EverGreen Farm

CSA Newsletter #24, October 27

This is your last delivery of produce.  It includes:

• Carrots
• Beets  (pickled beets anyone?)
• Sweet Red Onions

The clear weather held on just long enough (well, for a day or two anyways) to harvest another share of produce for you. Today it's snowing again. 

This picture shows more about the farm than I'd like to admit.  Just look at all those weeds!  This is one area of the farm we never got to weeding very well.  It shows!  Looking at all those dried weed seeds makes me cringe in anticipation for next year.  Off to the right you can see several nicer mounded rows of dark soil with drip tape running along the top.  This is where we planted the Polish Jenn and Spanish Roja garlic.  It is nearly weed free.  And in case you can't tell, those are two rows of carrots we are digging among all those weeds.  It takes about 2 full cart loads of carrots to give each CSA share a big bag of carrots.

Last Friday we took advantage of the dry weather and dug up as much food as possible.  This is our last big load of red onions.  They are still holding on despite the freezing temperatures.  (The yellow onions did not fare as well unfortunately.)  

Last week I asked some end of the year questions.  Here is one more:

• Would you prefer to receive a wider variety of produce in your weekly shares?  Or would you rather have consistent weekly deliveries of the more common/favorite vegetables?

I have received very little feed back from CSA members as of yet.  Please take a few moments to let us know how you feel about the season and the service we provide.

Although we haven't really had time to think about next year just yet, we are currently planning on keeping our 2010 CSA season very similar to this past 2009 season.  (Except that we have plans to make the season even better by fine tuning the way we grow several crops.)  I will be in touch with our current 2009 CSA members by email when we start selling 2010 CSA shares.  Announcements will also be made on this website.  CSA shares are sold on a first come-first serve basis, with current members being notified approximately 2 weeks before the general public.  I will be putting together the details of the 2010 season just after the holiday season slows down.  I'm thinking sign-ups will start mid January.  (I know this later sign-up date will be of concern to some Jackson residents because of the sign-up procedure/deadline/price increase/etc. with the other Jackson CSA.  If you feel you can't wait this long to sign-up for an EverGreen Farm CSA membership, please contact me.)

Have a great week and enjoy your veggies!

The End.

Tara

CSA Newsletter #23, October 20

In your bag of produce this week:

• Carrots
• Red Beets
• Yukon Potatoes, last potatoes of the season
• Sweet Red Onions

As a reminder, NEXT WEEK is our LAST CSA delivery, Tuesday, October 27th. 

Thank you to the many CSA members who responded and took action in regards to Shain's post earlier this week about upcoming food legislation.  Spread the word. 

Last week's CSA delivery was approximately 15 pounds for each share.  That's 645 pounds of food we sent out to you.  I think this week's bag of food weighs even a little more!  Those root crops sure weigh more than a bag of fresh greens and my back is feeling it when I load/unload those coolers. 

Clean up time has started here on the farm.  Even though the bulk of harvesting has been done, we still have plenty of work.  We need to try to bring in all the row covers, pull up drip lines, add dead plants to the compost pile, and deal with the weeds.  Oh, those weeds! 

Shain's priority has been clearing greenhouses and spreading compost in preparation for next year.  He wants to get a head start on getting the greenhouses ready to plant just as soon as possible in the spring.  It's quite common for us to have crops growing out in the greenhouses with several feet of snow just outside the doors. 

As the end of this CSA season gets closer, we welcome your comments, suggestions, and constructive criticism.  We do like to hear back from our CSA members.  I have a few questions in particular, and I'll have a few more next week too.  You can answer by email, or even anonomously by mail if you'd prefer (P. O. Box 153, Smoot, WY  83126).

• Did you experience any problems or confusion with picking up your food? 
• Do you feel the cost of our CSA membership ($550) was fair for the amount of food you received?
• Is there anything about our CSA you feel could be improved?
• What are some of the things you like most about our CSA?

Sorry to keep this so short.  I'm in charge of delivering the shares to Jackson today and I better get going.

Have a great week and enjoy your veggies!

Tara

Tell Congress - One Size Does Not Fit All

CSA Members,

Please take a few minutes of your time to read over the following information regarding The Food Safety Modernzation Act (S. 510) currently under consideration in the Senate.  This might be our final chance to stop legislation that will undermine small farms like ours by mandating regulations only large-scale industrial farms can fulfill.

The Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance, FARFA, is an organization which I have followed for several years and has proven to be a reliable sources of political information regarding issues critical to small family and organic farms.

Both FARFA and The Northeast Organic Farmers Association (the organization responsible for the Farmers Pledge program in which EverGreen Farm participates) sent a letter to each United States Senator with concerns and proposed amendments to Bill S. 510.  This campaign simply asks for an amendment giving small-scale and local food producers an exemption from food safety legislation designed for corporate agriculture.

The continued existence of our farm as it currently operates depends on our response to this legislation.  Please follow FARFA's recommendation and call your senators to express your support for the actions suggested in their letter.

This link will provide you with more detailed information including contact information for our senators and ideas about what to say.

FARFA - "Tell Congress to Protect Local Food!"

Thank you,

Shain Saberon

CSA Newsletter #22, October 13

In your share this week:

• Sweet Red Onions
• French Fillet Beans, last of the season
• Red Norland Potatoes
• Carrots
• Beets

Our list of crops still available to harvest for the CSA is dwindling down each week.  Root crops are holding on strong under ground, and often under snow.  Everything else is basically frozen.

