EverGreen Farm

CSA Newsletter, Week 22

Week 22

In your share this week:

• Swiss Chard
• Leeks
• Carrots
• Potatoes
• Onions - several small ones, we picked everything barely big enough to harvest
• Tomatoes
• Cabbages - not fully formed, I picked anything that felt was big enough to eat.  Loose leaves can sbe used as wraps, "bowls", steamed, or chopped.
• Beets - a variety of all we grew this year:  golden, red, and even some white beets that grew as a surprise in with the reds.

This is our last CSA delivery for the year.  Thanks for supporting us!  And a very, VERY big thanks to our Workshare crew for their dedication and help since we started all of this back in the early spring months. 

I am personally very proud of the 22 weeks of foods we grew to feed so many families this year!  Along with some crops failures (onions, cabbages, tomatoes, basil, and maybe some others I'm not remembering), some crops grew very well for us this year (zucchini, crooked neck squash, carrots, dill, and many others).  Disappointment in a few items is quickly overshadowed by the abundance we have been able to harvest each week from our fields and greenhouses.  We hope you can appreciate all the hard work and effort that has gone into this special Community Supported Agriculture project we pulled off this season.

Now we focus on farm clean up.  We are organizing a big work day this Saturday, start time 8 am.  We plan to get at least one of our greenhouses taken down for the winter.  There's a LOT to do and we invite our members to come lend a helping hand.  Let me know.

It's been a very busy week and my need to be on time for today's deliveries is interfering with me saying as much as I'd like about our plans for next year.  To be very honest and brief, we are really struggling with making some big decisions about the future of running our farm.  Several factors are taking a toll on our personal lives and ability to operate an organic vegetable farm.  I will explain in more detail in a later post, but I feel I should be as fair as possible to our members and give you the heads up that we will be making some very big changes.  We arent' even sure there will be a CSA next year.  For the past several years, Shain's teaching position has required more of his time and attention.  He is at the point of bringing home extra work on school nights and weekends.  Because of all this, he can no longer contribute to farm work during the school year.  That leaves me and the Workshares to pull off an amazing amount of hands-on labor.  We have also experienced a steady decline in the interest and availability of people who can commit to being a Workshare every week at our rural location.  Even CSA members aren't volunteering like they did in years past.  This farm is a LOT of work.  Hiring someone is out of the question due to costs.  This is our 15th year of operating EverGreen farm as a traditional CSA. It appears as though this model of operation is not going to serve us very well for the future.  As a friend of mine put it, "Are you able to work for free so other people can have good food to eat?"  While this is a noble cause indeed, it's not practical and not serving our family well.  We have a lot to think about.  And as another friend of mine couseled "Don't look back with regrets.  You have so much to be proud of!"

I'll be in touch.

Thanks for your support.  We wish you the best this winter.

Have a great week and ENJOY your veggies!

Tara

CSA Newsletter, Week 21

Week 21

In your share this week:

• Carrots
• Italian Parsley
• Leeks
• Dino Kale
• Spinach
• Garlic - a little "ugly" or small, the last of what we culled out as not good enough to plant
• Broccoli - not enough for everyone so it goes to those who did NOT get the melons last week (I'm trying to be "fair")
• Dill
• Tomatoes - mostly green, but they should ripen on your counter top
• Red Norland Potatoes

NEXT WEEK, October 25th, will be out last CSA delivery of the season.  As you can see from the photo above, despite it freezing every night, we are still able to harvest a good amount of produce.  This is due to our diligence (or stubbornness?) with row covers and greenhouse management each morning and night.  We have harvested heavy from the rows of crops you are getting this week, so most of these items are the last pick of the season.  However, we have a few items remaining and some nice weather ahead.  We will end our season with all the foods that have not died off yet, at the end of October, grown in the mountains of Star Valley, Wyoming.  A CSA season of 22 weeks was my goal and I'm very pleased to see it happen.

And now we move into clean up mode.  Greenhouse 6 is already "dead" and about half cleared out.  We have row covers to roll up, metal cages to pull out and put in storage, dead plants to remove, and lots of weeding.  Each greenhouse will get this "treatment" as we prepare for winter.  It's a lot of work and we invite our CSA members to come help.  Clean up projects begin this Saturday, October 21st, 8 am.  (Let me know if you can make it.)

Gleaning - We have little bits and pieces of crops all around the farm that can be gleaned.  Too many to list off.  Not everything is up for grabs quite yet, but it you are willing to pick through what we have, there is quite a bit of food that can still be used.  The only thing I'm asking is that people leave the area cleaner than they found it and that you come when I'm home.  So, check in with me if you are interested.

Have a great week and ENJOY your veggies!

