From too much rain last week to weather like an Indian Summer this week. At least the forecast is calling for some warmer temps for our warm weather loving crops. While we've started picking strawberries from the field, the cooler temps and cloudy skies seem to have impeded their ripening. We will start rotating strawberries into shares this week starting with regular shares. If you don't see them this week, you will over the next few weeks. This is our first season harvesting the strawberries, so it's a new crop for us.
  
   Farming is always a gamble. You can do everything right and still loose to bugs and weather. That is one of the reasons we chose a CSA as our marketing model, and grow such a wide variety of crops. It sort of acts as crop insurance, so if one crop fails there are more to take take it's place. A few crops we had to replant already this season due to the weather and pests, but others you don't get a second chance until next year.  

   All of our winter squash is finally in the ground, with varieties such as butternut, delicata, acorn, spaghetti, red kuri hubbards, and pie pumpkins to look forward to  in the fall. Our summer squash is started to form buds, so they should become available soon as well. The first planting of broccoli is growing beautifully, but still not forming heads, but we'll keep looking! Tomatoes and sweet peppers are budding as well, and the cucumbers are climbing their trellises in the greenhouse. We also planted melons (sugar baby watermelon and cantaloupe) in our small greenhouse. They love the warmer temps and we haven't had success with them here in the past, but are counting that giving them a more hospitable growing environment will result in an abundant harvest. 

   One might think that with all the plants in the ground, that all that's left is to sit back and watch them grow. This is not the case at all. There are daily field walks, seeing what's ready to harvest, looking for bugs and signs of disease and nutrient deficiencies. There is also weeding and trellising, and all the harvests. (we harvest 3 times every week, between Tuesday's CSA and Thursdays and Saturday's markets.) We have simplified some of the weeding chores with specialized tractor equipment, but there is still hand hoeing and good old on hands an knees weed pulling. 

While there hasn't been a huge variety of harvest for CSA yet these first few weeks, with some crops set back from the wonky weather, and not ready to harvest, and some having to be reseeded, there is plenty to look forward to, and some great greens in shares this week. And some crops are only available in the early weeks, so enjoy them while they're here!

This week's share contents:

Small Shares: Asparagus, garlic  scapes, lettuce, swiss chard, radishes (french breakfast or cherry belle) 

Regular Shares: all the contents of the small shares and braising mix (a mix of brassicas including mustards greens, tat soi, red bok choi, and chinese cabbage) (please be advised that this may change to mustard greens for Thurs and Sat shares)  and Green kale. Strawberries will start rotating into regular shares this week. So if you don't get them this week, you can look forward to them in the coming weeks. 

Garlic scapes. Some of you may be excited, as this is a once a season crop, some may be wondering what the heck they are. They are the flower buds that form on the hard neck garlics that need to be pinched off to create big dense bulbs of garlic. They can be used in place of garlic in any recipe; we used some last night in our mashed potatoes. They have a bit more of a milder flavor than garlic cloves and can be roasted whole with your asparagus. Here are some more ideas of how to use your scapes. Garlic is one of our favorite crops. Planted in late fall, it provides from early spring in the form of garlic greens, then later as scapes, and then later as green garlic and then stores well into the winter.  I use garlic in almost every meal I cook, as it adds flavor and it's health benefits.  In one recent study raw garlic was even found to kill cancer cells in petri dishes overwhelmingly better than any other vegetable. Garlic respells bugs, an oil infusion can help settle ear aches and other other ailments. 

