Week 1

Tomorrow, June 9^th, we will not be doing volunteer seeding in the Greenhouse.  Thank you all for your hard work and dedication this spring.  I hope to see all of you again very soon (like this Saturday for example for the launch of our Weed and Feed program)!

Welcome to the first week of the CSA season! If you are assigned a Monday/Tuesday pick-up block, please pick up your share either Monday 2pm-7pm or Tuesday 11am-5pm. If you have a Thursday/Friday pick-up block, you can pick up your share either Thursday 2pm-7pm or Friday 11am-5pm. For those shareholders who are new to the CSA and were unable to attend the orientation on Saturday, please let one of the shopkeepers know when you check in and they will be happy to go over the pick-up routine as well as answer any questions you might have.

Due to our fashionably late spring this year many of our crops are a week or two behind where we need them to be for our first week of pickup.  Now there is a very good argument to be made when things like this occur on the farm, which states that a CSA is an investment and investments do not guarantee successful returns.  When you buy into a CSA you are agreeing to share the season’s risks and rewards with your farmer.  There is, however, a counter argument of my own invention that it really stinks to disappoint one person let alone 550 vegetable hungry shareholders on their first week of pickup.  As the “still wet behind the ears” new manager at Appleton I was not looking forward to a skimpy first week.  Fortunately our friends at Heron Pond Farm were able to help us out with our supply problem with some truly gorgeous produce.  Look for it in the share room this week.  Thanks Andre and Greg!

Next Saturday will be your first chance to join us for the inaugural Weed and Feed volunteer day.  Strawberries and peas may not be ready yet but Lambs quarter, Chick weed, Nut sedge and many other wild edible and medicinal weeds are ripe for the picking. Our carrots, parsley, and herb beds need your help. Whether you are interested in learning about wild edibles or just eager to improve the PYO experience at Appleton, please join us out in the field any time between 8am and noon this Saturday.  Our rendezvous point will be marked on the pick your own map in the barn, or just look for the group of people having an insane amount of fun out in the field.  A hearty thank you in advance!

What’s in the share: Lettuce, radishes, Salanova salad mix, kale, and assorted greens, PYO herbs

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother’s day CSAers.  It is a warm sunny day with clear blue skies.  Our potatoes are planted, so are our big spring plantings of cabbage, kales, kohlrabi, and broccoli.  Onions are almost all in the ground and our team will shed no tears to see that task behind them.  Peas, spinach and radishes have popped up and so have the beets and carrots.  All of our fields are plowed and there is plenty of room in our greenhouse to catch up on seeding.  In latter weeks I may find myself examining my poor life decisions (it happens at least once a season) but right now it is good to be a farmer.

We mailed out final bills this past Friday the balance of which will be due on the first of June.  New member orientation day will be held on June 7^th at the CSA barn from 9am-11am and the first week of the CSA season will begin on the 9^th of June. 

We are hoping to recruit some motivated volunteer weeders this season to help us keep the Pick Your Own fields tidier and help the crops grow in bounty.  To incentivise volunteers to join us we have arranged to have Dr. Nicole Andrade and Iris Weaver join us every other Saturday through June and July to help us identify edible and medicinal weeds.  Dr. Nicole practises traditional medicine and Iris Weaver is an herbalist.  If you are interested in learning about wild edible or if you just want to help improve the pick your own experience please join us in the Pick Your Own fields on Saturdays between 9am and noon.  

If you have any questions or concerns or if you are interested in volunteering with us please contact me, Ryan Wood, at rwood@ttor.org.  Thanks for reading and we’ll see you soon. 

A week of many seasons

Garlic is looking good!

Weather has monopolized the forefront of my thoughts this week.  I am probably the first farmer ever to be vexed by this particular concern.  I spent the beginning of the week in July and the middle of the week in January and the end of the week back in April.  In spite of the curve balls coming our way from the weather we are slowly but surely catching up on field work.  With a lot of work and a lot of luck next week will include planting potatoes and preparing for the big onion planting push.

One advantage of the wacky weather is that we have been forced to go to the one place where we can control the climate.  Our greenhouse seeding is actually ahead of schedule as a result.  We are moving seedlings out to the cold frames as quickly as possible but it is beginning to look like weekend hours at the DMV: lines of fennel, scallions and napa cabbage impatiently waiting for their chance at the front of the queue.  Cold frames aren't the most comfortable place for our transplants so we are hoping to get them in the ground soon.

Our strawberries, snug under their blanket of mulch came through the winter just fine.  Even our experimental beds of fall planted berries look pretty good in spite of a spat of rodent related vandalism.  We have high hopes that this new technique will drastically cut down on strawberry maintenance and free up much needed field space through the spring and early summer.  Garlic has also begun to push up through the mulch and it looks fantastic.  Many of you have been curious about the long caterpillar tunnel in our underhill field.  We experimented with fall planting onions last season for the purpose of extra early onions this year.   Although there is some chance that these onions will bolt and go to seed rather than bulbing up, the first part of the experiment was a success.  I’m hoping that fall planting techniques such as these will help to balance out the planting delays caused by extra cold and wet springs like the one we’ve been having.

New Beginnings

Ginger! A new experiment we are trying in the greenhouse this year.

Greetings CSA members and blogging enthusiast, It is beginning to feel the tiniest bit like spring this week and speaking of unassuming beginnings I have now officially started as the new CSA manager.  Lise Holdorf left some big and extraordinarily muddy boots to fill but, with the help of our fantastic crew and the support of our invaluable membership (you), we are hoping to make this season just as fruitful as the last.

With our fields muddied by the thaw and spring rains, we haven’t yet been able to do any plowing this season.  This is a little discouraging because, according to both our records and our planting calendar, this puts us a little behind schedule.  Fortunately, all it takes to lift our spirits is a trip to the greenhouse where spring has come early.  We have now run out of table space and have been putting seed trays on makeshift benches in order to stay on schedule in the greenhouse.  Thanks to our wonderful greenhouse volunteers who helped us seed 48 trays of cabbage, 36 trays of kohlrabi, 40 trays of lettuce and 18 trays of snap dragons this past Monday for a grand total of 142 trays seeded.  Fantastic work everyone! 

In other CSA news our new apprentices will be starting this Monday.  They are excited, energetic and very eager to learn.   I am very pleased to welcome Rachel Kessler, Sean Cubbins, and Rachel Dennison and welcome back Ryan Donnelly to the Appleton Farms community.  Jon Berube and I can’t wait to begin working with these exceptional individuals.  Look for updates to our staff bios page in the next few weeks. 

Stay tuned for more exciting updates from the field!

-Ryan Wood