Lots of new crops to harvest this week (including plenty of carrots)! We're beginning to harvest summer crops like zucchini, cucumbers, and cherry tomatoes, all the while also harvesting our spring crops like cabbage and broccoli. It's a little strange for us because in the past, it seems like the 'brassica block', as we call the cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower beds are usually done producing by the time we start the summer crops that require regular picking. This year has been a strange one, with a late Spring and an early Summer, but we're not complaining because it means we're able to have enough to go around. As is typically the case with these order ahead boxes, when a new crop comes online, we are pretty conservative with our harvest estimate for the week ahead because we don't have any harvest numbers to build off of yet. So though we are beginning to harvest zucchini, there isn't enough for it to be widely available yet. Don't worry though, soon zucchini will be coming out of our ears (and yours too!).
Speaking of harvest estimates...here's a little primer on how the Harvie system works (that we use to manage our CSA and also sell extra Farm Stand boxes with). Each Friday, Rudy and Bonnie do a 'harvest walk'. We estimate the quantity of each crop that we'll be able to harvest next week. Then we input the numbers into Harvie. Harvie uses an algorithm to build default boxes for our CSA members, this takes into account their preferences. For example anyone who rates beets as 'hate it' won't be seeing beets in their default box. Then the emails go out letting our CSA members that have a delivery coming, that it's time to customize their box. If we have so much produce in our estimate that we can fill our CSA boxes and have plenty of variety for swapping AND have plenty more, then we open the Farm Stand and those emails go out as well. Both CSA members and folks that grab a Farm Stand box have until Monday at noon to either grab a box (Farm Stand) or finish up customizing their box (CSA). We are intentionally conservative with our harvest estimate because we never want to sell anything that we won't be able to harvest for delivery. So often times, items will be available at the Farmers Market that were not available in Harvie, but that's just a by-product of being able to do these build ahead boxes.
