Eleventh Week of Spring Season
Our Online Marketplace opens this morning, May 8th, and closes at 5pm Sunday, May 10th, for a Tuesday May 12th delivery.
What’s Up at Market
One small change at the market gives me hope. Even though Wandering Roots is not coming, nor Patrick (at least not yet) who focuses more on the Medford market. Other farmers have to pick up the slack or the Ashland market is the loser. Runnymede will gladly sell from other farmers who can’t show up at market and small farmers can step up with diversity to fill in the blanks. So, with Victory Garden showing up now, I know some important veggies will make it to market and, if I show up at opening, like I do, we will get all we need.
I’m looking for someone to compete in the snap pea department. It would have been Patrick, but I think Josh might come up with them. I miss the large, crunchy ones and will double check if someone is selling them to the co-op. Mine will be ready in June.
At Jessie’s Cosmic Garden
I am offering cilantro and arugula this week, waiting a bit longer for the kale to take hold at the roots. I had my gardener helper/pruner here to clear the rest of the beds for planting in the main garden. There will be lots of weed seeds germinating and needing scraping off with my special tool, but digging out roots is taken care of. The chickens had quite a good time with piles of them. I consider this life-extension for me, the farmer.
The greenhouse is really nibble proof and everything is doing quite well. I hope the lettuce batches (3 maturing at 2 week intervals) will not experience bolting with coming heat and think the steady cool (but not freezing) nights will see them through. The basil is planted and growing quickly, the greenhouse-delegated tomatoes are planted and cherry tomatoes are blooming already.
I’m getting the flowers planted in the pots and other containers around the patio and front garden and porch this week. I also need to seed more arugula and cilantro rows. put out some baby cabbages, seed sunflowers and take the young pepper plants to a hot place in the greenhouse. Then my house can get back to normal instead of being a plant nursery.
I got most of the flowers at the Ashland Greenhouses and found most of the petunias were down here instead. It is a really impressive enterprise with a series of large greenhouses hooked together so you can wheel through all of it. There wasn’t a discount for buying there either so support Native Grounds and Spring Hill Nurseries instead. I was at both filling in the blanks yesterday and getting some CA+ for the tomatoes and Bat Guano for general startup plant transplants. I have a flat each of green beans and corn germinating for a jump start but also planted many rows of green beans in the greenhouse that are not yet above ground.
Everything is going as planned for this especially important moment in local food production.
Cheers! Jessie
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.