Monroe Family Organics CSA Newsletter for Week 2

 Farm Update

 

Hi everyone!  I hope you all enjoyed your shares last week!

One of the great truths about farm life is that everything revolves around the sun.  We need it to produce the heat and light that grows our food, we need it to burn off the morning dew so that our plants don't stay wet and become susceptible to disease, and it pretty much dictates the rhythm of our workload over the course of the year.  As the old idiom indicates, one must "make hay while the sun shines".  And while we don't grow hay, the spirit of the phrase is certainly true for us.  The amount of work that must be done at the farm to keep things going directly corelates with the number of hours of sunlight we get at any given time of the year.  And as you all know, the summer solstice was a few days ago, so we're pretty much at our most sunny and most work-filled time of year.

The work is varied this time of year, because we're still very much in the midst of planting even as we're harvesting thousands of pounds of food for the CSA each week.  This week has been pretty dry, so we've been irrigating like crazy, which involves carrying around our heavy irrigation lines to far flung corners of the farm to make sure no little plants get too parched.  We've also been making a big planting push this week, because if we don't get seeds into the ground now, it means we don't have food in August.  Many of you asked me where Fred was at the drop-offs this week, and the answer is that he was planting a whole bunch of winter squash, lettuce, beets, fennel, okra, cucumbers, and tomatoes that will make their appearance in the shares in a few months.  

Fortunately, we have a great crew to help!  We have four farmhands that help us with all the planting, weeding, harvesting, washing, packing, and everything else that needs to happen.  Callie and Taran have been working with us since March, Tate joined the crew a few weeks ago, and Jackson (who started just a few days ago) is the newest addition to the farm team.  We also were thrilled to have two people who worked at the farm in past seasons come back to help us with the planting this week!  Fred's brother Charlie, who worked with us for four summers while he was in college, came back on Thursday to help plant beets and lettuce. And our dear friend Lindy, who is in town from Virginia and just couldn't stay away from the farm, came over on Friday morning and helped us plant squash.  

Here's our friend Lindy on the transplanter,
planting the squash that will be in the shares
this fall!  When we transplant, Fred drives the
tractor with the transplanter attached,
spikes on the yellow wheel put holes in
the row of black plastic (which helps
keep weeds down), and one or two people
put the plants into the holes as quickly as
possible.  Although hand planting everything
takes a long time, this allows us to get
a bunch of planting done a lot faster.

Aside from planting, we're also harvesting a bunch of things for the CSA.  I'm so excited that we'll be having the first carrots and potatoes in the shares this week!  The potatoes this week are new potatoes, which are the most delicious, tender, fresh potatoes you'll ever have in your life!  They're harvested a lot earlier than most potatoes (we'll be doing our main potato harvest in September, when they're bigger and more mature), so they're especially good in dishes that really emphasize their tenderness.  (If you're interested in learning a really delicious preparation, check out the recipe section below for Farmer Fred's New Potatoes with Dill and Garlic Scapes.)  We're also going to have the first carrots of the season this week!  These young little carrots will be smaller than what you normally see at the store; basically, they're baby carrots, but way more delicate and flavorful.  Then as the season goes on, they'll get bigger and stronger, but they'll still keep their amazing flavor.  

If you have young children, you may have also heard that this season, we're teaming up with our local Great Start Parent Coalition/ Family Connect groups to bring fun themed activities for families to do with their kiddos while you're waiting in line for your veggies!  Many of you might not know that I also have an off-farm job as the Parent Liaison for the Gratiot-Isabella Great Start Family Connect, which is a fun parent group that puts on educational opportunities, family events, and the like for families of young kids.  So I teamed up with Amanda Hawkins, my counterpart in Midland County, to launch Talking is Teaching activities at the market style CSA drop-offs in Alma, Mt. Pleasant, and Midland!  Talking is Teaching is a program that encourages and supports us to talk, read, and sing with our kiddos to help build our children's brains as well as our connection to our kids.  We'll be bringing different themed activities to the drop-offs each week, and right now we're gathering information to help us plan our activities.  If you scanned the QR code that was at the drop-off last week, then you're all set!  But if you have young kids and you didn't happen to scan the QR code last week, please take a minute to fill our our very short survey so we can plan fun and relevant activities for the kids at the drop-offs!

And now for some housekeeping stuff.  Here's just another reminder about the 4th of July coming up next week!  We'll still be having the Alma drop-off as usual on Monday, July 4th, but if you can't make it to the drop-off, that's totally fine!  Just let me know by Sunday, July 3rd, and you can either postpone your share and pick up a double share on July 11th, or you can arrange to pick up your share at another drop-off that week.  When 4th of July falls on a Monday, we often have a lot of people opt to pick up their shares on Tuesday, July 5th in Mt. Pleasant, so just let me know if you want to do that. 

