Sold Out for 2010 Season

We're sold out folks! If you are still looking for a CSA check out the Land Stewardship Web site or head to the Seward Co-op for a big CSA fair on April 24.

2010 Shares Still Available...But Not In St. Paul

Today I sold out of shares to be delivered to the St. Paul drop site (Hampden Park Co-op).

We do still have some shares available at the Stillwater drop site (River Market Co-op) and the Hudson drop (Fresh and Natural Foods). If you are interested in signing up please see a previous post entitled "New Member Sign Up Time Is Here". At the bottom of that post you'll find a sign up form which you can send or e-mail to me.

River Market CSA Fair: I’ll be setting up a booth at the River Market Co-op CSA Fair which will take place Saturday, March 13 and Sunday, March 14 from 1 to 4 p.m. both days. River Market is located in downtown Stillwater on Main Street. Should be a pretty fun gig, there will be lots of CSA farmers their hanging out in the produce section.

Coming Soon: I’ll be posting a list of everything I’ll be planting this year. It should be quite the list…guaranteed to kick your cabin fever into high gear.

Pictures From the Farm

If you are interested in becoming a member of Eener’s Farm CSA see the previous post. We still have some spots left.



It’s looking pretty snowy around here…but there are some things happening. Here are some recent farm pictures:



Throughout this winter we’ve been working on restoring our haymow floor. One half of the haymow is right around 100 years old. The other half is part of “the new addition” put on by my grandparents in the 1950’s. It’s been quite the project and I’m excited to report that we can now walk across the floor without worrying about falling through!

A view into the chicken coop. The ladies are really enjoying all the sunshine we’ve been having. They are still a little apprehensive of our new dog Mabel hence all the bunching up. On the upside Mabel’s presence makes taking their picture as a group way easier.


Phyllis, one of our ewes had triplets! I expect her herd mates, Thelma and Bernece to lamb soon too.

New Member Sign-Up Time Is Here

Today I'll start accepting brand-spanking new members for the upcoming season. Here's our post that will soon be appearing on the Land Stewardship Project web site (a great place to shop for CSAs), http://www.landstewardshipproject.org/csa.html the 2010 CSA directory should be up soon:

Eener’s Farm is a fifth generation family farm located in Dunn County WI approximately 60 miles from St. Paul. Earlier generations utilized the farm for dairy and beef operations. Eener (that’s Renee backwards) has converted the farm into a CSA.

Full and half shares are available at reasonable prices ($255 for half shares and $500 for full shares). Deliveries are weekly and start the second week in June and continue for 21 weeks through the last week in October. Delivery sites: Fresh and Natural Foods in Hudson (Mondays 3-9 p.m.), River Market Co-op in downtown Stillwater (Mondays 2-9 p.m.) and Hampden Park Co-op in St. Paul -928 Raymond Ave. (Wednesdays 3-9 p.m.).

Each share includes at least 40 varieties of vegetables and a small selection of herbs. Eener grows pretty much all the classic garden veggies plus a few oddities. As an added bonus, members sporadically receive bouquets of flowers, Eener’s free range chicken eggs and other treats. Eener’s goat, lamb and pig meat will be available for sale in the fall. Farmer to Farmer coffee shares also available.

Everything grown on Eener’s Farm is done so in a sustainable manner without the use of chemical herbicides, pesticides or fertilizers. Please see Eener’s website for share rates, more CSA details and whacky farm antics. www.eenersfarm.blogspot.com

Members are not required to work on the farm. They are welcome to visit and encouraged to attend the Big Fall Harvest Party Fest which is held at the farm in October and involves a bonfire, food, farm tours and pumpkins.

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If you have questions don't hesitate to e-mail them to me at eenermachine@gmail.com or call me at 715-643-2803.

Below you will find a sign-up form in case you need it. You may send it via e-mail or to: Eener's Farm N12449 220th St. Boyceville WI 54725. How to pay: one half of your share amount is due by June 1, 2010 (many folks find it convenient to send this in with the sign-up form) the other half is due by October 1, 2010. Of course you can pay the whole works at once if you like. If you send/e-mail me this form, I'll send/e-mail you back a confirmation letting you know you're on the list.


