CSA Members 2006: Newsletter Archive

Dear CSA Members,

Good morning everyone. Sometimes these notes flow easier than others and this morning I find myself sitting at the computer, admiring the dappled sunlight filtered through the pine and vine maple outside the office window and thinking about how badly my dog needs a bath. My hope is that in writing this it will somehow remove the block and frankly it seems to be working. Thanks for your patience.

This week's delivery includes our first peas. You will find English shell peas, which have to be one of the most fun vegetables to eat, despite the fact that I sometimes wonder if I am burning more calories frantically opening them than I get from eating them, as well as snow peas. Please also note that the spinach is some of the prettiest we have grown in a long time. Like peas, I have had a hard time with spinach the past few years. As a crop spinach is very sensitive to heat and will flower quickly if the temperature spikes. To make matters worse, the best tasting spinaches seem to be the least tolerant to hot days. Many is the season I have watched a beautiful thick planting of spinach "blow" over the course of one of those early hot weeks we sometimes get. Knowing this, I hope you enjoy it all the more along with the strawberry vinaigrette recipe that follows.

You may look forward to cherries and the first of our carrots coming soon.

The farm is really an exciting place this season. We have almost doubled our acreage, opening new fields and dealing with all the challenges that come along with that. In this particular case that is primarily the presence of a healthy deer population and the local elk. If you thought slugs a challenging garden pest imagine what a herd of hungry elk could do. Perhaps the most significant challenge for us this year is the business end of farming. With an increased labor force, and more ground to cover than I could possibly do on my own we have had to concentrate on our communication and rely on our employees like never before. The learning curve is steep, but this growth has allowed us to expand our markets and increase our CSA, as well as provide meaningful employment to more people. I am proud of all of us, particularly Heidi. You may never know how hard she works, both physically and mentally, to make sure everything gets to the right place at the right time.

One of the most rewarding projects we are involved in at this point is providing fresh organic produce to homebound seniors in Lewis County. Working with the Area Agency on Aging, whose visionary director secured some grant money for the project, we have been providing what amounts to a small CSA share to 200 seniors in the area. Every week, early Wednesday morning, Melissa shows up in the big white van to pick up boxes of our farm's vegetables and fruit for her clients. I must admit I get a little misty eyed thinking of the recipients tasting our strawberries, it is my greatest hope that they might remember the taste of a real garden fresh strawberry from their youth as they enjoy the all but forgotten experience of the first ripe berry of the season.

Thanks again for your participation in the program, and as always feel free to contact us with any questions or concerns.