Hi Everyone,
Seasons’ greetings from Jubilee Farm. This is our last communiqué for 2004 (and our first for 2005), and the last general note we’ll send until the spring of next year. In this update we’ll touch on the following:
1. E-mail and snail-mail lists for 2005.
As most of you know, neither our e-mail list nor our snail-mail list is one of those that “once you’re on, you never get off.” Just as we like to start with freshly plowed soil each year, we like to start with “clean” mailing lists—those people who we know (still) want to hear from us. Because so many e-mail addresses have changed during the year, we are sending this last update twice—once by snail-mail to everyone, and then again by e-mail, just before we delete the 2004 e-mail list. Those of you who wish to continue to get our updates (and we hope that’s all of you) can get on the 2005 list easily and quickly. All you need to do is go to our web page (www.jubileefarm.org), select the very bottom item on the menu of our home page (“newsletter sign-up”), and in 30 seconds or less you will be signed up, sometime after Sunday, January 16. You can also add your new e–mail address at any time during the season if you change addresses. If you don’t use e-mail, give us a call (425-222-4558) and we’ll get you on our “postal” mail list.
2. If you have signed up for Summer Session:
Enclosed in this update should be a receipt of your application, payment, and a schedule for subsequent payments (if there is a balance remaining). If you have sent in an application (or hand-delivered or done an application on-line) but receive nothing enclosed in this update, please give us a call (425-222-4558) or e-mail us at jubileefarm@hotmail.com.
3. If you have not signed up for Summer Session:
Applications are available on-line (www.jubileefarm.org) or you can give us a call and we’d be happy to send one in the postal mail. If you’re working on-line, you can either download the form and mail it to us, or you can sign up on-line. You can also pay on-line, but you can only pay the full amount. If you want to make partial payment, you should just download the application and mail it in with your deposit.
4. Weekend farm pick-up for Summer Session, 2005.
Many of you through your surveys and in conversation have asked if we could once again have a Saturday pick-up at the farm during the Summer Session. We’ve decided to do that. For now we will set the pick-up times to be between 10:00 and 4:00. But we’re open to input on the times and could adjust them if it seems those involved would like us to. If you have already signed up for a Tuesday or Friday and would like to switch to Saturday, just call or drop us a note (425-222-4558) or email jubileefarm@hotmail.com.
5. End of season surveys—changes for the upcoming season.
We appreciate each of the many, many surveys that were returned to us. This is a very helpful way for us to get very straight (usually anonymous) comments about strengths and weaknesses of the CSA. This was a particularly good set of surveys with many specific observations and suggestions. It was exciting for us to read and discuss them. It’s also good to know the level of concern that so many of your have.
Rarely do we first learn about an “issue” from the surveys. But reading your comments about the things that we have sensed is a very strong motivation to take action. Moreover, we do often get suggestions that we had not thought of. The comments this year seemed to fall into the following categories, which I will enumerate and respond to:
1. Regarding the survey question about quantity and variety of fruit and produce.
It is a “given” that we can’t and never will know exactly how much is “too much” or “too little” for everyone. But for some reason, going through these surveys this time a light came on. Of course some members are always going to think we had too many beets, or too much chard, or too many tomatoes; and others are going to think we had too few beets, too little chard, and not enough tomatoes. This is a perennial issue. But the answer, I think, is not to stop offering beets or chard or kohlrabi or any other particular item. We need to expand our culinary experiences, and growing only those things we’re “used to” is, I think, not healthy for us or for the land. But there are three things we can and need to do:
There were some good suggestions. We can’t do them all; the request for pineapples was heard, but, unfortunately, that’s one we can not do much about. But here are some we can do something about:
Green onions: this came up over and again, and is something we will do this year (especially spring and fall).
Regular onions: Many of you mentioned that you would like more onions. That was a seasonal issue (the 80 degree weather the last week of April toasted our onions), but we have taken steps to remove some contingency with onions by going back to starting our onions from seed again (we had gone to buying transplants). We are starting onions now, and hope to have a much better year by getting them started earlier and by using our own transplants that are not “bare-root.”
Larger Potatoes: Several people mentioned that they wanted larger potatoes (for those situations where you want to peel them). This year we will grow, along with our usual varieties, a russet-type, baking potato.
Artichokes: Artichokes were asked for, and I’m happy to report that the large batch of artichokes we started in the green house last summer and transplanted in the fall are doing well. I’m quite sure they will be producing this year.
More berries: Last year we had two equal sections of three-year old strawberries and first-year strawberries. The first-year berries produced very well. The third year berries did ok early on, but then died off. This year we are planting another (slightly bigger) batch of first-year berries, and our second-year berries should be very strong producers. I think that the third year berries should be plowed under mid-season. I’m very optimistic that we’ve figured out how to make strawberries work here. This will be our second year on the raspberries, and they should produce much better this year. We’re also hoping that this year we will really get the thornless blackberries we ordered last year. It will take a couple of years to bring them along, but they will be a great addition to our berries.
