Farm Happenings for June 17, 2020

Welcome to the Cherry Valley Organics Farm Share season!

For our biweekly and every four week members who may just be joining us for the first time this week, you will want to check out the Farm Happenings from prior weeks to stay in the loop on all of the activity going on at the farm!

New this Week: It's greens season! Swiss Chard, Dinosaur Kale, Curly Kale, Red & Green Butterhead Lettuces, Italian Flat Leaf Parsley, Garlic Scapes, Scallions, and Pac Choi Microgreens

Just another friendly reminder to please take a moment this week to login into your Harvie account and confirm that your preferences for each item are complete with a rating of 1 if you do not like the item, and 5 if you love the item. 2-4 ratings are somewhere in between! This will ensure that you are receiving all your favorites in your shares each week. If you have an item that is "Not Set," meaning you haven't selected a rating, then the system defaults to a 3, which means you will see the item appear in your share from time to time.

This Week at the Farm:

Over the last several months, our team has been working hard in the fields everyday - planting, weeding, cultivating, watering, starting seeds in our greenhouse and much more. As with the start of farm share deliveries each year, our team had a new routine to settle into this past week. We had some long days and a few hiccups, especially with the heat in the early part of the week, but overall, our first week was a huge success! If you are a weekly member, we hope you enjoyed your first delivery!

Next week, we will be settling into a routine that we will follow for roughly the next 20 weeks. There will be harvest days, and farm share packing and delivery days, and planting days each week. In the coming week, we will be planting the eggplants and ground cherries, the remainder of the peppers, our late planting of tomatoes (we already planted about 800 plants!), and hopefully we'll get to the watermelons as well. We also need to save our beet and carrot plantings from well, quite a lot of weeds...

Member Appreciation Event this Week!

Throughout the season, we periodically have member appreciation events and we will have one this week! Given the difficulties faced by our country and the world this year, we figure that everyone could use a bit of cheer these days so we are giving each of our members a potted flower this week. If you do not have a place to grow your flower, please pay it forward, and gift it to someone you know!

A few notes from last week, in case you missed them...

Heightened Sanitation Protocols

On a more serious note, we take food safety very seriously at our farm. Emily Kramer, one of our Veggie Growers, is our Food Safety Champion, and she is our go-to expert for all things food safety. Given the Covid-19 crisis, we want to reassure all of our customers that we are taking every precaution to ensure that you have a safe and healthy experience with us this season.

Some of the protocols that we have implemented, or enhanced at the farm this season include:

- Regularly wearing face coverings while harvesting and processing food products, and when working within 6 feet of our teammates

- Strict and regular hand washing protocols

- Social distancing for our team both at work, and outside of work

- Thorough cleaning and sanitizing of all food contact surfaces and high touch surfaces, including harvest containers

- We use only recyclable or compostable single-use packaging in our shares

We want you to know that your health and safety, and the health and safety of our team, is very important to us!

Pick-up Location Protocols

If you have selected to pick-up at one of our hosted pick-up locations, we ask that you observe the following protocols when picking up your shares from our self-serve coolers:

- Wear a facial covering, and practice social distancing with other customers

- Review the "share maps" on top of each cooler to find your last name and then open only that cooler

- Carefully find your share inside the cooler based on the "share map," and collect your share from the cooler without touching, or handling other shares

- Gloves are recommended, if you have them available

*If you have Add-on Shares such as cut flowers or PA pantry items, they will be located adjacent, but outside, of the coolers. Please remember to collect these items.

Home Delivery

If you are a home delivery customer, then one of our team members will be delivering your shares directly to your door via contactless delivery. We will leave your share near your front door. If you will not be home to bring your share inside right away, then we suggest leaving a cooler on your porch for us to put your share inside. If you have selected cut flowers as an Add-on share, then we suggest leaving a clean bucket with water so that your flowers stay fresh until you arrive home.

If you have any questions, please reach out to jodi@cherryvalleyorganics.com or to support@harvie.farm at any time. We're looking forward to a great season! And, thank you for being a farm share member this year!

Jodi, Emily, Annie, Allie, Heather, Bo, Meghan, and Nicole

The CVO Team

Cherry Valley Organics began in 2001 as a USDA certified organic farm, producing a high diversity of agricultural products, including vegetables, herbs, cut flowers, and potted plants. Since those early years, we have grown into an organic lifestyle company, producing a wide diversity of products that support a clean, organic lifestyle, including our herbal teas and herbal body care products, all of which are grown or hand-made at our farm.

At Cherry Valley Organics, we believe in…

*Living the healthiest life possible (full of organics!)
*Fair, livable wages for our team members
*USDA certified organic growing and production practices
*Minimizing our carbon footprint and ecological impact
*Supporting our local community

Cherry Valley Organics is a collaboration. Unlike traditional family farms, we come from diverse geographical, family, and professional backgrounds. We are growers, scientists, food & health enthusiasts, teachers, caretakers, chefs, and nutritionists. We are all farmers. And, all of us here at Cherry Valley Organics are committed to growing and producing high quality certified organic products for our community. We would never compromise on organics. Ever.

Cherry Valley Organics, founded by Jodi Danyo, began as a one-third-acre “urban farm” in the Pittsburgh suburb of Crafton, Cherry Valley Organics now encompasses approximately 36 acres in nearby Cherry Valley, Washington County, PA. Despite this expansion, the footprint of the operation is still quite small with farming operations encompassing less than 8 acres. The farm was built, quite literally, from the ground up!

Our Farm Share Growers, Emily Kramer, Vanessa Davis, Lindsay Henry, Alexis Williams, and Alliy Gundlach, love producing high quality organic products for our local Pittsburgh communities. You can find our products at the Sewickley Farmer’s Market on Saturdays (April through November), and also at local florists and specialty shops. In 2018, we opened a Farm Market & Cafe along the Panhandle Trail in Burgettstown, PA.

What makes our Farm Share unique?

*We wash the produce. Thoroughly. You are unlikely to get any mud in your CVO Farm Share bag. We still recommend that you wash our veggies, but many items will be ready to eat (and may make for excellent snacking in the car on the way home from the pick-up location).

*High diversity of veggie crops. We grow over 150 varieties of vegetables and herbs per season, on average.

*Specialty crops, like microgreens. It's a bit unusual to see this high value crop in farm share programs. They are a bit tricky to grow, but wow do they pack a nutritional punch! Despite their small size, they are the most nutritious veggie in the share!

*We believe in minimizing our environmental impact, and we use biodegradable and compostable packaging wherever possible. And we have a variety of new packaging products in the works for 2021.

*Specialty cut flowers are a niche crop for us. We grow many of the hard-to-grow flower varieties like Ranunculus, Bells of Ireland, Delphinium, and more. Many more. Nearly 300 varieties! Our flowers are not your run of the mill market flowers. Our bouquets are carefully crafted, and absolutely gorgeous!

*We have extensive partnerships with other local businesses and farms, including Primrose Farm (pasture-raised eggs), Paul Family Farms (maple syrup), Tait Farm (jams, butters, shrubs), Weatherbury Farm (flours, milled products), Big Bob's Honey (honey), Clarion River Organics (potatoes, sweet potatoes, melons, winter squash), Woolf Family Farms (blueberries, apples, peaches), Cherish Creamery (cheese), Emerald Valley Artisans (cheese), Steel Cup Coffee Roasters (organic, fair-trade coffee), Conover Family Farm (pickles, hot sauce) and more! A selection of these items is available on a weekly basis and can be added onto your Veggie Farm Share in any quantity you choose. We believe in the value of small business and keeping dollars in our Pittsburgh neighborhoods.

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