Registration for our current CSA season is now officially closed so I can focus on setting up the website for our May-November 2017 registration. I’m hoping to have that up and running by mid-November for everyone. I know a few of you have bought shares as holiday gifts in the past and we want to make sure registration is open in time again for that opportunity. I will of course keep you abreast of when I’ll have it ready.
As a reminder, we open our registration up to returning members first before we open it up to the public and we offer an early registration discount as well. We will once again have egg shares available both for the full season and for June-August. The full season shares are capped at 60 dozen and we all know how fast they get snagged so you’ll want to register as soon as possible to claim your stake! We will have our beautiful bouquets as an add-on with no limitation to amount of shares. We will have Markegard meat as an add-on and I’m currently waiting for confirmation on having the honey as an add-on once again. Unfortunately Mary will no longer offer her duck egg shares because her business has acquired some really great clients that require all her available eggs.
A new herbal remedy share may be available next season that I’m really excited about! Steadfast Herbs and I are in talks of working out a partnership to be able to offer their herbal remedies as a monthly add-on. They grow most all of their own herbs right down the street at Root Down Farm! I’ve received some samples of salves, tea, and tinctures and I’m really excited about a possible partnership with them!
Now on to field news… we’ve planted out our spring onions this week. They over winter so come spring you’ll have nice, delicate onions in your shares! With the sporadic rains we are unable to do as much tractor work so the crew has been hand digging crops like carrots & leeks that are usually undercut with the tractor before the crew comes in and bunches them all. It is incredibly time consuming & hard work! We did manage to begin spreading our cover crop seeds with the tractors so we’ll begin to see those plants germinate. Our strawberry plants will be arriving soon for plant out. Strawberries get planted in the fall and over winter in the fields as well. Can’t wait for strawberry season again! Our hens are laying significantly fewer eggs these days and starting this week most of our markets will not be offering eggs for sale until the CSA is over. We are needing to hold most all of the eggs for our members that have shares until the last week of delivery. Our customers that line up an hour early at market are going to be so disappointed! We put a light in one of the chicken coops this year to extend the daylight hours by a little bit so we’ll see if that makes any difference in egg production this winter.
We have cut way back on our restaurant orders, only offering market pickup orders and eliminating our bi-weekly delivery route. Teresa, Mike, & John are considering eliminating our restaurant sales all together next season. The reasons for this is that without a harvest coordinator and Teresa expecting a child in February, it just may not be possible to coordinate restaurant harvest and packing. We have also struggled staffing our farmers markets all season and rather than having a delivery driver out all day we will instead have him work the markets. They are hoping to be able to focus more on farmers markets, expanding the locations we sell at, & growing the CSA. We will begin selling our produce at the Ferry Plaza in SF on Saturdays starting in the next couple of weeks!! We are really excited about participating in that market.