In this update:
1. Greetings and welcome
2. Summer Session Handbook completed!
3. CSA Cookbook
4. On the relationship between sun and produce
5. Hatching baby chicks—this week in the market
6. The passing of a dear friend of Jubilee Farm
1. Greetings
So, the first week of CSA distribution is finally here. We’re anxious to get under way. As I mention below, a little more sun this spring would have yielded a little more substantial first week’s boxes, but things aren’t too much behind schedule, just a little. Besides, this provides the occasion for me to remind you all of a phrase that has been in every first newsletter since we started ten years ago: “it’s about more than vegetables.” It’s as true today as it was then.
What could there be in a CSA beyond getting healthy, organic produce? The last person who asked me that question turned and ran for his car after enduring just the first twenty-five minutes of my rejoinder. I had a lot more to add! Well, I don’t want to be guilty here of preaching to the choir, but if you are new to this kind of program, you need to know that CSA really is about a lot more than vegetables. I’ll let you off easy in this first newsletter, (it’s easier to hit “delete” than run to your car), but in future newsletters you’ll be hearing a lot more on this subject.
For today, let’s join together in welcoming the new harvest season, being joyful and thankful that even with all the problems that exist in our lives and in our world, when the earth is cared for and nurtured, it still provides us with the produce that we need and enjoy so much. We should also be mindful that no matter how sophisticated our world has become, we are still dependent every day on the food we grow; nothing in modernity has replaced our most basic daily need for what only sun, seeds, and the soil provide.
2. CSA Handbook complete and on-line.
Last year in our “year-end-survey” several of you noted that we should have all the policies of the Summer CSA written and available to new and returning members. During the winter we pledged to do this, and it is now complete. I especially want to thank the members (you know who you are) who helped us so much by editing our fairly random and rambling collection of items into a format that we believe will be very helpful. Unfortunately, I did the final collation of their editing, so I suspect the document bears the stamp of my oversights. But in all, we are very pleased to have this prepared for the beginning of our tenth Summer Session.
The Summer Session Handbook is on our web page (www.jubileefarm.org). It is comprised of 30 questions which are enumerated with answers following. We will post a copy of the handbook on a bulletin board in the market, and Julie will have a copy at the counter. But we hope you will all take the time to go to the web page and read this short but informative document.
3. CSA Cookbook
The single most frustrating and problematic issue for new members is learning how to use the fresh vegetables they get here at the farm. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. The CSA Coalition from Madison, Wisconsin has produced a cookbook, now in its third edition, called From Asparagus to Zucchini: A Guide to Cooking Farm-Fresh Seasonal Produce. The book is full of great suggestions for how to cook and store the kinds of vegetables you will be getting here at the farm.
Because this is the best book we’ve seen on cooking with fresh vegetables, we purchased more than a hundred copies from the publisher and hope that all of you who don’t have it already will buy a copy. Many of you have the first edition, and I’m not sure there are enough changes in editions to warrant getting the updated version. But if you don’t have it, and if you have any questions, concerns, anxieties, despair (should I go on?) over what to do with your farm produce—get the book!!! Having bought a larger quantity of books this time, we got a better deal and the cost of the book in our market will be $16.50. If you can find a better price somewhere else, that’s fine. But one way or another, get it.
In addition to offering the cookbook, we have asked one of our long-time members if she would share some of her recipes and suggestions for how to cook with farm produce. She’s agreed, and from time to time you will see notes “From Amy’s Kitchen” appearing in the market with selected vegetables. Between the cookbook and Amy, we’re hoping that we all make the startling discovery that the foods that are best for our nutrition and health can also taste better than anything you’ve ever eaten.