Also, if you have egg cartons kicking around your house, we can always use them!  And if you still have the little pint containers that your strawberries came in, I can wash those up and reuse them as well.  If you already got rid of them, no worries, but if you still have your containers, I can definitely reuse them for blueberries and cherry tomatoes when the time comes.  

Thank you so much!  Just let me know if you have questions about anything, and I'll see you at the drop-off! :-)

What to Expect in the Shares this Week

 

If you pick up at our Alma, Mt. Pleasant, or Midland drop-off, here are the options for your shares!  If you have a half share, you’ll choose one item from each choice category, and if you have a full share, you’ll choose two.  And if there is something you don’t like or can’t eat, you can bring it to the trading station at the end and trade it for something you like better. 

• Baby carrots or new potatoes
• Kale, bok choy, or Swiss chard
• Zucchini or beets
• Cilantro, microgreens, or garlic scapes
• Spring mix or romaine lettuce
• Green onions
• Kohlrabi or dill

 

If you pick up at our Lansing, Okemos, St. Johns, Midland hospital, or Alma hospital drop-off, or if you have home or workplace delivery, here are your options!  We have three different prepacked shares, and you can let me know which one you want by filling out this quick form by lunchtime the day before your drop-off.  If you have a half share, you can choose one of these options, and if you have a full share, you’ll choose two.

Share A:

• Potatoes
• Kale
• Beets
• Garlic scapes
• Romaine
• Green onions
• Dill

 

Share B:

• Baby carrots
• Kale
• Zucchini
• Cilantro
• Spring mix
• Green onions
• Kohlrabi

 

Share C:

• Baby carrots
• Bok choy
• Zucchini
• Microgreens
• Romaine
• Green onions
• Kohlrabi

 

Recipes

 

Farmer Fred's New Potatoes with Dill and Garlic Scapes

The more we get into the CSA season, the more we move away from the leafy veggies of spring into old favorites like potatoes, carrots, zucchini, and lettuce.  But one veggie that's in the shares this week that might be new to you (and probably is if you haven't been part of a CSA before) is kohlrabi!  Every year when we first bring kohlrabi to the drop-offs, a bunch of people stop short, look at it for a little bit, and then ask, "What the heck is this thing?"  And rightly so.  It's a funny-looking little green bulb that sometimes has large leaves sticking out of the top, or if the leaves are absent, it has the cut stems where the leaves were once attached.  It kind of reminds me of the little aliens from the claw machine in Toy Story, and for that reason, is pretty much universally loved by small children.  It kind of has the texture of a broccoli stem and a light, pleasant flavor.  It can be eaten raw or cooked, and if you're looking for ideas, here are 20 Easy Kohlrabi Recipes from Insanely Good Recipes!

And I would be remiss if I didn't pass along the amazingly delicious potatoes with dill and garlic scapes Fred made this weekend!

Farmer Fred's New Potatoes with Dill and Garlic Scapes

• 1 CSA bag of new potatoes
• 1/3 bunch of dill
• 1 bunch of garlic scapes
• 1-2 tablespoons of Dijon mustard
• Olive oil
• Butter
• Salt and pepper to taste

Cut your potatoes into 1-inch chunks, or just halve them if they're already the right size.  Cut your garlic scapes into 2-inch lengths, discarding the little light green bump.  Cook them in a mixture of olive oil and butter (you can play around with the proportions to suite your taste) over medium heat, stirring frequently.  When the potatoes are tender and can be cut easily with a fork, turn off the heat, add 1/3 bunch of finely chopped dill, 1 or 2 tablespoons of Dijon mustard, and salt and pepper to taste.  Stir until everything is well-mixed, and enjoy this delicious stuff!

Monroe Family Organics CSA Newsletter for Week 1

Farm Update

 

Taran learned how to drive the tractor
on Thursday!  Up until now, Fred has
been the only one who could drive the 
tractor, which created a bottleneck that
prevented our most efficient use of time.
Now that we have two tractor drivers,
that will make our lives way easier!

Hi everyone!  Are you ready for some organic fruit and veggie goodness next week?  I know we are!

