Hi Everyone,
In this update:
1. Work Share Information
We know there are a number of you who are planning to be Work Share members this summer, and probably others who are thinking about it. We’d like to remind you that if you intend to do a Work Share, there is an application you need to fill out—even if you’ve been a work share in past years we’d like you to fill out the application. We’ve changed the application a bit (added a ten page essay detailing your plans to become a full-time farmer in the next two years—just kidding!) this year. So if you haven’t done that yet, drop us a note (jubileefarm@hotmail.com) and we’ll get you the paperwork.
We are also offering Work Shares for the Spring Sessions this year. If you’re interested in that, please let us know.
2. May Day Festivities: Mark your calendar now
We’ve had a number of people ask us recently if we’re doing our usual “May Day Celebration.” The answer is yes. It will be held, as always, the first Saturday in May. We’re hoping many of you will come join us for our first “open house” of the year. It is still a ways, well quite a way, off but if you mark you calendar now, you’ll be sure to be free to attend!
3. Life in the “interim.”
We often hear anecdotal news items that cause critical thinkers to pause, asking “is this really true?” This week I heard a surprising and credible confirmation of some disconcerting reports about broccoli grown in Mexico. I think we all are aware that since the NAFTA treaties, broccoli production for the US market has “migrated” from the US to Mexico. Questions have been raised about the standards by which this broccoli is grown. What I heard last week was from a lecture given by WSU Professor Dr. Jose Alamillo. His talk focused on the treatment of Mexican farm workers in the US. But he mentioned and affirmed that the horror stories we’ve heard about broccoli fields being irrigated out of septic lagoons are, at least in some cases, true.
I doubt that these practices are wide-spread. But this incident does confirm that the concerns many of us have about the quality control of vegetables grown outside areas that we can observe and control are justified. Buying directly from a farm is one way to eliminate these concerns, but, lest this sound too self-serving, I’m convinced that in our area we have several retail outlets of organic products that are conscientious about the vegetables they buy.
The point I want to make here is this: We’re living in what seems to me like an “interim period.” We are only now beginning to suspect what are the total impacts of the last 70 years of assaulting our food supply and our world with enormous quantities of altered and synthetically manufactured chemicals. I believe that in the future people will look back at many things that we allow now with the same horror we feel when we look back 40 years to the time when DDT was sprayed over our countrysides from airplanes, and over beaches with children frolicking through “sprinklers” emitting the deadly poison. During this “interim period,” we need to be careful about what we eat, and even more so about what we allow our children (whose central nervous systems are still developing) to eat. And we need to think about what policies we support with our patronage. Certainly, buying local and organic is best. But we can’t always do that. In those cases we need to be asking those from whom we buy our food where that food comes from, and what assurances we have that it’s not being grown under conditions like those described by Dr. Alimillo. We have a right to know, but we won’t be told unless we ask.
4. Delivery option for Summer Session
We want to remind you that this year we’ll be offering delivery for the Summer Session. If you’d like to switch to have your produce delivered, all you have to do is let us know. Depot locations are on our web page (www.jubileefarm.org). We’re certainly not trying to push the delivery—we want you all to come to the farm! But we know that’s not always possible. Remember too that there is a fee for delivery (it’s a one-time, forty dollar charge for the entire Summer Session). Another feature of the delivery option is this: any week during the Summer Session, delivery members may, on short notice, elect to come to the farm for that week’s pick-up—you simply need to call or email us by noon on Monday of the week you want the change. Our goal is to try to provide the flexibility that many of you have asked for, and we hope these changes will help.
5. End of Winter Session, beginning of Early Spring Session
As I write these words, Wendy and her able group of helpers is packing the last box of Winter Session. We were pleased that so many chose to join us for the Winter Session—our largest Winter Session ever by a substantial number of members. We have to recognize that of all the times of the year, winter offers the fewest options for those of us committed to eating a nutritious amount of fresh, organic fruit and vegetables. But, hey, if we can do it in the winter, how much easier it is the rest of the year! I know that for me and Wendy, and I believe for the many other members of our Winter CSA also, our commitment to getting a weekly supply of wholesome food compelled us to eat a lot better than we otherwise would have.
