(CSA Newsletter: Week 36)
Meet this week’s vegetables:
It’s that time again: fall has arrived (welcome back cabbages and potatoes!) and we’re approaching the last of the 2009 CSA shares. This weekend, Casey and I inventoried the storage room and fields to sketch out the remaining weeks of veggies — the next nine weeks look delicious and abundant!
And, even as we finish up one year, we’re seriously planning the next. So, we’re including in this week’s newsletter a 2010 CSA ‘Commitment Form’ so that you can reserve your spot in our 2010 CSA.
We call it a ‘Commitment Form’ because we ask for no money now. Simply return your filled-out form to us by November 3, and then we’ll mail you a CSA handbook with more information and invoice on January 1, 2010. The first payment will be due by January 20, 2010. (We put off receiving payments until 2010 because it makes our finances and taxes much simpler and can help CSA members budget more appropriately for the year as well.)
So, as you prepare to sign-up again, you’re probably wondering what’s in store for you next year?
Much of next year is going to be a continuation of this year’s successes. The season will once again be 45 weeks long, beginning the first week in February and running through mid-December. For those of you who joined us in late May this year, participating in the entire almost yearlong season will be a new experience. The upcoming fall-like shares should give you a good sneak peek into what winter CSA eating is all about … it’s seasonal at its best — lots of delicious root vegetables, hardy sweet greens, onions and garlic, fresh tender greens, and more. If you’ve never eaten seasonal local vegetables in winter, you’re in for a treat — you will discover flavors that you can never find in a grocery store, because produce shipped from California and Mexico just can’t compare with freshly harvested local produce.
The types of veggies will be more or less the same next year as well. Of course, we’re always tweaking and refining our planting plans (for example: plant more melons next year!), but we really enjoy growing (and eating) the abundant diverse mix of vegetables we offer. So, you’ll once again enjoy eating everything from arugula to zucchini. (And so much in between: Carrots! Tomatoes! Kale! Lettuce! Peppers! Broccoli! Leeks! and much more!)
We’ve also received positive feedback on the quantity and volume of vegetables provided in each week’s share, so we will aim to provide about the same amount per week next year as well. Again, these things always fluctuate somewhat from year to year, month to month, and week to week — but you’ll be able to plan to have six to nine different veggies, each in a volume suitable for one or more meals.
We will also continue working with the same CSA distribution system: pick-up will continue in our signature ‘market’ style on Tuesdays, 3:30 – 6:30 pm.
However, we are making two changes for next year. First, and most significantly, we are moving to a new pick-up location beginning in February. We’ve had an absolutely fabulous three years of being hosted at the First Baptist Church parking lot and the YCAP food bank warehouse. Both hosts have been incredibly generous and offered very convenient and comfortable locations for our pick-up. However, we’ve often wondered if there’s a place downtown that would be suitable year-round for our pick-up (to ease some of the spring and fall moving confusion). We think we’ve found a great new site!
You may be aware that there’s a new Saturday Market starting, held in the ‘Granary District,’ just two blocks off of 3rd Street at the east end of downtown McMinnville (behind Buchanan Cellars and R. Stuart winery). The market is planning to provide a year-round inside/outside venue for local small businesses, artists, and other producers. We think this new Saturday Market will be a great complement to our already thriving seasonal McMinnville Farmers Market. Plus, the new market has grabbed a great site: an open flexible building on a big, safe parking lot very near the heart of downtown. Since we knew the market is primarily going to be open on Saturdays, we started thinking … wonder what they’ll do with that space mid-week? Never hurts to ask, right?
So, we’re now in the final stages of an agreement to use the market’s space for our Tuesday pick-up. We’re very excited about the location: it’s still close to downtown and within walking distance of other shops and neighborhoods; it will provide weather protection suitable for every season; it’s well lit; it’s an easy spot for us to unload our truck; it offers lots of safe parking right in front of the pick-up; and it provides an opportunity to partner with a new organization that has a lot of promise for future small business development in the county!
Even though we’ll be in a different site beginning in February, we plan to continue our existing partnership with YCAP into the foreseeable future by providing the food bank with all our leftover CSA vegetables. We are so grateful for what YCAP does in our community and especially grateful for the great committed staff who runs the food bank. They are so enthusiastic about fresh produce and work hard to make sure that every single lettuce we bring to them finds a home. Unfortunately, not all food pantries and food banks are as diligent or as well suited to handle fresh produce, and so we are very glad to be associated with one that makes fresh food a real priority. It makes it that much easier for us and other farmers to donate when there is profuse abundance!
Anyhow, we recommend you drive by and check out next year’s location. We’ll be using the site for our November Holiday Harvest (the day before Thanksgiving as usual), so we can give it a trial run, and you can check out the space then. Or, now that the Mac Farmers Market is over for the season, perhaps you might even want to check out the new Saturday Market itself? The market opens for the holiday season on Saturday, November 14, 9 – 3.
The second change for next year is that we’re slightly raising the CSA price for the 2010 season, from $900 to $960, or about $1.33 more per week. We’re doing so simply to keep the price of our service and products current as the economy continues to change around us. We haven’t raised our CSA price since 2007, but many of our costs have changed since then. For us, the price of soil amendments, seed, and supplies have all gone up since our last CSA price increase. We’d rather keep up with changing prices gradually every few years rather than wake up in 2030 and realize we need to double the share price!
Our goal is to always keep the price of our CSA reasonable enough that we could afford to participate on our own admittedly farmer-sized income. We’re not interested in being an ‘elite’ service that only the wealthiest in our community can afford. We try to keep our CSA affordable in many ways, including continually working on our own business and farm efficiency. Thus, we’re able to make just small increases every few years even though the price of some goods increase dramatically around us in the same time.
We also try to make the CSA more affordable by offering three payment plans to fit differing budgets. We know that some people can’t pay for a year-long CSA program in one lump sum of $960, so we also offer a quarterly plan of four $240 payments and a monthly plan of 12 $80 payments. It’s the same price either way, so it’s up to you to choose which payment plan best fits your income and bill paying method. As you fill out your 2010 commitment form, please indicate which payment plan you choose so that we know ahead of time. We’ll remind you of your choice when we send you an invoice on January 1.
The business end of operating the farm has involved just as much learning and growing as the farming itself. So far, we’ve done well — the CSA seems to be priced fairly and we’ve been making our living from the farm since the first year. We hope to continue both trends into the future.
So, those are the major details for 2010’s CSA season. I’ll provide reminders and more information with your invoice, but hopefully this gives you enough information to make a decision about whether to return. We hope you do — the CSA community has been a huge blessing to us, and we’d love to keep seeing all your smiles at pick-up every week! In the meantime, if you have any questions, please ask.
If possible, please return your commitment forms by November 3 so that we can start recruiting new members if we need to before next year.
And, as you mull over the decision, be sure to thoroughly enjoy this week’s fall-delicious vegetables!
Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla
