29 October 2009

Arugula, Brussels sprouts, Carrots, Celery root, Cress, Endive (radicchio or escarole), Lettuce, Onions, Hot peppers, Potatoes, Sage, Shallots, Winter Squash

This is the end. Not of the world. Not yet anyway, though that will come too. Give it a little time. No, it’s just the end of the CSA season. No more weekly deliveries of farm fresh, occasionally identifiable crops. No more odd ramblings of an exhausted farmer. No more hours pondering what exactly to do with a giant daikon or a fistful of hot peppers. Sure it will be tough going on without all these things. But it’s not like it’s the end of the world. Not yet anyway, though that will come too. Give it a… oh wait I already wrote that.

Not only is this not the end of the world, it does not even have to be the end of deliveries of vegetables from the farm. You won’t get another weekly share from us this year, but you can get more of our produce. We have a number of crops available still, which I have listed below. You can place an order with us, preferably via email (Thomas@theallegedfarm.com), and we will deliver it to you on November 20^th. If we still have vegetables available after that we will offer you another chance to order them in December.

Plus, of course, this is merely the last delivery of this season. You can sign up again (I will send out an early sign up form soon) and get another season of produce starting next June. Maybe even better produce. Not that I am apologizing for this season’s vegetables. We had our share of difficulties—infected garlic, rotting carrots, blighted tomatoes and potatoes, planting and cultivating schedules thrown off by wet weather, crops set back by the cold, a ridiculously late spring frost, poor germination for a number of seeds. But then we always have difficulties. And in spite of the diseases and far from ideal weather we managed to hand out a lot of vegetables—both a lot of different kinds, and a large quantity. I won’t go so far as to say you got your money’s worth since money’s worth is a subjective matter and I am not in a position to dictate what it is worth to you. But I will say that you could not have bought all those vegetables from a store (assuming you could find a store that offered everything we grow) for anything like as little as you paid for your share. You could not even have bought those vegetables from us for that price if you had not been a CSA member.

So why do I suggest you might get even better produce next season? Well, there’s always room for improvement. The best growers I know are still far from perfect. And I can always hope that we will get better weather and fewer diseases. We have to have a warmer, drier summer again one of these years. And I can do some things to improve the produce, such as packing shares in boxes, and getting a real cooler to keep the produce in peak shape until we send it out, and buying a bed shaper/mulch layer in order to keep more crops high and dry, and finding a second tractor so we can do more field work when the conditions are right.

You might notice that each of these improvements involves an investment (yes, even the boxes; a season’s worth costs several thousand dollars). You might also have heard that farming is not a high profit business. If so, you heard correctly. Which means I am unlikely to make all of these improvements at once unless I put up the price of a share significantly, and I do not plan to do that. But I will invest in at least one of these things, and though there’s no guarantee it will make as much of a difference as I hope (in fact, there’s something close to a cosmic guarantee it won’t) it ought to make some difference. Plus I would like to think I learn a little bit from my mistakes (more because the alternative is unattractive than because of any solid evidence) and might be able to avoid one or two of them next season—without simply replacing them with one or two new mistakes.

Who knows, I might even figure out how to grow large Brussels sprouts. At least we got some sprouts. I had given up on growing them at all for a while because the results were generally so disappointing. This is the best crop I have had in years.

It is far from the best potato crop ever. They have not particularly enjoyed the rain, and the blight got into one of the patches. Nonetheless, we have a certain number of extra potatoes, and thanks to the efforts of those of you who came to the farm on Sunday and of the Robert C. Parker School 8^th grade, we should have somewhere around a ton of them to donate to Community Action. That strikes me as a good way to end the season. So thank you potato pickers.

And thank you everyone for helping to support the farm this year. Jan and Mike and Adrienne and I hope you enjoyed the food we grew for you and that you ate well.

Crops available for delivery on 11/20. Please specify quantity and type (if applicable).

Onions $1.75/lb (yellow or red)

Shallots $5.00/lb

Leeks $4.00/lb

Garlic* $5.00

Potatoes $1.50/lb (red, white or yellow)

Carrots $2.50/lb (orange or mixed colors)

Turnips $2.00/lb

Celery Root $3.50/lb

Daikon $2.50/lb

Kale $2.50/lb

Lettuce $1.75 each

Endive $3,00 each (frisee, escarole or radicchio)

Bok choi $2.50 each

Tatsoi $2.50 each

Winter Squash $1.75/lb (Butternut or Acorn)

Hot peppers $5.00/lb (Jalapeno, Cherry bomb, Lemon, Fatali)

Fennel bulb $2.00 each

We do not have unlimited quantities of these vegetables. They are first come first served. We will let you know if we are unable to supply something you ordered.

We may also have small quantities of other crops we have grown this season. If you are interested in getting something you do no see on the list, let us know and we will tell you if it is available.

*We have picked through the garlic as carefully as we can, but I cannot guarantee it is uninfected so I am selling it at half price.