We hope everyone has been enjoying their shares so far and are looking forward to filling their fridge with this week's. A reminder that we love when folks share recipes. Please feel free to share recipes you try and love in the blog comment section here or on our facebook page. The recipes we share are just a few of many possibilities, and we're certain that you'll find more. Sharing will help other CSA members make the most out of their CSA. 
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     The fields finally got some much needed rain this week, which made plants happy and our boots grow with a few inches of mud.  So here's hoping some of our direct seeded early season greens bulk up for next week; arugula, mizuna and mustards. Of course  with the rain comes the weeds. We've taken to calling this the June Monsoons, when it seems we get all the rain all at once, (always after getting irrigation set up in grueling heat)  which makes getting out in the fields with equipment  impossible. So it will will be a lot of hand weeding until things dry out some and we can use tractor cultivation and hoes. While it has been a bit more rain than needed, we are happy to report that the time spent in the spring digging drainage trenches and utilizing our bed shaper to raise beds off the ground level has paid paid off, as normal washout spots are not washing out and we don't expect to lose crops to excessive rains like we did last year. 
   We got a chance to try out our new Jang seeder and planted more radishes, carrots, and cilantro. We really like this new investment, as it allows us to plant one bed all at once rather than pushing our seedway seeder up and down our long beds 2-3 times. We'll see how well it really works when the seeds start to germinate. This is a precision planter that not only saves us time and labor, but also seeds; dropping seeds at perfect spacing and only one at a time, it will also save us seed and time thinning. It can be pulled by the tractor or pushed by a person. For a small scale farm with minimal workers, this will be one more step towards efficiency on the farm.

This week's Shares are as follows:

Small Shares: lettuce, swiss chard, asparagus, garlic greens and red russian kale

Regular shares: all the contents of the small shares plus mint and spinach

While we were hoping to get radishes and a bit more variety in your shares this week,  some stuff just needed a bit more time to grow after the dry month of May. We have spotted some strawberries ripening in the field as well. So we are anticipating within the next week or two you'll starts seeing those in shares as well, and we'll give CSA members the first notice when and if we open up the patch for u-pick.

We've also found that the garlic scapes are starting to form. While you may be  thinking "what's with the garlic greens and scapes? I just want cloves of garlic" this is the seasonality of things. Garlic greens and scapes can be used in place of garlic in any recipe and keeps the garlic coming throughout the season. Garlic is staple in most kitchens and recipes and is one the most cleansing vegetables known to mankind. The greens and scapes are a seasonal treat while the cloves hold us over from late summer into the winter months. 

Despite the rains this week we were able to get so many more transplants in the ground. Our greenhouse is full of cucumbers, the high tunnel full of tomatoes and we'll be working on the melons  in the smaller greenhouse later this week.  Two plantings of pickling cucumbers, summer squash, our hot peppers, paste tomatoes, and rutabaga have all settled their roots in for the long haul this past week, along with lots and lots of potatoes. 

While we mostly saute our greens in our house and serve over pasta, we know some of you are looking for more creative ways to use your greens. Here's a link to a recipe for stuffed kale leaves, which you could very well substitute with the swiss chard as it is much bigger and probably easier to wrap. 

Many folks have stopped doing CSA's over the years because they've said it is simply too much food. While this is the reason we've created the small share option there are many great ways to use up your produce before the next week's harvest. While the early season shares tend to be a little less dense than the later season will be, the greens only have about a one week shelf life in the fridge. So here are some tips from a die-hard on how to make the most of your CSA share. While the article is aimed at late season crops, we hope you'll find it useful throughout the season as it offers creative uses of various vegetables. 

We hope all went smoothly with picking up shares last week and everyone enjoyed their share of the harvest.  

                            Theholiday weekend was a work weekend for us here on the farm as usual. The difference from past years was that instead of planting, we were weeding and harvesting, and getting irrigation going because most of our transplants are in the ground already. Not bad for a 4 person crew! And of course, we all celebrated our youngest daughter, Freyja's birthday in the midst of the rush and heat wave.

 If you are a member and missed the email last week, please be advised that all our Southern route drop sites will be delivered Tuesdays this year instead of Thursdays.  Oswego and On farm will remain Thursdays, and Watertown deliveries on Wednesday. Syracuse Regional Market; Saturdays,  All other drop sites will now be Tuesdays. 

If you've never been part of a CSA before, welcome to the start of seasonal eating this summer. If you're a returning member, welcome back. 

As stated in our member agreement we will strive to get newsletters out at the start of each week to let folks know what they'll be getting in shares and recipe links. Please bear in mind that while we try our best to get these out to you in a timely matter, sometimes share contents will differ, and there may come a week here or there that we simply don't get to writing it. Again, we are a 4 person crew here at the farm, with Travis and I doing the bulk of the work and all of the customer service, planning, deliveries etc. So  if we miss a week, or don't get them out until after shares have been delivered, please bear with us.  As some of you may know, our farm is 3 years young, and has grown a little every year. We love what we do, and we love sharing the bounty with our customers.  There will be new foods to try, and tried and true staples.

