August Third Do worms eat your garbage? Do chickens? Do pigs? Do your dogs or your cats? Where do your beet tops and onion roots and cabbage centers and basil stems all go? Is it called ‘garbage’ in your home? We’re a little uuber-weird about recycling on the farm. Our “garbage” falls under at least […]
July Twenty-Seventh Because I know that only on very rare occasions will he read the newsletter, I’ll go ahead and spotlight my husband, Adam. I’ll have to admit that he’s turning into a full-fledged, totally obsessed, genuine farmer. We like to joke about how when we met he couldn’t tell the difference between a cucumber […]
July Twentieth Ode to the Worker Share On this farm we started a worker share program a couple years ago that started out quite loose and without structure. “Worker Shares” were invited to come to the farm whenever they could make it out in an effort to work 3 hours a week in exchange for […]
July Thirteenth The pilgrimage has begun. I’m something of a spoiled ‘northerner’ and temperatures above 80 tend to bring a new challenge to the harvest, planting and weeding routines on the farm that are normally enjoyable, smooth and comfortable jobs to manage. It feels like we haven’t had a summer with this consistency in warmth for […]
Week 5, July Sixth Greens, Greens the magical food! If there is one thing that I hope you can take away from this entire experience from joining a CSA farm, I hope it is that you learn to eat more green food. I’m not really just talking about a side salad with dinner, or even […]
June Twenty-Nineth The spirits of the farm have lifted this week. The clouds cleared on Saturday morning and it was as though heaven shone down on us. We were so happy to see the sun returning to kiss the garden good morning. All that rain and all this sunshine is making everything take off very […]
June Twenty First The weather on the farm this week has your farmers on a bit of a nervous and cautious alert. While it might be customary for us to check weather.com and weather.gov, one followed immediately after the other, once a day or every-other day during a fair weather sprint, we’re back to […]
June Fifteenth The second week of harvesting vegetables on the farm felt like riding a bike down a smooth paved road on a beautiful sunny day in the 70’s. A very smooth start we are off to indeed. This season has felt very methodical and well planned out in comparison to all of our […]
February Twenty-First, 2011 Winter time is healing for farmers. It is a time of rest and relaxation and for a farmer’s energy to be less focused on their crops, harvest and delivery schedules and to become more focused on their own personal health and their family connections. At high tide, in the midst of an […]
October Thirteenth In the relatively few years that I have been farming, I have never seen a fall quite like this one. The last two weeks of the CSA season are usually quite cool where we are harvesting with stocking caps, gloves, long johns under our pants and tall muck boots with two layers of […]
October Sixth The frosts came this week, and they came again, and again. Saturday, Sunday andMonday night we woke the following mornings to a frost-covered ridge-top. An impressive wave that we did not really expect. The good news is that we had many of our tender plants that cannot handle these temperatures and freezing dew […]
September Twenty-Nineth On the eighteenth week of our CSA season, I see that the energy of the field is focused downward. The plants are dying back down and they are dropping their seeds in one final flush to ensure their species’ survival for the future Spring to come. The leaves on the plants have faded […]
September Twenty-Second In my earlier years of journeyman farming, working on other farms as an intern and apprentice I went through various stages of defining what I thought a sustainable farm would look like. As I spent years traveling north America as something of a ‘migrant worker’, working on one diversified farm after another, I […]
September Fifteenth We’re on the home stretch now with only four more weeks of CSA delivereis. Could you have guessed that there were this many different varieties of produce that can be grown in the Midwest and that can be provided over this length of time? It is truly amazing all of the colorful, delicious […]
September Eigth Balance is the theme of the week for me. As the change of the seasons is felt in more of a drastic way, I am reminded of the balance in my life that seemed to escape me for the annual 2-month pilgrimage that it goes away on during the months of July and […]
September First And the leaves on the trees here at the farm are showing the first signs of changing colors. I watch for this with hopeful anticipation each year. I love the decompression that the farm starts to feel as the seasons slowly turn. The heavy demands of weeding, harvesting and planting all at once […]
August Twenty-Fifth Julie harvesting Tomatoes in the warm, sunny afternoon towards the end of our summer days! Jillian cleaning onions in the greenhouse for this week’s CSA deliveries. A “truck load” of beautiful, colorful heirloom tomatoes! Sooo, What’s in the Box??? Melons!- Most of our members received a […]
August Eighteenth It’s mid August and the tomatoes are here in full force, right on schedule! I have so missed their juicy, ripe flavor. There are few vegetables that I long for in the off season as much as I long for tomatoes. I have a love for them that I cannot compare to many […]
August Eleventh Working in the ha-ha-ha Heat! You’ve got to eat it to save it. Maybe you’ve heard this saying that refers to saving endangered species of plants and animals. It’s true, if we want to preserve genetic diversity, we can actually help by cultivating these plants, raising these animals and spreading awareness about their […]
August Fourth We made it half way! Week 10 and it seems like some of the summer favorites are just starting to roll in. I know that you’re wondering, where is the sweet corn? You’re seeing it on the roadsides, it’s at market, and you see all the field corn alongside the highways forming heads […]