CSA Newsletter for Week 8: Our Awesome 2018 Farm Crew!

Farm Update

We included some of our lovely sunflowers in the shares last
week, and it was so nice seeing these sunny blooms out on the
tables with all the vegetables!

Hi everyone!  We hope you're all having an awesome weekend so far!  Things are going pretty well at the farm this week.  We got a little more rain on Thursday (nowhere near the big downpour we had at the Midland drop-off, but enough to help keep the upcoming plantings watered!)  This weekend, we'll be putting carrots, lettuce, and various herbs in the ground, and we also completed a really large seeding of lettuce transplants in the greenhouse recently.  We may also be planting the spinach for this fall in the next few days depending on the temperature.  The spinach usually suffers in the height of summer due to the heat, but we've started to see the overwintered spinach start to come back, which is a pretty sure sign that it's time to plant the fall spinach.

We've also seen a proliferation of animals of the small and medium-sized variety lately.  The large animals (primarily deer) are gone now that we have our wonderful deer fence (I'm still not over being excited about that, it's been such a game-changer for us)! But we have been seeing a lot more frogs and toads, garter snakes, and the bane of everyone's tomato-harvesting existence, the humongous spiders who arrive to take over the coldframes each year at this time.  These spiders are seriously huge and terrifying!  All of the aforementioned creatures are mostly harmless, but we've also recently starting fighting a bunch of woodchucks that are eating our veggies.  So far, the battle has mostly consisted of us getting mad and yelling at them, which has (unsurprisingly) been largely ineffective.  The next step is to have a trapper friend of ours come out and set some traps for them around the farm, and we hope to make that happen in the near future so the woodchucks will stop eating all the food.  Every week at the farm is an adventure, and I'm looking forward to seeing what next week will bring!

What to Expect in This Week's Share

Is that another woodchuck?!?  Oh, no.  It's just Ben.
Thank goodness!

If you are picking up at one of our traditional style drop-offs (Alma, Mt. Pleasant, or Midland), here’s what the options will be at the different stations.  If you have a half share, you’ll choose one item at each station, and if you have a full share, you choose two items at each station.

• Potatoes
• Cherry tomatoes
• Green/yellow beans or lettuce
• Slicing tomatoes or lettuce
• Zucchini, cucumbers, or microgreens
• Onion, 2 shallots, or kohlrabi
• Kale or basil

If you have a prepacked share (Midland hospital, St. Johns, Lansing, Okemos, or home delivery), here are your options.  If you have a half share, you’ll choose either share A or share B, and if you have a full share, you can choose two of them.

Share A:                               Share B:

Potatoes                                Potatoes
Onion                                   2 Shallots
Zucchini                               Cucumber
Cherry tomatoes                   Cherry tomatoes
Lettuce                                 Slicing tomatoes
Kale                                      Basil
Carrots                                  Green/yellow beans

Our Awesome 2018 Farm Crew!

People often ask us how we're able to grow, maintain, wash, pack, and deliver so much produce each week, and there are two equally important answers:  The first one is that Fred is a logistical genius mastermind.  Seriously, I've been married to the guy for 13 years, and I'm still impressed daily with his ability to figure out the exact most efficient way to fit in all of the moving parts and unforeseen elements that the farm can throw at us.  And the second is that we have an awesome amazing farm crew.

Our crew this year consists of Fred and me, of course, and we also have three full-time and four part-time people who help us get everything done.  Without further ado, here is the roster of awesome folks who help bring food to your table each week!

Mary harvests cherry tomatoes in the coldframes
a few weeks ago.

Mary:  Mary is Fred's youngest sister, and this is the third year she's worked for us.  This girl is seriously wonderful, and we joke that she's pretty much our servant because she works for us at the farm all day and then goes home and helps baby-sit our kids.  So it's only a slight exaggeration to say that we couldn't live without her.  At the farm, her favorite tasks are harvesting blueberries and transplanting, and her favorite new skill she learned this year is manoeuvering the pallet jack.  She reports that her favorite memory at the farm this year was the time she and the others were trying to determine if peanut butter should rightly be called jam, because it is made from the mashed up fruit of the plant.  A serious consideration, indeed. :-) In the fall, she'll be leaving the farm to enter her junior year at Spring Arbor University, where she is in the nursing program.