4. Sun and Produce
It’s been a wet spring; I don’t have to tell any of you that. Many have asked if we’ve been affected by all the rain. It’s interesting, because this winter we put a lot of energy into preparing for a dry spring and summer. We were all set for another sunny spring, and honestly, that would have been better for the plants. If it’s dry, warm, and sunny, we can always provide water through irrigation, and get excellent results. But when it’s wet and cool, there’s no way we can provide warmth and sunshine for photosynthesis. So, the long and short of it is that some of the crops are a week or two behind. But some crops like this kind of weather. The potatoes are doing great. And the broccoli, unfortunately, did so well that it couldn’t keep until our first week. Fortunately, there are more rotations coming up!
Our tomatoes are doing quite well, but they require a little more babysitting in cool weather. By keeping the doors shut and the greenhouse sides closed, we can create the warmth the tomatoes need. But we have to be careful. If the sun comes out we have to scurry to get the doors open and the sides up. Although the tomatoes like heat, they don’t like as much heat as direct sunlight through a closed greenhouse provides. So we have to be on our toes, always trying to extort the heat from the greenhouse without letting it get so hot that the plants get fried.
This week we dutifully planted out our first rotation of cantaloupe and watermelon. I would like to have not had to, but we’ve learned that beyond a certain size the plants don’t survive transplanting very well. We’ve been watching the melons for weeks. We took them off heat in the greenhouse earlier than usual trying to slow them down a bit, hoping the weather would change. But they still grow, and this week it was do or die. So, we planted them and are hoping for the best. So far we had very little mortality, but I can’t honestly say the first rotation looks too happy out there in this cool and grey weather. That’s one of the benefits of doing rotations; if the first rotation should happen to not survive (as was the case in 1997 when we had a frost on June 18 and learned the hard lesson about second rotations), we’d still have a chance with the second.
The peas are coming along, and we’re hoping to be able to start harvesting them next week. Although we didn’t plan it, we ended up with two rotations of peas. Our first planting didn’t do very well, so we had to come back and replant between the survivors. Some of the “gaps” between survivors were pretty long! But the inter-planting germinated very well, and so we’ll have some peas early and some later.
I hope that you all remember that we’ve never suggested that all our boxes will be the same quantity from beginning of the season to the end. It’s not that way at all. The start is always slow; sometimes slower than this year, sometimes not, but there’s always much less produce and variety in the beginning. But soon that changes as more and more vegetables begin to ripen. By mid-season, most of the cultivars we grow are producing, and most of our members are wondering how they are going to eat everything they get in just one week! The value of the membership needs to be assessed over the entire season, not based on any single box, and certainly not based on the boxes from the first couple of weeks.
5. We’ve got our fingers crossed.
If our counting was right, and if our hens and roosters were, well, “adequately friendly,” then we should have chicks hatching in the market this week. We put 21 eggs in the incubator about three weeks ago that should hatch out early this week, and another 21 eggs in a few days later that should hatch out later in the week. We’re hoping you’ll all get a chance to see the baby chicks as they’re hatching.
Wendy has been tending the incubator with as much care as a mother chicken with her eggs. She’s also “candled” the eggs and is reasonably sure that they are developing. There is certainly no guarantee, but we’ve done the best we can to time this right. We’ll see!
6. “To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven.”
I’m not usually short for words, but I don’t quite know how to say this. I can’t escape the strong emotion that accompanies my telling you that a wonderful woman, Susan Thomas, and an enthusiastic, long-time supporter of Jubilee Farm, passed away this winter. Susan was among our most loyal friends. For many years, long before we could offer a “work share,” Susan came to the farm and volunteered countless hours of labor, doing whatever needed to be done. She had a strong vision for the importance of local, organic farming as a component of good health. Susan taught Yoga, and led several sessions of classes here at the farm. Even this past season, when her health was not good, Susan would come to the farm each week. There wasn’t a lot she was able to do, but she wanted to help in whatever way she could.
It was comforting to join with a large congregation of people whose lives were touch by Susan as we gathered to celebrate her life, and to mourn her untimely death. She is survived by, among others, her husband, Pat, who has also been an active part of our farm along with Susan for these many years now. I’m sure I speak for all of us in extending to Pat not only our condolences, but our lasting gratitude for the joy, hope and love we all experienced through Susan’s vibrant life.