 As an organic farm, we are committed to not only growing healthy food for our family and yours but also to growing healthy soils, and offering refuge for beneficial insects. In not spraying pesticides you may find some crops to have bug holes here and there. They are perfectly ok to eat (otherwise we wouldn't be sending them to you). We do find however, the more we build the the soil, and practice good crop rotations and companion planting the less pest damage and losses we see. And this is a process that takes time and stewardship. 

Some of our members last year may recall that we were in a constant battle with the deer and the woodchucks. It was maddening to have two 300 ft beds of kale and not be able to provide for our CSA. This season we have moved most of our production to our property, and have thankfully seen no sign of animal pests (just flea beetles so far) We have however have been having some interesting weather so far this season. Some of our first field plantings were covered to keep the bugs and frosts off and are finally catching up to where they should have been two weeks ago. Add very little precipitation and high temps the last week and we're off to a challenging start. But drip lines have been ran and new plantings are taking turns getting drinks. 

Please take a moment  to read some details pertaining to pickup and of your CSA share. If you are a market pick up person I will explain the system to you when I see you this week. 

Shares will be in grey totes with your name on a label. It is very important that members pay attention to this and only grab shares from their totes. We offer several share options, and some folks will have double boxes due to vacation holds, and add-ons as we have items available for special order from our online store. If everyone is cognizant of this it will help things run smoothly for everyone and ensure that you all get the correct items you paid for.
Please bring a reusable shopping bag(s), or basket to bring your produce home in. We ask that you leave your totes stacked nestled together to be picked up the following week.
Please remove all produce from your box. If it's something you don't like or want, someone else is likely to. We strive to reduce food waste, and when folks leave food in their share box it goes to waste and is inconsiderate of our drop site hosts, as it usually goes unnoticed until it starts to smell or leaks. We also do not enjoy cleaning totes out of produce that has been left to sit all week. Also it is food you paid for! 
Here are some useful links for recipes, nutritional information, and storage tips, that we hope can be helpful to you this season. We also find that storing the leafy greens in a plastic bag in the crisper greatly holds their shelf life in the refrigerator, and also that a salad spinner is a useful kitchen tool to have on hand. You might also want to be prepared to preserve; pickle, freeze or can some of the season's veggies for a taste of summer in the cold CNY winters. We also have information on some of the crops we grow on our website. It's an ongoing project, so you won't find all our crops, but enough to get you started.
You will find our weekly CSA newsletter  throughout the CSA season in the farm news section of our website. We will also be emailing the link to members, and posting on facebook. The newsletter will keep you informed on the happenings around the farm, events, u-picks, share contents, recipes, any important changes to drop site info, etc; and offerings of extra add ons and bulk items. 
You can log in to your account   at any time to switch a drop site, schedule a vacation, order from our online store, to view your account information, or make a payment through paypal.
Please keep in mind that the CSA is seasonal produce from our farm. We do not buy in out of season crops, and most CNY farms don't really start harvesting in earnest until July. A few of our earliest field plantings were set back with the last cold weather in April and had to be replanted. So some of the crops we'd hoped to have the first couple of weeks will be a bit later than anticipated. So if shares seem on the small side in the beginning rest assured that they will bulk up as the season progresses. We have a lot of great food planned for the season and are looking forward to sharing the bounty with you.  
Also, a reminder that egg shares will be coming through our friends at Grindstone Farm's egg suppliers.  After intense cost analysis we realized we were loosing money on producing the eggs and decided to focus all our efforts on the produce production. All eggs are from free range operations supplemented with non GMO feed from our neighboring farms in the Pulaski area.

And now to the good part.

This weeks shares are as follows:

Small Shares: Asparagus, lettuce, shallot greens(scallions) cherry belle radishes(loose) and garlic greens

Regular Shares: all the contents of the small shares plus: swiss chard, red russian kale, red pac choi and  mixed herb bunches. 

