CSA Newsletter for January 2024
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Hi everyone! Happy new year! It's definitely winter out there now! As I write this, the snow continues to come down, and the farm is mostly asleep. This time of year, we don't have any of the planting, harvesting, washing, packing, delivering, weeding, and managing that we are doing during the main farm season. Now we are occupied with a very different type of work, and truth be told, there's just a lot less to do this time of year at the farm.
Right now I am in the middle of the annual frenzy of tax stuff and compliance forms, which is not my favorite thing to do, but which must be done when you run a business. It always takes about four times longer than I think it will, and then at some point, after going over each form and reading each exception, I have to just send it in and hope I haven't made any mistakes, lest I bring the wrath of the IRS down upon us. At least it only has to be done once a year.
My work is mostly inside these days, but Fred still spends some time doing work outside. He is continuing to construct the new greenhouse that we had hoped to finalize last spring, but which we had to set aside once we got into the CSA season due to the sheer volume of extremely time-sensitive work that needed to be done. Now we are in a much more relaxed time of year, so progress on the greenhouse has resumed. He is finishing bolting together the metal structure right now, and once that is done, we will put on the plastic covering. The plan is to grow a profusion of tomatoes next season, which is exciting, because I am definitely missing tomatoes right now.
While we don't have anything growing in the fields, we do have a few vegetables overwintering in the hoophouses. The hoophouses are unheated greenhouses, and they offer just enough protection from the wind and cold to keep little baby veggies alive through the winter. Those little lettuce, spinach, green garlic, and mache plants aren't actually growing right now, but in the spring when the temperatures get warmer and the days get longer, they'll take off growing with a little bit of a head start. The picture above is some of our little baby lettuce plants biding their time under protective plastic in the hoophouse.
There is also quite a lot of farm equipment that needs to be repaired or modified in the winter. Fred has been using this time to modify the root vegetable washer and the old potato digger, fix the tractors, and get everything into tip top condition before things get crazy in the summer. He and our employee Ander (who is still working very part time through the winter) also recently finished pulling up the black plastic mulch we use to keep the weeds at bay and insulate the little baby plants at their most vulnerable stages. That is a pretty big job and a surprisingly strenuous workout, and it was really good to get that done before the ground was too frozen to make progress on it.
Fortunately, much of Fred's work happens inside by the fire when the weather gets too nasty outside. One of his big winter projects is to pore over seed catalogs and choose the very best varieties of vegetables to grow for the upcoming season. Then he makes his big spreadsheet of seed varieties and puts in a massive order with a few different seed companies. Our very first seeds arrived the other day, and the rest will trickle in over the next few months. Then we store them in the back room of our house until it's time to plant. Over the next month or so, our storage room will become mostly impassible with large cardboard boxes full of seed packets and little plastic cannisters, and then eventually those will make their way out to the barn and I'll have my storage space back again.
This is also the time of year where Fred really combs through the farm's financial information from the previous year and sets this year's projections. One of the nice things about having this built-in rest period is it gives us a chance to really think about whether what we did last year is still what we want to continue to do this year. Almost every year, we end up making some changes, whether it's seeking out new sources for basic supplies in order to cut expenses, or switching from plastic clamshells to more eco-friendly plastic bags for our retail spring mix, or trying out growing a new kind of crop. Many of these tweaks are minor individually, but over the course of the farm's lifetime, they add up to real change. After thirteen years of operating the farm, I really appreciate that each year is a little bit different from the last. The farm certainly never gets boring, and while most of that is due to the relentless pace of the work once the CSA season starts, and the fact that everything we do is dependent on the (naturally unpredictable) weather, a lot of it is because we are always trying something new. And this season is no different. We're not exactly sure what all the new things are yet, but when we finalize those decisions, we'll let you know in one of the upcoming newsletters. The farm is always an adventure, and we are so glad to have you all along for the ride!
And if you know you want to sign up for the 2024 season and you haven't done so yet, now is the time! You can sign up for this year's CSA by filling out this form, and then I'll email you an invoice. The cost for a full share will be $640 for the full 19 week season, and a half share will be $345 at the regular drop offs, and we also have home/workplace delivery for an extra $95 for people who live or work within two miles of where we're already driving. If it works better for you to pay for your share with a few different payments, that is totally fine, and if you have SNAP benefits, you can use those to pay for your CSA share as well! Just let me know if you have any questions about anything! We would love to have you in the CSA again next year! :-)