Eener's 2010 CSA Sign Up Form

Your Name:
Your Address:
Your Phone Number:
What Size Share Would You :Like?
Where Will You Be Picking Up Your Share (Hampden/River Market/Fresh & Natural)?

Survey Results

If you are shopping for a CSA for 2010 please see a previous post entitled Eener's 2010 Preliminary CSA Details (posted in November). More details on 2010 sign-up to be posted here soon.

Check out our new puppy, her name is Mabel. We figured Maynerd, our orginal dog, could use an assistant in his garden/critter protecting duties. He's working on training her in. She's half springer and half hound...seems pretty smart. We've been enjoying her company.

Thanks to all of you 2009 members who filled out the Eener’s Farm Survey! The results were very interesting and I’ve been taking them into account as I order seeds and plan for the coming season. If you haven’t yet filled one out it’s not too late, send it on in if you’d like. Here are the questions and results:

1. Was there anything you would have liked to have seen (or seen more of) in the boxes?
Lettuce/salad mix received the most votes with spinach coming in as a close second. I’ve been researching varieties of lettuce that will retain good flavor as summer temperatures rise. I struggled last summer with the salad mix getting bitter as we got into July. Obviously I need to plant more spinach! Cucumbers, tomatoes, melons and egg plant also received a fair amount of votes. All of these were crops that were not happy campers last year, especially the tomatoes which were hit with a bad blight. I’ll be investing in a hoophouse this year so hopefully we can have better success with these heat-loving veggies. Sweet corn, carrots and broccoli got a few votes too so I’ll plant more of these.

2. Was there anything you found in your box too often?
Turnips were the overwhelming winners for this question. I’m not surprised, every single turnip seed I planted must have sprouted, they really enjoyed themselves last summer. Beets also received a fair amount of votes with summer squash, swiss chard and tomatillos bringing up the rear. I’ll be planting a lot less turnips this year and also plan to scale back on the zucchini and tomatillo production. I’m only going to plant half as much swiss chard this year and I’ll introduce kale which is something many of you suggested I grow.

3. Do you think you got a fair amount of produce for the price you paid for the share?
All of the survey participants said yes to this question except for one who was undecided. I was glad to hear this since it was my first year and I wasn’t certain on how much should be going in the boxes. My goal is to provide members with an amount of produce that is equal to the price they paid for the share, but ideally I’d like to give them more. Of course this isn’t always possible since farming is so tied to the weather. I’ve heard that many CSAs north of here were unable to produce an amount of produce that was equal to share price due to drought. This happens…being a part of a CSA is a gamble and the very same thing could happen here.

4. What was your favorite box item?
We were all over the board on this one… pie pumpkins got the most votes; I would agree they are one of my favorites too. Spuds received a lot of votes. It was a very good year for potatoes and we had a nice crop…don’t worry I already ordered red seed potatoes for this year! Pretty much all of the other candidates in this category got only one vote, obviously a matter of taste. In response to this question one member wrote, “…my absolute favorite box item was dirt. It is absolutely wonderful to wash dirt off of veggies, and not to have to worry about chemicals and wax”. Well put I think, this is a box item I didn’t expect to see mentioned.

5. What was your least favorite box item?
Turnips won here too and rutabagas were not very far behind. I’ll be severely limiting the amount I plant of these two crops. Beets and brussel sprouts also got some votes although many of you said these were on your favorites list so I’ll not cut production back much.

Many of you had some great suggestions! Here are a few I’ve really taken to heart:
More recipes in the newsletter – good call!
Fruit - We’re really working on this. We put in a strawberry bed and a bunch more rhubarb last year hopefully we’ll see some return on that this year. We will continue to plant more fruit but most fruit takes a fair amount of time before you actually get to eat it. Several of you mentioned blueberries….hmmmmm (that was me trying to figure out were I can start a blueberry patch).
More meat – Another thing we are interested in doing. Lamb and goat meat may well be available next fall depending on how the lambing and kidding season goes. We are seriously considering getting some pigs and offering up pork for sale this year.
More herbs – Another good call, I’m expanding the herb selection this year.
Cauliflower – Exactly what I was thinking! It’s on the list for this year.
Cheese – This could happen…but not this year.
Asparagus – I planted 100 of these last year. We may see some this year but really they won’t be at full production until 2011.
More winter squash – I agree and have had a lot of fun picking out some new varieties.

