New this Week: Pac choi, Lemongrass, and Zaatar!
This Week at the Farm:
Still drought conditions here, but at least we did get a few overnight rains. The crew has officially decided that fall is our favorite time to farm. The weather is cool and great for working. Sunny days are a bonus. There are so many cool season crops to grow that we just simply can't grow here in PA in summer, either due to heat or to high insect pressure - like arugula, radishes, mustards, and pac choi. We are also big greens lovers, and we hope you are too. The greens just get tastier and tastier as the cool fall continues! We also love that insect pressure subsides as many insects stop breeding, feed less, and go to ground for the winter. Flea beetles are a great example, and you'll notice far fewer holes in those arugula and mustard leaves as we take second and third harvests from our plantings in the coming weeks.
This week, we are officially saying farewell to some crops, such as our heirloom tomatoes and summer squashes. We hope that the eggplants and peppers continue for a little while longer. As winter approaches, we will be reframing the focus of our farm to our value-added product lines, including our herbal teas; our herbal soaps, salves, fragrances, and lip balms; and our herb-infused vinegars.
We started making these products over a decade ago to increase revenue for the farm in the winter months of the year. Now, these products have taken their own, well-established place in our diversified business model, and we have a few exciting announcements to share with you this week!
If you haven't tried them yet, our herbal teas are unique blends of our USDA certified organic herbs all grown on our farm here in Cherry Valley. In a few blends, we use additional spice and fruit ingredients such as certified organic cinnamon, apples, and orange peel from reputable fair trade, and local when possible, suppliers. The biggest news is that our teas are now available in Giant Eagle Market District! This will make them more accessible to our Pittsburgh-area customers all through the year. Check them out in the Robinson, South Hills, Shadyside, Waterworks, Wexford, and McMurray stores! And, please help us spread the word!
Check your email this week for another big announcement regarding our lip balms!
Have a great week!
Preference Check Reminders (from last week's Farm Happening):
1) In your Harvie preferences, have you rated every item available? If you have an unrated item, then the system defaults to a 3 rating, which means you will get the item, even if you dislike it.
2) Have you accurately rated each item? In other words, maybe you said that you would just make it easy and rate every item either a 1 (dislike it) or 5 (love it). This type of rating is essentially the equivalent of not having any ratings at all. Of course, you will not receive the items you rated as 1. But everything rated as a 5 will be looked at equally by the Harvie algorithm, which could explain why you are getting the same items in your share every time. The Harvie algorithm does not take into account what you get from week to week. It looks at each week as standalone (it is one of the drawbacks that they are working to fix). Bottom line, be sure to rate items as 2s, 3s, and 4s. It will make a difference.
3) Have you changed every item you don't want to receive to a 1? Although the Harvie language instructs you to rate your preferences based on your likes and dislikes, the preferences really reflect what you want to receive and what you don't. If you grow your own herb patch, you may not want to receive those herbs in your share. You'll want to change the preferences for those herbs to 1s (even though you love them) so the system does not allocate them to you. Same with squash or tomatoes, or anything else you might be growing for yourselves.
Preferences will become even more important as we head into the fall season. As produce availability becomes more limited in the final weeks, you will want to make sure that your preferences are in good shape to give you a share you will enjoy!
IMPORTANT NOTE FOR FLOWER BOUQUET MEMBERS:
Unfortunately, the Harvie platform scheduled some of the flower bouquets after the end of flower season in late October or early November. We have taken the first step to move these bouquets to the weeks between now and mid-October. For every four week or biweekly flower subscribers, this may mean that you will receive a bouquet on a week you weren't expecting. If you are a weekly bouquet subscriber, some of your bouquets will be doubled up. Of course, these moves are just place holders. If you wish to cancel these bouquets or you wish to reschedule them to different weeks, you are able to do so via your Harvie profile. Or drop us or Support an email and we'll help! We will even substitute a dried flower bouquet by request. We hope you have enjoyed your bouquets this season, and we apologize for this inconvenience.
If you have any questions, please reach out to jodi@cherryvalleyorganics.com or to support@harvie.farm at any time. Thank you for being a farm share member this season!
Jodi, Emily, Annie, Allie, Meghan, Nicole, Hannah, and Vanessa
The CVO Team
