Though summer vacation is over for most, the CSA isn't even close to ending. We have 8 more weeks left. The final CSA pickup is October 13-15. Your shares will be changing as the season changes but we expect the largest variety of the season especially in the last 5-6 weeks of the season, so keep those home-cooked meals from fresh ingredients coming.
Winter CSA Signups Coming Soon
For those of you who were winter CSA members last year and have your Harvie auto-renew settings set to "ON" your auto-renew order for the winter CSA will occur on September 6th. You'll have 3 days to adjust your order or cancel it with your first week (initial signup) payment occurring Sept 9. What is autorenew and how do I find out if I'm enrolled?
We run autorenew twice per year and each time it is season-specific. Once for the winter season and once for the summer season. September 6 we are running it for the winter season. You'll only be automatically signed up for the winter season if you were a winter season member last year and have your settings set to "ON" for autorenew. Right around the end of the summer season sometime in mid-October, we'll be running autorenew again but that time it will be for the summer 2023 season and all of you who have your autorenew settings set to "ON" will then be automatically signed up for the 2023 summer season at that time.
For those of you who would like to join the winter CSA for the first time, we'll open up signups for the winter CSA Sept 10. Don't wait long to make the choice because we can only support about half the shares in winter that we do in summer, so it will fill up quickly.
As we get closer to Sept 10 and the opening of new signups for the winter CSA, I'll write more details about the winter CSA. Pickups are almost every week (20 total deliveries) from October 20 to April 20. We take holiday weeks off and we only do 2 deliveries per month in January and February. Pickups are at distribution sites at member home porches on Thursdays in OP, Prairie Village, Lee's Summit, Brookside and Lakewood and the farm as well as the Friday Self-serve on the farm. The veggies are limited by what we can grow in winter. Most of the crops are greens and roots with some bonus stuff near the beginning of the season while it lasts. More details later.
Tomatoes on the Decline
Well it was good while it lasted, wasn't it? Most of the outdoor tomatoes are succumbing to disease now. It's just a matter of time when you grow tomatoes outdoors at scale organically without antibacterial or antifungal sprays, they'll get diseased and die off. That's what we're seeing now with our largest outdoor tomato plantings. It's to be expected and it's one of the reasons we keep building high tunnels. Tomatoes with dry foliage protected from heavy dew and rain by a roof overhead, are slower to develop these diseases. We still have strong plants in our high tunnels but with shortening days, the fruits are becoming smaller and less plentiful. We'll keep them on the list as long as we can but quantities are going down dramatically.
But peppers continue to be on the ascension. We're also getting close to lifting the first of the ginger and the field of green beans is looking great in this cooler weather. We keep hoping for that monster flush of beans that once we see it will probably overwhelm us all.
We also have potatoes again from our farmer friend Mike Pearl. He's been dig'n 'tators so we've got them now. This is one of the crops we don't have the space or equipment for. Mike farms organically on sandy loam river bottom land which is much better suited for growing spuds. We're very glad he can help supply us with these tasty treats!
Bread and Cheese
Farm to Market Great Grains Sliced Bread
Hemme Brothers "Brother's Keeper" block
Have a great week!
Dave and Sheri
