A season of rest is coming at the farm! It is hard to believe, but we are now at the end of our 20 week CSA season. It has been a good year for our CSA program, and we are so grateful for the support we've received. We've had an amazing crew getting the work done, wonderful and dedicated volunteers and generous, committed customers (like you) to keep us going strong even in uncertain times.
I wanted to let you know that behind the scenes throughout this season A Rocha has been partnering with an initiative called "Seniors Come Share" to send weekly bags of fresh veggies to isolated seniors in White Rock/South Surrey. We've been preparing 68 bags a week and this organization delivers it to people's doors. This program will continue through the month of November, making use of storage vegetables and winter crops remaining in our fields, and we'll also be sending some vegetables to Umoja over the next month (a long-time A Rocha partner supporting newcomers to Canada in North Surrey).
On Wednesday of this week we were also able to donate over 600 lbs. of winter squash to the Sources Food Bank. This donation was prompted by the wind... Our squash was curing/being stored in a small poly greenhouse structure which was picked up and flipped in a strong gust on Tuesday afternoon. We hope to save the structure, but in the meantime our squash was exposed and needed to find a new home. Some went into storage elsewhere on site, but the very next morning the foodbank came by to take away everything we didn't have space to save. Squash storage is tricky for us - we'd love to sell as much squash as possible at the end of the CSA, since we don't have facilities to store it for months, so take this final week to add some extra squash to your share! Don't hesitate to stock up for the winter since squash typically stores for many weeks or even months.
This week's featured squash for CSA is butternut, but we have a number of other squash varieties available as add-ons, and we've put them ON SALE! We also have plenty of hot sauce and sauerkraut available now - and these keep well in your fridge for months, so get them while you can. I had a former CSA member contact me yesterday to ask if I could ship our ferments to her in Ontario!!! Lucky for you, accessing the best sauerkraut and hot sauce around is easy and painless! This stuff is only available very locally - no, we don't ship.
I applaud you your decision to eat a local, seasonal diet these past few months. We are immensely grateful for this commitment and the choice you've made to support our sustainable farming work. We'll be in touch.
