Main season CSA is full!

This morning we received our fortieth CSA sign-up in the mail, which was our goal for the season! That means that our main season Community Supported Agriculture program is officially full!

You might wonder, why 40? Well, that’s about a third of the number of shares at the farm where we trained, and we’re about a third of the labor, so we figured it would be an achievable goal for our first year. But I also think perhaps the number was ingrained in us after our combined many years of Catholic education and Baptist Sunday school lessons (40 days of rain, 40 days of lent, 40 CSA shares—you know). It’s a good number, any way, and we’ve now met it for the main season at least.

We do still have room left in our Fall season CSA, as well as our market share program. About half of our CSA members only signed up for the main season, which we assumed was due to a justifiable mix of frugality and skepticism on the part of our members: “Will this program work for me? Will my kids eat the vegetables? Is this going to be worth it?”—These are all very smart questions to ask, so we understand people wanting to wait and see before signing up for the fall season too.

However, we do still want to fill the fall season to forty as well, since we should have enough food to keep going past the main season. In order to do that, we are going to begin advertising the fall season to our customers at market as well, but we’d like to give current CSA members priority in signing up. We don’t want to rush anyone, but we do maybe want to give you a little shove if you’ve been waiting. Hopefully next week’s first pick-up will put some minds at ease if there has been any worry about what this will all be like. We think it’s going to be a very tasty first share.

Also, if you’ve been wondering what kinds of things will be in the fall season (running from Nov. 7 to Dec. 12), here’s a preview of what we’re hoping to provide at some point through the fall: tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, salad mix, beets, mixed cooking greens, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, carrots, kale, kohlrabi, leeks, onions, parsnips, potatoes, popcorn, pumpkins, radishes, spinach, chard, turnips, and winter squash.

A bit surprising, isn’t it? Casey and I adore this late season—almost everything is around: both the cold and heat lovers. Once the first few frosts hit, much of it will start to slow down, but we’ve got tomatoes and peppers in a field house, so they should last awhile. Plus, a little known fact about growing vegetables in the cold weather: the ones that don’t die get significantly sweeter. Things like kale, parsnips, carrots, and broccoli are more crisp and sweet in late fall than other times of the year. We’re excited about the late harvests, so we hope our enthusiasm helps others join on. It should be a very delicious season.

We’re hoping to continue extending our season even more in future years—eventually perhaps even to a year-round program! We hope that excites some people out there! Until then, we’ll be selling veggies at least through this December. Just think: you could eat local organic vegetables as part of your winter holiday feasts! What a treat!