Because the Fall/Winter/Spring Sessions are short (just six weeks each), they come and go quickly. Our Early Spring Session starts next Wednesday. In the last few years a lot of you have joined in for the Spring Sessions, and we want to offer a cordial invitation to each of you to commit yourselves and your families to nutritional eating for the next six weeks. If you want to join, you may do so easily on-line (www.jubileefarm.org). The deadline is Monday noon of next week. You can pay on-line using Pay-Pal, or just do the application on-line and mail payment. As a last resort, a phone call and message at the barn (425-222-4558) will suffice. But Wendy, who is doing all the paperwork, wants me to let you all know that an on-line application makes her work a lot easier! And don’t we want to make paperwork easier for a person who still is limited in the use of her right hand? She is, by the way, doing better, and is able to use her hand for some things. But recovery from severed tendons is, as many of you know first-hand, a long, slow process.
6. Summer Session Payments
Wendy is just now mailing a statement to each of you who have already signed up for Summer Session. If you don’t get a letter (snail-mail) from us in the next day or two, that means you are not signed up for Summer Session. The statement will reflect all payments made, and let you know your balance and payment dates for that balance.
We work hard to achieve 100% accuracy in our billing, but we’re not professional accountants and we can make mistakes. If your statement doesn’t look right to you, by all means drop us a note (jubileefarm@hotmail.com) or give a call (425-222-4558) so we can clear things up.
7. Summer Session Membership/Marketing
The Summer Session of our CSA is the backbone of this farm, and our desire is for that to always be the case. The off-season Sessions are important and provide cash-flow through periods of the year during which cash-flow is necessary to keep the farm afloat. And the October pumpkin season has been there to pick up deficits in the Summer Session. But when we think of what our farm is about, we think immediately of the Summer Session of CSA—it’s us growing as broad a spectrum of fruits and vegetables as we can, and providing these, as well as the ambiance of our farm, to our members.
For years I’ve wondered, what is the optimum number of Summer Session members a CSA should have to be sustainable? I still can’t answer that question, either in general or for our farm. But I do know this. At this time the Summer CSA is still not economically sustainable. That’s the bad news. The good news is that in the development of our growing skills, we have reached a level of efficiency such that we could raise considerably more produce without proportionally increased expenditures of energy and expenses (i.e. growing eleven beds of carrots requires considerably less than ten percent more resources than growing ten beds). The solution seems obvious. If we could produce more with a small increase in resources, and if we’re not making ends meet now, we need to grow more produce, and have more members.
One begins to worry a bit here, and wonder if we’re on a slippery slope. Does this line of reasoning lead inexorably to the 10,000 acres organic farms of California, planted “fence line to fence line” in mono-cultured crops? Well it doesn’t have to. But one of the foundational elements of organic farming—an element that has been lost in the National Organic Standards—is “appropriate size.” This is impossible to pin down with precision, but the model most of us have in mind is a farm that is not larger than one family and a couple of employees can manage. Right now Wendy and I are one full-time, year around employee, and one part-time employee (yes, since I have another avocation, I’m the “part timer”). And we have one “full-time seasonal” employee (Francisco), and two “part-time seasonal” employees, Julie and Jacob. So our work force definitely keeps us within the un-legislated but widely accepted parameters held by sincere organic farmers; I think we can grow some without being in danger of falling onto the path to organic perdition.
So we have to grow, and we want to have that growth in the segment of the farm that takes (easily) 90% of our resources: Summer Session CSA. There is a practical concern that we feel and that some of you have voiced: would growth mean crowding at the farm? You may remember that last year, about this time, we also said we need to grow, and that we were concerned about crowding at the farm. At that time we introduced a new pick-up day, Saturday, to take some of the pressure off Tuesday and Friday. And that helped. The Saturday option was introduced after most people had already joined, and the actual numbers of Saturday members was small. But it did increase throughout the season, and this year, when people have known about it before they signed up, we’ve noticed a larger percentage of members signing up for Saturday pick-up. So that should reduce Tuesday and Friday members, and make room for new members as well.
