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Above are the images of each share from the 2017/18 Winter Season!

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Hey Friends & Farm-ily,

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We hope everyone is doing well!  We can hardly believe it has been 18 weeks since the start of 2017/18 Winter harvest season!  We are so happy and proud of this year’s CSA. As farmers, every season that we farm proves to be an incredible journey with so many things to learn and many delicious farm grown goodies to grow.  As we head into our 9th year, we’ve harvested 17,400 individual CSA shares and over 490,000lbs of produce all while feeding 1,000’s of families in our community.  

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Winter CSA Success!  This week was the final pick up week of our third Winter CSA season and I know we’ve said this time and time again but we LOVE the Winter CSA!!  Thank you to the 95 households who supported our 3rd season growing through the winter.

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We, your farmers, want to give a big THANK YOU to our CSA-ers!  Thank you all for your continued support through all the seasons.  You are all CSA rock stars and we are proud to be your farmers!  

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‘All the Year Round’ Cauliflower from Uprising Seeds making it’s way into this week’s share!  

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The Winter Bounty.  We started our Winter CSA journey on November 28th and we’ve made it all the way to the middle of April! Our expectation for the Winter Shares was 8-12 items (dependent on weather) in each weekly share.   Over the course of 18 weeks, Farmer Brian and I have grown, harvested and distributed 40,000lbs (1,400 shares) of winter produce with 13-17 items in each weekly share!  ​

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We were also impressed with the variety of veggies we harvested through the winter months – most weeks we had more fresh picked produce than storage veggies which is amazing (even in the coldest and darkest of winterdays)!   To top it all off, it was an average of 510lbs per weekly share which comes in around $1.48/lb of produce.

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So many different kind of goodies in the winter shares…Arugula, beets, broccoli, brussel sprouts, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, celeriac, celery, cilantro, cipollinis, collards, garlic, greens mix, hon tsai tai,  italian dandelion, kale, kalettes, kohlrabi, komatsuna, leeks, lettuce heads, onions, herbs (thyme, oregano, sage), pac choi, parsley, parsnips, purple sprouting broccoli, pumpkins, radish, rapini, radicchio, romanesco, rutabaga, scallions, shallots, spaghetti squash, spigarello, spinach, sweet potatoes, swiss chard, storage tomatoes, turnips, winter squash and more!

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The PSB has been a real champ this winter season. We’ve been harvesting our PSB for over 10 weeks from 7 different varietals which provided a bountiful successional harvest (over 2,000+lbs). That’s a lot of sprouting broccoli pickin’! 

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Some interesting highlights from this year’s Winter harvest (we’ve harvested..):

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 Carrots for 18 shares,

 Broccoli for 14 shares, 

Cauliflower for 12 shares, 

Tomatoes for 4 shares, 

Onions for 18 shares,

Shallots and Cippolinis for 15 shares, 

Romanesco Broccoli for 4 shares,

Garlic for 18 shares, 

Winter & spaghetti squash for 18 shares, 

Cabbage for 8 shares, 

Beets for 7 shares, 

Potatoes and/or Sweet Potato choice for 18 shares,

Mixed Bunch Greens for 15 shares, 

Lettuce, spinach & bagged greens for 15 shares, 

Leeks for 10 shares, 

Brussels for 7 shares,

Kalettes for 7 shares,

etc, etc!

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This Winter was definitely more mild compared to last year.  We had some cold stretches (with lows around 18), windstorms and rain but we seemed to avoid the snow and extra frigid temps (15* and lower).  We felt prepared for just about anything and as we become more seasoned that feeling of preparedness keeps growing.  At the end of last fall, we were able to put up many tons of carrots, potatoes, onions, garlic, sweet potatoes, winter squash and other root crops and grew plenty of PSB, kale, cauliflower, leeks, spinach, cabbage, brussels, kalettes and other greens to keep all the shares fresh and varied.  It was our most successful winter CSA to date (look at those numbers above) and we’re riding that high as we head into the Spring, Summer and Fall growing season.
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We are so excited to learn and grow for the next winter season!  Keep your eyes and ears open for when we launch the 2018/19 Winter CSA Sign Ups later this summer!  We’ll be starting our first Fall and Winter veggie starts in the coming months (we’re always thinking ahead…!)
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Last weekends storm a brewin’… enjoying the ‘calm before the storm’ relaxing in the sun and finding four leaf clovers!
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WHEN DOES THE SPRING/SUMMER/FALL CSA begin?  We’ll send everyone an official start date email during the first few weeks of May!    Our estimated start date for the season is the week of May 15th – so it could be as early as then but as the seasons vary the CSA may begin up to two weeks after our estimated start date.   We’re working hard to make a mid-May start date happen.. now it’s just up to ol’ mother nature (more sun = warmer temps = faster growing plants!)  Keep doing those sun dances!

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We look forward to seeing and meeting all our Spring/Summer/Fall CSA Members next month!  We’ll be in touch with updates about the start date etc.  In the meantime, follow us on Instagram & Facebook to keep in touch with our daily happenings on the farm.  Here we grow!  Whoo hoo!

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With kind regards,

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your farmers

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Jess & Brian

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dirty hands, clean hearts

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