Hi Everyone,
In this update:
1. Time to sign up for next year's Summer Session
As I'm sure almost all of you know, October is our subscription month for next year's Summer Session. It's important to us to get October registrations for a couple of reasons. First, although we know others will join us later during the winter and even in the spring, based on previous years' October registrations we get a pretty good idea where we will be the next year in terms of the land we need to plant, seeds we need to get, and other plans that need to be made for the upcoming season.
The other thing the October registrations provide, through the $100 deposit we request, is the "seed" money to get us started in the spring. Although we don't start Summer Session distribution until mid-June, we, along with our crew, start work very early in the spring. Early Summer Session registrations help with the cash flow to provide for the summer harvest.
So, we are hoping that many of you-all of you!-will want to join again next year and be a part of our CSA. We are all aware that our country is experiencing economic turmoil just now. But I do hope that whatever else we may have to do without, none of us are planning to economize by not eating food, or, almost as bad, by settling for a diet dictated by what the "big box" stores sell. So, now is the time to insure that you will get a share in our season next year. Last year we had to turn away a lot of people, even some people who had been members but who procrastinated in registering. But we didn't turn anyone away that registered in October, and we won't this year either!
Oh, by the way, we are holding our 2008 price for the next season. The only change will be an increase in our summer session delivery charge for those of you who don't pick up at the farm. Our delivery charge was too low when we first set it, and we've never changed it - so, with gas prices triple what they were when we started our deliveries, it's time! It will go from 50 dollars to 96 dollars for the 20 weeks of the Summer Session.
2. Time to sign up for Fall Session
While you are registering for our next Summer Session, you can also sign up for our Fall Session. In case you don't know how our "off season" Sessions work, and what the difference is between our main Summer Session and the four off-season Sessions, here's a quick run-down:
The Summer Session is the long Session that includes most of our best growing season-the 20 weeks from mid-June to the end of October. During Summer Session, we all become locavours because everything we distribute from June to November 1st is grown right here, on our farm. But eating well is a year-round project, and several years ago we started our "off season" Sessions. Where does the food come from in our off-season boxes? We have a lot of produce of our own during the off-season. But we can't grow everything for the boxes (else we wouldn't have an "off season"), so we have developed some good sources for fruit and vegetables during the off season, and are getting more local sources all the time.
The off-season Sessions work for the farm, as it helps us with our off-season expenses, and provides us an outlet for the various off-season and storage crops that we have. It works for members because it offers them the discipline of a weekly box of healthy and nutritious food to keep them eating well.
The off-season Sessions are short-just six weeks. The first is the Fall Session, which starts (always) on the first Wednesday in November. This year that will be Wednesday, November 5th. Because of our flooding situation, all boxes are delivered to depots in your neighborhood or at a place where you regularly travel to on Wednesdays. Unlike the Summer Session, delivery costs for the off-season boxes are included in the price of the share.
You can sign up on-line for the Fall Session (www.jubileefarm.org) or send us a note if you have questions (jubileefarm@hotmail.com).
3. Local Food/Local Wine
I used to confess to writing news letters while sipping my evening glass of wine. The fact that I haven't made that confession for a while doesn't mean I've abated that practice. Tonight I'm enjoying a Pinot Gris from a local winery: Bainbridge Island Winery.
Last week I had the opportunity to visit Bainbridge Island Winery and meet owners Gerard and Jo Ann Bentryn, who, in an obvious labor of love, have sustained this winery for the last 27 years. The occasion for my visit was our own interest in starting a winery here at Jubilee, something that, thanks to my visit with Gerard and Jo Ann, is likely to begin with the planting of grapes this spring.
I chose a somewhat inopportune time to visit, as Gerard, JoAnne, and their vintner Betsy were engaged in a whirlwind of activity as they began to process their first grapes of the season. But they were gracious to me, as it seems they are to the many people interested in wine grape growing and wine making that find their way to Bainbridge Island in search of good, local wine. I've also heard (from a variety of sources) that it's a needful pilgrimage for want-to-be wine grape growers and wine makers; having made the visit myself, I can see why. It wouldn't be too much to say that these folks have written the book on growing wine in the Pacific Northwest. And although I've been plenty willing to reinvent the wheel in a lot of agricultural projects, on this one, I'm willing to take advice from the masters.
