Dear Kimberton CSA community,
The first seed order is in! A big thank you to all of our members who have signed up over the last two weeks. A large part of the CSA commitment is to help your farmers purchase seed, fertilizer, potting soil and other spring supplies so we can start our season off with a bang!
And those are just some of our annual purchases! Ongoing costs at the farm are the same as any other business. Rent, wages, insurance, utilities, taxes...it goes on and on. Yet, we don't have a tangible product to sell until May! We 100% rely on you to help finance the farm--debt free--during the off-season by purchasing our veggies in advance. Remember, we are Kimberton Community Supported Agriculture.
The last newsletter I sent out highlighted a few cosmetic changes to the shares, pick-up times, and farm hours of operation. If you missed it you can view it here on our Blog. Although we won't be archiving previous seasons' newsletters, the plan is to publish them as we go during 2020 for reference. Eventually, this might mean using a different email platform, but we will give you a heads up if this happens so you don't miss out!
Its almost February, which means we will start sowing soon. Snapdragons are first on the list. They take a while to germinate. Our Assistant Manager Becky has been adding a few new varieties to the u-pick flower list, so there should be a few surprises out there. Ah...fresh bouquets! And hopefully we'll be able to replicate last season's sunflower patch.
There have been a few other tweaks to our seed schedule for 2020. We're moving back to the larger, indeterminate cherry tomato plants, which means more of a jungle but a longer harvesting time and...Sungolds!! We'll also have a few new types of tomatoes, including a yellow paste called Orange Banana.
We also made a few changes in light of member responses to the 2019 end of year survey. We are going to attempt to grow Spaghetti squash in addition to the Butternut. I've never grown Spaghetti squash; I've never even eaten one! But they look pretty neat. Spaghetti squash with an orange banana sauce...yum!
Members were basically in a dead heat between the three options of watermelon; cantaloupe; and, watermelon and cantaloupe. So, we'll be doing our best to make sure we have both watermelon and cantaloupe this year! Arugula and bok choy were overwhelmingly the most popular fall greens. Several spinach advocates left comments as well. Duly noted!
Pickling cucumbers will stay on the share for now (not u-pick) and we plan to have snap peas and snow peas in the spring. Thanks for taking the time to respond and leaving such kind comments. We appreciate you, too!
We'll be back in a couple of weeks with another farm update!
Cheers,
Andrew
