Hi farm friends!
Welcome to the 5th week of our Farm Share! I love early July for produce as you still have many of the offerings of spring, like peas and radish, but summer produce is starting to show itself, like beets, cucumbers, and zucchinis. In the hoophouses, we ate our very first ripe tomatoes and small peppers are beginning to grow. Happy summer everyone.
NEW – Partnership with Common Ground Farm
We have a new announcement to share with you all. We are deciding to expand what we can offer our Farm Share members by partnering with another local organic farm whom we very much admire – Common Ground Farm in St Thomas.
What this means:
You will see some additional veggies in your shares and available for swapping or extras purchases which are grown by Common Ground Farm. They are a small-scale, local (St Thomas) farm and they are certified organic. You can read more about them at their website www.commongroundfarm.ca. We were actually Farm Share members of theirs when we first moved to Strathroy. They, like ourselves, are members of the Ecological Farmers Association of Ontario and the London Are Organic Growers.
All items grown by them will be identified on the customization page so you can easily see.
We will offer items from Common Ground that either we do not grow at all, or that we have in limited quantity ourselves. We'll still be growing the vast majority of the food in your shares.
Why Are We Doing This
The short answer: we want to provide you with plenty of choice and diversity in your shares, with the knowledge that you are supporting local organic farms. We want to increase the long-term sustainability of our own farm business.
The long answer: While we put absolutely everything we have into growing a wide variety of high-quality produce for our community, as farmers we face many challenges and limitations – whether that is weather, soil, pests, disease, labour, or space. Through the 10 years we have been growing (even before we made it back to Strathroy) we have realized that the sort of small-scale farming we are doing is not really meant to be done alone. When small farmers were responsible for the vast amount of local food, they were part of large communities of farmers and truly that is more sustainable. We think it makes sense (mentally, financially, philosophically) to partner with other local organic farmers, as a way to strengthen the local food system and our own farm business. We think you’ll get better value from your share as well, since you will get more variety, choice, and quantity - all while continuing to support your local organic farmers. This is our first foray into this territory, so together we will see how it goes!
From Common Ground this week: radishes, red torpea onions, arugula, basil, mini cabbages.
Feedback?
If you have any feedback or thoughts on this, let me know!
Remember to Customize Your Share and Return Your Bags
Don’t forget to customize your share by Tuesday at midnight! It’s the best way to get the full experience and value from your share. PRO TIP: Customize your share more than once! As people customize their shares, different items may come available. You can always check it out a second time closer to the cut-off time to see if anything has popped up.
And don't forget to return those green bags :)
Highlights from This Week’s Share:
Fresh Garlic
This is garlic that hasn’t yet been cured. You can keep it in the fridge. It is a bit milder and smaller than fully cured garlic.
Cucumbers We are finding more of these in the field each week. We grew a pickling cucumber variety that is delicious for fresh eating. Alex grew up eating pickling-style cucumbers from his grandparents’ farm. They can sometimes be prickly on the outside so give them a wipe. Inside they are sweet.
We also have zucchini, kale, chard, shelling peas, spring onions, salad mix, mini lettuce, and baby beets.
On The Farm
We have had some fertility issues on the farm this year. Some items just are not as robust and productive as they were last year. Trying to analyze why something isn’t flourishing is a challenge, since many factors might be at play. A big change this year, though, was us moving away from a very rich turkey litter compost to a lighter cow-manure compost. We think this might be the culprit, so we have returned to our turkey litter compost for the rest of the season. Needless to say, we were pretty happy when our compost delivery arrived.
Thank you for keeping us growing.
Your farmer,
Kim