Launching the CSA is always a big project each year, but as we enter our 12th CSA season, I feel more prepared than ever for our biggest week of the year.  Aside from the normal planting, harvesting, irrigating, weeding, and delivering that we always have going on in June, I always spend a significant amount of time the week before we launch the CSA getting the systems up and running that will carry us through the season as smoothly as possible.  There is actually quite a lot of administrative work that happens behind the scenes at the farm, and since the farm is a dynamic natural system that is always changing and can’t be automated, my systems need to be able to flex and stretch as well.  There will always inevitably be things that slip through the cracks, but after more than a decade of doing this, I know what to look for and what to pay extra attention to.  So that said, here is some timely information for everyone so we can all have an awesome, fun, smooth first week of the CSA!

-It’s a good idea to add my phone number to your contacts, just in case you’re on your way to the drop-off and have a question!  I don’t frequently check my email in the afternoons of CSA drop-off days because I’m on the road, but if you need me, you can call or text me at 517-896-6884. 😊

-If you get a prepacked share at the Lansing, Okemos, St. Johns, or hospital drop-offs, I’ll send out a text to all the folks at those locations when I deliver the shares, so you know when you can come get your produce.  If you’d prefer not to receive those texts, just send me a quick email and I’ll take you off the text list.  Or if the phone number you entered when you signed up for the CSA isn’t a cell phone, just send me a good phone number for you to get those texts.

-Week 3 of the CSA is 4^th of July week! Independence Day falls on a Monday this year, so if you normally get your CSA share on Mondays, we will be delivering shares as normal.  However, if you have plans and can’t make it to the drop-off, or you normally have your share delivered to your workplace but you won’t be there, just let me know!  We can postpone your share and get you a double share the next week, or you can arrange to pick up your share at another drop-off that week.  Plenty of folks who can’t make it to a Monday drop-off in Alma choose to pick up their share the next day in Mt. Pleasant, and we can absolutely do that!  Just make sure to let me know by Sunday, July 3rd if you want to postpone your share on July 4^th or pick it up somewhere else.

So that’s it for the housekeeping stuff!  As for the farm itself, now is the time of year when everything comes to life.  There’s a reason why we wait to start the CSA until the middle of June, and it’s because now is when all of the veggies we’ve been waiting to come into season explode onto the scene in their full vibrancy.  Up until now, we’ve been harvesting our cooler season crops (lettuce, kale, spinach, radishes) and smaller amounts of some warm season crops (zucchini, cucumbers, etc.) but now a lot more veggies are ready in larger amounts.  Things have been growing like crazy, including the weeds.  Our farmhands, Callie, Taran, Tate, and I have been weeding lettuce, cilantro, dill, and onions over the last few days in an effort to keep the weeds under control, but there is still so much to do.  Plenty of home gardeners complain about the never ending weeds, but when you’re trying to keep tens of thousands of bed feet from getting taken over by weeds, that’s another story altogether.  Fortunately, I actually love the quick, methodical movements of weeding, and I love being outside with the sun on my back, so the work is enjoyable to me.  And I love that for every section I weed, we’re making sure that the plants we do want aren’t having to compete too hard with the plants we don’t want for scarce resources like water and sunlight, so they can grow up to be big and strong and delicious. 

And as they say, it’s important to know when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em.  One of the crops we have turned loose over the last few years are our strawberries, because we always struggled with them in our soil and it was so hard to have enough for everyone.  However, we know that strawberries are really important to you all!  We pride ourselves on being a single-farm CSA, where everything we provide in the shares is grown by us, but we make an exception for the strawberries.  The strawberries in the shares over the upcoming weeks were actually grown by Jonas Miller, a friend of ours who is also certified organic and just has much better soil for strawberries.  We almost never include items in the shares that weren’t grown on our farm (the strawberries are pretty much the only things from another grower that we’ve ever had in the shares), but we always want to be really transparent when we do, because it’s so important to us for you to be able to know where your food comes from.  It’s also super important to us to only have certified organic produce in the shares, so that’s also non-negotiable for us if we were ever to include anyone else’s produce.  If you have any questions about the strawberries, or about Jonas’ farm, just let me know!  And while you can’t call Jonas and ask him about the berries (because he’s Amish and doesn’t have a phone), I can get you his address if you’re interested in stopping by his farm and talking to him. 

So that’s it!  Just let me know if you have any questions, and we’ll see you next week at the drop-off! 😊

What to Expect in the Shares this Week

 

If you pick up at our Alma, Mt. Pleasant, or Midland drop-off, here are the options for your shares!  If you have a half share, you’ll choose one item from each choice category, and if you have a full share, you’ll choose two.  And if there is something you don’t like or can’t eat, you can bring it to the trading station at the end and trade it for something you like better. 

