(CSA Newsletter: Week 9)
Meet this week’s vegetables:
As I write this week’s newsletter on Monday night, we are experiencing yet another strong spring storm — strong winds, lots of rain, cold air … It’s been an amazingly windy, blustery, rainy couple of weeks now. There are huge puddles of standing water all over the valley, and the Willamette River came up enough to partially submerge the irrigation pump we had already placed near our seasonal waterway (thinking the threat of flooding was over for the year!).
Fortunately, our fields are well drained enough that they seem to be weathering the crazy wetness ok. We hope so anyway, because we had most of our spring crops already in the ground before this recent spat of storm fronts. Either way, there is no standing water in our fields — always a good sign during the breaks between downpours.
But we’ve definitely been refocusing our attention indoors during this period — as much as possible at least. The CSA harvests must go on, cold weather or not, but the rest of the time we’ve been working around the storm fronts.
A big project for the last two or three weeks has been organizing our expanding seed growing operation. I mentioned before that last year we experimented with growing a few of our favorite vegetable varieties for seed at a small production scale (bigger seed plantings than we would ever need for our own purposes, but still very small compared to the 40 acre fields of seed commonly grown in the valley).
Thanks to the supportive folks at Uprising Seed in Bellingham, WA, we managed to sell a little bit of our first seed crops last year. It wasn’t a huge financial contribution to the farm, but it was enough compensation and excitement to keep us interested. The more exciting aspect for us though has been growing out some of our saved seed this year — just as we’d hoped, the quality of the seed far surpasses the stuff we buy commercially. The seeds are bigger, darker and have better germination. We can only imagine how these positive traits will translate into the final product.
The seed quality we’ve seen in our own production is much more on par with the seed we purchase from our small-scale seed growers here in the Northwest. Clearly, when you pay attention to vegetable seed crops, they come out better — just like vegetables themselves! Not surprising, since both are crops, but it’s still been fun to actually see the difference in action. It makes us want to grow more seed crops for our own use as well as to sell to other farmers.
So, Casey has been working hard to get more seed growing contracts at the beginning of this season. We’ve collected quite a few already and are still making some calls. There are many varieties we’re planning to grow out simply to have as well. Between all our contracts and our own projects, we’ll be growing and harvesting about 30 varieties of vegetable for seed this year!
Since we need to maintain ‘isolation’ distances between members of some families, these 30 varieties represent quite a diversity: a variety of winter squash, basil, pole bean, broccoli, onion, pepper, and more.
We’re still working on the logistics of how to organize these crops into our fields and into our paperwork records and planning, but it’s exciting to be moving forward with something that we find to be so fun as growers.
We’re also pleased to find that the work of seed production tucks nicely into our existing schedule as fresh vegetable growers — growing the crops themselves integrates fairly easily into our vegetable plantings, and the work of harvesting and cleaning the seed happens later than our big fresh harvests.
The cleaning itself can be done anytime in the fall — in fact, it’s perfect work to do inside on a wet October or November day! To that end, seed production will help us keep a steady supply of work for our employees through the end of the CSA season (something we struggled with last fall).
Of course, right now it feels more like fall than spring, and I feel like we should be cleaning seed rather than planting it. To me, these big blustery storms feel much more like a fall weather event than a spring one. The house is shaking slightly under the force of the gusts, and the poor cherry trees are in bloom all around us, even though no pollinating bees should venture out of their hives right now. It may turn out to be a low yielding year for cherries. But hopefully the seed crops will do fine!
Enjoy this week’s vegetables!
Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla
CSA payment notes:
Quarterly payment is due! Sorry, everyone — I dropped the ball in reminding you about the second quarterly payment, which is due … um, now. Since I didn’t get a reminder out ahead of time, please just get it to us as soon as you can. The quarterly payment is $240 (and the third installment is due by July 1).
A reminder to the monthly payers: I just wanted to remind those of you on the monthly plan that the monthly payment should be $80. We’ve had a few people forget and write the old amount on their checks. Oops! Also, to be current with your bill, by the end of April, you should have written us four checks, for a total of $320.
For both parties: If you would like to know where you stand in our accounts, send me an email, and I’ll check on my Quickbook accounts and get back to you! Thanks everyone!
