Hello CSA Members!,
It’s hard to believe it’s farm season again! Seems like we went from a mild tail end of winter straight into summer. Warm days and dry as a bone out there….unfortunately, the nights have been on the cold side (26 degrees at the farm last night). After many discussions this week, Rebecca and I have decided to start the CSA share the week of May 18th (rather than the 12th, as previously suggested), and here’s why. The first week of vegetables are ready right now, but the second week of vegetables doesn’t look like they would be ready in time if we started this week. But more importantly, we are not ready. Once CSA starts, much of our daily time is spent harvesting and preparing vegetables for distribution, and we lose out on field time. Being planting season, we still need to get more crops in the ground before we tackle harvest, and we also need to get the processing barn properly cleaned up and sanitized. The 18th is a more typical start date for us, and losing the week was going to put too much strain on us. At this point, there are four of us on the farm, but we will be up to full strength (6 in total) sometime this week. Just so you don’t get the idea that we’re a bunch of slackers who can’t get a field planted, I’ll run down what happened in the past week. In addition to cultivating the fields (13 acres in total) and shaping all the raised beds, and watering the 4 high tunnels and 9 hoop houses, we managed to plant 19,000 onions, 600 asparagus crowns, 1000 strawberry plants, 1800 broccoli, kale and cabbage plants, and 1500 row feet of baby bok choi and Napa cabbage. One more week like that, and we’ll be ready for CSA!
Late evening tillage session in the new field
A farm is like a chain (actually, more like a ball and chain), it is only as strong as it’s weakest link. As we have built our farm, we’ve always tried to use scale-appropriate technology, and lately the weakest link had become transplanting crops out into the field. So this year we bought a water-wheel transplanter. In the past, we would crawl along the furrow on our hands and knees digging holes and planting plants, and would then have to lug multiple hoses from the nearest water source to water in the plants before they wilted….very time consuming. With the transplanter, two wheels punch holes in the ground at predetermined spacing, and fill those holes with water. The two people sitting behind this wheel then stick the plant into the pre-made, pre-watered hole and they are done. It takes about 5 minutes to plant a 180 foot bed in this manner (including setup time), whereas it would take over an hour the old way. This little beauty really changes planting season for us. Unfortunately, we only have it set up for certain plants, so those 19,000 onions….yeah, they were done the old way.
The new water wheel transplanter
We apologize if the communication has been sparse up to this point, but our entire focus has been out in the fields trying to make sure we are all set to have another spectacular CSA season. Thanks for bearing with us. At this point, the start date is definite. On Monday the 18th, we will send out emails via the blog as well as member assembler to fill you in on all the details regarding pickup locations, pickup times, etc. So, depending on which pickup location you have chosen, you will pickup receive your share either that Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, or Saturday. If you have any questions regarding your account, you can go to our website twobearfarm.com and on the left hand side click member login. This will take you into your account, where you can check your balance, make changes to your delivery location, and schedule vacation holds among other options. And if you are sharing a CSA with anyone and they are not receiving these emails, please either add them in member assembler, or have them go to our website and subscribe to our newsletter (upper right hand side of home page).
We’re looking forward to seeing all of you again, and meeting you new members. Enjoy the beautiful weather, and we’ll see you in a week.
The Two Bear Farm Crew
….Todd, Rebecca, Dane, and Zac
