Small Family CSA Farm

February 10th, 2010

To all of the slumbering CSA-ers, localvores and seasonal food connoisseurs.  The days are getting longer, the chickens are laying more eggs and the itch in my boots is starting to return.  My calendar, my plans and my intuition are telling me that it's almost time to git farmin' a-gin. Your small family farmers have recharged their batteries.  The buildings on the farm are all straightened up, some renovation projects are under way, and all of the equipment is greased, repaired, and ready for another season of heavy use.

Here on the farm we're getting ready for our best season ever.  We have a fancy new website that we're pretty excited about.  It is now possible to sign-up for CSA shares online using your paypal account.  This is huge!  As farmers, so much more familiar with the world of physical matter and tangible objects such as steel, soil and plants, it's truly amazing to watch a website be created out in the ether and light world of computers.  Check out our Forum, leave comments, ask questions, or talk about our veggies and share options.

Depending on where you live, where you work, or who you're insured by, you may also be eligible for a rebate of $100-$200 on the cost of  your CSA share!  This is really exciting to see so many insurance companies offering rebates to their customers and partnering with CSA farmers.  In our winter months we are spending time creating and strengthening existing CSA coalitions and contacting other potential insurance companies that may be interested in offering rebates to their customers in the future.  This alone is impacting the world of CSA memberships in a really big way.  It's exciting to see so many more people interested in buying local foods and signing up for CSA memberships.  A $100 rebate is always a nice incentive!  Check out the MACSAC website that explains this a bit further.

We have made the very difficult and large decision to also market our produce to Madison, Wisconsin next year.  We're hoping this will help us meet our membership goals for next year a little more easily and quicker than we have in the last couple years.  We have also decided to switch our delivery dates to Wednesday next year.  From reviewing so many survey forms, it seemed like a popular request to have the produce delivered mid-week rather than at the end of the week when so many people have plans to eat out, travel out of town or are simply not available at 5pm on a Friday afternoon.  We hoped this will help make it more convenient for you to pick up and use up your veggies.

You may have also noticed that we will be a 'Certified Organic' farm this year.  We are taking full advantage of using those words and plastering them all over our website as we are paying good money to use those words.  We're not sure how much it means to all of you, who know very well our farming practices and that we have been growing delicious organic veggies for years.  But the truth is, so many people come to trust the symbol 'USDA Certified Organic' more than they care to get to know a farmer and their food themselves.  A swirl of convenience.  We made our decision to get 'certified' very slowly and took a good long time to come to where we are about it now.  But we're happy with our decision now and we know that we made it for the right reasons.

Be sure to take advantage of our Early Bird Discount that is available through March 1st!  You can receive $20 off the cost of the share.  This is a big savings, and it's only good through March 1st!

October Sixteenth

Well, what a week to end the season?  If you came out to look at the gardens after the last week of hard-hitting frosts, or should I say freezes, you would agree with me that it’s time to call it a season.  Last week, Sunday morning, I walked around the garden to see weeping kale, chard, beet, broccoli and lettuce plants.  The water-filled cell walls in the spines on the leaves of these plants burst when the temperatures dip down into the low twenties.  We could have handled temperatures in the thirties for another month or so, but when they get that low, there just isn’t much a farmer can do but start getting ready for winter  a bit earlier.

As the season ends in such a harsh and blunt way, I seem not to care about much else other than the CSA members and how the experience was for all of you.  I hope that in a month or so, when we all realize that the boxes really are going to stop coming and the vegetables really are gone, that in reflection at least, we remember the season as a good one and as a wholesome experience.  I hope that I was able to do my job and go beyond by educating my members about what truly fresh, local and organic food means on the fundamental level.  We are a mutually beneficial system.  You provide financial support to us, and we provide the highest quality food that we know how to grow to you.

October Nineth

I’m curious to know how this went for you.  What was it like to be a CSA member of our farm this year.  Did you learn to look forward to the boxes each week or come to dread ‘more vegetables’?  I know that CSA is not for everyone out there, but I certainly think it’s a worthy experience to put yourself thru.  It’s a challenge that most city dwellers, if not encircled by vegetable gardeners, may never know.

If you’re not a gardener yourself, surrounded by gardeners or a member of a CSA farm, you simply do not know what it’s like to be overwhelmed by beautiful, raw food.  What a noble challenge it is it try and pack as many vegetables onto a dinner plate as you possibly can.  When there are people starving in countries all around us, and in this country, consider yourself blessed to be a CSA member.  Think of yourself blessed to have too much food and friends and family to share the burden with.  I myself, take for granted how truly rich I am.  Now, I would really be rich if I had a ‘personal preserver’, or someone to spend their every day finding ways to freeze, can or dehydrate as much of this bounty as possible and carry it into the winter months ahead of us.

October Second

I wonder where the month of September went in the same way that I wonder where year s21-25 of my life went.  This is how easily time slips away from me.  I woke up one morning and I don’t know when it got cold outside or when the season changed, or when I became 26 years old.  At this rate, I’ll be 62 before I know it.  I guess I already have ‘one leg in the coffin’, as my grandpa used to say.   How do I slow this down?

Farming is terrible for this.  I became a farmer because I wanted to become closer to the essence of life and become part of what makes a healthy life.  Clean air, water and food.  An honest hard-days work and a supportive family to share a meal with me.  I have so many wonderful people and elements all around me, yet it sometimes becomes easy to forget all about how good I have it, while my nose is to the grindstone.  My American society rewards hard workers and tends to look past those who travel at a slower pace and take naps in the park.  I sometimes wish I could take naps in the garden and go for bike rides before dusk.  I wish I could figure out a way to surpass my neurotic personality and relax a little, is really what I’m saying, before I wake up and Spring is here all over again.