I know we shared this recipe for spring shares, but it's one of our family's favorites, so I will share it again for new members. Grilled asparagus is an easy way to enjoy your fresh asparagus without having to heat up your kitchen turning the oven on. I also find that a toaster oven works just fine to prepare roasted asparagus. Our asparagus planting can only be harvested for a few weeks as a new planting. Most of the asparagus you'll find in your shares will be coming from Grindstone Farm.

Another simple recipe which works for any of our greens with so many variations is sauteed greens. Kale, Swiss chard, spinach pac choi.... any cooking green become savory when prepared this simple way. 
In a cast iron skillet, heat up 2 tsp butter, olive oil, bacon grease, our your fat of choice. Add a handful of chopped garlic greens (or scapes or cloves as they come in) and a handful of scallions (or onions)  Saute stirring often to avoid burning at low heat. When the garlic and onion are just a bit golden and tender, add your washed chopped green of choice and cover. Turn once or twice and remove from heat when greens are just wilted. We like to serve this over pasta with some good pasture raised sausage. You can also add a cup of vegetable or chicken broth and cook that down for a bit more flavor. You can also add hot peppers, tomatoes, mushrooms....I like my greens sprinkled with Ume plum vinegar and Parmesan cheese. There are so many variations on this recipe idea that you can eat your greens all summer and not get bored in the kitchen or the dinner table. 

We thank you for joining us for our third season growing. Now to put some aloe on the sunburn, tuck in the kids, and hit the hay so we can be bright eyed and bushy tailed tomorrow to kick off the start of another CSA season providing healthy fresh organic produce to our CNY community.

      Our experimental strawberries in the greenhouse can be called a success. We started picking the first berries this week and will be rotating them through regular shares by drop sites, and then small shares. While it is a small planting, and we aren't sure if we'll be able to get them to everyone at once, we will send pints to our CSA members as they become available. This week there will only be a few pints, but there are more ripening and many more to come from the field in June. 


      Travis has been busy prepping beds in the field for all our plantings,  and winter squash transplants were seeded this week. We'll be harvesting lettuce to make room for tomatoes in the high tunnel the next two weeks. 

     Both the Oswego and Watertown Farmer's Markets start next week, so CSA members in both places please keep in mind your drop site will switch. Watertown members will be picking up Wednesdays either at Sherman Street or the market (depending on your drop site choice) and Owego members will be picking up from our booth at the market across from Pathfinder Bank. 


     This week's shares are as follows:

Small Shares: Aparagus, lettuce, garlic greens, cherry bell red radishes, green swiss chard.

Regular Shares: All the contents of the small shares plus: Arugula, broccoli raab, watercress, and strawberries for select drop sites (we won't know until we pick them again in the morning how many we'll have) 

    Asparagus is the veggie of the season. One of the first of the spring crops, and a perennial plant that's nutrient dense. High in vitamin k, folate and b vitamins, as well as others,  it makes a great spring treat (as it's only harvested generally May through July in this region)      

   One of our family's favorite ways of enjoying fresh asparagus is to roast it in the oven, or on the grill wrapped in aluminum foil with a splash of olive oil and balsamic vinegar.       

     Its been a busy week with many more to come. But for now that's the news from the farm. We'll keep it short so we can go close up the greenhouses and turn in for the night.
​                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

There's been a lot of work getting done around here this week, as is that time of year. All of our onions have been planted, so that's one less crop to water in the greenhouse. When it starts getting hotter, watering all the seedlings can take up to an hour to water in really good. We also transplanted the first broccoli planting and another run of kale (red russian and green curly) parsley, and lettuce. The high tunnel crops are looking beautiful and some will be going into this week's shares. We will be harvesting to make room for some of our tomatoes in the high tunnel. The first seedings of carrots are in the ground as well as field seedings of arugula, mizuna, snow and snap peas, mustard greens, three varieties of radishes, and beets. We will be planting our potatoes in the next week or so as well. 

This is one our busiest times of the year, getting everything seeded and in the ground as well as havest and two more markets starting at the end of the month. It is also one of the most money guzzling times of year when we're putting money into production before we have much rolling from harvest. It is also the last few weeks before our Summer season CSA starts and folks can still sign up. 