Of the many contributions that this wine producing family has made to local viticulture, one of the greatest is simply that they make a great wine. I have been disappointed in a number of the local wines I've tasted. In fact, that's what has kept us from charging forward. Whenever I taste a less-than-stellar wine I ask myself, what if I made something like this? But Gerard and JoAnne's wine has given me hope. I brought home about eight different vintages of their wine, all from grapes that they grow on their farm (can you see why I like these guys?), and found them all to be of excellent quality. I've got to tell you that sampling all these wines has been an arduous task, but it's just one of those difficult things I didn't feel I could delegate; some things you just have to do yourself.
One of the things Gerard stresses is that local wines complement local food. While foods grown locally can certainly be enjoyed with a variety of wines, wines made from grapes grown from the same soil as local vegetables, and bathed with the same air and atmospheric conditions as local foods of all types, are especially suited one to the other. This puts drinking local wine in a whole new light. It may be that some of the grapes that are best suited to our climate are not familiar to us. That only means we need to become familiar with them! We can educate our pallet here too, and learn to appreciate the subtle and unique flavors of locally grown grapes and wine-the perfect accompaniment to locally grown food!
Gerard was very interested in our CSA. He has thought of doing a wine CSA (or CSV), and as you might guess, I encouraged him to do that. I would be the first to sign up! In future updates I'll keep you all posted on whether he decides to do the CSV. I'm sure that many of you, like me, would like to be a part of supporting a local winery that grows all its own grapes, and that many of you would like to become more aware of the wine grapes that grow best in our climate. We are a number of years from making our own wine here, obviously. But that doesn't mean we can't educate our tastes in the mean time!
4. Pumpkin Season and the farm
"It happens every October." The pumpkin thing, I mean. Never have we agonized as much as this year about whether to let it continue to happen. And never have I had so many people argue (fairly persuasively) that we should. Regardless, it's happening this year, and especially those of you new to the farm this year need to be, well, warned.
What started a dozen years ago as a small pumpkin patch with a few week-end visitors has morphed into an October madness that seems to have a life of its own. Because it intersects with the last three weeks of our Summer Session CSA, I always feel compelled to say a few words about how to deal with it.
First, if you love October, love pumpkins and love the hoopla over harvest festivals, pumpkin patches and crowds, you have nothing to fear or to be concerned about. But if you've grown to love the pastoral quality farm, the last three weeks of the CSA will be something of a departure from that. Here's the information that is relevant, and from this you can strategize on what is best for you during the last three weeks of CSA pick-up: School tours are held on weekdays only; large crowds of people come only on Saturday and Sunday. The kids during the week are noisier, but they don't affect the traffic as much. The kids' tours are over by 2:30, so if you come in during the week and come late, you will avoid them altogether. If you pick up on Saturday, the earlier you come the quieter it will be. That's the short version; I hope this helps.
5. Wall Street and East Main Street
In the Nichomachean Ethic, Aristotle claims that even if people prosper (or seem to) for much their lives, they could hardly be counted as "happy" if they were to end up penniless and scorned. A similar theme was suggested hundreds of years before Aristotle in Jewish tradition by the Psalmist who was (almost) tempted to envy those who through less than honorable means found themselves wealthy and respected. But then, the Psalmist "looked to the end" of those who engaged in such practices, and found that inevitably there was a day of accounting. And many of us are, perhaps, familiar with words attributed to Jesus: "don't be deceived; whatever you sow you will reap."
