Full Share Box: 1 doz. eggs, salad mix, hakurei turnip 'thinnings', mokum carrots, French breakfast radishes, varna leeks, and chives.
Partial Share Box: 1/2 doz. eggs, salad mix, mokum carrots, French breakfast radishes, and chives.
Hope Bay Farm Box 2010
This Week…
Hi folks! Apologies for having gone ‘quiet’ over the past week and a half. We’ve ben very, very busy planting, cultivating, installing irrigation, harvesting – you know, farming. It’s been a bit overwhelming but completely satisfying. I also having been feel a bit parental – ensuring that I have enough food to feed my ‘extended’ family (you!). Strangely, this works for me – possibly because I’m an eldest and kind of naturally gravitate to positions of responsibility or because I’ve (finally) found my true calling – farming… which calls to mind a beautiful poem by Wendell Berry:
The Man Born to Farming
The Grower of Trees, the gardener, the man born to farming,
whose hands reach into the ground and sprout
to him the soil is a divine drug. He enters into death
yearly, and comes back rejoicing. He has seen the light lie down
in the dung heap, and rise again in the corn.
His thought passes along the row ends like a mole.
What miraculous seed has he swallowed
That the unending sentence of his love flows out of his mouth
Like a vine clinging in the sunlight, and like water
Descending in the dark?
This Week’s Boxes
Apologies again for not letting you know sooner what to expect in your boxes. Truth is, we don’t know ourselves until the last minute. I sort of feel like a chef when we put the box together. Going through the various crops, seeing what looks good, what’s ready, is there enough for everyone? is it too sluggy? etc. I expect this is what chefs must do – at least those lucky enough to work in places that offer a daily menu…
This week expect some of the following in yer’ boxes:
Eggs
Salad greens
Radishes
Carrots (yes, some are finally ready!)
Turnip greens
Spinach (possibly for the full share boxes)
Chives
The boxes will likely be a bit light over the next couple of weeks as we transition from our overwintered crops to our spring-planted ones.
Pick Up Times this Week
Everest and I are going to town this afternoon to see a screening of “Silence at the Heart of Things,” a documentary film about an amazing Canadian fiddler, Oliver Schroer, who’s life was cut short by cancer. As a result Tuesdays boxes will be ready by 1pm on Tuesday afternoon. Wednesdays boxes will be at the stand by 7:30am.
Feedback
We’ve been silent on our end but so have you. We welcome all constructive feedback. This is a pilot year for our CSA. Your feedback will help us make improvements. Please do not hesitate to provide your comments directly to us via email or phone or just stopping by. Please don’t use the Pender Island grapevine. It’s too indirect. Case in point: We understand via the grapevine that some of our radishes have been substandard (i.e. hollow). Please tell us this directly. We were unawares until we found out and are now making adjustment to our harvesting. Getting this information sooner (i.e. directly) would have allowed us to make adjustments sooner. So, please talk to us!!
Week 4
Week 3
Hi Folks! Yours boxes are ready for pick up. Wednesdays orders will be read first thing tomorrow morning.
Sorry for having gone quiet for the past week – it was crazy busy with political responsibilities and a sore throat from hell didn’t help matters. We persevered with much needed help from Anna, Tim and Ange. Thx guys!
Apologies for the slug nibbles on the lettuce, radishes and komatsuna – due to a mild winter and our four-season cropping regime, we’re dealing with insane numbers of slugs. I wouldn’t mind them so much if they were subscribers :).
That’s it for now. Take care and be well!
Full Share: 1.5 lbs rhubarb, 1 doz. eggs, salad greens, garlic greens, cilantro, komatsuna, and French breakfast radishes.
Partial Share: 1 lb. rhubarb, 1/2 doz. eggs, salad greens, garlic greens, cilantro, and komatsuna.
Week 2
Week 1 – It Begins!
Pick Up Times
Hello folks! We’re a few sleeps away from the first CSA box. Due to the number of subscribers we’ve decided to have two pickup days -Tuesday and Wednesday. A few folks have already indicated that they would prefer one day over the next.
Please let me know via email which day you would prefer? If it doesn’t matter, please indicate that as well.
Unless folks object, we are intending to have the boxes ready by 12 noon Tuesday and Wednesday. However, we could have them ready early in the morning. It’s up to you.
Expected offerings for next week:
Regular Box: salad mix, rhubarb, eggs*, herbs
Partial Box: salad mix, rhubarb, 1/2 doz. eggs*
* NB: We’re including eggs this week both to celebrate the launch of the Box Program and to ‘flesh’ out the boxes.
Our 1st CSA Meeting
This afternoon we hosted a small meeting at our community hall with folks who have expressed an interest in our proposed farm box program or CSA. It was really heartening to be with people who really get it and want to demonstrate their love of local food by more directly supporting our farm.
Even though we (and particularly I) love farming and growing food, it can be lonely, unforgiving work. I’m excited to be sharing more of our farm and our farming more directly with part of our community. It may seem like such a small first step – 10 shareholders that we keep supplied with veg. and fruits for 25 weeks (the length of our main growing season) – but it’s huge for us; for our family and our farm. We hope this is just one more important step in the agrarian reawakening that seems to be gripping our wee island community. I’m certainly looking forward to this season.