In addition to the Saturday pick-ups, this year we have brought back our Summer Session delivery. This too will allow for growth without over-populating the farm on any given day. We have one other tool that we’ve used before to prevent any given pick-up day from becoming too crowded, and that is limiting the number of people who pick-up on that day. We can do this easily by just cutting off the availability of a day when it reaches a number that we deem to be too high.
All this is to say that we need to grow the Summer Session, and we’ve taken measures (delivery and an extra pick-up day) to make sure that we don’t end up with crowding on pick-up days, and that we have an additional measure to insure that we don’t go over a manageable number of members on any pick-up day. So, how are we going to grow the Summer Session CSA?
As in times before, we are going to ask for your help. We’re hoping that if you know we need more members, and if you know that we’ve thought through and prepared for potential growth issues, that you will be our best advertisers. We’re also prepared this season to reward our advertisers. This has been done off and on in the past (more off than on), but this season we are going to be diligent to see that those who bring new members to the farm are given an appropriate demonstration of our appreciation. Obviously we don’t have a lot to give, but we do have an abundance of produce, and our plan is to give coupons for a certain amount of what our farm produces (basil, tomatoes, melons, our salsa, jam, pumpkin butter, pumpkins or whatever), as a way of saying thanks for your work in recruiting new members. The amount would be forty dollars for each new member. It could also be applied to the cost of a future CSA Session.
I need to pause here, and say something that is strongly on my mind as I write these words. I just can’t help being deeply cognizant of the fact that there are so many of you who have, in the past, brought many members to the farm, both when I’ve asked specifically and also when I haven’t. I can’t forget that, and I can’t adequately convey how deeply appreciative I am. I could name names, but you know who you are, and I do too. I know you did it because you believe and love the farm as we do. When you did these things, our backs were against the wall; we were in no position to offer compensation. Things are different now. We can’t go back in time to offer the recognition that I wish we could, but I just want you to know I haven’t forgotten, and I am not unaware that we would not be where we are now without a lot of promotion by a lot of you over the years.
As we look to the means to increase our membership, we also have decided to do some small amount of advertising this year. Here too we are going to call on you for ideas and some help. We’re looking for input about where to best advertise. We also are in need of some expertise in how to design the advertisement. I know that some of you have offered your services in these areas before, when we were not advertising; unfortunately my memory concerning offers of help isn’t as strong as my memory in other categories. I’m hoping those of you who have offered in the past, as well as others who are experienced in this area and willing to help, will get in touch with us.
Our goal for this year is an increase of 100 members (inclusive of delivery members). We believe this is an attainable goal, and that with this membership we can keep the dog wagging the tail, instead of the other way around. Many of our Fall/Winter/Spring delivery members have told us they will be joining in the summer, which helps us in our optimism about reaching our goal.
By the way, “recruitment” doesn’t mean you have to have new members “signed, sealed, and delivered.” If you even send them to the farm to meet us and they join, that’s recruitment. We have a line on our application this year that asks new members if they learned about the farm through one of our members, and to identify that member. That’s what we will be looking for. We should also say that both Wendy and I will be available to come and talk specifically about our CSA or specifically about organic farming to any group you are a part of that may be interested. Now that could be an easy way to rack up those farm coupons, as families who join from meetings like this would certainly count as “recruitees”!
8. Future Plans
I don’t very often do this, but below is a slightly edited version of something I wrote for this week’s Winter CSA box. When I finished writing it, it seemed like something I should share with the broader mailing list, so here it is:
We are very pleased with some new directions we’re taking on the farm now, and with the progress we see in some established courses of action. Here are some of the things we are working on now or have planned for the future:
(1) The mineralization project is going very well. It has taken a lot of time to mark out and measure each of the 28 parcels we did individual soil analyses on. But since the amendments are quantified in “per acre” amounts, we need to know the exact acreage for each parcel to determine how many pounds of each mineral needs to be added to each parcel—each is different! I’m getting lots of practice in my geometry and algebra skills!