This week's shares include some fun crops new to us, as we've never grown them before. One is watercress. Watercress gives kale a run for it's money as a super food. One of the first  crops cultivated by humans and one of the most nutrient dense foods you'll find. They grow wild locally (we find the cultivated varieties are milder in flavor) and love wet areas, so spring is the perfect time to grow them. Another is broccoli raab; while it heads like tiny broccolis, it is more closely related to turnips, and has a slight bitterness to them. They are generally prepared like other cruciferous greens.

We hope you enjoy these new greens we're trying this spring, along with the old tried and true spring crops. Our greenhouse strawberries are starting to get color, so it looks like within the next week or two we'll be able to offer them in spring shares. Our asparagus is starting to pop up as well, however the last two cold nights brought a mild frost which set them back some. We'll be up there looking for more to be poking out of the ground in the coming days with the heat awakening them them to growth. 

The garlic green bed has almost been wiped out, enabling us to work up those beds for cucumbers.  Garlic greens look like scallions and can be used in place of garlic in any recipe. 

This week's shares are as follows:

Small Shares: lettuce, red russian kale, garlic greens, broccoli raab, french breakfast radishes, and watercress.

​Regular shares: All the contents of the small shares plus one head of lettuce, braising mix (a mix of brassicas for salads and braising) green swiss chard and scallions.

I would give a recipe, but this week's shares lends to gently sauteed greens or salads, so enjoy and get creative!
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      It seems the old adage  or "April showers" has changed over the past few years. We had May flowers in March, winter snow in April and our showers in May. But showers are what we needed for our spring field plantings.
    
​     Travis has been working on working up more field space on our property, while I've been diligently planting and transplanting seedlings to fill that new space. We are just about doubling our growing space using land that we've kept cover cropped, mowed and pastured for the past two seasons awaiting organic certification this spring. 

    We have ordered sweet potato slips to grow out this year. They are a crop we've never grown before, but are excited to try. Asparagus is starting to pop up, so with the rain and increased temps, we hope to be harvesting within the next couple weeks. Tenacious rhubarb plants are coming back to life after their winter's rest. Our greenhouse strawberries are getting bigger, and setting more fruit, while the field berries are just starting to come back to life. 

   We will be back in our summer spot outside Shed E starting this week at the Regional Market and are looking for ward to the start of the Oswego and Watertown markets at the end of the month. 

    Spring shares start this week, so on top of all the spring plantings and field prep will be spring harvests and deliveries. Spring CSA members should check their emails this evening with pickup site and time details.

    This week's harvest will include the following, of which some or all will be in this week's shares:
Red russian kale, baby lettuces, watercress, garlic greens, french breakfast radishes, swiss chard, broccoli raab, spinach,  herbs (chives, sage, thyme, or rosemary) and jerusalem artichokes from our friends at Grindstone Farm. Sorry we don not have a more precise list for members this week, but with the early greenhouse harvest we are still working out harvest numbers.

     A CSA member referred us  to this helpful article on utilizing your CSA produce, that we thought we'd pass on to you. If you click the links on the veggies above, it will redirect you to some recipe ideas for this week's harvest.

    We're headed out from the office to harvest for tomorrow's deliveries. Cheers!

            We went from venting the greenhouse in March, back to heating it diligently in April. You never know what you'll get in CNY! The good news is all our seedlings are thriving, there are buds on our greenhouse strawberries (for an early crop) and the high tunnel will be filled this week with swiss chard, lettuce and various asian greens after the temps go back up some. 

        Two new drop sites have been added to our route this season. One is the Rothchild Early Childhood Center in Syracuse, and the other is Willow Wellness Center in Baldwinsville. A huge thank you from the farmers to both these businesses for inviting us to distribute shares from their place of business. 

        The sign up process for folks interested in the Cornell study I wrote about in the previous entry has started. There still are some shares available through this program, so if you're interested and live in the Watertown area, please contact Leah Connor at [email protected]  or phone: 607-255-7342. Folks outside the study area can still pay via a payment plan with SNAP. We do not yet have our food stamp card reader, so this will be limited to our farmer's market pick up sites and will utilize the SNAP coins for weekly payments with a 1 month down payment in cash, check, or paypal transaction. Currently USDA regulations prohibit prepayment for goods with SNAP beyond 2 weeks, so that is why we are structuring payment plans like this. 
      