Carson:  This is Carson's second year with us at the farm, and he is seriously great to have around!  He is working on his PhD dissertation in fisheries at CMU, and he pretty much knows everything about wildlife.  He's enthusiastic about even the most daunting farm tasks, stating that he likes pretty much everything at the farm except weeding carrots in the rain, and he's also the only person besides Fred who knows how to drive the tractor.  Carson is also really funny without even meaning to be, because we often think he's making things up when they're actually real things.  I was cracking up reading his response to the little survey I had everyone fill out, so I'm going to quote him directly about his funniest memory of working on the farm:

"I’m an ecologist/biologist type, so I’m regularly noticing and pointing out wildlife that I recognize at the farm. This year I got several strange reactions to my attempts to describe how the haunting, hyena-like sounds we often heard in the back field were coming from the winnowing wings of a pair of snipe – long-billed migratory game birds that look a lot like a woodcock. Thanks to old-timey snipe hunting jokes, I suppose I must have come across as if I was making a joke out of not knowing what the sound was, myself. Fred’s reaction was about the same when I told him that I saw two bobolinks on the farm…"

This is basically what talking to Carson is like all the time.  Enough said. 

Ben:  Ben has also been with us at the farm for two years, and he is actually the younger brother of a much-beloved employee we had years ago.  When we heard that he was old enough to work at the farm, we jumped at the chance to have him out there!  He recently graduated from high school, and we'll likely have him at the farm for the rest of the season even after our other students go back to school.  His favorite job at the farm this year was when he and Fred built out walk-in cooler a few months ago, and he says his funniest moment at the farm was learning that Austin, a fairly hard core ex-marine that worked with us for a few months, is afraid of spiders.  Ben has a perpetually positive attitude even when the days are long and the weather is extreme, and we so appreciate having him at the farm!

Carson, Ben, and Jewel helping plant 50,000 onion plants
just after the thaw in April.

Jewel:  This is also Jewel's second year with us, and she is one of the sweetest people you'll ever meet!  We also jumped at the chance to have her work with us after her crazy brother Keegan worked for us a few years ago, and she has been awesome!  Her most useful new skill she's learned this year is how to harvest strawberries, and she says her favorite thing to do at the farm is to find dumb questions to ask Carson.  In the fall, she'll be starting her freshman year at Montcalm Community College, where she intends to study Digital Arts.  Hopefully, she'll still be able to work with us this fall when her class schedule allows, because she is a total ray of sunshine at the farm!

Daniel:  Daniel is an old family friend, and he has worked with us at the farm for four years now!  He likes doing pretty much everything at the farm, because his prefers being in a state of movement, and keeping busy at the farm definitely allows him to do that!  In the fall, he'll be continuing his education at CMU, where he'll be studying elementary education.  He says that the most fun thing at the farm is that the entire season is like one continued conversation, where they just pick up where they left off talking last time, like they were never even gone.  He also enjoys that our crew can go from talking about weeding to quantum physics in a short period of time, and that it's actually a pretty common occurrence.

Danny:  This is Danny's first year with us, and he is the next in a long line of people who have followed in their siblings' footsteps to work at the farm.  In fact, his sibling is still there, because he is Ben's younger brother.  Danny's favorite thing to do at the farm so far is harvesting blueberries, and in the fall, he is going to continue with school and do some volunteering in military history museums.  His favorite memory of the farm is of the time Carson carried a gigantic weed around and asked if anyone wanted a Christmas tree, and then proceeded to throw it as far as he could.  I wasn't present for that, but it must have been a humongous weed!

Max:  Max is the newest and youngest member of the farm team!  He is the son of some friends of ours, and he comes out once a week to help us out and learn the ropes of farming.  He has a great attitude and is eager to learn, and we've really enjoyed having him around! In the fall, he'll be returning to school and his various sports and extracurricular activities, but we hope to have him back for years to come!

So that's our awesome 2018 farm crew!  They are seriously the coolest and hardest-working group, and I just can't say enough good things about them!  :-)

Recipes

Yay for green beans!  I just love them, and I am always excited when they finally come into season!  Here is a great recipe for Roasted Green Beans with Parmesan and Basil from my friend Rachel at Rachel Cooks.  And if you're looking for something new to do with your basil, you could try making a flavorful basil water!  Simply put some basil in a pitcher of water and let it sit for a little while so the flavor infuses the water.  If you're one of the many people who don't drink enough water because it tastes boring (I'm definitely guilty of this!), this is a great way to add some flavor in a healthy, non-sugared way!