 

• Strawberries for everyone!
• Spring mix for everyone!
• Kale or frisee
• Bok choy or Swiss chard
• Garlic scapes or baby head lettuces
• Green onions for everyone!
• Basil, cilantro, or microgreens

 

If you pick up at our Lansing, Okemos, St. Johns, Midland hospital, or Alma hospital drop-off, or if you have home or workplace delivery, here are your options!  We have three different prepacked shares, and you can let me know which one you want by filling out this quick form by lunchtime the day before your drop-off.  If you have a half share, you can choose one of these options, and if you have a full share, you’ll choose two.

Share A:

• Strawberries
• Spring mix
• Kale
• Swiss Chard
• Garlic scapes
• Green onions
• Microgreens

 

Share B:

• Strawberries
• Spring mix
• Kale
• Bok choy
• Baby head lettuce
• Green onions
• Cilantro

 

Share C:

• Strawberries
• Spring mix
• Frisee
• Bok choy
• Garlic scapes
• Green onions
• Basil

 

Recipes

 

The fun part about being part of a Community Supported Agriculture program (besides knowing your farmers, eating locally, supporting environmentally friendly farming practices, getting truly fresh and delicious food, and engaging with your community) is getting to try new things!  Most of the stuff we have in the shares will be old favorites (like lettuce, green onions, and strawberries), and some of it might be new to you.  I always try to provide a few recipe ideas for items you may not have worked with before, and the ones that might not be as familiar this week are bok choy, garlic scapes, and frisee.  So definitely check out these recipes for some inspiration, and I always love chatting about recipes at the drop-offs too, so let me know if you have some good ones! 

Here are 10 Tasty and Easy Bok Choy Recipes from The Spruce Eats!  There are lots of options here, so you can choose what works for you, the amount of time you have, and what ingredients you have on hand! 

And here are 7 Things to do with Garlic Scapes from Serious Eats!  I love the wealth of great ideas that you can then tweak and make your own!

I was looking around online, and most of the frisee salads I found kind of look the same.  But I wanted to let you know what we did with frisee a few days ago that was super delicious!  Since frisee is an endive with kind of a bitter (in a good way!) flavor, using a sweet flavor to offset the bitterness is a great way to bring out the flavor.  Fred just made a quick frisee salad with a dressing he whipped up out of balsamic vinegar, chopped basil, and blackberry jam, and he put little chunks of brie cheese on top.  The flavor was lovely, and the brie added such a rich texture.  So if you have those ingredients or something similar on hand, that’s a great way to make a quick frisee salad that feels really fancy!

CSA Start Dates and What to Expect at Your First Drop-Off!

Farm Update

Hi everyone!  We have exciting news!  The CSA will officially be kicking off the week of June 20th, so mark your calendars!  And just send me a quick email so I know you got the message, because I want to make sure no one misses their first week of veggies! 

The first Alma drop-off will be Monday, June 20th from 5-6 PM out in front of His Place on Superior St.

The first Mt. Pleasant drop-off will be Tuesday, June 21st from 5-6 PM behind Herbs Etc. on Broadway.

The first Lansing drop-off will be Wednesday, June 22nd between 4:30 and 9 PM at the Soup Spoon Café on Michigan Ave.

The first Okemos drop-off will be Wednesday, June 22nd between 4:30 and 6 PM at Mert’s Specialty Meats on Grand River.

The first St. Johns drop-off will be Wednesday, June 22nd anytime after 2:30 PM at the home of a CSA member who lives around the corner from the hospital.  I’ll send all of you St. Johns folks a separate email with the address shortly.

The first Midland drop-off will be Thursday, June 23rd from 5-6 PM in the pavilion behind the Eagle Ridge Church of God on Waldo Rd.

The first Midland MyMichigan Hospital drop-off will be Thursday, June 23rd anytime after 3 PM at the seating area behind the Center for Women’s Health.  There is a place where delivery vehicles pull over on Campus Ridge Drive, and a sidewalk goes up to the back of the building.  There are a few picnic tables there under some shady trees, and that is where you’ll find your CSA shares!

And if you get home or workplace delivery, I’ll be dropping off your shares on the afternoon of whatever day we deliver to your town, probably between 2 and 4:30 PM.

So there you have it!  I’d definitely recommend setting up a repeating calendar event or reminder so you don’t forget!  The CSA will go for 19 weeks until the end of October.