I cite these sources of the collective wisdom of the Western World (similar citations could be made from Eastern sources), not to rub salt in the wounds of the many of us who are hurting just now, but only to show that what we are experiencing is nothing new. The reason this "wisdom literature" exists and has been both preserved and revered is that throughout history, the kind of behavior it warns us against has been common. That behavior can be castigated with a moral censure as being "wicked" or "evil," but all cases it is, at least, short-sighted. It's true that "cutting corners" works for a while and that those who employ this behavior have their day in the sun. But in the end this behavior, and this kind of life, seems to be, in one way or another, doomed to failure.
The lesson in all this is one that is fundamental to good agricultural practice, and was the hallmark of Rudolf Steiner's teachings. This is the requirement that one's farming be sustainable. To say this of agriculture, or of any other field, is something of a tautology: it's quite obvious that practices that can't be sustained will lead to failure. But even though it's obvious, we - farmers, bankers, insurers, corporate planners - still fall for the same old fallacy: not recognizing that short-term gain is never worth long-term failure. Practices that can't maintain a person, a family, and a community for a life-time and for generations beyond are self-stultifying, and will inevitably lead to loss, discouragement and hardship. Isn't it interesting that one of the lessons that most of us try to teach our children is that immediate gratification usually comes at a cost. Yes, it may be more fun to watch TV than to do your homework, but in the long run... We teach our children well, but have we learned the lesson ourselves?
The agricultural sector of the US economy, along with the status of our impact on the environment (of which agriculture is really a subset), are both headed toward the same end that we've seen in the so-called "Wall Street meltdown," and for the same reasons. The way we have treated and continue to treat our nation's most precious resources - our soil, water, and the air we breathe - cannot be sustained. And yet, even with the inescapable evidence from Wall Street about what happens to institutions that engage in non-sustainable business practices, in terms of our environment and our soil we are plunging headlong into long-term destruction for the sake of short-term gain.
There is a federal mandate that the US Farm Bill be renewed every five years. The most recent Farm Bill reflected, for the first time, a scant acknowledgement of non-toxic agriculture - a small percentage of funding was earmarked to be used for sustainable research and to promote non-commodity, agricultural products. [The major "commodity products" are corn (for cattle and for the high fructose corn syrup that was recently banned from all PCC grocery stores), wheat, cotton, soybeans and rice.]
Agricultural commodities have, until this Farm Bill, received all the subsidies and almost all the research funding that is provided in the US. In this Farm Bill, as it was delivered to Congress and the President, this was going to begin to change. A small portion (less than 10%) of our huge expenditures for research and production was to be allocated to what is called "specialty crops" - i.e. farm products like fruits and vegetables.
But now, in the wake of a sagging economy, and as a result of the strong petro-chemical lobby in Congress, those gains for the non-commodity agricultural industry are being attacked, and are likely to be stripped from the bill. It seems that instead of taking a first step toward long-term sustainability in agricultural practices, we will continue our headlong plunge toward agricultural collapse with the putative justification being "higher production." It's simply a matter of trading short-term gain for a few for a long-term disaster for the many.
The same thing is happening with our resolve to protect the environment. We see that the rallying cry of one of our political parties has become "drill, drill, drill" (whoops! I - and others - stand corrected: "drill, baby, drill"). That chant is simply a reflection of the fact that many of us are willing to do anything to cut our fuel bills. It seems that we think nothing is as important as our right to pay as little as possible for fuel. This mantra is also, of course, a reflection of power of corporate entities and their lobbyists who stand to profit immensely from on-shore drilling. All the while the results of our dependence on fossil fuel surround us, and are of such unspeakable and unquestionable proportions that it takes determined obscurantism to ignore them. Will we be like the Eastern Islanders, who, when they cut the last tree on their Island, must have known that their demise was not far away?
I don't want to be counted among the gloaters over the Wall Street Meltdown. But if the meltdown really were to somehow moderate our insatiable expectation for the instant gratification of any desire we happen to have, if it caused our nation to ask the unutterable "why" question and to begin to look for ways to live within our means and in ways that preserve our environment, then I would say there is more than just a silver lining to this very difficult situation.
Erick and Wendy