I would like to start this week's happening by paying my respects to the First Nations and their societies who inhabited this land for millennia. Their spirit and reverence for the natural world, and all of it's beings, is a continual source of inspiration in my farming journey.
Together, we will celebrate an incredible Fall season with our shares this week. Just in time for Thanksgiving, we have enough heads of broccoli for everyone! These broccolis were started in early July inside of our propagation house, before the Spring farm shares ended. I planted the transplants in the field in the middle of August. We protected them from the sun with shade cloth, overhead watered three times a day, and ran drip irrigation. I cultivated them every two weeks, and fertilized with cow manure plus compost in September. More so than almost any other crop, I have really wanted these to succeed. We know y'all love broccoli, and last year, it really disappointed me when the Fall crop failed. Fortunately, these are the first of three succession plantings. Next, we will start harvesting broccolini. If all goes well, we should continue to harvest that crop until January.
There are 10 bundles of baby carrots available for shares this week. To be fair, I adding those as a swap item, so it's first come, first served. We will also have a few bundles at the Ruston Farmers Market this Saturday. Also available for swap is our strawberry fig jam. We haven't added this one to the shares yet, so it's a great time to try something new! We have a number of fresh herbs right now. I'm adding dill, lemon balm, and leafy celery to the list of swappable items, so choose exactly what you need for a flavorful Thanksgiving!
Thanksgiving is always a reflective time of year for me. Lately, I think back to Fall 2018 when we raised the broad-breasted bronze turkeys. So many things went wrong. They were not ready for processing in time, so we went over our feed budget. Then, we ended up barely selling half of the ones we harvested. People were not willing to spend $120 for a turkey. We lost so much money, and we worked so hard, that it really forced me to pivot from a ranch (we also had 150 ducks and 250 laying hens) to a vegetable farm. That following Spring, we started our first CSA season. It really is a lesson to never be afraid to change when it comes to your business model. When the pandemic hit, we sold 97% of all the flocks, and put every dime Tuna and I had into starting this vegetable operation. We did it with no loans, no grants, no investors-just an unbeatable drive for improvement, hard work, and investing the money from farm shares and farmers markets back into the farm. I spent my stimulus money on the greens harvester and the jang seeder, tools which have helped us produce more than $100,000 worth of vegetables this year, on less than an acre. So many things have gone our way. We were privileged we didn't have to spend money to access this land, which is one of the biggest hurdles for beginning farmers. Although some weather events have been erratic, we have had pretty mild weather. Most importantly, we have amazing customers like all of you who eat our veggies! Our farm shares represent about 60% of our total sales, so without all of you, there wouldn't be a farm! I am extraordinarily thankful for each and every one of you. To all of you who are friends and family, I love you, and thanks for believing in us. To all of you I haven't met, thank you for trusting us to grow food for you and you family. It is an honor to do so.
I hope you all enjoy a restful time with your family and friends this week. If you plan on sharing some vegetables with your family this holiday, know that sharing brings us immense joy.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Sincerely,
Conrad Cable
