End of the farmer social season

(CSA Newsletter: Week 4)

Meet this week’s vegetables:

Thanks everyone for allowing us a week off from the CSA. We were able to attend one of our favorite winter farmer get togethers at Breitenbush Hot Springs in Detroit, Oregon. The event is just one of many that occur in the ‘off-season’ for busy farmers: conferences, meetings, parties, etc.

Each winter we try to get our fill, as the gatherings allow us to learn from other growers from around the northwest. We love talking about the past season with farmers: sharing the lessons and hardships.

While it’s wonderful to talk about farming, eventually we’re ready to begin just doing the work again. This year we have just one more this weekend, and then our attention and time will turn fully to the season at hand. 2008 will move one season back into our memory banks and 2009 will unfold all its individual stories, lessons, and glories.

It’s a good moment for the winter farming conference (i.e. ‘social’) season to end as well. As I type this late on Monday afternoon, the fields are bathed in the glow of the setting sun. Just yesterday, I was complaining that March’s arrival was too dark and dismal for my taste, and now I can hardly believe winter has any strength left (watch out — I’m sure it does). After February’s frigid weather, the temperature has warmed significantly this week: today’s high was in the 60°s. As a result, the over-wintered vegetables are all visibly growing again, putting on tender beautiful new leaves or flower shoots.

Spring is an inherently hopeful time of year. But this year we are especially hopeful for spring’s arrival for other reasons as well.

The last three seasons have been amazing periods of growth for our farm: we’ve gone from growing on one acre for 48 CSA members in 2006 to growing on four plus acres for 90 members today. In that time, we’ve had many successes, but we’ve also encountered numerous challenges and made choices that don’t suit our long-term goals.

This year we’re changing several big things on our farm that we hope will help us become increasingly more sustainable as a business. The first big change (as you know) is that we are no longer selling at the McMinnville Farmers Market. As the market season sneaks up on us, we are definitely a little sad that we won’t be there.

But, we are also extremely relieved this year that our spring won’t be a sprint to the first market. In past years, the first market date marked the end of our ability to easily accomplish field tasks. Harvest and selling at market took the better part of two days, as does the CSA harvest and distribution, which would leave us only one to two days at the farm to sow, plant, weed, and do other important work in the fields. This year, our weekly routine will stay as it is now all summer long: Monday and Tuesday harvest and distribute the CSA; Wednesday through Saturday work at the farm. The days we work at the farm will become busier as the season picks up, but we won’t be trying to crush all our work into too little time anymore. This makes us very happy farmers.

The second big change for the year is that we’ve hired our first real employees. Up until now it’s been the two of us doing the vast majority of work on the farm, supplemented with some weekly help in the summer from friends. This year, we will have two other able bodies joining us four full workdays a week, beginning in late April. Our backs are very excited, as are our spirits. We’ve enjoyed building the farm as a couple — it’s a bigger accomplishment than we ever anticipated for our lives. And, now we’re ready to share the farm work with others, both to ease our burden and to help spread knowledge and experience.

We’re also looking forward to numerous simple things: beginning the season with adequate irrigation set-up and supply (hoorah!), improved tools (specifically a new tine weeder for our cultivating tractor), and new vegetable varieties we’re trying (Diablo Brussels sprouts, Green Finger cucumbers, Green Lance broccoli).

But maybe the best things of all are all the things that aren’t new this year. After three years of adding new tools, building infrastructure, trialing varieties, and establishing systems, we’re finally getting into a good farming groove. We’re starting the season with a pretty clear, experienced sense of how most of our tools work, how we wash and handle veggies, how we transplant, how our irrigation will be set-up, how the different vegetables we grow will perform throughout the season, etc. We feel more settled than ever before, and it is a very comforting feeling — especially since every season will continue to surprise us in unexpected ways. We might as well enter the mystery of farming with our heads on straight and good knowledge of how we’re going to addresses the unexpected. You know, as much as we can.

Also with the turning toward the new season comes tasty new veggies. In this week’s share you’ll find the first ‘rapini’ of 2009 (see the ‘Meet this week’s vegetables’ for more info about this unique delicious veggie). Enjoy the vegetables!

Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla