Dear Kimberton CSA community,
Thanks to all our members who have signed up for 2020 so far! We really appreciate the early commitments. Having that cashflow at the start of the year means we can purchase the supplies we need for the CSA. It is really important to be ready and organized when spring hits, as this sets the course for the rest of the season. During the winter months, early sign ups allow us to plan better during the day and sleep sounder at night!
For anyone who missed our last newsletter, you can access it here on our website. In it, we highlighted a few changes for the 2020 season after collating the results of our end of year survey. We also mentioned that we'd be sowing soon and I can confirm that last Thursday (2/6) was our first sowing of 2020! It was a flower day, so we sowed a new variety of snapdragon, and some familiar ageratum and statice varieties for our first succession of u-pick flowers. Next week will be the first vegetable sowing as we get our greenhouse curly kale and Swiss chard started. Our early bunching onions, parsley, herbs for the herb boxes, and some more u-pick flowers are also on the schedule!
Beyond taking sign ups, sowing flowers, and planning for the new season, we have been pretty busy since the last newsletter. Last week we attended the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture (PASA) winter conference in Lancaster, PA and the weekend before we paid a visit to our friends and partners Spiritual Foods For A New Millennium (SFNM) in Bethesda, MD.
The PASA conference is always a good place to network, catch up with fellow farmers, and learn some new practical applications and policies affecting small scale, diversified vegetable farmers. In Bethseda, however, instead of being in the audience we were the ones who gave a short presentation! We talked to a group of interested folk about KCSA, introduced a few biodynamic concepts and discussed the difference between organic and biodynamic agriculture at SFNM's bi-monthly Peace lunch.
During our research for this presentation, we waded through stacks of old newsletters, pledge sheets and notes that were handed to us by Birgit and Erik Landowne (prior KCSA farmers) during the farm transition from them to Frank and I in 2017. We had gone through some of these documents before and were familiar with the more contemporary history of the CSA, however, we came across an unverified, typed note that claimed that the land we farm (and the land Seven Stars Farm and the Kimberton Waldorf School is on) was part of a 30,000 acre plot that once belonged to William Penn. Yes, our history just got a little richer!
Skipping over the question: who owned the land before William Penn (!?), the unverified typed note explains that those 30,000 acres were subsequently purchased by Dr Daniel Cox, Sir Mathias Vincent and Major Robert Thompson in 1686. Fast forward a hundred years and a Clement Rentgen was on the land operating a forge and slitting mill along French Creek, rolling iron bars for the shipbuilding industry. In the 1850's, Alexander Kennedy bought the property and he successfully petitioned the County Commissioners to build the covered bridge most of you drive over to get your veggies: the Kennedy Bridge.
After Alexander Kennedy, H.A.W. Myrin owned the land and started the Kimberton Farms Agricultural School, which later merged with the Kimberton Farms School into the Kimberton Waldorf School (KWS). I believe it was H.A.W. Myrin that became interested in biodynamic agriculture and not only donated 400 acres to the Kimberton Waldorf School but also invited Dr. Ehrenfred Pfeiffer to guide a biodynamic agricultural training center on the land. It should be noted that it is the same Dr. Pfeiffer of the Pfeiffer Center in Chestnut Ridge, NY.
This all led up to KCSA's formation in 1987. At the time, Kimberton was the headquarters for the Bio-dynamic Farming and Gardening Association--now simply the Biodynamic Association--and the Director of the Association was Rod Shouldice, who had been sowing the seeds of starting a CSA in Kimberton for a while. Like most things in life, timing was key as 1986 saw a reassessment of the KWS's management of Seven Stars Farm, which coincided with a talk at the farm by Trauger Groh (who helped start the Temple-Wilton Community Farm). It was decided that an experimental plot of 5-acres would be set aside to start The Kimberton Community Supported Agriculture.
With a core group of members, support from KWS, Seven Stars Farm, the Biodynamic Association, all KCSA needed was some farmers! And it is the story of the farmers that we will pick up in the next newsletter in a couple of weeks.
Cheers,
Andrew
