I spent some time this past winter thinking about starting a CSA.  What, you might ask, is a CSA?  It stands for Community Supported Agriculture.  In a nutshell, you as a participant purchase a "share" which is a weekly pick up of a pre-made box of  produce grown by us, that you will get for 13 weeks.

Our goal is have participants committed to the CSA by May 15th and the actual program will begin the first week of June and run through the end of August.

Here is our 2015 CSA information:

 The summer CSA will be a 13 week program and will run from the first week of June through the last week of August.

           (There may be a second option of doing a mini-fall 8 week  CSA.)

      

      Pick up is available at our house in Arendtsville Fridays from 3-6pm, or at the Gettysburg Farmers’ Market on the square (Saturday mornings 7am-noon on the PUB quadrant.)  Please let us know what your preferred pick up location will be.

          All produce offerings will be grown by us.  Though we are not certified organic, we do use organically approved products in our fields.

           Fruits we have to offer this year are strawberries, black raspberries, watermelon and cantaloupe.

         Small share is geared for a 2-4 person household.  Large share is geared towards a 5-6 person household.

         Payments are appreciated by May 15^th.  Special consideration will be available for those wishing to do monthly payments.

         Every effort will be made to provide you with a nice variety (5-6 items) of high quality vegetables, herbs, (& fruits in season) each week.  Large shares will have the same number of items, just a larger portion of each.

         Our goal is customer satisfaction.  Please provide us with feedback on your experience at any time during the program.  If there are vegetables you don’t like, please let us know so we can make a substitute (pending availability.)  We grow 35-40 different kinds of produce throughout the year.  This should allow you to have a nice variety in your share.

        As a courtesy to our CSA members, we will offer you 10% off any additional purchases made while shopping with us at the Gettysburg Farmers’ Market.

       The total cost of a small “share” will be $275.00.  Large “shares” will cost $300.00

Gator-ing along

We are very fortunate to have not just one, but two "Gators" on our farm.  They are both true work horses.  The older one, purchased 12 years ago, does all of our "dirty work."  Anything that needs moved that is not food related gets hauled on this gator.  This includes firewood, shovels, rakes, chainsaws, gas cans, straw, etc.  It has 1,200 hours logged on the engine and still runs great.  We've had to replace the tires, not because they were worn out, rather they kept getting thorns in them from young locust trees.  Other than that, we've only had routine maintenance expenses.

After a lot of thinking, planning and number crunching, we decided it was in our best interest to purchase a second Gator.  Our newer Gator, purchased spring of 2014, only hauls produce harvested from the fields.  Therefore there is no chance of contamination to the produce.

We are very grateful for having both of these gators.  They save us a lot of time and work!

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The Market Season.....

As the end October came to a close, it marked the end of the market season for 2014.  No more 4:30 am wake up alarms, no more late nights the night before market tying up loose ends - washing, bagging, or weighing produce, no more lugging canopies, tables and crates of freshly harvested produce.

 And no more steady income..... 

 However, there is still a lot of work to be done on the farm.

The fields need cleaned up ... rows of plastic need gathered,  irrigation lines need taken up, fields need mowed, the strawberries need covered before freezing weather sets in, and, the entire irrigation system needs drained and the fertilizer injector needs removed and stored in the basement for the winter.  All of these jobs need to be done before the ground freezes.  

And, it's time to start planning for 2015.  The seed catalogs should start arriving in the mail boasting of new varieties to try, we have to figure out a crop rotation for the fields, and I am still hoping to get an annual rye cover crop established on the open ground.  There are still a few things in the field yet to harvest.

We have tomatoes, romaine lettuce, kale, red beets, cabbage, cauliflower and broccoli growing in the high tunnels.  We are experimenting with growing the romaine over the winter.  If this winter is not as brutal as last winter, we should be able to have some most of the winter.  Our experiment is to see how long it will take to mature since the amount of daylight is much lower over the next few months than during the summer.

And while we will miss seeing our regular customers, it is nice to get a break from the demanding growing season.  However, we do look forward to seeing you again when we start our 2015 markets!

Tomato Humor

Just a little tomato humor to begin your November.  :)

And speaking of tomatoes...... we were very concerned about freezing temperatures Sunday night, so we decided we should pick through the tomatoes again.  It's amazing to still be getting 75 lbs of tomatoes in one picking..... BECAUSE it's early November... in south central Pennsylvania!  Once again I gotta say that I love my high tunnels!  Temperatures are to be in the mid-60's this week with overnight lows in the 40's, so hopefully we'll get another 75 lbs or so later in the week.

                                                photo of our big high tunnel with the moon rising over the back

Garlic time.....

The weather was beautiful today and now that we're getting caught up on our pumpkin and fall ornamental harvest, it was time to get the garlic planted.  We are planting one softneck and one hardneck variety.  It is nice to have the scapes from the hardneck to sell at market, but also nice to be able to sell some garlic braids from the softneck.