The strawberries are giving us a warm welcome this spring, with the earliest crop we’ve ever had! The warm winter has prompted early blooms of plants of all sorts. Our habitat restorationist Laura Kummerer tells me that the annual wildflower count on April 15th may be too late this year to catch many of the wildflowers—they’ve already bloomed and will be done by that date! As usual, this variation in the timing of spring will probably have downsides as well as benefits for us on the farm. But for now, we’ll enjoy the early fruit and favorable growing conditions.
The busy spring season is upon us here, with Steve and the crew planting at a furious pace, and vegetables coming ready for harvest. We put in an early planting of summer squash, including zucchini, cousa, yellow crookneck and costata romanesco. Steve also is getting an early start on tomatoes, which are almost ready to transplant out from the greenhouse. He’s especially excited about a Japanese variety that we haven’t tried b
efore. We’ve been going through lettuce withdrawal here, so the greenhouse full of lettuce starts is a welcome sight! The spring lettuces start with the little gems ready to harvest this week. The awesome kale planting that has carried us through the winter is still producing beautiful kale. And the usual spring veggies are on their way, with carrots, fava beans, radishes, beans, leeks, cabbage, cilantro, Tokyo turnips, spinach, parsley, spring onions, cauliflower, chard, broccoli, and so on, all soaking up this warm sunshine and growing well. We expect an early fruiting from the blueberries too.
This spring we’re taking a close look at how to “green” our packaging. The clamshell packaging for berries has been on the top of our list of packaging issues for awhile. So we’re delighted that recycled plastic containers have finally become available. We’re getting a bulk order of these 100% recycled PET clamshells for both strawberries and blueberries with our label on them.
Another waste stream issue we’ve struggled with for a long time is the waxed cardboard boxes that we use to deliver the CSA produce. The boxes are reusable to an extent, and the plastic liner bag has made them last longer, but the fact is, the boxes are not recyclable and end up comprising a large portion of our landfill bulk from the farm. Some other CSA farms have switched to plastic crates for their CSA delivery. We asked Full Belly Farm about their experience, and they are very happy with the recyclable plastic crates they are now using. The crates nest inside each other when empty, but have flaps that close the top so that they are stackable for delivery. They say that they have used the crates for two years without a single crate breaking, and note fewer trips to the landfill and savings in packing time. The manufacturer will take back any broken containers, which they grind down to use again.
The difficulty comes in the initial purchase price, which comes to about $12.50 per crate. Full Belly got a $15,000 grant from StopWaste.org in Alameda County to help them buy 2,000 crates. In order to make the switch for our farm, we would also buy 2,000 crates. We send out about 700 CSA boxes per week now, and we need two crates per subscriber since we pick up the empties on the next delivery. The price break at 2,000 crates is significant, and we assume that over the years we will need the extras. In order to help with the $25,000 initial purchase price we are considering launching a crowd-funding effort through a group called WorthWild —we’ll tell you more about this as soon as we get a campaign together.
We’re excited about the coming year of growing your vegetables. Thanks for your continued support of our farm!
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