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Dear Common Thread Members and Friends,

 

Amazing kale

It's been another cold winter with a lot still going on with vegetables until just a couple weeks ago when the winter CSA shares ended.   It has been nice to have a wide variety of storage crops and hardy greens to eat and share with CSA members.  We've been learning a lot about the winter hardiness of different crops and what coverings are needed to be able to continuing to harvest into the colder weather.  Kale takes the prize for being able to withstand quite a lot of cold with little to no protection, along with spinach.


We have one market that is still going: the Poolville Winter Farmers Market, on the first and third Saturdays of the month.  Asher will be there on Valentines Day with potatoes, carrots, beets, rutabagas, winter squash, our own popcorn and a few other things.

 

Winter roots
Wendy will be at the Mohawk Valley CSA Fair this coming Saturday, February 7 from 2-5pm at the CCE Oneida Farm and Family Center, in Oriskany, NY with information about our CSA. We will also be at the Madison County CSA fair on March 21, 2-5 pm at the Madison County CCE Agriculture Center (100 Eaton Street Morrisville, NY).

 

Now is a great time to sign up for 2015 - we're just about to do many of our major orders and would love to know that there are a good number of people ready to eat all the food.  Please let your friends and neighbors know about us!

 

On site CSA Share Agreement Form 2015

 

Delivered CSA Share Agreement Form 2015

 

Common Thread Flyer

 

We are almost done with our crop planning and hope to place our seed order within a few days.  We are making a number of adjustments according to member feedback including more broccoli, tomatoes, brussel sprouts, garlic, leeks and melons and less bok choi, radicchio, celeriac, fennel and kohlrabi.  We're planning to shorten some of the pick up times a bit to keep the food fresher for everyone who picks up.

 

We're also thinking about ways to help people connect more to the farm and to each other.  Here are a few ideas that we'd like to try:

  • Planning some work days and potlucks a little further in advance so that folks can get them on their calendar.
    Picking edamame
  • Doubling the pick your own picking limits for folks with delivered shares so that it's more worth it to them to occasionally make the trip out to the farm.
  • Set up a remote distribution site that allows for more vegetable choice and more community building. If we can find a space (perhaps at a church or community center) where we can set up our vegetable bins and we sign enough people up, we can have an attendant to greet people and help them out with questions; offer a little bit more vegetable choice; offer a mini share; and we (the farmers) can visit sometimes to meet members, share vegetable tips, etc. We'll try this in New Hartford or Utica this year and if it goes well, start a site like this in Syracuse next year.  If you are interested in joining such a site or have ideas for locations, please let us know.  
We are also open to other new box share delivery sites this year.  We are looking for a public site such as a store or church to replace our Fayetteville site, and potentially to start new sites in Norwich, Shelburne and Oneida.  We are also open to workplace CSA sites, so if you think that your co-workers would be interested in a drop off at work, please let us know. 

 

Yours in the field and under all the seed catalogs,  Wendy and Asher