Twelfth Week of Spring Season
Our Online Marketplace opens this morning, May 16th, and closes at 5pm Sunday May 18th for a Tuesday May 20th delivery. We plan to attend every week until December, weather and member-participation permitting.
What’s Up at Market
The selection of greens at Fry Family Farm includes most kinds of kale including 3 curly kale variations (see posting) and dino. What was interesting last week was that we spent twice as much at market as we did at the Co-op. It seems early in the season for that to happen but cheers around! Of course, it was a smallish order but lots of fun for me taking my time shopping the market, which I love, and I got the rest of the soil amendments, chick scratch and some flowers at the Grange.
Leeks are done for the farmers but present at the Co-op. They must seed them in the fall as mine are just up now from seeding a month ago. Three farms had early strawberries. I listed Antonio’s but Runnymede and Patrick also had some you can request. The asparagus is gorgeous, spinach deep green, radishes gigantic and snap peas at two farms now, Runnymede and Fry.
At Jessie’s Cosmic Garden
I can pick regular arugula this week as well as the herbs. Several of my succession planting of spring greens are coming along soon, as is dill, sure to be next week with all the good weather coming. This week ends with all the greenhouse tomatoes in the ground, more cabbages planted outside along with more greens .We’re flirting with some likely very hot weather as they mature but it’s worth taking a chance. The kale should be fine through summer and feed us in the fall too.
Tomorrow I start building up hills of manure and straw for the strawberry transplant because that bed is next in line for weeding. The ground cover for regenerative ag treatment of the sweet corn is three feet tall now. I will have to mow strips at the highest lawnmower cut height to plant double rows of sweet corn. I want to give it plenty of compost as well. One quarter of the garden still needs weeding but they are the beds for outdoor tomatoes and summer squash which will go in later in June. I’m planting flowers on the patio and around the house, some I’ve grown, setting the theme of lavender with pink, blue and purples.
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.