December 1, 2009:Finishing out the year and starting anew

In the past, Thanksgiving day represented a split in the season. Up to that Thursday, we’re still busy harvesting, distributing turkeys, fall storage shares and delivering to grocery stores in the area. In the past, there was a steep decline in the work load on the farm after Thanksgiving, as we went into clean up and preparation mode for the next year. Not this year.

The beautiful November weather has allowed us to harvest longer out of the field. The hoophouses are even more robust, filled with spinach, arugula, mizuna, Tokyo Bekana and even beautiful red radishes. We’ve signed up for more winter farmers markets. And we’re experimenting with more deep winter growing of greens. It means that the drop in labor needed on the farm is gone. It means that Kay and Paul don’t get to kick back and relax over coffee and the new seed catalogs. It means that we’re in the process of becoming a year-round farm.

That’s right, we’re on cusp of providing produce, both storage items and fresh greens, to our customers throughout the year. It means that we have labor that is not only seasonal, but able to stay with the farm throughout the winter months. It’s a process that began years ago and is just now showing signs of happening.

Each Monday morning, we sit down to a weekly to-do list. It includes clean up, planting, watering, harvesting and more clean up. In between are the winter meetings we attend, the careful scrutiny of the books and planning for next year – which varieties to grow, what fields they will go in, planning the CSA weekly shares and all the other lists of details that go into the planning of running a farm.

It means you’ll hear more from us during the winter months – what will be available at the winter markets from JenEhr, newsletters, reminders and little tidbits. It’s a scary/exciting thing this moving to a year-round farm. It means more thought about pacing ourselves, planning winter work and finding more things we can grow during those months to financially support the added labor and other expenses. Exciting, because we all know how good fresh greens taste in the middle of winter. Exciting because it means we’re offering year-round employment to wonderful staff. Hang with us as we experiment, try new things and look for your feedback on how we’re doing.

In the meantime, the new sign up form for the 2010 CSA shares is available online. We’ve made a few changes:

• Longer Early Season CSA Share
• Regular Season CSA Share starts in the middle of June and extends to the middle of November
• New Milwaukee Third Ward pick up location
• 2009 pricing for the 2010 CSA season