Hello CSA members and friends of the farm,

Sorry if we have kept you in suspense, but it’s been a wild spring here at the farm!  If you recall, we finished last season with 4.5 inches of rain in October, followed up with the biggest winter in the past 20 year.  And this year we are running at 228% of average precipitation as of the end of April.  What does all that mean?  It’s wet!  By far the wettest spring we have ever had in our 10 years of farming.  Oh, did I mention, this year marks our 10th year farming anniversary!

So aside from the farm providing excellent duck habitat this spring, what does all this moisture mean?  Well, it’s a tale of two farms.   All of our greenhouse, high tunnel and hoop house covered production is dry and on schedule.  But with the outdoor fields, we have yet to be able to get our tractor and implements out there.  So we’ve reverted to doing things the old and slow way….by hand.  In the muck.  The new farm crew has really embraced the task, and have gone above and beyond to try to keep farm production on schedule.  Speaking of, here is the motley crew for the 2017 season:

Muckfest 2017

The sunshine last week really started to dry things out, and this upcoming week looks like more of the same, so hopefully we have turned the corner.  Based on the current rate of growth of all the vegetables in the high tunnels, we are predicting a CSA start date of either May 15th or May 22nd.  I’m thinking it’s going to be May 15th, but we really can’t tell until the last minute if everything will be ready in the quantities we need.

I know, not the level of certainty you were hoping for!  Welcome to farming 🙂  Basically, let’s plan on the week of the 15th for now, and we will send you another email update by the end of this week with the final start date.

For those of you who are new to the CSA, we will explain the entire pick-up process in our follow up email.   We will also send out a weekly email/blogpost just like this one, that contains the items you’ll be receiving each week, some news and photos from the farm, and some helpful recipes.  This email/blogpost is your link to the farm, and it is important that you read the weekly email before your scheduled pickup day in case there are any changes to anything.  The emails will be automatically sent to the email address that you entered into your CSA signup account, so if you would like it to go elsewhere, please go online and update your account info.

Well, that’s the news from the swamp for this week.  Again, we apologize for the delayed communication.  We’re looking forward to another great season of fresh organic vegetables, and we appreciate you joining us on the journey this year.  Onward!

 

Todd and the Two Bear Farm Team