My goal is for our CSA season to last through Tuesday, October 27th, if the weather holds out a little longer.  We've had some really cold harvest days these past few weeks.  Several days have been spent working in the snow or rain.  Freezing temperatures are a challenge.  Mud is to be expected, but if it's muddy that means the sun is shining!  Our farm Workshares have been great!  They keep working hard and doing their best even on days we can't feel our fingers or we are tracking an extra 10 pounds of mud around on our boots.  Shain and I couldn't run this farm without their help.  The good times we have together are an added bonus.

Please excuse the extra dirt you'll be seeing on some of your veggies.  If the weather is too cold, or we get short on time, we won't be washing every thing clean.  This is SO out of my comfort zone, but I'm dealing with it.  I hope you will too.

You'll be getting quite a few onions from now through the end of the season.  The variety of onions we grow are not necessarily a storage onion, but we've received many reports of how long they last.  I've heard of several methods for storing onions:  keeping them in a cooler out in a garage, in a cardboard box in a pantry or basement, or even just the crisper in the refrigerator.  But the most popular method for storing onions seems to be hanging them in pantyhose.  Here are some instructions clipped from a food magazine -

Cut off the legs from a used, clean pair of pantyhose.  Insert one onion down to the bottom, tie a knot after it or use a twisty tie, and repeat over and over again.  Hang the onions high in a cool, dark place with good ventilation.  Use a pair of scissors to snip out the the bottom onion as needed.

I am happy to say the garlic is planted!  The last row was finished tonight.  What a relief.  Now it's time to start cleaning up the farm and getting the fields and green houses ready for winter. 

I still have some garlic for sale - German Extra Hardy or Spanish Roja.  Please contact me directly if you are interested.

Have a great week and enjoy your veggies!'

Tara

CSA Newsletter #21, October 6

Your share this week:

• Tomatoes, last of the season*
• French Fillet Beans*
• Bell Peppers, last of the season*
• Hungarian Wax Peppers, last of the season*
• Leeks
• Yukon Gold Potatoes
• Red & Yellow Sweet Onions
• Cucumbers, last of the season*

*Several of the vegetables in this week's share were picked last week in preparation for the big freeze that came our way.  I recommend using them quickly.

We took last week off from the CSA with every intention of getting all the potatoes dug up and our garlic planted.  But things didn't go necessarily as planned.

The potato harvest went very well, and was completed in nearly a day thanks to some very motivated (a.k.a. "crazy") workshares. 

Then we moved on to planting the garlic.  The weather was great for a few days and we managed to get all the German Extra Hardy garlic planted.  6 rows!  Then the weather turned cold and wet quite quickly.  So we switched gears and focused our efforts on picking everything we possibly could out of the greenhouses just in case the temperatures ended up dropping as low as predicted.  17 degrees at the end of September?  That's way too early for this farm girl!

Most of our greenhouses are not insulated well enough to protect plants dropping to the low 20s.  Still we'll try to pull plants through with row covers.  Sometimes the cold isn't as bad as the predictions and plants are OK, but when the forecast is for temperatures to drop into the teens, we'll that's an entirely different thing.  And that's what we experienced this week.

 

One day we picked you another large share of French Fillet Beans.  Then the next it started snowing and we picked every single cucumber left on the plants, every bell pepper, every Hungarian wax pepper, and every tomato that was in the range from orange to red.  Just in case.  And most of those days' work are what you are getting in your shares this week.

Unfortunately the garlic planting didn't get finished.  And still isn't done as of today.  But the weather is supposed to stay dry for a few days and that is the next priority.

It was a real shame this cold had to come so early this year.  The cucumber plants were really starting to produce.  The peppers were starting to come on heavy too.  Maybe we can get them started a little earlier next year for a longer harvest.  It's always a balancing act - start plants too early and they could die (and you have to start over again, which we've had to do before) or start plants too late and they don't have a long enough season to produce to their potential.  Shain keeps records, but every year is different.  Can't control the weather, or the plants...

While I'm on the subject, let me give you an update on a few more crops you haven't seen yet, or been getting as much as you'd like:

-The cauliflower and broccoli plants were a failure this year.  Their growth was stunted quite considerably.  Some of them never growing over a foot.  Very sad.

-About 1/4 of our leeks went to seed this year.  Instead of forming a nice tender edible plant, they grew a thick fibrous stalk.  We have never had this problem before and are stumped at the cause.  Something for Shain to research this winter.

-We've done poorly on getting you many beets this year.  This is mostly due to the fact that there were so many crops ready to harvest in season that we'd keep putting off the beets until later because they hold well in the ground.  Now it's nearly the end of the season and we'll be giving you as many beets as possible.

Even with all the frustration with some crops not growing, or being as plentiful, we still feel like it has been a great year for growing.  Just different from last year.  Some crops do well one year and we think we have it "figured out" and the next year things just aren't the same.  We hope you have enjoyed this season overall.  As this season draws to an end (don't worry, NOT YET!), we ask you to contemplate your EverGreen Farm CSA experience.  We do want to hear from our members.  I'll be asking a few specific questions in the next few weeks, but any input you have is welcome.

Have a great week and enjoy your veggies!

Tara