Greetings CSA Members-
This has been the warmest, driest growing season I can ever remember here in SE Minnesota. And the last several weeks of fall have been no exception. There is almost no way to overstate how much easier this makes all of our lives here at Featherstone Farm; carrots come in out of the field virtually mud free, ground can be worked and seeded to cover crops almost effortlessly, we have all kinds of time for fix up and clean up jobs all around the farm. At times like this, it is easier than ever to imagine why 90% of the nation’s fresh fruits and vegetables are grown in the arid west. So life is good at Featherstone Farm as this Thanksgiving season approaches.
Lupe on carrot harvest last week
Once again, we have so much to be grateful for, so many people to thank for another fantastic growing season… including you, dedicated winter CSA vegetable customers!
This coming winter of CSA boxes will have a number of old favorites (carrots and squash in great abundance), more fresh spinach than ever before (with any luck… we have added 50% more growing space in high tunnels since last year, and the crop looks fantastic at the time of this writing), and a few new additions (frozen watermelon juice and first ever FF wheat flour blend). We are doing everything we can to diversify the crop mix for the long cold months ahead.
One of our high tunnels with spinach and lettuces for later this season
We have a solid winter warehouse crew this year too, which we hope will make our lives easier day-to-day, particularly through the peak holiday season. In addition to “local” year round employees, we will be joined by summer crew members Veronica and Mayra. These 2 will be returning home to Mexico in mid November for a 3 week “vacation” before returning here in early December on new Visa contracts. In this era when it is so difficult for small businesses (particularly in food and agriculture) to find workers, I cannot tell you how fortunate we feel to have such dedicated warehouse people, willing to come back to the frozen north to help us wash and pack carrots and other CSA crops all winter.
I myself plan to spend the winter supporting warehouse and field work planning work however I can, renovating an apartment or two before workers come back from Mexico next spring, and thinking generally about the “big picture” issues that face all of us in general, and Featherstone Farm in particular: labor standards and benefits, climate change, and the future of small, independent agriculture like we practice here at FF (hint: none of these are getting any easier). With such a marvelous group of farm employees, customers and community members near and far backing us, I feel more hopeful than ever that Featherstone Farm will rise to the challenges of the future, great and small.
I will also be going to high school basketball games. This is a bittersweet time for me and for Jenni: we have been involved deeply in youth sports with our 3 sons beginning with Emmet’s first little league baseball game in Winona ca 2004. With our second son Oscar, things stepped up considerably (travelling basketball leagues nearly year round). Jasper has taken sports to the highest level of the 3; as a HS senior, he is now actively considering scholarship offers to play college basketball. Through it all Jenni and I have developed a love/hate relationship with what we now call the “youth sports industrial complex” I will spare you all our petty gripes and objections at this time and say only that, when this final, final season of high school basketball begins in 3 weeks, we will be cheering enthusiastically from the stands. But with a bit of melancholy in the back of our minds and hearts, too… we will miss having these 3 wonderful boys in our home and daily lives, full stop.
Again, we have so much to be grateful for this Thanksgiving season.
Jenni and I- and all of us at Featherstone Farm- hope that you do, too.
Happy Thanksgiving! Jack
