by milecreekfarm

CSA WEEK 10

This Week’s Harvest

Farm News

Last week we hosted a guest for a morning as we had our organic inspection (spoiler: we passed!). We went over our Organic Systems Plan (OSP) which is basically a blueprint for the farm- it’s a detailed description of the practices and procedures used on the farm. We update it every year and the inspector comes to the farm to inspect and verify that we are doing what we say we are doing. We went over records, validated any changes that were made to the OSP from last year, toured the farm, buildings, seed supply, equipment, etc. Even though we’ve been certified since 2010, it’s always still a little nerve wracking. The inspections definitely go smoothly but everyone is their own individual and we never know what aspects of the farm inspectors will want to focus on.

One time in our early years we had treated seed on the farm! Ben had gone to farm auction that winter and purchased a 2 row corn and bean seeder. By the time of our inspection, we hadn’t yet used the seeder and we completely didn’t notice it had residue from the previous owner. The hoppers had a little remaining treated seed at the bottom of them. It wasn’t a deal breaker for passing the inspection. We assured the inspector of the situation and that we hadn’t used it yet at all. We could look at receipts to verify the purchase of the seeder that winter as well as our seed receipts to show we hadn’t purchased treated seed. We also had to be sure to clean it out before use and document the cleaning and make note of all of that for the next year’s inspection.

Happy to report it’s been awhile since any red flag during our inspections. The current summer season features our sweet corn and we are really proud to bring our customers organic sweet corn- we hear that it is hard to find! Enjoy!

Recipes

Coming Up next Week (Our best guess….) Garlic, Sweet Peppers, Poblano Peppers, Sweet Corn, Green Beans, Cabbage, Cantaloupe, Zucchini, Cucumbers, Onions