Egg Plants: This will be a year of experimenting with egg plant. We’ve not had good success yet, but I believe we will. This vegetable will, I suspect, be one of the immediate beneficiaries of our renewed commitment to learning how to save our own seed. We need to find varieties that are late enough for our relatively short and cool summers, and then we need to select those individuals we find among those varieties that show particular ability to set and mature fruit in our climate. If any of you have varieties you would like us to try, we will be glad to add them to our list!
Sweet Potatoes: This is another crop that will have to go through the learning curve. We will probably have to grow them through black plastic, which we can certainly do. It’s getting and maintaining the starts (“slips”) that we’ve struggled with up to this point. But it is on the list!
3. U-pick issues. There were a couple of issues that came up many, many times on the surveys. They were:
4. Misc. items: Finally, here are three “other” items from the surveys I’d like to mention:
6. Winter Session CSA
Right now we are all enjoying a bit of a “winter break,” but Winter CSA will be starting before long. Our first delivery will be on Wednesday, February 2nd. As I suppose you all know, the “off-season” Sessions (that is, those that fall outside our main growing season which constitutes our five month Summer Session) are short—just six weeks at a time. If you haven’t joined before and would like to try a Session or would like more information, drop us a note (jubileefarm@hotmail.com). This winter we’ll be delivering to Fall City, North Bend, Carnation, Ames Lake, Klahanie, Sahalee, Redmond, South Bellevue (Lakemont area), Eastgate, Mercer Island, Mount Baker, the University district, Wedgewood, Canyon Park, and Woodinville.
For those of you who are already signed up for Winter Session (and those who plan to), we would be the happy recipients of any egg cartons you can collect to return in your boxes. We thought we had plenty, but even though we are taking a winter break, the chickens aren’t. So if you can easily save your egg cartons and pass them on to us when you return your boxes on the second week of pick-up, we would be very appreciative.
7. What’s happening on the farm during the long, lonely, dark winter?
Well, I guess I just told you one thing that is not happening—the chickens are not taking a break. They are laying right on schedule, and want to be fed and watered on schedule. We had quite a time with them on the night of the last flood. That flood didn’t turn out to be as big as we feared it might, but it was still the largest since February of 1996. I was thinking when I went to bed that night, with the water rising slowly, that the chickens (hereafter to be known as the “dumb clucks”) would be ok until morning. But by 1:30 I could see that the morning was going to be too late. I’m certainly not the greatest carpenter, but I knew that the chickens weren’t going to complain if their new “floor” (elevated three feet) wasn’t exactly in square. So, for about three hours I built a plywood false floor under them, while they roosted. I don’t know what they thought of the whole procedure, but at least when it got light they had something other than two feet of water to land on when they descended from their roosts. And, of course, descend they will—regardless! They really aren’t too bright. I’ve lost a lot of chickens that way. Wendy doesn’t like it when I call them “dumb clucks,” sometimes you just have to call a spade the spade that it is!
The flood peaked at a height that was very advantageous for us. All the fields were covered, which is good, but it still would have taken another six inches to get into the barn and make a real mess. But the best thing about it was that it peaked in the afternoon of a beautiful, sunny day. I was able to row around the entire farm and take “benchmarks” for a flood of 58+ feet. That’s very helpful, as I now have a very exact idea just where the water is in the barn, around the rental houses, in the chicken house, in each of the green houses, and so on, whenever we reach the 58 foot mark on the Carnation gauge. King County updates the gauge height every half an hour, twenty-four hours a day on its Flood Warning Web site. So it’s pretty easy to keep track of which way to row to try to avert (or at least to be there to witness) catastrophes.
Beyond dealing with floods, we’ve been putzing on other projects. As of this week we have the three greenhouses all ready for spring. The first step in that process is to remove the tomato plants. Considering we have over a thousand plants, that takes a while! This year we “harvested” the tomatoes that were green and still on the vine, left them in the squash room to ripen, and distributed them in the Fall Session of our CSA. So that made the task of getting rid of the old plants more interesting. We can’t use the composted plants, as that would increase the likelihood of preserving some kind of bacteria that mature plants can withstand, but the "babies” we plant in the spring could not. So far we’ve done well to be using the same houses now for nine years without problems. After we take out the old plants, we tie up the strings, add compost, work the compost in with a chisel plow (no rototilling!), and plant our cover crop of Austrian field peas, vetch, and fava beans. Next year we’re going to devote the two houses near where Julie and Laura live to tomatoes too. I didn’t mention this above, but several people asked about salad tomatoes, and although we’ve done outside cherry tomatoes the last couple of years, they do much better inside. So we’ve still got some work to do getting those two houses composted and ready for tomatoes.