Flail Chopper

If you are interested in 2010 CSA details, please see the previous post!

Last month I headed out to another CSA farm located just a little ways north of my place for a field day. The farmers at this particular CSA have been farming for quite a number of years and had a lot of good ideas about mulch, building the soil and lots of other things. A bunch of farmers from all over the state met up at their place, we had a tour, drank some coffee and had a really informative discussion not only about soil but also about other odds and ends. It was a very educational afternoon for me.

One pretty big area of discussion involved flail choppers. Flail choppers are pretty nifty pieces of machinery that are pulled behind tractors and used primarily for chopping corn stalks but also for other types of crops too. The chopped plants are then fed directly to animals or used as silage, another type of livestock food that’s sort of fermented. The CSA farmers were saying that they used flail choppers to hack up all the standing debris in their gardens like sweet corn stalks, sunflower stems, pumpkin vines and what have you. The chopped debris broke down faster and was thus a more efficient form of fertilizer.

After hearing all this, I got pretty excited about flail chopping my garden. I knew my parents owned one and went to their house the next day to borrow it. My dad and I drove his pick-up out to an area of his woods were he has all sorts of interesting farm equipment parked. My parents used to grow corn but over the years switched to a more grass based system and so haven’t used the chopper in quite awhile. We located the chopper and found it in working order.

We headed over to my place with the chopper hitched to the pick-up. Once we got out to the garden we hooked it up to my dad’s Allis Chalmers tractor (I borrow a lot of stuff from my parents).

A little about the anatomy of a flail chopper…(I'll try and get a picture up here soon) it’s basically a giant, high powered mower. They have a rounded rectangular body that houses banks of knives that rotate. They also have a good-sized curved metal shaft that sticks straight up off the body. As they are pulled along the knives chop up everything then it all gets sucked up the shaft were it spews into a type of wagon called a chopper box… really a pretty cool system.

Another important detail is that they run off PTO (power take off) shafts. A PTO is a bar that runs from a farm implement into the back of a tractor and provides power for moving parts. These things spin really fast and are incredibly dangerous if they don’t have a guard on them. All farm implements that run off PTO shafts come with guards it’s just a matter of replacing them when they break.

A little PTO shaft side note: One day years ago my grandpa hopped on his tractor to go do some farming with a PTO driven farm implement. A little while later he came walking back to the house in his underpants. Due to the fact that he wasn’t much of a PTO guard maintenance kind of guy the implement didn’t have a shaft guard on it. Sure enough, he got a little too close and the rapid spinning action of the shaft ripped his britches clean off him (if you ever want to launch my mom into a fit of prolonged hysterical laughter, just mention this story to her).

So I’m digressing quite a bit here…back to the chopping of the garden.

It turns out that my dad’s chopper had been slightly modified over the years. It no longer has the long shaft sticking up. So instead of sucking the cuttings up and out his chopper just obliterates everything and shoots it in all directions. I had never run a chopper before so he was giving me some pointers. At the end of his lesson he advised that due to the modifications, I should wear a helmet with a face guard.

Donning my super-hip logging helmet with the metal face guard in place I started the tractor and engaged the PTO. The chopper lurched to life as all the knives began rotating at breakneck speed. The noise the thing made was alarming, it sounded like a chainsaw but more breathy…a sort of menacing whir.

As I started driving around my garden, I noticed myself leaning decidedly to the left. This was because the main body of the chopper was to my right and the second I started chopping I knew why the helmet was necessary. Cascades of vegetable matter spewed out mostly behind me but I found that some of it came directly towards me especially if I was turning a corner.

Sweet corn shredded up nicely as did pumpkin vines, zucchini plants, cucumber vines and pretty much everything else. The kohlrabi bed had quite a few golf-ball sized plants left in it and when the chopper hit it a spray of nickel-sized debris shot out and pegged me in the back. Kohlrabi (a relative of the turnip) can kind of sting when it’s ground up and shot at you.

