We've reached the end of our fourth CSA season. Things have been steadily growing and improving. We're finishing the season with over 500 customers. Pretty good to go from 0 to over 500 in four years!
Much of our development and success has been achieved via the efforts of Robin; most of you will have interacted with her several times over the years. After five years of dedicated work, Robin is leaving us at season's end, most likely to pursue her interest in networking, information dissemination, and otherwise developing local food access.
It's hard to tell what we'll miss about Robin most. Though we didn't always see eye to eye (which is often good), I've never worked with anyone who cares more, does a better job of taking initiative, makes sure things get done, finishes things, and communicates what she's done. In this transitional period when we are reassigning responsibilities, she's been great at making sure that Sean, Sheila, and Kurt, who will be taking over her tasks, get all the information they need to make the transition as smooth as possible. Her absence leaves a hole to fill for sure and we'll miss her.
This is, however, not the first time a very important person has left the farm, and no person is bigger than the team effort. The measure of our team will be to see how well we replace Robin's responsibilities, and how well we take advantage of the opportunities that exist any time big change happens. Having Robin's dedicated help and assistance in this transition will give us a great chance of negotiating the change as best we can.
As for the CSA itself, and the farm's end of things, not everything always gets better all the time. Two steps forward and one step back for sure. In farming, more than in most activities in life, doing well next year what you did well last year is especially difficult. So many things change so much from year to year, presenting a moving target. We're always working to make good crop selections, even out harvests over time so that we can deliver the freshest produce possible, and balance good variety with high quality. To a point, greater crop diversity assures greater overall success as some things always do better while some do worse. Beyond that point it is difficult to manage too many crops. With hundreds of varieties of nearly 40 vegetables and a few herbs, there is a lot to consider, and it's very important not to try to do too much. That is why we don't grow cucumbers, melons, golden beets, parsnips, and a few others. On the other hand, I can see trying cucumbers (did I say that?), cilantro, a new lettuce-type crop from our favorite seed company (Johnny's) called Salanova, and different mesclun ingredients in the years to come.
On a much less exciting note, I should have mentioned a thing or two about the frozen sweet peppers we included in the box last week. As they are frozen, don't expect them to maintain much physical integrity upon thawing, though you can expect them to taste like peppers. Use them in places where you can get by with flavor and not mind the fact they'll be mushy. I put them in chili, pasta sauce, or any sort of stew/cooking where their flavor is appreciated and their physical form is less important.
And as I predicted last week, the weather stayed too cold to get enough growth out of our spinach to include it in this week's box. As I write this newsletter, in fact, we're looking at a high of 12 with moderate wind and little sun. Though the spinach is happy enough "overwintering" as it does so well, it's not growing at all. The warmer weather later this week will give it some cause to grow, and we've got a full month to let it size up for the winter CSA share. We've done a good job of making sure we have lots of crops "in the bank" in the form of frozen raspberries, winter squash, jarred tomatoes, and root crops, so that we can always put a decent box together. While there are no guarantees in life, the winter share is likely to have spinach in all six boxes as the spinach always grows eventually--what isn't here now will be here later. We've got a good customer base forming for the Winter CSA; many thanks to those who have signed up for the winter and/or other seasons next year. We hope that those of you who don't think of local food as much in winter will still consider joining our Winter CSA. I'll think you'll be pleasantly surprised to see that it's at least as satisfying to buy local in winter as it is in summer.
-- Chris