Sixth Week Of Our CSA’s Summer Season
Our Online Marketplace opens this morning, July 26th, and closes at 5pm Sunday July 28th, for a Tuesday July 30th delivery.
What’s Up at Market
The balance between veggies and fruit is the theme at market now. Some of the greens are hard to find due to extreme heat but I’m surprised that the farmers are keeping up with lettuce mixes and, between all of them, the kales we want. The spring Walla onions look and taste great sliced on a burger, chopped up raw in tomato salsas and salads.
The berry options just got a boost with Penningtons finally agreeing to sell their berries through Runnymede. This seems to happen when the flow of blueberries starts piling up faster than sales. So we have their blueberries for a little less in cost, and last week Marion and Ollalie blackberries. There are a few more blackberry flavors but all taste great so substitutes are hard to pass up. Raspberries are surprisingly rare at market. We are ordering from Teri who might have one or two baskets to bring to market and I have yet to see the fellow show up who has the late berries. Surely he will and usually carries them into the fall for us.
A Review of Our Ordering System
Every once in a while, when I’ve been chalking up a few order errors, it’s a good idea to review how it goes. The order you submit comes by email to me as the summary you see after you push the submit button. The whole marketplace is on the email. To work with it, I have to reply to it which opens it to me for editing and I go through the whole list eliminating all the things you didn’t order. I print this out and will use it to write up your order as an invoice.
I write up the invoice and send it to you on Sunday evening for review. If I’ve made a mistake translating your order in the step above, you can catch it right there. If you ignore the chance to review, any error is baked in. From all of the orders sent out that week, I ask the program for a pick list kind of report. This tells me what was ordered by all of you and the total of each item wanted. On Monday morning, I use the pick list to compose purchase orders for the Market, The Co-op, TJs and add-ons like Coquette, The Wharf and Market of Choice specialties. If I didn’t make a mistake on your invoice, I could make one here, typically getting the number of a particular item wrong – so not enough. My apologies when this happens.
Wednesday morning I go through your original orders comparing the quantity and price of each item to the original with the checkout slips from the stores and notes on farmer prices from market. This I send with a statement to all those who order, along with notes about the shopping. These are typically quite accurate. So hope that gives you a birds-eye view of the program we use and what can go wrong. The best thing you can do for me is actually review your order Sunday night and make sure it is accurate to start with 🙂
At Jessie’s Cosmic Garden
This week I’m stalking the start of the pickling cucumber season. I imagine it is already in high gear and I need to do something about restoring my supply of garlic dills in the next two weeks. If you want canning amounts of pickling cucs, let me know this week. I might go up to Bingham Farms for them after market. They are north and east of Central Point. I need to call ahead. They sell at the Thursday Medford Market so you could catch them there too. For modest amounts of pickling cucs, Fry Farm will have them at market and I added them to our Marketplace.
I’m expecting 2 broody hens to hatch some eggs in the next couple days. I’ll be back to chick training at bedtime but a little later in the evening than the last batch. I have arugula still and the last of the salad mix as far as it goes. The first bed has all bolted and the second has been reduced in size by ground squirrel nibbling. I am seeding lettuce mix for the fall today and seeding greens mixes in the garden hoping to keep the nibblers away from it. I’ve had a few summer squash ripen so we should be in the swing of it soon. I can see a lot of fruit setting on the Honeynut winter squash too. So far, no squash eating critters.
I will have tomatoes soon – lots of Mountain Magics and not so many Moscvich as I wanted to have. They have not set blossoms into fruit for a main crop and judging from all the tomatoes in the greenhouse, I’m guess it is the high heat this year. Those that I started a month early are the most productive but are also not setting late blossoms. I feel for the farmers as they try to deal with the whims and certainties of climate change and hope that the cherry tomatoes in the main garden do better than last year.
Link to order form: https://www.heartofthesun.com/csamarketplace.htm
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!