At the Farm: This Week in Pictures

Farm Update

We brought some of the first tomatoes of the year to the drop-off
this week, and there are more to come!

Hi everyone!  It has been a great week at the farm!  Very seldom do we ever get a week where we feel like we got most of what we needed to done, and this was one of those rare weeks.  It was just an enjoyable week to work outside too. (Except for harvesting potatoes in the rain on Friday.  Major props to Mary, Therese, and Fred who braved the cold rain to get the first round of potatoes out of the ground!)  As always, there are so many tasks that need to get done at the farm, and this week I remembered to chronicle some of them in pictures.  In other news, our resident grad student, Carson, is conducting a research project about CSA membership.  He's created a research survey for you all to (please please) fill out that will really help him collect data for his project.  We're going to be publishing the link to his survey in next week's newsletter, so be on the lookout for that.  See you this week!

What to Expect in your Share this Week

If you are picking up at one of our regular drop-offs (Alma, Mt. Pleasant, and Midland) this week, here are the options you’ll find at each station!  If you have a half share, you’ll choose one item at each station, and if you have a full share, you’ll choose two.

Carrots or kale
Cherry tomatoes or sweet corn
Broccoli or potatoes
Lettuce or beets
Cabbage, fennel, or 2 zucchini
Herbs, cucumber, or garlic
Onion or slicing tomatoes

And if you’re having your share delivered or picking up in Lansing, Okemos, or the Midand hospital, here are your options.  If you have a half share, choose either share A or share B, and if you have a full share, you get to choose two.

Share A:                               Share B:

Carrots                                 Kale
Sweet corn(4 ears)               Cherry tomatoes
Broccoli                               Potatoes
Lettuce                                 Beets
Cabbage                               2 Zucchini
Cucumber                            Herbs
Tomato                                 Onion                                   

At the Farm:  This Week in Pictures

I always enjoy when news sources run "This Week in Pictures" type articles.  Perhaps it's because a picture is worth a thousand words, or perhaps it's because I just like a visual representation of the big and small things humanity has been up to.  So here are some of the moments I captured this week at the farm, so you can see what a week at the farm looks like.

Monday:  I discovered two volunteer sunflowers next to the
coldframes.  We never actually planted these, but we did plant
some sunflower microgreens earlier in the spring.  So we
suspect that a couple micro sunflowers somehow migrated over
here and took hold, growing to beautiful fruition.

Monday:  Carson moves and sets up some of our drip line
irrigation.  We irrigated pretty heavily during the early part of
the week, and moving all of the irrigation lines around is a
pretty time-consuming process.

Monday:  Jewel and Ben harvest green beans for the CSA
drop-off.

Thursday:  Ben shows off the unusual cherry tomato he found
wile harvesting.  This one has the appearance of a tiny pumpkin.

Wednesday:  Fred left the tractor at the end of a section he was
undercutting to make the carrot harvest easier.  Carrots can be
really hard to pull out of the ground, but if we go through with
this attachment that loosens up the soil underneath the carrots
first, it makes harvesting a much easier task.

Monday:  Mary weighs out carrots for an order in our makeshift
packing area.  When crops come in from the field, we wash them
in our repurposed restaurant sinks, spin the leafy stuff in our
giant salad spinners (that were clothes washers in a former life),
and bag them up for the CSA and wholesale orders.  We then
put them in crates and move them into our adjacent walk-in cooler.

Tuesday:  I set up the tables before our Mt. Pleasant CSA drop- off.

Monday:  Fred cultivates a lettuce bed to help keep the weeds
down.  The cultvator disturbs the soil in between the rows of
lettuce, pulling up the weeds.  That means that the only hand-
weeding we need to do is right in the rows, where the cultivator
can't reach.

Thursday:  We had a nice surprise visit at our Midland drop-off
from one of our old crew members, Nate.  He came by to
pick up his parents' share while he's in town, and we got to chat
with him for a while.  It was so nice to see him!

Thursday:  Emily shows off an oddly-shaped zucchini she found.
Usually when we find vegetables that don't look normal, we set
them aside and take them home to eat.

Friday:  Mary harvests potatoes in the rain.  After Fred drove
through the potato bed with our old potato digger (which picks
up dirt and potatoes alike and deposits the potatoes on top of
the soil, making the harvest a lot easier), Mary and Therese
would go along and collect all of the potatoes into crates.