D&V Organics CSA
Week 24
While we will still be producing vegetables through November, this week will be our 24th consecutive week for the 2021 CSA, and the final week of the season for most members. If you have rescheduled weeks outside of the initial 24 consecutive weeks, then you will have shares remaining in your profile. The end of our main CSA season represents somewhat of a relief for us each year. The middle of our work week is usually filled with preparing for the CSA in terms of harvesting, washing and packaging all of the produce items. Moving forward, we will have a little more time available to prepare for next year, clean up fields and finally finish building our new greenhouse. Every year presents some level of challenge, and those challenges are typically unpredictable and rarely ever the same. For us, this year's most difficult challenges were unlike any that we have had in previous years, coming in the form of labor shortages on the farm to accomplish the farm work and basic farm supply shortages. With the lack of laborers to help accomplish the farm work this season, we had to adjust some of our production plans for the Fall and reduce some of the items that we normally grow and which occupy a significant amount of time and labor to produce...things like baby greens, broccoli rabe, radishes, turnips, etc. We tend to like growing a significant diversity of items (mainly because we like to eat them too), however, the lack of laborers forced us to trim things out of the production schedule so that we were not spread so thin. Many businesses have been affected by supply chain shortages, we've seen this over the past couple years since the beginning of COVID. The farming industry has been affected by these supply chain shortages, forcing us to buy things like fertilizer for incredibly higher prices than we have ever paid in the past, with incredibly long lead times. This year, seed purchasing became incredibly challenging, some common varieties that grow well in our area became unavailable from our seed suppliers or we found ourselves being forced to buy things in excessive quantities because seed suppliers did not have labor to divide large lots of seed into smaller unit sizes. Hopefully we are coming away from 2021 learning a few lessons and developing an understanding on how to navigate new challenges for the future. Nevertheless, we are excited to continue farming for the rest of the year in preparation for a better season in 2022.
Thank you all so much for your support this season, we hope to continue growing nutritious food for you and your family next season.
Enjoy,
Derek & Vicky
