubocha to give them time to cure. This sweetens and improves their flavor. Lisa and Eva use hook tools to cut vines off the sweet potato plants in preparation for harvest. Next steps are to undercut the bed and dig the sweet potatoes out by hand. Last week we harvested about 5,000 lbs of beautiful sweet potatoes, our best yield ever! They cure at 80 degrees for about a week to improve flavor and heal the skins. You'll soon start seeing them at market and in your CSA shares! Everyone was bundled up to head out for harvest early on Monday morning, but our salad greens don't mind the cold. Lettuce mix, arugula, baby kale, and spinach are at their best in the fall when there's less weed and insect pressure and chillier temperatures make for outstanding flavor and quality. One of the great things about leeks is they hold in the field late into the fall and can even survive below freezing temperatures! We harvested about 300lbs for our CSA shares and markets last week and still have plenty in the field for later this fall. We hill the soil around the base of the plants several times throughout the summer to grow long white blanched stems on our leeks. This week it's easy to support "Share the Harvest", a program sponsored by NOFA-VT to offer reduced price CSA shares to limited income Vermonters. This Thursday, October 1st, if you make a purchase at any one of these Upper Valley restaurants or stores, a portion of your purchase will go towards NOFA's Farm Share Program and will help your neighbors in need get access to healthy food:
Colatina Exit Bradford The Local Buzz Bradford Skunk Hollow Tavern Hartland Cedar Circle Farm E. Thetford Route 4 Country Store Deli & BBQ White River Junction Upper Valley Food Coop White River Junction Woodstock Farmers Market Store Woodstock We're grateful to NOFA-VT and generous donations from our own members that enabled us to offer 8 new CSA members a reduced price share this season. We're grateful for a beautiful summer that's resulted in a bountiful harvest, and we're on track to keep delivering a diverse supply of our fresh, organic produce through December. We're growing over 140 varieties of organic vegetables to satisfy every taste and introduce new ones. Right now we're harvesting five different varieties of tasty tender beans- green, yellow, burgundy, purple, and Italian broad beans. The market table is full of color and variety with mountains of rainbow root vegetables getting taller, and summer squash, cucumbers, peppers, eggplants and tomatoes are all in great supply. Our fall crops are starting to size up nicely. We've been keeping the irrigation running through hot and dry spells to cool off our fall plantings of broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, beets, lettuces, and herbs. We're jumping with joy about our winter squash this season! Our field looks great, and we've got so many varieties that will be ready to harvest for Fall CSA Shares. If you haven't already, sign up now for a Root 5 Farm Fall CSA Share. It's a great way to eat fresh, eat local, and eat healthy. Visit www.root5farm.com to sign up today! Fall Shares start on September 7th!
Harvesting and packing our CSA shares each week is so rewarding, as our hard work comes together in a delicious array of colors, flavors, and textures. Last week John and Amir harvested beets on a rainy day... ...and Benner seeded the next succession of salad greens with our trusty Planet Junior seeder. We often let cover crops like buckwheat, vetch, and clover go to flower to provide a good source of nectar and pollen for our honey bees all season long. Our potatoes are in full bloom right now and looking amazing. We have swaths of white, yellow, purple, and red flowers for each different variety of potato we grow. Our winter squash is also in bloom and buzzing with bees. Each one of the flowers that are pollinated grows into a squash, one more reason to keep honey bees on the farm. Also noteworthy, Ben dressed as a giant broccoli and walked on stilts in the Fairlee 4th of July Parade with this fine group of stilt walking vegetable people! Fun times!
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December 2022
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