Things had been getting a little dry and dusty on the farm, but not anymore! We're glad for the rain. OK, it can stop now.
The garlic harvest is complete thanks to the help a group of ya'll. We enjoyed the time talking and pulling garlic from the ground. These little work times are a great way to get to know your farmers and connect with your food. We're grateful for the help on these monstrously large tasks and we'll have another one of these tasks soon with the first of the onion harvests! We're watching the weather closely. The onions are about ready to pull but its clearly too wet right now. We'll be watching for a window of dryness and when we see it, we'll send out as much advance warning as possible.
So much about farming is weather dependent that we don't tend to make long-range plans, at least not with specific dates in mind. I can tell you now that we'll be harvesting sweet potatoes in late September and October but I can't put a date on it. We just go with the flow. For you ultra-planners out there with your schedules booked weeks in advance...well, we might seem sort of seat-of-the-pants people. For us, it's hard to make plans, even personal plans, weeks in advance because that might be the week the sweet potato slips come and we have to plant them, or the week the soil is dry enough to plant the fall carrots. So, we sorta take it a week at a time or even a day at a time, reshuffling the schedule as weather, soil conditions, and crop needs dictate.
All this to say, if you want in on one of these community harvest days, keep an eye peeled on your email or the private CSA Facebook page. You may not get much advance notice. If you can make it, great. If not, no worries, there will be more last-minute opportunities. If getting dirty with us isn't your thing, totally understand. There are no strings attached to your CSA membership. We do these community events as a way to build camaraderie and give you an opportunity to connect with your food in a meaningful way. Maybe connecting with your food through Instagram is more your thing:).
Bread and Cheese
Bread- Farm to Market LARGE Sourdough Sliced Loaf
Cheese- Hemme Brothers Mild Cheddar block, 6 oz
The Grapes of Wrath
Been reading (listening to) The Grapes of Wrath this week. I'd never read it before and really didn't know what it was about but Steinbeck's writing of the plight of poor farmers overcome by the menace of industrial agriculture spoke to me. Steinbeck describes the time-period of the Great Depression and the beginning of chemical agriculture, dependence upon economies of scale, operating loans, corporate ownership and the squeezing out of the small farmer. He reminds me why we are working so hard on such a small scale to decentralize our food system. You are part of bringing small farms back--Farms where the land is cherished, stewarded, and known! Thanks for supporting local farmers and making small-scale agriculture possible again! I'll leave you with a a quote about the dangers of the factory farm and the machine of big business controlling the land and the food supply.
“The tractors came over the roads and into the fields, great crawlers moving like insects, having the incredible strength of insects … Snub-nosed monsters, raising the dust and sticking their snouts into it, straight down the country, across the country, through fences, through dooryards, in and out of gullies in straight lines. They did not run on the ground, but on their own roadbeds. They ignored hills and gulches, water courses, fences, houses.
That man sitting in the iron seat did not look like a man; gloved, goggled, rubber dust mask over nose and mouth, he was a part of the monster, a robot in the seat … The driver could not control it – straight across country it went, cutting through a dozen farms and straight back. A twitch at the controls could swerve the ‘cat, but the driver’s hands could not twitch because the monster that built the tractor, the monster that sent the tractor out, had somehow gotten into the driver’s hands, into his brain and muscle, had goggled him and muzzled him – goggled his mind, muzzled his speech, goggled his perception, muzzled his protest. He could not see the land as it was, he could not smell the land as it smelled; his feet did not stamp the clods or feel the warmth and power of the earth. He sat in an iron seat and stepped on iron pedals. He could not cheer or beat or curse or encourage the extension of his power, and because of this he could not cheer or whip or curse or encourage himself. He did not know or own or trust or beseech the land. If a seed dropped did not germinate, it was no skin off his ass. If the young thrusting plant withered in drought or drowned in a flood of rain, it was no more to the driver than to the tractor.
He loved the land no more than the bank loved the land. He could admire the tractor – its machined surfaces, its surge of power, the roar of its detonating cylinders; but it was not his tractor. Behind the tractor rolled the shining disks, cutting the earth with blades – not plowing but surgery … The driver sat in his iron seat and he was proud of the straight lines he did not will, proud of the tractor he did not own or love, proud of the power he could not control. And when that crop grew, and was harvested, no man had crumbled a hot clod in his fingers and let the earth sift past his fingertips. No man had touched the seed, or lusted for the growth. Men ate what they had not raised, had no connection with the bread. The land bore under iron, and under iron gradually died; for it was not loved or hated, it had no prayers or curses.”
Thanks for getting connected with your food through our farm! You are the Community that Supports this Agriculture.
Your farmers,
Dave and Sheri
