With the wide variety of crops coming available, it's getting harder to predict days in advance what will be harvested and available for the coming week. We'll continue to give you a Sneak Peek, but it will be more of a guesstimate than it has been so far this season. Those of you who were at our farm visit or have read our newsletters consistently may have a sense of the competing factors that go into which crops to harvest and put in the box, which include:
* Is there enough for everyone to have a reasonable amount?
* Has it lost some of its food value due to insect or weather damage?
* Which should we harvest--X or Y--when we don't have time or staff or weather conditions to do both?
* If we harvest it now at peak size and quality [or before the heavy rain/wind/hail that's predicted], will it hold up in the cooler until we pack the boxes?
* Should we harvest it this week or give it another week to grow?
Throughout the season so far, we've also tried to include nearly identical items and quantities in the Monday, Tuesday and Thursday boxes each week. For many of the same reasons listed above, that's becoming increasingly difficult, so we've put that goal to the side for the moment. So even if the Sneak Peek holds up for one day, it might be different on another day. We are very mindful, however, of offering approximately the same value in each day's box. And we'll aim to even things out over the course of the season.
Similarly, you may have noticed recently that some items go to one or two box sizes but not all four. That, too, is attributable to the same considerations. It might also be a matter of having a small amount of one item (particularly a storage crop like carrots or beets) and rather than composting them out on the field, we might give them to the Large shares which constitute less than 10% of our customers so is a smaller number to divide up the excess.
Chris and Kurt make the determinations of what's ready for the box and Kurt uses a complex equation and keeps copious notes from week to week to make sure the value is accurate and reasonably consistent.
If you have questions about the relative value of the boxes, or how (or why) certain decisions about what to include have been made, please email us and your inquiry will get directed to Chris, Kurt, or whoever else on the farm staff can best address your question.
