What a blessing of great weather we've been enjoying after a brutally cold January! The sunshine and warm temperatures have been a balm to our hearts as we seek to recover from the cold damage we suffered a few weeks ago. We've also had the opportunity to make good progress on the newest high tunnel getting close to being ready to plant it out with early spring crops.
Veggies this week (Feb 15th) and then again on (Feb 29th).
I know this every other week thing can be confusing and get you out of the habit of picking up your veggies, but we have only one more off week before we are back to weekly deliveries and you won't have to ask yourself if you were supposed to get veggies this week or not. So deliveries are the 15th and 29th (with NONE ON the week between). In March and April, you won't have to guess because we'll be back to every single week then.
Summer CSA signups are open
We aren't accepting new members for the remainder of the winter season but signups for our larger summer season are now open. If you know someone who might be interested in joining you can direct them here: https://www.harvie.farm/farm/where-the-redfearn-grows-natural-farm/signup . We appreciate the word of mouth (or word of Social Media) advertising that our members provide. Over the next week or so I'll be working on putting together our spring signup media push for National CSA Week to help get the word out about local food and local farms. (I had planned on working on that this week, but I just can't force myself to do office work when the weather is this good. You have to make hay while the sun shines, so outdoor work has taken precedence over computer work this week). Whenever we are ready to do that media blitz, in late February, we would really appreciate your help spreading the word. But it's never too early to start. To remain level with last year, we have around 65% of the members we need for the upcoming summer season. That always seems like a large shortfall, but signups come quickly in March and April oftentimes due to your helpful support and the warm weather making people think about fresh food again.
Veggie availability this week
Spinach is amazing. Please feel free to load up on the sweetest spinach you'll ever get from us this year. The extreme cold did some damage to many cold hardy crops but the spinach which is especially cold hardy only benefited from the cold. Did you know that the way spinach keeps alive in the cold is by moving the sugars it develops through photosynthesis up into the leaves as a kind of natural antifreeze? So any spinach leaves that have been hit with really cold temps will be extra sweet and delicious. Sometimes there may be a little cosmetic white spots from the extreme cold but that only means it's extra delicious. We're planning on harvesting a lot of it this week so feel free to trade things out for additional spinach. We'll have fun harvesting that for you from our outdoor plantings that were buried beneath the snow for extra protection. Also we have lots of beautiful baby arugula that looks so amazing. What we don't have is lettuce. Even protected with extra fabric inside our high tunnels, we lost a lot of lettuce in the cold. We were able to scavenge what we could the last couple weeks to save the plants that remained but it was sparse (hence lots of tiny lettuce heads last week, sorry that's all we had). We're taking this week off to let the lettuce regrow and let our replacement plants get established and grow. The outlook for lettuce looks good in the coming weeks, but we just can't do it this week. So this week instead of lettuce try some spinach or arugula salads (the arugula isn't nearly so spicy this time of year).
Bread and Cheese
Farm to Market Rosemary Olive Oil Artisan Loaf
Hemme Brothers Applewood Smoked Curds
I hope you get a chance to get outside and enjoy the beautiful outdoors maybe sometime during a lunch break this week. Good weather like this makes us feel pretty special that our "office hours" can be spent outside in God's creation listening to the birds and feeling the warmth of the sunshine on our faces. For us it can be a worshipful experience delighting in the goodness that we see all around us. We hope that the hand-cut leaves that grace your salad plate give you a little taste of the goodness of creation and the majesty of its Creator. Every shade of green, every intricate texture and every delicate flavor point to a Maker who has a good purpose for everything and everyone including you.
"Taste and see that the Lord is good" - Psalm 34:8
Your farmers,
Dave and Sheri
