Howdy to y’all, from Kimberly, another intern earth dancer.
First, I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the very important role that Ruby, the farm dog plays in all of this vegetable production. She reports promptly to work every single morning, always enthusiastic and excited that we’re all still here, and that there is still an outdoors and so much open space through which she energetically and impressively leaps and bounds. She offers unwavering moral support throughout the duration of whatever task we’re doing, even on the colder, gray, wet days, when it is maybe less fun for her to be outside.Ruby brings us lots of joy and comic relief from the occasional monotony we experience when doing one task for long periods of time. She seems to have an unlimited supply of unconditional love, which she freely gives faithfully every day, and if you pay close attention, you can probably taste it in your vegetables. So many thanks to Ruby!! It wouldn’t be the same around here without her!
I’ve been here at the farm (and in Minnesota) since the very end of March, so I’ve now had the privilege to see the springing of spring, the glorious season that is summer in Minnesota, and now the gorgeous falling of fall, and wow–you all live in a very beautiful place! Seasons are not so distinct in central Texas or Southern Arizona, the only other places I’ve lived so far.
I have next to no background in agriculture, and when I was a kid, food came out of the back of a big SYSCO truck behind restaurants, as far as I knew. I’ve always appreciated good food, having grown up in a restaurant, but I hadn’t taken much time to consider how or where it was produced. I graduated with a degree in Spanish and Sociology four years ago, and I still don’t know what I’m going to do when I never grow up. I first gave real thought to sustainable agriculture about a year and a half after I graduated from college when I was desperately trying to find some direction. The spark of interest was born out of spending some time around a knowledgeable, fellow farming friend of mine, and then was set ablaze after reading Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Around the same time I picked up and moved to Tucson, AZ, the bone-dry desert, and naturally the place I would decide to start learning how to grow food. I took some free gardening classes offered by the local community food bank there and got my hands dirty in the gardens I started taking care of at work. After learning how to do smaller-scale vegetable gardening in the AmeriCorps jobs I held while in Tucson, I decided there was only one way to find out how much I would really like farming. So here I am, and it is just as beautiful out here as I’d hoped and imagined, the work is just as hard as I was warned it would be–but also just as gratifying as I’d expected, and vegetables abound!!
Thank you for supporting the movement to return to locally sourced food by being CSA members. I hope you all are enjoying it, and I hope you continue to be CSA members. It is the next best thing to growing your own food, for many reasons, in my opinion. I was also a CSA member of a farm while living in Tucson, so I’ve been on the CSA member side of this beautiful relationship, getting the weekly newsletter and the assortment of different veggies each week. I hope you’re finding that it’s a great way to get to know what’s really in season when and how to keep and use different veggies. And it forces you to eat more vegetables on the regular! Also, the vegetables you’re getting are just harvested, so they’re super fresh, and as you know, they don’t travel very far, which is better for the whole planet. When I was making the drive up here in March, I remember stopping at a Wal-mart in Ft. Stockton, TX, which seems to have little to offer in the way of good food. I was wanting something green and leafy, so I reluctantly bought one of the many plastic containers of triple-washed “fresh spring greens” on display under the flourescent lights. I distinctly remember in that moment feeling very grateful for being on my way here, where I can just run up the hill any time I have a hankering for some kale. When you find yourself feeling something like homesick in the produce section, because you don’t know where the greens came from that you’re about to buy, you know you’ll either always grow your own food, or you’ll know who did.
I hope you all can make it out to our upcoming Fall festival on October 11. I would love to meet those of you I haven’t met yet and would love to see all of you out here! We want to know who we are harvesting vegetables for every week! It will give us even more incentive to kick some butt out here, and it will hopefully make you feel even more connected to your food, having met the people who handle it and seen and touched the land in which it grows.
Farmer Notes:
- Harvest Gathering is Saturday October 11th beginning at 2 pm!
- Come when you can and rsvp is helpful but not required
- One and only delivery of sweet potatoes – enjoy
- The winter squash is Delicata this week
- These are Baby Bear pie pumpkins made for baking
- We are expecting a hard frost on Friday night so say your goodbyes to the cucumbers, summer squash and green beans
- Beets and carrots for weeks 17 and 18
This is week 16 of the 18-week summer share, so there are 2 more boxes coming. We offer a fall share that extends fresh produce up until Thanksgiving with full deliveries of a full bushel box on October 30, November 13, and on November 25. Here is a list of crops you can expect:
- HERBS – parsley, cilantro, rosemary, sage, thyme
- HARDY WINTER GREENS – scallions, kale, spinach, radishes, romaine, arugula, tatsoi, mizuna, Russian red kale, braising mix, collards, broccoli
- ROOT VEGETABLES – beets, carrots, rutabaga, parsnips, potatoes, onions, turnips
- STORAGE VEGETABLES – cabbage, winter squash, popcorn, honey
- Email us if you have any questions about the Fall Share. We would love to have you join us!
