Category Archives: csa

Matt and Martin are two of the folks who have worked to make the farm successful over the past three years. I realized writing this and looking back through photos that I have very few crew photos, I should remedy that this year, we’ve had a lot of great folks work with us in the past few years.

Update 4/11/19 – We’ve had a great initial batch of applications and I’m nearly through the interview process. I expect the positions to all be filled by the end of the month. Again, once the positions are actually filled I’ll take down this post.

We had a great season with a great crew in 2018, but unfortunately for us most of the 2018 crew is headed off to start their own farms so we’re looking for a couple of new crew members for 2019. A document with the job description and application process is linked to here. If you know anyone who is looking for part time farm work (Mondays and/or Thursdays), who has a good work ethic and is good with their hands we’ll be hiring someone for the “full season”, May through October, as well as summer, June through August, and fill in help. I’ll take this post down as soon as we’ve fill the positions, but until then feel free to pass it around.

The seeds for 2019 are all here and I just bought paid for them and all of our potting mix and soil amendments using the money that came in from our first CSA signups of the year! CSA signups are off to a good start but we still have plenty of space for more members so check out the website if you’re interested in tasting the roots, stems, leaves, flowers, and fruits of these seeds!

We just put up the sign up information for the 2019 season over on the CSA page!

It took us a little longer than we hoped to get confirmation that we’d be able to grow on the same site again in 2019, but it looks like we’re good to go and we’ve been working hard on updating our planting plan for the coming year.

There are a few minor changes in the works so I’ll list some of those here:

The share price has changed a bit, and is actually lower for the full season. We base our prices loosely on the retail equivalent of our projection. Despite the season being one week longer this year due to Thanksgiving being one week later, changes in the crop mix are actually bringing the price down slightly.

We’re planning on giving out all of the potatoes with the summer share this year. We’ve been having good potato crops, but we don’t really have space to grow a lot of potatoes or space to store them so we’ll give them all out when we harvest them in the summer. As a CSA member you can decide if you want to store them yourself, or eat them right away (I’m still enjoying the ones I saved for myself in my refrigerator!)

There won’t be any garlic or garlic scapes this year. We’ve had serious trouble with rust (a fungal disease) for a number of years and for the past two years we’ve grown garlic off site which was a real pain. Last fall we decided to give ourselves a break, we skipped planting it and just gave out our saved seed stock to the CSA. We’ll miss the scapes especially – but you should still be able to find good garlic and scapes at the farmers market!

We’re changing our winter squash spacing. Last year’s experiment in tighter spacing with the corn and beans was a real bust and yields were very low, the squash just got buried. Our fingers are crossed for a much better winter squash year in 2019.

As we do every year we’ll be experimenting with a few new varieties and continuing to grow a lot of the same ones that have been working well for us. Notably, there are a few new sweet peppers I’m excited to try and we’ll be experimenting with some new lettuces.

We’ll be continuing with the pick your own section and the little farm stand. For the farm stand this year our plan is to sell any surplus at a deep discount to CSA members and also make the stand available to folks who aren’t CSA members at more normal prices. We’re always looking for ways to get more of the vegetables into the mouths of eaters, and to cover our costs at the same time.

We had enough income at the end of last year to invest in a few tool upgrades that we’re hoping will improve our yields. One of those upgrades is a fancy new seeder that should improve our yields on crops like salad turnips and winter radishes.

That’s most of it. The weather will determine many of the changes. Every season is different but we’re hoping for another good one!

The final CSA week of 2018 and it got too dark for me to take a photo of the share before it was all harvested. Instead, I’m posting a photo of one of the giant parsnips we harvested today, and a Matina tomato I gleaned from the hoop house for my lunch.

Here’s the list of what was in the share. Thursday should be very similar, although we may have a different bunching green and I’ll try to take a photo then.

Lacinato Rainbow Kale, Red Dragon mustard, Bora King radishes, Gilfeather turnips, Hablange parsnips, Einfache Schnitt 3 parsley, Napoli Carrots, Blue Solaize leeks.

It was a cold one out there today, but we’ve gotten very lucky with the weather this fall and it was nice to harvest on a dry, sunny day. Looks like we might get lucky again on Thursday for the final harvest of the year.

Next week is the final week of the 2018 CSA season and right now it’s looking like the weather will be kind to us for another week.

Here’s what I think will be in the share, but of course we never know what kind of shape things are in until we actually harvest them – especially the roots which hide underground:

Kale, red mustard, Gilfeather turnips, winter radishes, parsnips, carrots, leeks and parsley.

A few notes on some of items. The Gilfeather turnips are actually a very sweet variety of rutabaga. Germination on that crop wasn’t great so we won’t have many roots but I’m keeping my hopes up that we’ll have enough and they should be bigger. The parsnips are in this same low germination, but potentially large size camp. The leaves are at least looking really good, we’ll see what we get when we dig the roots. Talking to my farming friend Laura Masterson (47th Avenue Farm) she was telling me that she thinks of parsley more like a green than an herb and I think that’s a good approach – not something that needs to be used in small quantities only, a green that’s great cooked or fresh, and that works well with other vegetables and especially generous quantities of olive oil.

At the farm stand we should have a few remaining winter squash, all good to eat right now. If requested, we might harvest the few remaining escarole and sugarloaf as well and make those available.

We may have gotten too cold, but keep your eyes open and come a little early – it’s possible there are still tomatoes and sweet and hot peppers hiding in the field that will be available for gleaning. Definitely stock up on the fresh herbs – oregano, thyme, sage, and Mexican tarragon.

A little smaller share today as we approach the end of the fall season (only one more week of harvests after this week). Big heads of Treviso red radicchio with beautiful, sweet, crunchy white ribs, and giant celeriac are the centerpieces of the share this week. We left some of the tops on the celeriac because it’s looking good and tasting sweet and while it’s not as tender as stalk celery it’s still good for cooking and flavoring dishes.

There’s a bunch of Napoli carrots, and they just keep getting sweeter every week. The chard is giving us one last harvest and we found some nice looking arugula in the field too.

Rounding out the share is a small quantity of storage onions and shallots. After giving out most of them earlier in the year we found a small stash, big enough to give one last sample.

If you can make it to the farm with a little time for gleaning, be sure to walk through the tomatoes and sweet peppers. It’s been warm enough that they’re still producing some decent fruit. If you’re missing those foods do take advantage. The herbs are also all in good shape still so help yourselves to those too.

Follow the link to YouTube https://youtu.be/ixsjGswxyvM to see what the farm looks like these days.