Some other exciting news is that we are (probably) adding a drop-off at MyMichigan Medical Center in Alma!  This is currently in the works, and we just started talking about it with the hospital on Thursday.  We had some CSA members who were affiliated with the hospital ask if we could do a hospital drop-off in Alma like we do in Midland, and I said that if we had 10 hospital employees sign up, we could do a delivery there.  So far we have several people signed up for the Alma hospital drop-off, so it’s looking like it’s probably going to happen.  So if you are signed up for our regular Alma drop-off, but you work at the hospital and would like to switch to the hospital delivery, just let me know and I’ll change you over!  The main difference would be that at the hospital drop-off, we’d do prepacked shares instead of you getting to pick your produce out from the tables.  You can learn more about that later in the newsletter when I talk about how our various drop-offs work.

Wow!  I am just amazed that despite the prolonged cold weather we had in the spring and the slow start to our growing season, we are starting the CSA at the same time we usually do!  And I am thrilled to see all of you in just a little more than a week!

What to Expect at Your First CSA Drop-off!

Some of you have been CSA members for years and are old hands at this.  And some of you are CSA newbies, and probably have some questions about how it works at the drop-offs.  If you’ve been part of the CSA before, it’s pretty much the same as it’s always been.  But if you’re new, here is everything you need to know for your first CSA drop-off!

First, we have two different types of CSA drop-offs.  In Alma, Mt. Pleasant, and Midland, we have our regular “market style” drop-offs, where we set up big long tables and CSA members get to pick out their veggies one by one.  For our Lansing, St. Johns, Okemos, and hospital drop-offs, we prepack your shares at the farm and bring them to your drop-off location for you to pick up at your convenience.  If you want to, you can skip right to the part about your particular drop-off style.  :-)

“Market Style” drop-offs (Alma, Mt. Pleasant, Midland):  When you pull up to the drop-off, you’ll see us and our tables full of produce, and probably a bunch of people lined up to get their veggie goodness.  On the tables, there will be a sign-in sheet where you can initial next to your name, and then seven different produce “stations”.  At each station, you’ll see a sign telling you what the options are for that station.  It might say something like, “Spring mix or spinach:  Half share, choose 1 bag.  Full share, choose 2 bags”.  Then you’d choose either one or two portions depending on whether you have a half shar or a full share.  Then, you’ll continue down the line to the next six stations and make your choices there.  At the very end, we have our Trading Station, where you can switch out any items you’re less excited about for something you like better.  For example, if one of the stations is Kale or Bok Choy, but you don’t like either of those, you can take your item from that station to the end and trade it for something you like more at the Trading Station.  This means that you don’t get stuck with stuff you don’t like!

Some pro tips for the market style drop-offs:

There’s usually a big rush at the very beginning of the drop-off, where about 80% of people go through the line in about the first 15 minutes.  After the rush goes through, some of the variety is usually snapped up, so if you want the widest variety, it’s a good idea to get there early and get in line.  But if you don’t have a strong preference for what veggies you get and you hate to wait in line, it’s a good idea to get there after 5:15.

If you have one, bring a basket or reusable grocery bag!  We’ll have plastic bags available, but it’s definitely more eco friendly if people bring their own that they can keep reusing.

If you’re in a hurry, or you just would rather not wait in line, we can prepack your share for you at the farm, and you can just grab your bag of produce when you arrive!  If you want us to pack up your share, you can just fill out the quick form I’ll have in the newsletter each week and let me know what choices you prefer.  Definitely read about how the prepacked shares work if you’d prefer this option!

We usually also have eggs from our free-range chickens for sale on the side, so if you are interested in eggs, it’s a good idea to carry cash.  Like just about everything these days, the cost of our eggs is going up this year from $4 per dozen to $5 per dozen, so I just wanted to give you all the heads up about that!

And now, for the other type of drop-off.

Drop-offs with prepacked shares (Lansing, Okemos, St. Johns, and hospitals):  For you, your CSA pickup actually starts the weekend before when our CSA newsletter arrives in your inbox.  Each weekend in the newsletter, I’ll tell you what fruits, veggies, and herbs will be available in the shares the next week, and there will be a special section for the prepacked shares.  You will have the choice between three different prepacked shares. It will say something like, “Share A has these 7 items, Share B has these 7 items, and Share C has these 7 items.”  And then if you have a half share, you’ll choose one of those bags, and if you have a full share, you’ll choose two of those bags. There will be a quick form for you to fill out to let me know which share(s) you want for the upcoming week, and you’ll just want to make sure you submit that by lunchtime the day before your drop-off.  So if you pick up your share on Wednesday, you’ll want to get your choice to me by noonish on Tuesday so I can be sure to get your preference onto our harvest list for the next day. If you get it in later in the evening, I’ll still probably be able to get you your preferred share, but the best way to make sure you’re able to get the veggies you wanted is to submit your form on time.  Also, if you forget to fill it out, that’s totally fine!  We’ll still bring you a share, but we’ll just decide what to put in there for you.