The only area in the garden that gave the chopper something to think about was the brussel sprout patch. Brussel sprout plants get big and some of my stalks were about the size of baseball bats and incredibly fibrous. The chopper was unable to chop all of these into fine pieces. As a result a few six-inch lengths came flying out. On pegged me right square in the face. That thing was moving! It really tagged me and I was incredibly grateful for my face guard.

A couple of times the chopper picked up small rocks and flung them far distances. At one point it dredged up a rock the size of a basketball which caused the thing to sound as if it was getting ready to explode. I had to get down off the tractor (after carefully disengaging the PTO) and extract the rock which had been hit many times by knives and appeared to be slightly pulverized.

After I was done the garden looked like a scrubby, brown field. It was amazing how in about half an hour I was able to erase pretty much all signs of seven months worth of labor. It’s also pretty amazing how the 2009 garden will be a major part of the 2010 garden in the form of organic fertilizer.

Eener’s 2010 CSA Preliminary Details

Wow, I’m impressed by the amount of early-bird CSA shoppers! For those of you who are already scouting for next year here are some details on my CSA:

Delivery Locations: I deliver to River Market Co-Op which is located in downtown Stillwater and Hampden Park Co-Op in St. Paul (928 Raymond Ave., fairly near Midway Stadium). I’m interested in adding a delivery to Hudson….but haven’t done any research on this yet.

Delivery Times: If things stay the same as this year (and I expect them to) I will be delivering to Stillwater on Mondays and St. Paul on Wednesdays. I drop the boxes off around 2:30 p.m. and members come pick them up between 3 p.m. and 9 p.m. It’s advisable to pick up your box on the day it is delivered; the co-ops may or may not hold boxes for CSA members.

Share Sizes: I offer full and half shares. All the shares come in the same size box (it’s cheaper to buy boxes that are all the same size). The boxes are bushel sized and I try to fill full share boxes and half fill half share boxes. In the beginning of the season this is not always possible, towards the middle of the season this can be a real challenge. In the thick of the this year’s season I was running 18-20 different types of veggies in the full-share folks’ boxes and 9-10 different types in half boxes.

Pricing: Full shares sell for $500 and half shares sell for $255.

Box Contents - Veggies, Herbs, Flowers and Eggs: I grow about 40 varieties of vegetables, some herbs and a few flowers for bouquets. I also have a small flock of chickens and put eggs in the boxes as I get them. Fruit is something I’m working on….I don’t promise any fruit but if I end up with some I’ll put it in the boxes (last year I was able to run apples and a few plums).

Is Eener’s Farm Organic: I’m not certified organic (a process I’m looking into) so I can’t advertise myself as organic. I do advertise as “Chemical Free” which means I don’t use any chemical pesticides or herbicides in my farming operations.

Our Season Length: In 2010 I’ll be doing 21 weeks starting the second week in June and going until the last week in October.

When to Sign Up: The 2009 members can sign up anytime. I’ll start taking brand-spanking-new members on February 1, 2010 (sign-up forms will appear on this blog).

This is all fine and good, but what the heck is a CSA anyway? Basically, a CSA (which stands for Community Supported Agriculture) is a type of direct market farm, meaning the farmer sells food directly to customers. There are a lot of advantages to this kind of farm. For one, customers/members know exactly where their food is coming from (we encourage our members to come visit the farm and we hold a big party at the end of the season for everyone). Secondly, produce from CSA farms doesn’t travel far. As a result it’s better for the environment and members enjoy much fresher produce. Another perk is that CSA farms tend to be really diversified (we grow about 40 varieties of veggies plus herbs and flowers and eggs) so members get a nice variety of in-season veggies.

Risk. Since farming is so completely tied to the weather, it’s risky business. My goal is to provide my members with an amount of produce that is equal to the money they paid for their share. In 2009 I think I accomplished this goal. But I can’t promise that this will be true for next year. It’s helpful to think of CSA farms in terms of the stock market; when members buy a share they are making an investment. On a good year they will break even or get an amount of produce that is greater in value than their initial investment. On a bad year, they may end up with an amount of produce that is worth less than what they invested. In buying a full season of produce, the members of CSA farms share the risk with their farmers.