We have dried out enough (or almost enough) to finally get the tractor out in the fields again. Darin has been mowing, discing, and spading to prep the land to make new beds for our early springs rounds of plantings and sowings. Brassicas will be first priority for planting and then when more ground is ready we’ll get beets, scallions, herbs, romaine hearts, carrots, fennel, and more in the ground. Yay!!
The crew has been hard at work continuing the process of rebuilding the high tunnels, installing the trellising stakes and wire for the cane berries, much needed weeding, planting, and more.
We are now low in product availability for our markets. Between crop losses due to flooded fields, missing our winter planting window also because of flooding and wet ground, having attended more markets than ever before in the winter, and having our first ever winter CSA we’re pretty tight on product. We are trying to stretch out the food we currently have in the fields since there is going to be a gap in crops from the inability to be able to plant during the rains so we cancelled going to three of our farmers markets this last weekend. We were not at the Ferry Plaza on Saturday or at the Clement St. & Campbell markets on Sunday. We were still at the Saturday San Mateo market and on Sunday at Inner Sunset and Palo Alto. This may be the case for upcoming weekends and I will certainly be keeping everyone posted who is affected by these cancellations as soon as I possibly can so we can arrange another pickup option for your CSA shares. We really appreciate those of you who are picking up at other locations!
Welcome to what a CSA & farming can really look like. We live in such a mild area of the world in terms of weather that we don’t usually find ourselves having predicaments farming like farmers in much more seasonal areas experience. Both farmer and eater have to be flexible due to these uncontrollable forces of nature. We are so used to always having food on our market shelves because it’ll travel from other countries in order for us to have avocados year round that we get disconnected from the fact that all farms are weather dependent and food doesn’t magically appear. I’ve been in touch with other farms in the vicinity from Pescadero to Watsonville recently and learned that many farms this winter are having to buy in products to supply their CSA members with shares due to the extreme winter weather. I know I’ve said this before but one thing Fifth Crow prides itself on is growing 100% of your CSA share contents even though it means having to cancel going to markets and even possibly having to cancel boxes here and there (so far we’ve been lucky and haven’t had to do that).
Our carrots are all done for the winter CSA shares. We harvested all the beds we had planted for the winter and have not sowed any more as of yet. We are also close to being done with broccoli & cauliflower for awhile. I will get it in the shares when I can before it’s all over. The weekend & weekday shares have been looking a bit different from one another this season. For example, I put broccolini in the weekend shares last week but not in the weekday shares. The next opportunity for broccolini will then go to the weekday folks. Same thing has happened for the raabs, artichokes, arrowhead cabbage, and a few more items. I’m trying my best to give everyone the opportunity to enjoy the same crops.