Then, on the day of your delivery, you just show up at the pickup location sometime within the time windows listed above, tell them your name, and they’ll give you your preferred share in a bag with your name on it.  It’s that easy! 

No matter what drop-off you’re at, here are some things you’ll want to know:

If you’re going out of town, or you’ll be otherwise unable to make it to the drop-off, just let me know by the day before the drop-off you’ll be missing, and we can make other arrangements for your share.  You can either postpone your share and get a double share when you get back, pick up your share at a different drop-off location on a different day that week, or have a friend pick it up for you.  If you’re having a friend pick it up for you, you don’t have to let me know ahead of time, and your friend can just initial next to your name on the sign-in sheet.  But if you’re postponing your share or picking up at a different drop-off, I just need to know ahead of time.

And if you ever realize that you totally forgot to pick up your veggies, no worries!  Just let me know, and while I can’t necessarily put an extra share for you on the harvest list the following week, we usually have some veggies left over at the end of each drop-off.  The next week, if you come through the line after the rush goes through, chances are pretty good that we’ll be able to send you home with some extra veggies to make up for what you missed the week before.

So that’s it!  Let me know if you have any questions about the drop-offs or anything else, and we’ll see you the week of the 20th!  And don’t forget to let me know you got the message about the CSA starting! :-)

CSA Newsletter for May 2022

Farm Update

Hi everyone!  I hope you’re doing well and enjoying the weather!  We’re certainly glad that it’s no longer consistently cold and rainy, and it has been a very busy time at the farm for the last few weeks.  Once the weather turned for the better, we had to rush to get all of our plants in the ground in a lot less time than we’d normally have, because we normally would have been able to start several weeks earlier.  We’ve been planting in both the fields and the hoophouses; we continue to put cool-weather crops (such as lettuce, spinach, kale, bok choy, and potatoes) in the fields, and we’ve been transitioning the hoophouses (which are unheated greenhouses, also called coldframes) to their summer fare.  The coldframes previously housed our overwintered plantings of spring mix and spinach, which we’ve finished harvesting and turned back over into the soil.  Now we’re busy planting those same hoophouses with the tomatoes, cucumbers, and zucchini that will be in the CSA shares this summer! (In the picture above, you can see Fred and Taran transplanting the zucchini plants we started in the greenhouse into one of the hoophouses.)

With all the heat and rain we’ve been having lately, the crops have really taken off, and so have the weeds!  People often ask how we stay on top of the weeds in an organic system, because we can’t spray herbicides like conventional farms do.  Truth be told, we’re never 100% on top of the weeding, because there are just too many acres, and the weeds grow incredibly quickly.  But we try our best, and we have a few handy tools that help.  This year, we bought a new cultivating tractor that exists solely to make the weeding easier and more efficient.  It has adjustable tines that dig into the soil, so when you drive it over a bed of plants when the weeds are still small, it pulls up, buries, or otherwise disrupts the weeds in between the rows, but leaves the plants we do want safely in place.  So when I go back and weed that bed, I can simply focus on the weeds that were growing so close to the crops that they didn’t get disrupted, which saves a lot of time.  I’ve been doing quite a lot of weeding lately, which I actually love, but my back is still getting used to being bent over for hours at a time after a long winter spent mostly upright.  But I know that as the season goes on, my muscles will get used to it, and I’ll no longer have to do yoga stretches during my lunch breaks and after I finish up for the evening.  But weeding is one of my favorite things to do at the farm, because I can turn on an audiobook or some good music on my phone, and go to town turning a weedy mess into perfectly clean, orderly rows of food.  There is a lot of satisfaction in standing up after a few hours of weeding and seeing how much better it looks than it did before.  It’s like watching one of those before-and-after organizing shows, but with messy fields instead of messy houses. (I took the above picture of one of our beds of very young spring mix just after I had finished taking out all of the weeds, because it just looked so different!)

