CSA Update

Howdy folks! Thanks to all who have signed up for our CSA. We now have 19 members! Since we have a mix of full and half shares, that puts us at about half full. It seems like every day we gain one or two new members. At the rate we’re going we should be sold out by next month sometime.

Deliveries
We’re excited to start delivering. Since most of you are planning on picking up your boxes on your way home from work, I’ve decided to do the deliveries in the afternoon. I’ll be at the co-ops unloading at 2:30 p.m. so come get your boxes anytime after 3 p.m. or so.

For the Hampden Park Co-op shareholders the first delivery will be Wednesday, June 3rd. Your boxes will be in the air conditioned entryway right as you come in the door. So all you’ll have to do is find your box (your last name will be written on it) and you can be on your merry way. You must pick up your box on Wednesday; the co-op will not hold it for you. They are open until 9 p.m.

Since we’ve had more members sign up for our River Market Co-op drop than we had expected, that delivery day has been changed to Mondays. So for the Stillwater folks, your first delivery will take place on Monday, June 1st. River Market puts CSA boxes in their cooler, so shareholders will have to ask a co-op employee to fetch their boxes. They are open until 9 p.m.

For those of you who are doing Huebert delivery (Sarah’s co-workers), you will receive your boxes via Sarah on Thursdays.

Other Farm News
We picked up our seed potatoes on Tuesday. This year we will be planting reds, blues, russets and yellow spuds. Last year we had quite a problem with potato bugs. So this year we are arming ourselves with some spud bug protection. We’ll be spraying the plants with two different sprays; both are approved for organic farming. One is called Monterey Garden Spray and the other is Neem Oil. If you would like to read up on these here is a helpful web site: http://www.montereylawngarden.com/products/insects/

The baby goat is doing really well! She has a lot of fun playing in the pasture; she’s very fast and shockingly adorable. We are open to name suggestions. Our other goats are named: Blanche, Virginia, Jolene and Olaf. Our sheep are named: Phyllis, Marilyn, Bernice, Thelma and Ivan. Let us know if you have any ideas!

Most of our seed orders have arrived and we are working on starting our bedding plants. Since we don’t have a greenhouse, we’ve been doing the best we can with what we have, which is four windows. It’s going pretty good, many of the tomato plants have already sprouted. Since I’m sure we will fall short on what we can start in our house, we will also be buying bedding plants. We’ll be purchasing at least some of our plants from a greenhouse by the name of Prairie Farm Gardens that sells through our local co-op. This greenhouse uses certified organic seed and local potting soil. They also have a lot of interesting varieties, should be a fun order to place.

We’ve also been renovating our old milk house (see photo above) so that it can be used as a vegetable packing space this summer. It’s been quite a project so far. The building was moved onto the farm in the 1950’s from a neighboring farm that my grandparents bought. It was starting to separate from the barn and needed a lot of structural repairs, which we’ve pretty much have solved now. Soon enough we’ll be outfitting the building with new wiring, a sink and snazzy new interior boards. I’m glad so see this building put back into use and think it’s really cool that I’ll be packing my vegetables in the same building that my grandparents shipped their milk from.