Ninth Week of Fall Season
Our Online Marketplace opens this morning, November 14th and closes at 5pm Sunday November 16th for a Tuesday November 18th delivery. We plan to attend every week remaining through December 23rd, weather and member-participation permitting.
What’s Up at Market
Let it be known that Hoa will be back in town this weekend and resume make her spring rolls for us this week.
We have the next two weeks at market with Josh, Victory Garden and Wandering Roots. The latter two farms take off for the winter and return around May. Josh takes off until January when he starts up at the Grants Pass Winter Market. His carrots look really good right now. I suggest stocking up this week or next. We’ll try to get to that winter market at least once in January when he might have the winter carrot crop in 5# bags. We can also shop there at Sweetwater Farm and a third farm, name not remembered, but giant cauliflowers at a good price stuck with me.
Our other farmers will continue on at the indoor Phoenix market until Dec 23rd. Right now I can find lettuce mix, mesclun, spinach, arugula, some spicy mix, kale mix and chard leaves in bags. Fry has their hearty blend and also still has Persian cucumbers and lots of peppers along with kales, and chard bunches. The honey man should be at the indoor market along with Rise Up Bakery but not likely Coquette. Meyers lemons have arrived at the Co-op!
At Jessie’s Cosmic Garden
This week is all about getting ready for winter weather, including a hard freeze this weekend. I should get the chicken coop cleaned up this afternoon and transfer the contents to next year’s heirloom tomato bed in the main garden. New straw might stimulate egg laying but that won’t go on for long. They are really enjoying their time off. I will take straw to the new strawberry bed in the main garden to give them a nice blanket over winter. I should have arugula and kale for awhile still and rosemary and thyme through the winter. Oregano will go down with the freeze and already looks pretty tired.
I used one of my two remaining Tina cabbages to make the new sauerkraut recipe. It filled half of a 2 gallon crock so if it turns out a winner, I have the last cabbage to make one more batch mid-December. This kraut combines cabbage, carrots, onions, turnips, ginger and horseradish – should be interesting. I have one more small batch of tomato sauce to make to use the remains of this years crop.
I’m going to focus more energy on the greenhouse next season. With more secure doors, installed by my son-in-law over winter, I can bring back my salad mix, take better care with pruning tomatoes, and plant extras for the CSA like carrots, green beans and specialty greens. I will include nasturtiums in the beds and other flowers to make it more of an indoor garden than a tomato factory. With the summer heat we’re now getting the tomatoes will be fine outdoors with some early ones inside. Zero critters are attracted to tomatoes though gophers will take a couple young plants to their storage facility before they figure that out.
Link to order form:
https://www.heartofthesun.com/csamarketplace.html
Cheers!
Jessie
Important Information (leaving this up for awhile)
I don’t like rules but prefer to suggest some guidelines for the successful running of our CSA. Anyone joining in the last few years has probably not received or been reminded of them. The Old-Timers are quite good about them but we had reminders on the old website that I didn’t include on this one so here goes (and I will leave this up here for a few weeks to catch everyone as well as including it in the link notice email).
Please…
- Watch your statements and leave a payment in your box for pickup when you are not going to cover the cost of what’s being delivered – or make a paypal payment, or stop by with it. Especially during Winter and early Spring Season, our bank balance can get pretty low if we don’t keep accounts topped up. If I use the debit card (often) the transaction is immediate.
- If you are not going to order, tell me well ahead – earlier in the week if its a recent decision and at least two weeks ahead if you are going on a trip or are going to be out for a week or more. I shouldn’t find this out when reminding you to order mid-day Sunday. This is especially desired if you are a regular microgreen customer as I seed them around 12-10 days ahead of harvest. The seed is expensive – making needless chicken treats something to avoid. With a heads up in time, I can plan to grow less.
- Put your boxes out ahead of delivery (will often be later in winter when we drive to Grants Pass). Leave payments taped in them or with a rock on top of them. And please return all my canning jars so I have something to put the next batch of whatever it is in them. Thank You, Very Very Much. I love you all and so do our farmers!
- Microgreens I’ve been thinking about microgreen parameters for some time since it’s heartbreaking to feed them to the chickens who like garbage with equal gusto. Most of my microgreen members have the same order every time they order. I would like to call these subscriptions that I can always fill. When folks order every once in a while I never know its coming and may or may not have seeded enough to cover their orders, though always have some for small orders. I’m trying not to waste pretty expensive seed. So here’s the new rulIf any ‘subscriber’ is going to be gone, give me a heads up 10 days ahead, when you get your Sunday order to check the week before your absence. I will tag all the order emails with a reminder. If you are planning to place a special order or you don’t order very often and want them when you’re planning to order, give me a heads up the same 10 days ahead so I can seed more. You’ll notice I am now using a different sunflower seed (the striped ones from the big sunflowers) so if you’ve drifted away from them in the past, please try again.
- Minimum Orders: ‘Back in the Day’ when we started the CSA, we had structured box prices and an 8-week period in which to spend your box value. Now we are all over the place and it only works well when an X number of people order and a Y number of people have orders over $100. In the old days the minimum order was $35 for the small box if ordering every week. I’m going to make that the minimum order for doorstep delivery. You can place smaller orders to pick up here on order day between 3:30 and 6:00.