Another project that we’ve been working on has been planting the onion seeds that I mentioned earlier. We’ve planted about 30,000, which takes a while. They’re all done now and in the green house. We’ve found that the earlier we can get them transplanted in the spring, the more likely we will be of having success. I had thought of that even before this past season, when our eighty degree late April (yes, I know, it’s hard to remember that now!) did most of last year’s crop in. But now we feel it is necessary for the kind of success with onions that we’ve had sporadically but would like to have every year.
8. May Day
I know it’s a bit early, but since we haven’t yet done the calendar (mentioned above), I thought I’d remind everyone that except for the three six-week Winter, Spring, and Late Spring Sessions of our “off season” CSA, and except for a couple of months of plowing, soil and bed preparations, and planting, well, the next thing really “public” at the farm is May Day. This year the Saturday nearest to May 1 st is April 30, and we’re thinking that would be better than waiting until May 7th. So, Saturday, April 30th it will be. We’ll send out reminders, of course, as the time approaches, but it will be here before you know it. So, mark your calendars! We’re also on the lookout for musicians that would be willing to play for the kids’ Maypole event. Any volunteers?
9. Work Shares for the 2005 Season
We want to welcome any of you who have the interest to consider doing a work share in trade for your 2005 CSA membership. It requires only four hours a week of working on the farm—usually on Tuesday or Friday mornings. But this year, since we will be working Saturdays, we could also have work shares come in Saturday morning. There is information about the program on the web page. If you’re interested and would like to get an application for doing a work share, drop us a note (jubileefarm@hotmail.com).
10. Beef and Pork Shares
Next year we’ll be raising a few head of cattle on the farm. They will be grass-finished beef, and will be available next November. We’re only going to have a few, so if you would be interested contact us and we’ll get your name on the “interest list.” At this point, we’re just asking those of you who are “interested.” We’ve still got a few details to work out on pricing. But those who do contact us now will be given first opportunity to place an order when the time comes
This year we have kept our pigs through the fall (they are still with us, but are getting close). If you would like to get information about a side of pork, let us know.
11. Eating well, Living well.Few of us raised in Western cultures feel intuitively or believe there to be an inviolate logical connection between eating well and living well. Western philosophy and some understandings of Western theology abound with dualistic assumptions. Such assumptions, for most of us, have explicitly or implicitly been the “cultural catechism” in which we were instructed from a young age. The idea is simple—we have bodies, but are, and here the language varies, but we are, “selves,” or “souls” or “spirits” or something other than our bodies. We tend to see the body as something that houses our true self, and there is for many of us a tension between the bodies we feel trapped in and the real “us” we feel ourselves to be.
Not all peoples of the earth (or even of the Western World) have grown up with such assumptions. It is possible to think differently. For many years now I have enjoyed and profited from reading a Zen Buddhist monk from Vietnam named Thich Nhat Hanh. Nhat Hanh lives in exile in France, and has written many books, some of which I have used in classes at BCC. He suggests that it is both unprofitable and untrue to think of the body and spirit as two different things. Just as modern medicine now recognizes that states of mind have crucial if not definitive impacts on the body, so, says Nhat Hanh, the body and the state of the body has crucial impacts on the mind—in fact, they are the same thing.
Nhat Hahn also believes that we need to develop a “strategy” for how we feed ourselves. Animals raised in ways that overly restrict free movement and access to the living environment (i.e. in “factory farms”) “contain the anger and frustration” and ultimately affect those of us who eat them. Similarly, plants that are not grown organically (hence exploiting the land) and/or are raised on farms that exploit laborers also carry a contaminant. The image that comes to my mind is one from the times of the medieval plagues. In those days the sick were isolated, thinking that the disease was being passed on from person to person. But the sick were given and encouraged to drink all the water they could—water that was teaming with the bacteria that, we now know, was the cause of the disease. Of course no one knew about the bacteria, and at that time no one had the techniques for discerning the presence of the deadly bacteria. It seems possible (to me, at least) that there could be something associated with our food that is analogous to the presence (or absence) of bacteria in the water supply of those medieval villages and cities. At the very least it seems that the strongest argument against this view is the dualistic assumptions with which we have been raised. But if it were to turn out that these assumptions can be supported by neither science, philosophy, nor, perhaps, even theology, then we may need to re-think the value of eating food that is raised in respectful and sustainable ways, and the true costs of doing otherwise.
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Wendy, Julie and I all want to wish you all a happy, healthy, and peaceful 2005. I hope this year that I can learn to live in a way that is more sustainable and less exploitative of the earth and my fellow human beings. I’m sure many of you share this goal.