by milecreekfarm

CSA Week 6

This Week’s Harvest

SAVE THE DATE — UPDATED DATE!!!!!
Every year we invite our CSA members out to the farm for a field walk. This is a great way to see the farm where your food is produced, see how the season is going and what goodies are still to come, and learn about the ins and outs of organic vegetable farming and ask your questions. This year’s field walk will be MONDAY July 24th from 7 pm to 8:30. We’ll gather around the barns and begin the walk promptly at 7:15. The field travel ways are dirty – either dusty or muddy depending on the weather- and uneven, so we recommend good walking shoes. Strollers have made the journey before, but we recommend choosing an alternate way to bring little ones out the fields. Water bottles are also a good thing to have.  Rain date is Wednesday 8/2.  We hope that you can join us!  

FARM NEWS

This week, after relentless rains in Vermont, New England farms along the Connecticut River are in our thoughts. We’ve seen heartbreaking photos of crops underwater, unbelievable pictures of farmers canoeing in the fields, and greenhouses and barns under water. A lot of the farms affected had gorgeous crops ahead of the flooding, due to hours and hours of hard work put into their care. 
It is very stressful making a living off of something that can be impacted so severely from something out of our control- the weather. And most vegetable farms do not have crop insurance. This post here explains the whys and the wherefores of that: 
https://sustainableagriculture.net/blog/dont-harm-crop-insurance-improve-it/
As a customer to a CSA farm, believe it or not, you are acting as insurance to your farmer. We will still get income for the season even if we have a crop failure. We relied on the concept of both producer and consumer sharing the risk most in 2011 when it just wouldn’t stop raining in April and May. We never flooded, but the evenly spaced significant rain falls made it impossible to plant during the peak planting season. That year we didn’t have potatoes, onions, sweet potatoes, or winter squash. Fortunately our CSA was much smaller. 

Waiting for fields to dry out in the Spring
In 2015 mid season we had to toss a lot of plants that grew too big in their cells before we could plant them. While it looks dramatic, we probably had another succession of plants ready to go.
Having raised beds helps, but sometimes even then plants get submerged.


While we appreciate our customers support and commitment for the entire  season and willingness to trust us to produce for them, it shouldn’t fall on them to bail us out if the weather causes crop failures. We’ve never been in a 100% loss situation before so we don’t know what failing to deliver to our customers would actually entail- and hopefully we’ll never know!  But it does seems like crop insurance would be a good solution to “what if” weather scenarios- especially since a crop insurance program already exists!  The Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association has been working with policy staff and member farmers to come up with a wish list of sorts for crop insurance. The hope is crop insurance changes will be made in 2023 Farm Bill. You can read about OEFFA’s “fair, functional and informed” crop insurance program HERE

RECIPES

Swiss chard and Onion Panade

Swiss Chard and Zucchini Enchiladas

Cucumber and Egg salad Sandwich (use sweet onion in place of red onion)

Coming up next week (our best guess…) carrots, sweet corn, fairytale eggplant, Salad mix, tomatoes, basil, sweet onions, kale, cucumbers, zucchini, green beans