I can't stop with the Anne Brown calf photos. This week, I give you Barbara, our oldest dairy cow (born in 2014) and her new baby Jersey heifer, Babs, who will join the milking string in about two years if all goes according to plan. Here, we put a lot of value on the genetics that work well in our system. With that in mind, we don't get too fancy in managing pedigrees. We just breed on the animals that have done the best for us at Essex Farm. Barbara is a perfect example. She has thrived here for twelve years -- which means she resisted all the common infections that cause chronic mastitis, and kept a healthy weight on grass alone, while producing a lot of milk; she got pregnant every year, and calved successfully every year. Because she's such a good match for our systems, getting another new heifer from Barbara is a cause for celebration. Babs will be this year's golden child of the calf nursery. Before we turn to this week's share, check out Barbara's udder. That bag has seen some action, I tell you, and it is currently giving a ridiculous amount of milk. 

Another week, another cute cow photo from Anne Brown. This little guy got lost when the herd moved to a new pasture far away, and spent what must have been a scary couple of nights alone in the big bad world. Their joyful reunion was a bright spot in the week. We are about halfway through calving season now, completely finished with lambing, and have officially started farrowing as of yesterday, with the first sow, Hegel, delivering a litter of five. With piglets, we really want a littler of 12, and are happy with 10. Five? Well, we had hoped for a more expansive synthesis, but history has taken a different course. All our pig mamas are first timers this year, so we give them a little grace. 

The accelerator is pressed to the floorboards here as we approach the month of June. This is true every year, but especially on a spring like this, which started off slowly, and has seen plenty of rain. June is the everything bagel of the year on a diversified farm like ours.

So, what’s a whole-diet CSA, you ask? Join us at Essex Farm for an Open Farm & Tour Day and find out! Saturday May 16th, 11AM - 1PM.

We’re hosting picnic dinners at our respective farms to showcase the amazing food that we grow in our little corner of the world.

Strawberries are starting to boom, my friends. So far, you've been picking exactly as fast as they have been ripening.

My favorite meal this week was this delicious-spiced lamb dish with chickpeas, roasted carrots and herbs, slathered in a simple garlic yogurt sauce, on a fresh flatbread.

Mark is moving Snack Shack to the farmhouse kitchen this afternoon. Please come over to the house, have a bite to eat, and debrief your week of cooking with us. I can hear him chopping away down there, whistling along to his music (today it's Billy Joel).

This is the sort of dish that feels nourishing and healthy enough to eat for breakfast without guilt, but also delicious enough to serve at the end of a dinner alongside some extra maple syrup and whipped cream.

This recipe from Mark was a reboot of a thick curried squash soup from the day before, and a great example of how you can cook a large amount of something, and work it into different dishes all week without getting bored.

June! The leaves and flowers hinge and arc to track the sun. We orient ourselves to the sun in June too, zipping from field to field and task to task, capturing as much energy as we can during these golden weeks of long days.

Welcome welcome to this new year. The low last night – ten degrees – felt like actual winter instead of the creepy faux-cold we’ve had thus far.

We hosted fifty middle schoolers from the Lake Champlain Waldorf School in Vermont last Thursday. They hiked from the ferry to the farm via the Essex Gateway CATs trail in the humid heat.