        One of our long time friend and partner in farming, Dave Coppedge has started his own side venture, and will be pasture raising hogs, and meat chickens, as well as other specialty meat, such as duck, goat, and turkeys. The animals will be raised on certified organic pasture with an all natural medication free feed. If you are interested in more details, or pricing;  please call Dave at 315-243-0200.

        We've also been back at the CNY Regional Market weekly. We don't have a permanent spot right now, so check our Facebook page on Fridays to find out where we'll be. Starting the first week of May we'll be back outside of Shed E. The late snow is melting and we hope it's the very last of the season so we can start planting in the fields for you!

      CSA Day is here! Today has been deemed national CSA Day because on a national level it is the most popular day of the year to sign up for CSA shares. It's the time of year as winter starts drawing to a close but usually here in CNY is also when it rears it's bitter cold snowy head. It's also the time of year that most of the fresh produce at the markets and grocery stores are being shipped in from Florida, California and Mexico, and we start longing for that fresh snap pea, and those juicy ripe heirloom tomatoes. 

We have rolled out the heat mats and  started seeding our onions and transplants for spring shares, and will be diving headlong into filling the mats with seedlings for the season in the coming weeks. 

Now for some serious stuff and some reasons to consider joining a CSA on National CSA day. 

   This mild winter has been a strange one indeed, and Climate Change comes to the forefront when abnormal weather patterns occur. Agriculture has been deemed one of the most influential factors contributing to man made climate change. Many of the factors cited however, have much more to do with our national agricultural standards, and small local food producers in our region for bear the heavy weight of proof to show there is a better way, and that we can reverse the some of the damages done. Some of the major factors in studies linking farming to climate change are greenhouse gasses- CO2 and methane, deforestation, loss of topsoil/ erosion, degrading biodiversity, antibiotic resistance, and environmental pollution from pesticide use and fertilizer run off. Our farm as well as many other organic farms in our region work very hard to reverse that trend by sequestering carbon and methane by pasturing animals and composting,  by leaving natural forested areas for wildlife diversity and health,  by building soils with cover crops and organic matter, and preventing runoff to our waterways,  and utilizing the magnificent biology of the soils to give plant life the best defense against pests and disease without the use of harmful pesticides. And we also toil with the weeds, weeding both by hand and mechanically, mulching and cover cropping rather than using carcinogenic herbicides.  Our carbon emissions are also greatly reduced by marketing as locally as possible reducing our fossil fuel use. 

    That's where you come in. Many of us have looked at the destructive food system in our country and have been appalled;  you most likely wouldn't be here reading this if you weren't somewhat concerned. And we wonder, "what can I do?"  While I have gardened most of my life (which is a great place to start) I also started going to the farmer's markets, meeting the farmers and getting to know them and their practices. (another great place to start) Now a farmer myself, having that chance to meet customers and talk gardening, policy, and get to know families, seeing kids grow up loving their fresh peas and carrots, has really put into perspective how much the local food movement has grown over the past 8 years I've been farming. But is it enough?

   Many of the smaller scale sustainable/organic  farmers we converse with are barely getting by or supplementing their farms with outside income. Many require public assistance to get by. (There's something inherently wrong with the fact that many of the people who grow the food we eat need food stamps to feed their own families)  Some have even thrown in the towel and are shutting down. Many people have fallen in love with the trade but are saddled with enormous college debt at a young age, that starting a farm is out of the question. With more restrictions on produce growers to come into to play over the next 4 years, the increasing age of the average U.S. farmer, without the numbers in the next generation to fill their void as they retire,  and the expansion of international trade, we may stand to see more farms shutting down.

    Not to sound like martyrs, because we are truly just making a living doing what we love, but we really are in a David and Goliath like situation it feels sometimes. Even as more and more people are seeking out locally, sustainably raised foods, the industrial food system has been trying very hard to hold their ground, and increase policy to protect themselves. This comes in the form of the Dark Act, the right to farm laws in NY which protects CAFOS in a big way,  Food Safety and Modernization Act, and TPP and of course the ever present need to feed the world (and make a filthy buck). You can click on any of these highlighted links to learn more about these legislations. 

    To take a closer look at the food we eat and the systems that produce it, we need to only to understand what's wrong with our national food system, but what is right with it. What can be done differently, how we can affect change?