Planting and weeding have definitely been the two main focuses of the farm over the last several weeks, but we also completed our annual organic inspection on Friday!  Normally our inspection occurs later in the season, and it always falls at a super inconvenient time like mid-October.  In October, we’re still running the gauntlet that is harvesting for the CSA, but it’s harder because the weather is colder and rainier and there is less abundant variety, and most of our summer help has gone back to school.  And preparing for our organic inspection involves producing a season’s worth of paperwork, harvest dates, planting dates, sales records, photocopies of seed packets, and all manner of other information so the inspector can verify that we are abiding by the organic certification standards.  We always request to have our inspection before we hit the busiest point in the season, and this year, it was able to happen!  On Friday, Fred and the inspector walked around the farm so the inspector could make sure we didn’t have anything we shouldn’t (like synthetic chemicals, treated lumber, and the like), and then they came in for a few hours of checking out our records and filling out paperwork.  All in all, it was a lot easier this year than most, and it took only half a day instead of the full day it normally takes, and now we’re done for the year!  We’ll still have to let them know if anything changes (like if we order more seed, we’ll have to send them paperwork proving that it came from an organic source), but that should be pretty minimal.  And I know that in October, we will be so glad that we don’t still have that ahead of us!

And pretty soon we’ll make the transition to a lot more harvesting!  We’ve been harvesting a few early season crops so far, including spring mix, spinach, kale, radishes, green onions, ramps, green garlic, cilantro, and microgreens.  (If you’re wondering, you can find many of these things at Greentree Cooperative Market in Mt. Pleasant and Argus Farm Stop in Ann Arbor.)  But we’ll be gearing up for the CSA before we know it, and then we’ll be harvesting tons of food daily!

I’ve had several people ask about when the CSA is starting, and while we don’t have an official start date yet (because when the veggies are ready depends on what the weather does), we’re looking at the third or fourth week of June.  So mark your calendars for the week of either June 20th or June 27th, but I’m hoping for the week of the 20th.  That’s usually when we start, but this year the cold weather held on for so long that we couldn’t get into the fields until a lot later than we usually do, which might mean that we have to start the CSA a week later than usual.  We don’t really know yet, but as soon as we know for sure, I’ll send out a big email with the official start date!

And in case you or your friends were wondering, we do still have some CSA shares available!  If you want to sign up and haven’t done it yet, you can check out all the information here at our website, and then just fill out this sign-up form.  Then I’ll email you an invoice, and you’ll be all set!  Just let me know if you have any questions!

So begins the countdown to the start of the CSA!  I can’t believe it’s only a month (or so) until we get started, and I am so excited to get to see all of you again!  If you’re new to the CSA this year, I’ll be sending out a newsletter in a few weeks with everything you need to know for your first CSA drop-off, but in the meantime, feel free to email me anytime with any questions you might have!  Thanks so much, and we’ll see you all soon! :-)

Recipe

It’s spinach season!  In our house, we go through a lot of spinach, usually sautéed as a side dish, as the base for a salad, or cooked into omelets.  If you’re looking for something new to do with an old favorite, check out these 95 Ways to Use up a Bag of Fresh Spinach from A Taste of Home!

CSA Newsletter for March 2022

 

Farm Update

These green onions in the coldframes are 
ready to be harvested!

Hi everyone!  Things are really starting to take off at the farm, and life is becoming busier for us as the weather warms up!  Each year, our workload follows a pretty distinct bell curve.  It starts to slant upward this time of year, peaks in the last week of June/first week of July, remains on a very slight downward slope for several months, and then starts to dip much more dramatically once we hit November.  Now that the days have lengthened just slightly, there is enough sunlight to trigger the plants in our hoophouses to start growing again.  In fact, Fred has been harvesting the first green garlic, spinach, green onions, and microgreens of the year!  This time of year, there isn't enough variety or enough volume to start the CSA, but we are able to begin deliveries to a few local stores and restaurants.  We've done our first few deliveries to Greentree Co-Op Market in Mt. Pleasant (who just opened up at their new location a few months ago!), Argus Farm Stop in Ann Arbor, Red Haven Farm to Table Restaurant in Okemos, and the Allen Neighborhood Center in Lansing.  

Fred and the crew have also been doing lots of work in the field over the last two weeks!  Before they could plant our first field planting of lettuce and spinach, they collected a bunch of rocks from the field that would obstruct our ability to plant properly and made several huge rock piles on the perimeter of the farm.  They put up low tunnels over our overwintered spinach so the plants have room to grow.  A lot of people don't realize that you can actually plant some very coldhardy plants (such as spinach and kale) in the fall and cover it with layers of protective plastic throughout the winter to keep the heat in and the wind out.  This allows the plants to get a little bit of a head start growing, so when the temperatures get warmer and the amount of daylight increases, the plants can take off a lot sooner than they would otherwise.  They don't do much growing in the winter; they mostly just bide their time until nature signals that it's time, so they're perfectly fine under layers of plastic laid directly on the ground.  Once they start growing in the spring though, they need a little more head room, so we put up what we call low tunnels.  They're basically metal hoops stuck in the ground, and then we lay the insulating plastic over them to protect the plants until it gets consistently warm.  

