Construction for the next high tunnel has begun! Thanks to the help of a few friends, we've mounted the trusses. Now we can chip away at it between all the other normal farm jobs.
2 more weeks of the main season CSA including this week. The last pickup will be October 22nd, 23rd and 24th depending on your pickup day.
Hard to believe that we already have 24 weeks of the 26 week season under our belts. We've very much appreciated your support this season. What a year 2020 has been! Rolling out Harvie and drastically expanding our CSA has stretched us as and we've learned a lot. We're already making plans for the 2021 season. Here are some things we'll be doing:
1) Maintain summer CSA at current membership. Although there are lots of people who would like to join, we want to make sure we give our CSA members excellent service and we'd like to focus on improving rather than expanding. We'll bring in whatever new members we need to in order to make up for those who choose not to renew, but we aren't looking to expand. Remember, the default for Harvie is for autorenew to be set to ON. AutoRenew for the 2021 summer season will run on October 27th. If you DON'T WANT to automatically renew for next year, then you should go to https://www.harvie.farm/member/auto-renew-settings and turn your auto-renew setting to OFF. If you are having trouble with that, just send us a message that you DON'T want to be a member next year and we can do that for you. I'll be sending more specific instructions and information about the autorenewal process in the coming days. So more info to follow.
2) Use the data to grow more of what you like. We've always had a general idea of what CSA members like, but Harvie allows us to see exactly how much we harvest and how much you pick. We can see when we have surplus or run short on items. The new tunnel we're building will be growing a whole bunch more tomatoes because we kept suffering losses in our outdoor production.
3) A little different pickup location and times for Lee's Summit and Lakewood. In an effort toward simplifying our life, we're giving up on our long-time membership at the Lee's Summit Farmer's market. Instead, the LS pickup for the 2021 summer CSA season will be held on Thursdays from 4:00 to 6:30 pm at Connection Point Church in Lee's Summit near Colbern and I-470. We hope this is a convenient time and place for our LS and Lakewood members.
4) Shorten the season a tad bit. The 2021 summer CSA season will be 2 weeks shorter. Basically ending in early October instead of near the end of October. That will help us rest easier a bit and allow for a wider variety of summer season crops. Early fall frosts keep us up at night worrying. We purposely keep the winter CSA membership significantly lower because we know we are limited in protected growing space. Ending a little earlier will mean next winter CSA will start a bit earlier and will allow for a bit more variety in the winter CSA.
5) Bread Add-on Shares! We're piloting the program now for the winter CSA but we'll be offering bread shares as an add-on share. You can get fresh bread from Farm to Market Bread Co. included in your CSA share each week if you choose to add it. Starting October 27th you'll have the option to add a bread share to your renewal order for your CSA share. Again, more info on this later, but we're excited to be able to offer this option.
Thanks for making the 2020 CSA season possible! Thanks for putting value on nutritious, locally-grown, organic produce. We've been honored to serve you as your farmers. During this time of crisis, it has been our aim to provide food as medicine to you. You are what you eat!
Your farmers,
Dave and Sheri
