Personal Farm Connection
This past week, it was great to see the faces of so many familiar friends and to meet some new ones too!
For the winter season, we pack boxes for CSA members but since we leave them behind, each week to be picked up later, we don't get a chance to see you. (Brookside folks and Farm self-serve folks we don't get the chance even in summer to meet you much). There's something special for us to see the people for whom we grow. Slogging away at farming can be hard, even lonely sometimes. But getting a chance to see and chat with the community we feed and the community that pays our bills is a blessing.
In our modern agricultural system, the farmers who have really "made it", the "big boys", the "successful" ones graduate to producing for wholesale markets. They say it's a lot easier to get good at a handful of crops and sell them to a broker rather than have to "deal with" all the customers at market or CSA. I don't know about all that, but something about seeing your smiling faces and joining in your excitement at trying new recipes with the crops we labored to produce keeps us going. Though it would increase efficiency, we can't imagine producing for a faceless organization rather than real people. Of course real farmers are behind the food at grocery stores and real people end up eating what they produce, but often thousands of miles, national borders, days of delay and many middle men stand between the producer and consumer. Our CSA provides all of us with the closest possible connection between us and the people who eat what we grow. That connection is an encouragement to us, and I hope it's an encouragement to you as well to feel a real connection to your food.
So thanks again for being part of our community and helping cut a lot of links out of the supply chain between wholesome food and your plates. How cool is it that our supply chain isn't much of a chain at all? More like a direct connection.
Where's the Beef?
(Vegetarians disregard this paragraph). Do you have that sort of connection to your meat supply chain as well? If not, we'd love to make you aware of our friends the Farrar's from Farrar Family Farm https://farrarfamilyfarmkc.com/ . They do a monthly Thursday delivery to our farm with custom ordered pastured meats and meat CSA shares that coincides with the timing of our Thursday on-farm CSA pickups. They do a great job raising amazing animals and you can get that same sort of connection to even more of the food you eat by finding a local farmer like them. If you pick up your CSA at the farm on Thursdays, ordering from them and picking up meat at the same time is a great idea. And even if you don't normally pick up your share at the farm, you can use Harvie to move your share to the farm to coincide with their meat delivery dates if you'd like. Or they do other delivery points and even home delivery in some parts of the metro area, so check them out. Just FYI on picking up at our farm, their delivery time window is much shorter than ours because they have to hit several locations, so you'll just need to check on that timing and make sure you can make it for their timeframe. We'll be here with your veggies, but we DON'T have them leave the meat behind for you to pick up later.
Farm Visits
Some of ya'll asked about opportunities to come out to visit the farm and maybe help out. If you pick up at the farm, you're welcome to walk around and check things out. Just try not to step on anything that looks like it might be food:)
We try to have special events on the farm from time to time. We've planted a tremendous amount of garlic; even more than last year, so we'll definitely have some garlic harvest days and garlic trimming days again where we'll welcome help. We'll also have sweet potato planting days coming up this spring. These are fun events where whole families can come out and play in the dirt with us. No obligation, but if it sounds fun to you, be on the lookout for emails or Facebook posts about it.
Tomatoes?
Yes, we have them, but they don't have fruit yet. We've planted more than ever in tunnels and we've even started planting outside with some protection. So the summer crops are off to a good start, but they're called summer crops for a reason. Given the extra cool and slow to start spring this year, they may be a bit behind but that just means the cool season crops should be even better. The broccolini look amazing! Not producing yet, but it won't be too long. We've started trellising the sugar snap peas, but it'll be a bit before they flower and before we start the mad rush of picking thousands of peas every day. So things are slowly progressing on the farm. This next 10 day forecast looks fantastic for spring crop growth. 65-70 during the day and around 50 at night....perfect!!! We've been excited to see the outdoor crops finally kicking into gear. We're still mostly harvesting from our tunnels, so selection and quantity of produce is limited, but we're hopeful that things are turning the corner and we'll be inundated with fresh food soon! Thanks for your patience and enjoy the amazing greens while they last!
Bread and Cheese
Bread: Farm to Market Great Grains, Sliced
Cheese: Hemme Brothers Quark
Your farmers,
Dave and Sheri
