Upcoming attractions (Week 15)

Meet this week’s vegetables:

As I’m sure you’re aware by now, with our recent land purchase and many reflections on this season, we are already beginning to plan in earnest for 2007—our second season.

In addition to changes we’re going to make in how and what we grow, we’re also going to fine tune the CSA ‘system’—how we organize the seasons, price, etc. It’s nothing major and actually quite exciting (to us), since we love systems, planning, and organization. I suppose that’s why we’re farmers; there’s always something to plan for and do better next time!

But I don’t think that we’re the only ones around here contemplating ‘next year,’ since we’ve had quite a few inquiries about sign-ups (which delights us). So we thought we’d share some of the very preliminary details for the 2007 season:

Perhaps the most exciting change will be an extension of the CSA season in general—the first pick-up will be earlier in the year (mid-May) and the last later (late December). We’re also going to organize the separate share seasons into more parts so that there will be a spring, summer, and fall season (in the same way that this year we have the ‘main’ and ‘late’ seasons). We’re doing this so that we can have slightly varying numbers of people in the program during different times of the year. Spring is a slower time (as you’ll remember), so we’ll have fewer people in that season (probably around 60); summer will of course be the largest (maybe 100); and fall will taper off again in number but stay higher than spring (80-ish?).

As with this year, you’ll have the option of signing up for all three seasons (plus flowers!) up front or you can choose just one or two (for example, if you really just love the summer vegetables, or if you have your own garden in summer but want to share in our fall harvest).

We will also accommodate the fluctuating flow of vegetables by pricing each of these seasons slightly differently. The weekly average price for spring will be lower than summer, which better reflects the reality of the harvests. We imagine that each weekly share will still average higher than what CSA members pay up front, but the difference between what you pay and receive won’t be quite as large as it has been at times this year.

And we have another exciting new part of the program as well: in addition to extending the spring, summer, fall season of growing, we will also be venturing into deep winter as well. Yes, we are going to offer a winter season share, running from February through April. These are the leanest months on any farm, so it will be an experiment in planning and faith to ‘grow’ and sell then.

Growing almost year-round has always been one of our goals with this farm business, for a few reasons. One is that season extension is a way that we can increase our farm income without necessarily adding more infrastructure or labor to the already busy summer months. Also, we feel strongly about fostering a local agricultural economy. ‘Eating locally’ seems to fall apart for most people during the winter months when produce departments fill their shelves with California and Mexico vegetables. Yet, it’s possible to grow almost year-round here. So, why not?

Since it’s hard to predict what will be available and when, we’ll structure the winter share very differently from the other three seasons. The main differences are all based on winter’s unique challenges: we’ll deliver prepacked boxes to a site, for example, rather than sitting in the cold weather for three hours. Also, since locally grown vegetables are such a rare item in those months, we will be pricing the vegetables straight across (rather than giving the CSA bonus each week). Anyhow, there will be other details that don’t need to be described here, more than a year in advance, but we wanted to share some of what we’re planning because we’re giving you the opportunity to reserve a spot for that season as well. And initially we’re only going to have 15 spaces (but we’ll take a long waiting list just in case there’s more food than we expect, which is very likely in a normal year).

Fifteen spaces might seem like something worth clamoring over (CSA riot!), but I should add a caveat. We are truly excited about this experiment in winter food, but the eating experience will necessarily change with the seasons. Winter is an austere time, and the share will reflect that. As always, we plan to give out the highest quality vegetables possible, but things won’t be nearly as pretty, perfect or clean. Winter also limits the options to hardy greens and storage vegetables. There is still much diversity in these ranks, but the available produce lacks the same feeling of abundance and showiness of summer. It will be a quiet season, as winter is.

Even though this will be our first time stepping out into this trial on our own, the farm we trained on grew food through the winter. Last year Casey and I committed to eating vegetables only from the farm, even through the hard months of February and March. We absolutely loved the experience. Hardy greens like kale and collards grew deliciously sweet, and so did potatoes after months of cold storage (their starches turned to sugar!). We loved it so much that when we went out and saw plates piled with out-of-season vegetables like tomatoes they just started to seem wrong somehow—out of place. Eating from the fields, we felt like we truly experienced winter for the first time.

Once again, we’re sharing all of this planning with you partially just for the sake of sharing our hopes and thoughts for the future with the community who has joined us on that road. Thank you for coming this far with us! Enjoy the vegetables!

Your farmers,

Katie & Casey Kulla
Oakhill Organics

P.S. We’re giving this year’s CSA members advance opportunity to reserve their spot in the 2007 season, but our official sign-up brochure won’t be out until this winter. If you’d like to be added to our mailing list to receive a brochure, please email us or stop by market.