Casey Gooding- CSA Coordinator & happily relaxed vacationer
Vacation was amazing and I wanted to take a moment to say a special thanks to my much appreciated helper, Sarah, for being willing to train with me for a week and step up as supervisor of the CSA packing while I was away. She did an amazing job and impressed me with her on the spot trouble-shooting when issues arose that I would not have been able to prepare her for. Without her I wouldn’t have been able to relax and enjoy my family vacation knowing & trusting that everything was being covered for me and that you all would be in good hands. I had total confidence in her! Thanks so much Sarah, you rock girl!!
So… here we are a third of the way through the CSA season and with nearly 200 members we are doing quite well indeed. We have more flower shares than ever before. Last year we had 33 flower members and this year we’ve got 53!! Go flower team, Go! If you want to add flowers to your share we’ve still got plenty of flowers for you too.
We’ve got a brand new site in Cupertino that continues to grow and our local Pescaderians have outdone themselves with sign ups this year. The farm is now tied with Hillsborough as our largest site with a whopping 22 members at each.
I’m really happy to be working with our talented add-on partners/fellow farmers: Robert from City Bees Honey, Doniga & Erik Markegard from Markegard Family Grass-Fed, and Lauren & Finn from Steadfast Herbs. If you wish to add any of these goodies to your share during the season you are more than welcome to, just email me and I’ll get that set up for you.
What summer crops can you expect to see in your near future shares? I’m going to continue distributing the blackcap raspberries (pictured left) one or two sites at a time until everyone gets to taste this amazing fruit, we picked a couple of fully ripe blackberries on our most recent field walk and I will also start to be distributing those berries to everyone once they produce enough for the crew to come in and do a picking, and the rhubarb was very happy to be harvested and cleaned up and I’ll start getting that to the folks who are still patiently waiting to make their rhubarb pie in the next share. Apples are happening and I can’t wait to start harvesting in the orchard weekly. It’s a really nice way to spend my Tuesday afternoon. The cucumbers will continue to produce more, you’ll receive more summer squash, the tomatoes have set fruit and one variety is just slightly starting to ripen for harvesting, all the pepper varieties will become very abundant and you’ll get a lot of those, there are a few melons in the field and a lot of flowers on the vines so get ready for melon season folks! The potatoes are soon to show up in your shares and lets not forget about our steadfast crops like all our delicious baby head lettuces, carrots, turnips, etc. It’s going to be a delicious summer!
~Casey