(CSA Newsletter: Summer Week 18)
Meet this week’s vegetables:
We must admit: we’re not really sure what inspired us to divide the CSA seasons with ‘summer’ ending this week … perhaps we were inspired by last year’s Indian summer? Either way, the designation, however useful at one point, seems a bit silly when fall weather and vegetables solidly arrived weeks ago.
Regardless, this week is the final week in our 18 weeklong summer season. Thank you to everyone who has been a part of the summer season, especially those of you who will not be joining us for fall — hopefully we’ll see you again next year. Also, a huge thank you to the First Baptist Church community for hosting us all summer — the parking lot was a great location.
We’re moving next week, to the YCAP food bank warehouse (see below for details), as we begin our fall CSA season, running seven weeks, from November 6 through December 18. Believe it or not, even after 24 prior weeks, the fall season will feature several new and delicious vegetables. We’re excited, and we hope you are too.
This last week brought us more excitement (followed by blissful calm) as we received several significant pieces of good news. First, we finally got the final permit for our house. We almost entirely finished the house in April, but we had to re-bury our water line to the correct depth in order to get our final permit. It wasn’t a huge task, but it took us this long to have enough time. So, last week we re-buried and re-plumbed the water line, called in the inspection, passed, and received our final permit! Hoorah!
And, another huge burden lifted this week when we finally received our groundwater rights permit in the mail!!!!!!! As you know, we’ve been working on these water rights since this time last year. Even though we never had reason to think we wouldn’t receive the rights, the final confirmation is another huge relief. To prepare for next season, we’ve already been plumbing and wiring the well pump for spring use. We are so excited to be ready to irrigate long before the season even begins.
In much smaller news, our chickens laid their first egg this weekend. It was small but beautiful: the yolk was dark orange. Hopefully it’s the beginning of an egg abundance. We’re so pleased by the quality of our first eggs, that we’re already talking about expanding the flock so that we might someday provide eggs for the CSA. We have a lot of numbers to crunch first though. We’ll see …
And, the final happy event of our week was the pumpkin patch open house. Who would have expected that our late October open house would be the most beautiful of the entire season? The weather was perfect: sunny, warm, and calm. Thanks to everyone who came out to drink cider, eat cookies, watch the chickens, walk the fields, and pick pumpkins. We’ll definitely repeat the event next year — and we might even have orange pumpkins next time!
With all of our happy events this week, we’re feeling extra grateful for everything. Going into this season, we knew that it would be one of the toughest we would ever have as farmers. There was just so much to get established in terms of infrastructure, systems, access, etc. As we near the end of the season, we’re blown away by how much we’ve accomplished with the support of many people — most importantly you, our community of eaters. We feel like we took a million risks this year, but you did too. Investing your money and energy in buying locally grown veggies from a start-up farm is a risk. We hope that you are glad you joined us this year … we are so glad to have you with us now, into the fall season and beyond!
Have a fun & safe Halloween tomorrow! And, enjoy this week’s vegetables!
Your farmers,
Katie & Casey Kulla
Oakhill Organics
P.S. Don’t forget to vote! For more information about Measure 49, visit www.yeson49.com. One last compelling fact: In 1935, the number of farms in the United States peaked at 6.8 million. In 2007, there are 2.1 million farms dotting America’s rural landscape. In Oregon, there are an estimated 39,300 farms, the lowest number since 1997.