    By deciding to support a farm through a small farm CSA you help guarantee  their existence and longevity. You close the loop a little tighter so that farms don't have to ship their crops out of the region. You vote with your wallet to say "this is the sort of food system I want for my family and community." without having to write your legislators, or become an activist.  You can take solace in knowing that not only you're providing fresh healthy food for your family, but also helping keep that food on the plates of others by investing your food dollars in a farm and not a Wegmans or other grocery store which often pay below the cost of production to farmers when buying wholesale, and require perfect specimens, increasing instances of food wastes. You also get the adventure of trying new foods you may not have even known you liked by eating seasonally. 

   Today is the last day to take advantage of our CSA Day sign up special offer. Get $25 credit to be used during the growing season at our Farmer's Markets stands or on our online store when you sign up for either a small or regular Summer share. Add a little extra to your share throughout the season, or buy in bulk for preserving; use it however you decide.  Take a closer look at your food, get to know your farmers and enjoy the bounty of the season with us. Our motto is "Growing for a healthy future" so let's grow together! (...and look closer at the food we eat.)

     While it feels like spring with temperatures in the mid 40's for the past few days, we know that weather in CNY can change at the drop of hat with the lake effect snow not too far behind. Luckily the light snowfall so far this winter has been kind to the greenhouse and high tunnel- we thought we'd be shoveling out of four feet of snow just to keep the heat going and roof from caving in, as per our usual Pulaski winters. Strong winds did mangle the high tunnels a bit, but nothing that can't be fixed. The greenhouse is full of greens ready to be harvested- spinach, swiss chard, kale, parsley, lettuce, and garlic greens; while the high tunnel has similar cold hardy greens dormant under the row covers awaiting spring. We will be at the Regional Market next Saturday Feb 20th. 

     We have been putting the finishing touches on our seed orders and planting schedules, and will begin seeding soon! Hard to believe it's that time of year again. We will be growing a lot of tried and true varieties, and trying some new ones. We also plan on selling plants for your home garden this season at our markets, and will be planting extra seedlings for resale.

     We will also be tackling the huge task of fixing and remodeling parts of our barn for a processing area and cold storage. We have been leasing space from our friends at Grindstone for the past two seasons for washing produce and storing in their walkin coolers- which come September becomes almost un-navigable with both farm's produce stored. We decided to take the plunge and take out a loan for this project for many reasons. One is to save the barn from the affects of time and weather. Anyone who's driven past the farm knows that our barn is in sad shape, especially the side facing the highway that most of you would see. One of the reasons we fell in love with this property was it's magnificent neglected timber-frame barn, and although it would be "cheaper" to build a new smaller structure, it would be way more work and waste to tear down the old barn and build a new one. While we love working cooperatively with our neighbors at Grindstone, we've been planning this since we started the farm to be more independent from them and have the ease of our work space being closer to home. We also are on a time constraint to become compliant by 2020 with new food safety laws which involve a lot of upgrades to our processing area. For details on some of these new regulations regarding raw vegetable handling, please visit the USDA's website.  The good news is that once it's finished we'll have a welcoming space for customers on our farm for educational and possibly cooperative use. We will keep you updated on the progress as we go.  If all goes as planned the project will be complete by fall. 

   CSA sign ups are still open, and we are offering a limited number of spring shares for the month of May and Fall shares through December, in addition to our normal summer 22 week shares. 

Your commitment as a CSA member ensures your family has fresh organic produce all season long and we have capital to get the season underway with seed purchases, equipment and supporting our family.

You get the convenience of having you produce delivered to a drop site near you, and we have the security of knowing our crops are sold before we even plant. Choose one of our Farmer's Market pick up sites and build your own box; choose from that week's harvest to get the food your family likes best, and get to know your farmer and shop for your other locally produced food while you're there. 

We also offer CSA member exclusive u-picks throughout the season on crops such as peas, and tomatoes, and try to schedule at least one farm event per season for members to come see where and how their food is grown.


Here's hoping the spring is as mild as the winter has been, and that we don't get the torrential rains we got last spring. But each season comes with it's ups and downs, and each season is an adventure. Join us for another year of food adventuring in 2016.
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