Fifteenth Week of Summer Season
Our Online Marketplace opens this morning, June 5th, and closes at 5pm Sunday, June 7th, for a Tuesday, June 9th, delivery.
We are going to the Ashland Farmer’s Market and Co-op this week with stops at Trader Joe’s, etc. Next trip to market will be June 23rd.
What’s Up at Market
The only possible surprise at market might be blueberries from Pennington’s through Runnymede. I will add them to the wish list. The spring Walla onions should be getting bigger and rounder and I’d expect more summer squash showing up. We can get lettuce mix from Tina at Runnymede, Victory Garden and from my greenhouse. The spinach should be coming on still, maybe asparagus, and surely strawberries galore. The other shift to market might be cherry tomatoes.
Try for anything in special orders. I was paying for our bread order at Rise Up right in front of a basket full of smaller loaves that looked delicious – cheese and jalapeño. I bought one to try and will be getting 2 this week – one for the freezer and our ‘local only’ week. Wow! I also have to give Rosie and her crew at Rise Up the prize for the best plain croissant. They are only selling at the Farmer’s Market now with left overs making their way to Shop ‘n Cart. I notice newer bakeries showing up with sourdough at the Co-op to fill in the gap.
At Jessie’s Cosmic Garden
The lettuce crop in the greenhouse is holding up pretty well. We’ll be picking from the second planting this week and I’m selling overflow through a friend with a small neighborhood farmstand once a week. I planted way too many lettuces for just a few CSA orders so the chickens get to help out too. We know now that the greenhouse works for lettuce until the high heat months of summer. I’ll be seeding for fall in August. Our Rainbow Chard crop is doing really well so I think we can offer it every week from now on.
This will also be the week when basil is in need of pruning to branch the plants out, so I’m putting that up this week. It may not be available the follow week while it regrows. Oregano is going to peak out and flower soon – still good then but highest potency now for drying. I’m weeding a bed with the herbs and digging out spreading raspberry plants so will likely find peppermint so will activate that choice. The raspberry bed is full of honey bees pollinating the fruit. Each little section of a berry has to be pollinated separately – quite the big job but they’re doing a fabulous job. The comfrey is also blooming, attracting legions of bubble bees having a big feed.
Our 6 baby chicks are going to be 6-weeks old on market day. It’s a big deal for them because they will be fully feathered and won’t need the heat lamp anymore. Now they spend afternoons outside in a pen , but next week they can go to live in the second chicken coop. They should start laying eggs in November, when the older birds start molting instead of egg-laying.
Cheers!
Jessie
Link to order form:
https://www.heartofthesun.com/csamarketplace.html
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.