How are we doing?

There are just three more weeks of regular season CSA deliveries and the summer seems to have gone by in a blur. This has been a busy year for us, and one with a lot of new projects and challenges. The two biggest changes we had this year were operating as a single farm CSA after 8 years in our Two Small Farms partnership, and getting our new Lewis Road farm up and running. This meant many extra hours of planning and work, but also lots of excitement over new possibilities. We have done our best this year to make the CSA what we want it to be—a good variety of very high quality organic vegetables and fruits, grown by the most environmentally sustainable methods possible, delivered fresh, without hitches, to our pick-up sites every week.

Now is a good time for evaluation of what we’re doing. We feel that for the most part we have been doing well on the quality of produce—this has been a good growing year for us for chards, kales, collards, wax beans, shelling beans, lettuces, beets, turnips, cauliflower, broccoli, romanesco, fava beans, apples, radishes, carrots (after we figured out the nematode problem!), celery, fennel, cabbage, mei quin choy, parsley, cilantro, leeks, padron peppers, potatoes, summer squashes, and winter squashes. On the other hand, we had a difficult time this past spring in filling the boxes at all, with the unseasonably cool temperatures, lack of sunshine, and the inevitable learning curve associated with growing on new land.

We also know that we need to do better on some of the summer vegetables. With the intense time pressures of the early season, we weren’t able to get our hoophouses up on the Lewis Road terraces on time to plant tomatoes, so we depended on other local organic growers for the tomatoes. Due to the cool summer, it was a poor year for tomatoes all around, and though we got some nice tomatoes for you, we did not have the quantities and variety that we would have liked to provide. In addition our eggplants and cucumbers that we planted at the Lewis Rd. site did not produce well, partly also due to the coolness of the summer. Next year we will be planting tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and cucumbers under the hoophouses, and we are excited about having these vegetables more represented in the summer boxes, and hopefully having extras for your canning needs too. The hoophouses will also allow us to get the edge on the spring harvest, and to continue some crops through the winter.

This was an exciting but also frustrating year for our young orchards as well. The apples have started to produce nicely this year, and we were very excited to have our first blueberry harvest. But the blueberries caused some frustration also because the quantities we were able to pick each week made rotating them through the pick-up sites difficult. Without enough to at least fill all the boxes in one truck, we just didn’t manage to distribute them evenly, so we know that some of you got them a few times and others only once or maybe not at all. Fortunately that problem should be alleviated next spring as the plants are thriving and will produce a lot more fruit as they mature. Speaking of berries, we feel that the strawberries worked out OK this year, in spite of having less acreage of mostly second-year berries to pick. For the most part the fruit was good and we had enough for everybody for most of the season, though we would have liked to have continued to put the berries in the boxes a little later into the fall. For next year we are planting a full 2 1/2 acres of new crop strawberries and will plant Seascapes as well as Albions again (this year we had almost all Albions). We like the Albions a lot, but we also like the Seascapes (and they make a particularly good jam), and it is nice to have both varieties, plus enough to have more U-picks and/or flats available to order along with your boxes.

The pears were a more frustrating proposition. We were looking forward to our first harvest and were delighted when we saw the trees loaded with flowers in the spring. But in the end we got very little fruit (some may trickle into the boxes as “mystery” items these next couple weeks, but we won’t have enough for everybody.) We aren’t sure whether the problem was due to the strong late spring storms we got or difficulties with pollination. Hopefully we will figure it out in time for a good crop next year! We are continuing to plant fruit trees, including our new avocado orchard at Lewis Road, though this will not produce for a few years yet. Overall, we are enthusiastic about increasing the amount of fruit we can put in the shares in the coming year(s).

So, this is our self-evaluation. But we are interested in knowing what you think about our CSA from the receiving end. What vegetables would you like to get more of? What would you like to see less of? Which vegetables were about right? How did we do on the administration and delivery? Were there things that frustrated you? What can we do better?

In the next week or so, we will be sending out an e-mail survey. When you get it, please take a moment to let us know your opinions about our CSA program to help us plan for the coming year. Thanks!