Tara

CSA Newsletter, Week 20

Week 20

In your share this week:

• Onions
• Leeks
• Swiss Chard
• Collard Greens - last of the season
• A small cucumber - last of the season
• Bronze Fennel
• Golden Beets
• Yukon Gold Potatoes
• Dove Melon - going to only some members, I'll have to start rotating this item to various pick up locations, hoping those still green on the vines will continue to ripen.
• Tomatoes* - green tomatoes for everyone, a few red ones going to Afton
• Head Cabbage - this crop did not grow well at all this year.  A few of you will get a medium sized cabbage, most will get small ones, just because it's better than letting them not be used at all.

*It's very unlikely the tomatoes are going to ripen in the next few weeks, and the plants are either already dead or struggling each night that it freezes.  So I've made the decision to start pulling up entire plants and salvage any non-frozen tomatoes that stand a chance of ripening at home on your counter top.  Or, maybe you are one of those people who like fried green tomatoes or pickled/fermented green tomatoes, or any of the other recipes that call for a green tomato.  Now is your time to experiment, or be patient for the green beauties to ripen.

Our great news of the week is that our garlic is planted!  Garlic planting is a big job and has taken us several days to complete in previous years.  It all depends on weather and soil conditions.  In this case, we fretted and worried about the soil ever drying out enough for the ground to be tilled and prepared for planting.  Shain knew he couldn't do the tilling himself this fall so he asked me to schedule a farmer/cowboy we know with a low impact riding tractor and tiller attachment (for small farms like ours) so we could be sure not to miss the first window of opportunity.  In fact, in our anxiety not to be delayed any longer into the fall, we arranged for him to be here maybe a little earlier than he'd like to have come (he wasn't happy about having to hand pick all the mud caked under his tiller blades) but the tilling job was done on Friday and then the GROUND WAS PERFECT FOR GARLIC PLANTING!  So perfect that we were able to get 9 rows planted in just 4 hours on Saturday morning.  This is the quickest and best garlic planting I can remember.  We are so grateful to a wonderful crew of helpers that came to help us!  What a huge relief!

It's hard seeing crops die off now that the nights are getting really cold.  We had a deep freeze Sunday night that took it's toll on some of our most sensitive crops.  Now I look around the farm and take what we can, what's still alive and looking good, and then schedule out the root crops to fill in the gaps of our harvesting through the end of the season.  Our last CSA delivery will be on Wednesday, October 25th.  Even with the late start we got this year, we will have given 22 weeks of great foods for our 2017 season!

Have a great week and ENJOY your veggies!

Tara

CSA Newsletter, Week 19

In your share this week:

• Red Norland Potatoes - please excuse the dirt, trust me - they are so much cleaner than when we originally dug them out of the MUD on Friday and Saturday
• Dove Melons - see last week's newsletter for instructions to determine if they are fully ripe enough to eat
• Tomaotes - just enough for Jackson this week
• Carrots - again, please excuse the dirt and less than perfect bunches.  We were working in a rain storm and that's how things go some days
• Cucumbers
• Leeks - no, not scallions.  The leeks are on the small side this year, that's all the bigger they grew, but they taste just like a big leak you are more accustomed to seeing
• Spinach
• Dino Kale

Not much to show for all the hard work and long days we've put in since last Wednesday.  The last of the potatoes are dug, cleaned up and in our basement storage area.  This was a BIG project.  DIgging took longer because of the wet soil conditions which then created 2 follow up days of workshares helping clean off buckets and buckets full of muddy potatoes instead of harvesting other foods.  But this is behind us now and I'm so very grateful for those who came to help in trying weather conditions.

And the weather continued to challenge us all this week, but mostly just slowing us down on harvest mornings.  I'm SO HAPPY to say that nothing yet has frozen off and completely died.  We continue our daily routine of row covers and heaters in all 7 greenhouses.  Foods in the greenhouses are holding in there.  Foods outside are probably done for the season, unless we get another streak of warm weather.  I'm still holding out hope for that last stretch of Indian Summer we sometimes get in October.  Work with me here Mother Nature!

And this farmer girl even had to take a sick day.  So, there's that too.  Too much stress and a lot of work in the cold outdoors for several days finally got to me.  Self imposed rest days are hard for me because I know how short the season is and how just a little bit more work would make a big difference. 

So, your share is a little less than we'd originally planned, but it's still pretty dang awesome when you consider that other CSA's in the area ended their season the last week of September.  AND we still have a lot of great food to come your way!  When will the season end?  Well, I'm thinking we will try to go at least another 2 or 3 weeks?  We still have garlic to plant and enough cold weather greens and root crops for go for a couple of weeks.  I'll be asking for some help to pull off this off, and maybe even offering up some good bribes.  We are watching the weather closely and will give this our best shot.  MUCH THANKS to our Workshares who are helping us, some even coming to help dressed in snow pants, boots, and multiple layers of clothing!  Really, you should join us!  Even if just to take a selfie to brag to all your friends.

Have a great week and ENJOY this hard worked for share of veggies!

Tara