CSA Week 2

Week 1 is behind us, so I thought it was time for a CSA etiquette lesson:

et·i·quette: the customary code of polite behavior in society or among members of a particular profession or group.

CSA etiquette? You bet! This applies especially to our Brookside pickup folks, but also to those who end up picking up their own shares at the farm for Friday self-serve or who missed pickups (all but Brookside) and come help themselves at the farm to their shares.

Especially at Brookside, remember that this is a member's home, not a professional CSA hander-outer-person. We are very blessed to have Tamara volunteer her home as a pickup location so we should be respectful of her time and space. She tries to make it a point to text people who have forgotten their share to remind them in case they forgot, but this is only out of the kindness of her heart and not a necessity or requirement. As members, your responsibility is to pick up your share on time. She does not have a walk in cooler like we do to place the share in for you to help yourself later like we do at the farm, so missed shares there cannot be kept for a later pickup. She makes a habit of donating those leftover shares, so they don't go to waste. So, set reminders on your calendar or alarms on your phone, or strings on your finger to remember to pick up your box of veggies each week.

When you find your share with your label on it you'll likely have to unstack some shares to get to it (why is your's always on the bottom?). When you do this, it's easy to lose track of your own share and inadvertently take someone else's instead of your own. So before you grab your veggies, please double check that it's in fact your name, not a name similar to your own. A good way to do this is peel the label off your tote and take it with you (it's helpful to remind you of what you got and helps us not have to peel hundreds of labels off before the next week when we fill the boxes again). Also, as a courtesy to others, make sure you don't reorient the other member's shares so the labels are no longer visible to the others. Finally, please neatly nest your empty tote in a stack empty totes.

We hope that by adopting this simple CSA etiquette, we'll make CSA pickup an enjoyable experience for all. Thanks for your cooperation!

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!

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 Farrars 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.

Tomatoes?

Yes, we have them, but they don't have fruit yet. We've planted more than ever in tunnels and we are about to start planting outside after the next couple cool nights. 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. 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. 65-75 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 Bread Company 8- Grain Sliced loaf

Cheese share: Hemme Brother's (Cow's milk) Feta block- perfect for salad!

Thank you so much for being part of our farmily. As a family we often lift up our CSA members in prayer, thanking God for his provision for us through you and asking that he bless you through the food we provide and the eating experiences you share around your own tables. May God bless you this summer through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Your farmers,

Dave and Sheri

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