The minerals we use are all “elemental” or “naturally occurring” minerals, and each is certified for organic applications. The famous N-P-K (nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium) amendments are only a part of a full mineralization of the soil, although they are the extent of what most non-organic farms (and even many organic farms) do. This practice of looking only to the N-P-K is what produces those good looking, but nutritionally deficient vegetables that abound in our grocery stores today. Beyond N-P-K are the crucially important trace minerals such as calcium, magnesium, boron, copper, sulfur, manganese, iron, zinc, and a host of others. It is these trace elements that provide the building blocks for our bodies to build the enzymes so important for nutrition. We are fortunate to have a good, organic outlet for all these minerals in Wenatchee.
(2) We just can’t seem to ignore the call of the dairy. This farm was a dairy for a long, long time, and if our plans come true, it will be again. But this time it will be a “micro” dairy, servicing only a small number of active milking cows at a time. Many members have asked for raw milk, and we would love to produce it. This will entail rebuilding a shed with a milking parlor at the site where our old barn burned down five years ago.
(3) We would like to get a drain field for the barn. This would enable us to have real bathrooms in the barn, and to have a certified kitchen. We would also be able to build an “upper” loft in the back of the barn for a “meeting room” that would also have kitchen and bathroom facilities.
(4) The beef herd is underway, but there’s new ground to be broken here too. We now have three bred cows, and if our certification paperwork is processed in time, the calves that will be born in October will be the first “certified organic” cattle on our farm. We have bought six more calves this year which we’ll be getting later this month. Three of them are heifers, and our hope is to breed them, along with the three cows that calve in October, next January. Growing a herd is never a quick process, but eventually the numbers of cows begin to add up. I’ve been reading a lot of Rudolf Steiner lately, and the biodynamic system of organic farming that is based on his writings is insistent that every farm needs animals to provide on-site compost for building soil humus—a major reason for having cattle on the farm.
(5) Speaking of compost, we have begun collaboration with a very good farmer and an excellent maker of compost from the Skagit delta. Our goal is to use the south half of the loafing shed (where the combine is now stored) to build a “forced air” compost system. We’re really excited about this, as it provides a way for us to capture the manure of our herd as it collects during the winter when bad weather forces them into the loafing shed. We also found a “deal” on a used compost spreader, and although we haven’t exactly paid for it yet, it is already here, ready to go to work.
(6) This is a project that is happening serendipitously. The “salmon safe” riparian restoration project here on the farm has taken another huge leap forward this spring. Another 300 yards has been cleaned up of the invasive, non-native blackberries and is being planted this week into native trees and bushes. This is phase two, and includes both the planting of willows to over-hang the river, and the planting of a fifty foot riparian “buffer” of the trees and native shrubs between our farming operations and the river. This buffer will help protect the river, and will become a home for many native birds, mammals, and, as Wendy always points out, lots and lots of bugs.
There’s more, but I just wanted to give you a quick glimpse into the kinds of things we’re doing and contemplating. It’s a tall order for a farm with a total of one full-time farmer (Wendy). But we’ve accomplished so much in the last ten years that I have no doubt many of these will happen, and others too.
I also want you to know what I mean when I say, as I so often do, “thanks for supporting our farm.” Your choice to spend your food dollars at Jubilee Farm enables these kinds of things to happen. These are projects that will have an impact, and not only for our farm. Our valley is filling with other organic farms, and many other CSAs. We don’t see ourselves in competition with each other, as the market for our products far exceeds what we can produce (although we may need to be better marketers!). So what we learn here at Jubilee Farm, because we have been at it longer than others, becomes shared information. The end result could be that we will begin to tap the potential of this vast but unrealized resource of land along the Snoqualmie River. There is so much land right here that could be utilized, and could be done so sustainably. But we need models of how to do that. I would love to have our farm become one of those models.