Our greenhouse is full of flats of microgreens and
little plants that will be transplanted into the field 
when the weather gets warmer.

The planting of spinach that we're harvesting right now was overwintered in the coldframes (unheated greenhouses), and is now at a harvestable size.  The planting of overwintered spinach in the field that is currently under the low tunnels will hopefully be at a harvestable size right around the time we go through the last of the coldframe spinach.  And the third planting of spinach just went into the ground last week, along with the first field planting of lettuce.  Now all of those new lettuce and spinach plants are starting their life in the field under layers of protective plastic, and will probably be at a harvestable size right around the time we finish up the overwintered field spinach.  This system of planting the same crops at multiple times throughout the year so we (almost) always have some that is the right size for harvest is called "succession planting".  We do this with many of the crops we grow so we can have each item for as much of the year as possible.  Some crops have a relatively short harvestable season, but some (like lettuce and kale) have a very long season, and we plant some of these crops a dozen times throughout the year.  Most people think of spring as planting season and fall as harvest season, but with succession planting, we're both planting and harvesting virtually every week throughout the long growing season.  

Planting is definitely the theme of right now though, and that includes starting our seeds!  We've seeded a whole bunch of flats so the veggies can get a head start growing in our heated greenhouse.  When the weather is warmer and the plants are bigger (about an inch or two tall), we'll transplant them into the field, where they will continue to grow for the rest of their lives.  Right now, the greenhouse is about 2/3 of the way full of seeded flats, so hopefully we can get some great weather that will spur everything on, and we won't run out of greenhouse space before we can start transplanting into the field!

Aside from planting, we've also been working on plenty of other projects that need to be done in preparation for the upcoming season.  Our new farmhands, Callie and Taran, finished pruning the blueberry patch last week, which is a huge project!  The next steps before we can officially move on from the blueberries for now is to spread our organic fertility mix on the plants to promote lots of strong new growth, and to haul away all of the random blueberry branches that are still laying on the ground next to the bushes.  Then we won't have to think too much about the blueberries until May and June (when we monitor the blossoms, then the green unripe berries), and July (when we stress out about deer and birds messing with our bushes until the massive blueberry harvest at the end of the month).  Along with the intense physicality of farm work, there is also the large mental load of timing each planting as perfectly as possible given what the weather will likely do, and then protecting everything from extreme temperatures, storms, droughts, disease, weeds, and pests.  And that's all before we get it all harvested, cleaned, sized, bagged up, and delivered to you guys four days a week.  Basically, the farm is like a massive, months-long game of Tetris, but outside in nature.

The spinach that was overwintering in
the field is now under a protective low
tunnel, which gives the plants space
to grow.

Speaking of nature, I have to give a shout out to all of the wildlife at the farm!  There are the ones we're not huge fans of (like the mice who try to stay warm in the barn and greenhouse), and the ones we love, like the two bald eagles we've seen circling above the farm for several months looking for small animals to eat, and the big gray feral cat who hangs out in the coldframes and keeps the mouse population under control.  The other day, Fred accidentally disturbed a bright white weasel who still had his winter coloring, and who will likely blend in much better in a few weeks when he gets his gray summer coat.  

So this is a portrait of what March at the farm looks like!  Each month has its own rhythm, and it will be different in April than it was in March.  Probably when I send out the newsletter next month, it will be full of field plantings, rain, warmer weather, and asparagus.  

And as always, don't forget to sign up for the CSA if you haven't already!  With food prices on the rise, it's a good idea to lock in your produce for the season at a price that is way cheaper than buying organic produce at the store.  You can check out the CSA details here at our website (which I revamped last week, so go check out our new look!).  Here is our 2022 CSA sign-up form, and once you fill it out, I'll put you on the membership list and email you an invoice.  Just let me know if you have any questions!  We'd love to see you all again this summer! 

Recipes

Locavores, rejoice! Michigan small farms finally have fresh produce coming out of the coldframes, so you can say goodbye to storage vegetables and root crops that have become a little boring over the long, cold winter.  You'll start seeing locally produced spinach, lettuces, microgreens, green onions, green garlic, and kale at your friendly neighborhood co-op or independent grocery store (including our veggies at Greentree and Argus), so it's time to get cooking with all of these lovely spring veggies!  

I have a special spot in my heart for green onions (also called scallions) because they are one of the first harbingers of spring!  So try out these Chinese Scallion Pancake Beef Rolls from Taste of Home!  I know the name sounds weird, but you won't regret making these delicious wraps!