Farm-ily,
Nothing in an Amazon Prime box will ever make a farmer’s heart beat faster than a shipment from a seed supplier. Give us a humble box from Johnny’s Seeds or High Mowing Organics, and we’ll give you a year of delicious meals! Actually, perhaps ‘humble’ is the wrong word, since we’re expecting over 40 lbs of seeds to arrive this week. Maybe that doesn’t sound like much at first. When you consider that a large seed might be the size of a your fingernail and the smallest is scarcely larger than a grain of sand, however, 40 lbs goes a long way. Even so, that box is one of several. How many carrot seeds do you think we ordered? If you guessed over 150,000, you might be ready for a spot on the Willowsford Farm crew!
Unlike more familiar species like pumpkin or watermelon, most people will go their entire lives without ever encountering a carrot seed. Technically, a carrot seed is not actually a seed at all, but a dried fruit called a schizocarp. They’re similar in size and appearance to the dried fennel seed you may have in your spice cabinet. Fennel, as well as celery, coriander, dill, parsnip and carrots all belong to a plant group called umbellifers that produce schizocarps. Carrots are a particularly finicky umbellifer that produce their schizocarp seeds only after two years of growth. Despite their classification as a biennial, we grow them as annuals. In fact, we love them so much we’re adding purple carrots to the crop plan for this year so we can savor and share more varieties.
What else is new and exciting in those seed shipments? Our cauliflower repertoire is growing, with both cheddar and Romanesco varieties headed our way. We’re experimenting with Snow Leopard Melon, which is a tiny “personal sized” honeydew, and an early ripening cantaloupe called the Sweet Granite. Honey Snap Peas, a sweet yellow cultivar of sugar snap pea, are another new crop on the roster.
When we’re deciding what to add or tweak in our season plans, your saved preferences in Harvie are an incredibly valuable and helpful tool. Every rating from each member is aggregated into a set of detailed graphs that allow us to see what you love most, and what you might like more of. From there, we can make educated guesses about what else you’ll enjoy. The time you take pre-season to enter your preferences and share your opinion on what we grow is priceless. A tall stack of preferences reports is worth its weight in golden beets!
These are the things that excite us as Winter CSA winds down and Spring looms on the horizon. It goes without saying that during the hiatus between seasons, we miss the weekly pattern of picking and packing your farm shares, waving to you from the delivery truck, and seeing you tag us in photos of your meals on Instagram and Facebook. In this final week of our winter CSA, we want to thank you for keeping us warm this winter with your year-round commitment to the Farm! We hope you stock up on roots and locally raised proteins this week to keep a little local flavor close at hand between now and May. Until then, we’ll be carefully tending the seeds (and schizocarps!) that will bring us all together again in a few short months
Eat Well and Be Well,
Ashley, Collin, Alexandra, Gabe, and Finn the Farm Dog - Your Winter Willowsford Farm Crew