Just after I wrote the above I received a note from a politically active acquaintance notifying me of a conference that is being held to try to focus input on the new, US Farm Bill. I was frank (perhaps to the point of being blunt) with him, and for what they’re worth, I’ll share my observations with you. I don’t have any faith whatsoever that any piece of Federal farm legislation will do anything for our farm, anything for organic, sustainable farming, or anything positive for the interests of agriculture in general. I also don’t believe that any single voice, or even any consortium of voices, will be heard over shuffling of the ubiquitous dollars of agribusiness lobbyists.
That’s the bad news. The good news is that nothing the Farm Bill legislates will hurt our farm, or the organic, sustainable movement. The simple truth, as I see it, is that the Farm Bill is totally and completely irrelevant to anything except the “sustenance” of the status-quo for agribusiness. If a concession is made to organic, sustainable farming, it, like most legislation, will be “post-hoc,” or “after the fact”: it is merely documentation of what has already happened, a belated effort of politicians to catch up with the train (so they can try to find the controls and give the impression that they fired up the engine!).
Once again I find myself deferring to the wisdom of the East: change of any kind, political or otherwise, does not (contrary to appearances and popular myth) come from entrenched power systems. These always work to support the status quo that put them into power. Change comes from below, from individuals who demonstrate that change can make a difference. When change is instantiated in a quantum mass of individuals, the politicians (and in our case also the corporations—note that Monsanto now has an “organic” division) follow, “post hoc.” Even a few hundred successful, organic farms scattered across our country will have, I believe, more impact on agriculture in America than any federally legislated mandate.
9. Farm Chatter
I wish I had time to share with you all what’s been going on here at the farm. But time is short, and my list of projects is long. But I’ll ramble for a few minutes, and see what I can cover.
There are two very notable and dramatic differences between the start of this season and the start of last season. On this day last year, we were wearing sandals and shorts, and were irrigating crops that had already been planted. Francisco had worked all through the winter, and with the good weather we had a good jump on the season. This year, well, you know what the weather has been like. Moreover, Francisco went to be with his family in Mexico in October, and although he should be back in a week or two, up until now it’s been just me and Wendy.
We’ve been very busy in the greenhouse. This year we started our tomatoes about 15 days early. We’ve been using our squash room in the barn for a germinating room which has worked very well—almost too well. The tomato seeds, which we collected and Wendy processed last fall, almost jumped out of the ground, and we have already had to transplant them into four inch pots. So they are way ahead of schedule. This will enable us to use a little different strategy than our usual method of keeping them on heat as long as possible. Now we can slow them down by not heating them in the greenhouse. I expect they will become stockier but not so tall, which is what I would like to see happen. Time will tell.
Another thing that is far ahead of last year’s schedule, in spite of poorer weather, is that Wendy and I have finished pruning all the plum and apple trees. It was really nice to get them pruned before bud-break! We were very bold and even aggressive this year in our pruning. Many of our trees are looking fabulous. But others needed some radical reworking, and this year they got it! Some of those will produce very little fruit this year, but they should be in good shape for next season.
Our grafting is all done for this season. Just now grafted buds are swelling, and they look like they’ll open. But we saw this last year too. Sometimes the buds will swell and look like they are going to take, only to die back later. So we’re hopefully optimistic, but aware that it probably won’t turn out as good as it looks now. But assuming even a fifty percent grafting success, we should be able to transplant fifty new plum trees into a second plum orchard next winter. We’re pretty excited about that, and are anxiously awaiting the first plums from our first orchard this season.
We’ve also had a chance to weed the perennials, and the only over-winter annual we plant—garlic. The perennials are strawberries, raspberries, and artichokes. The very cold weather we had a couple of weeks ago really set back the artichokes, but I suspect they will come back; most perennials do alright with cold. But the onions we had in the green house are another story. We planted about 40,000 onion seeds in January. They were up and doing well until the cold, and then a lot of them, the larger ones, went down. There is a chance that they will come back, but right now it doesn’t look good. There is still time to buy in onion starts like we used to, but we’re hoping our own will make the big turn-around. We’ll let you know what happens on that one.
There’s a lot more I could “chatter” about, but it’s now past three (a.m.) and you are probably as weary of reading this update as I am of writing it! Thanks to both of you who actually read this clear to the end!Erick and Wendy Haakenson