Full Share: Braising mix, Salad mix, onions, beets, collards, bok choi, and head lettuce
Half Share: Everything in smaller quantities, no salad mix
Hello CSA members!
Holy El Nino. Word on the street is that the locals are really enjoying this weather. People are already swimming in the lakes and rivers, the trails are dry, and the crowds have not yet arrived. Yet, at the same time, the weather seems rather anomalous to me. May and June are supposed to be our rainy season, and I remember a spring only a few years ago where is was cloudy and cool all the way up until July 4th weekend. This year, I feel like we’ve already had a full summer, and summer hasn’t even started yet. It’s certainly shaping up to be the year of irrigation. Most years a warm early spring still does not preclude the late frost, and caution is the name of the game. But this spring, we haven’t even come close. Since early May, I don’t think we’ve had a single night with lows in the 30’s, which is really unheard of. And as a result, we’ve been trying to push our planting schedules to get the warm weather crops in the ground to take advantage of the growing conditions. Rebecca really loves endurance events like this. And I have yet to convince her that buying a transplanter that makes planting 5 times quicker does not yield a benefit if you plant 5 times as many rows. After a 14 hour shift on Sunday, I’m beginning to rethink my cost-benefit analysis.
While the rush to get crops in the ground early may give us a bit of a jump on maturity dates, farms in general are not very nimble, and change direction more like a disabled cruise ship than a sports car. Every vegetable you receive in your share takes a minimum of 4 weeks to grow, most take 8 weeks, and and some can take more than a 100 days to reach maturity after being planted in the field. Talk about lag time! Which is to say, even though the weather feels like mid-summer, the vegetables that are mature are still very much the spring vegetables.
This weeks’ share brings the much beloved braising mix, which is blend of baby greens great for saute’s and stir fries. And as an experiment this year, we decided to plant a high tunnel with carrots and beets back in March while there was still snow on the ground, just to see what would happen. Turns out it worked. This week you will be receiving beets with beautiful greens, which I highly recommend cooking with a spicy peanut sauce (the tops that is). And next week, you will be getting carrots….a full month and a half earlier than is typical!
Oh, and speaking of nimble, we have been receiving inquiries from CSA members regarding vacation holds. This is a tricky subject. You know we love you, and want to provide you with good customer service. However, the lack of nimbleness of a farm does not accommodate vacations very well. We plan our production to provide 200 CSA shares each week. and the food you receive in one week was often planted months prior. If too many people take vacation on a given week, we have a glut of vegetables. Conversely, when they return and want to “double up” on a share” we often don’t have enough. We looked into how other CSA’s around the country handle this issue. Some take a hard line, and say you get one share each week for 21 weeks, no exceptions. Other allow a one or two weeks of vacation hold, where the CSA member can skip a share and then get a double share at a later date. We have decided to go with the option of one week of vacation hold, to help accommodate you without over complicating things on our end. Ideally, if you are going out of town for more than a week, you can gift your share to family, friends, or neighbors who can pick up your share and enjoy it themselves. Just think of the brownie points you’ll earn!
Good luck beating the heat, and we’ll see you at CSA distribution! P.S. : Rebecca promises to take a picture of the share tomorrow and post it!
Still going….the planting continues, but the end is in sight!
