Boulder Belt goes CSA!

after 15+ years of doing farmers markets 2011 will be the last year we do this as in 2012 Boulder Belt Eco-Farm will go over to doing CSA as its' main source of income. This will be a huge change for us but we have found over the years that farmers markets have made us less and less money for the past 3 years and we find we really don't like the "crap shoot" at market as far as marketing goes. By this I mean we have no way of knowing what will sell at a particular market so if is rare that we harvest just what the market demands and too often go home with a lot of produce, much of it that needs to be tossed onto the compost pile.

With a CSA that does not happen. The farmer knows exactly how much to harvest so there is little to no waste. And the farmer knows what to plant as well because the farmer knows how many share holders they will be growing for months before the season starts.

We have been doing a CSA on and off (we took off 2 years after we moved to this farm) for the past 14 years. We are one of the oldest CSA's in the state of Ohio and yet until very recently we really did not take the CSA part of our market strategy very seriously. We would tend to give more emphasis to the farmers market as we saw that as our cash cow and the CSA as a back-up. And until this year I feel this was the correct thing to do as we would usually struggle to get and maintain members. And we were making 75% of our income from the Oxford Farmers Market Uptown and only 25% from the CSA (or less).

But 3 years ago this started to change. We were finally able to get more than 10 members and we were retaining over 80% of our members from year to year and taking on new members each year. And we noticed this year that the CSA was taking in a lot more than 25% of our annual gross income. AND we were getting unsolicited requests to join our Farm Share Initiative towards the end of our season. Unfortunately due to a horrendous growing season this year we could not take on any new members to our FSI but we are able to take new members for our Winter Share Program and so far have picked up 5 brand new members.

The fact that we now have a waiting list was what pushed us into doing the CSA full bore for 2012. This is a brand new thing for us and we like it, a lot. In the past we have been slow to change. For years we did part time work at a horse barn (me giving lessons, grooming horses, training horses and catch riding for shows. Eugene was repairing fences & building, running tractors and other maintenance jobs). We did not think while we were working at that farm that it was keeping us from expanding the farm. But once we quit Boulder Belt started growing fast and we became full time farmers. Granted we were not getting rich from the farm and we still are not) but we went from netting, say, $4K a year to making a more livable wage (okay, for many it still would not be a livable wage but we live very, very cheaply so it works for us as long as we stay away from most luxuries like vacations.). We expect the same phenomena will happen now that we have made the decision to drop our last farmers market and concentrate on the CSA. Only time will tell.

If you are looking for a CSA home and are in the Greater Dayton (OH) region check us out at http://www.boulderbeltfarm.com and click on the Farm Share link in the side bar

Farmers Market late August/early September 2011

Freshly washed Melons

Eugene sorting and pricing melons the day before market

Melons and more packed and ready to go on the Van, the night before Farmers Market

Melons at Market!

Heirloom mater and jalapenos

Pearl Onions

Mini peppers

Another satisfied Melon customer

March Winter Market Adventures

It is the last morning of winter (as far as the position of the sun in the sky) but it has been spring here for weeks.

We did the March edition of the Oxford Winter farmers Market and sold out of everything but garlic, garlic powder, dried beans, catnip and dried herbs.

We brought in a lot of greens (and some roots)
30 bags of spinach
18 bags of lettuce
13 bags of spring mix
5 bags of arugula
3 bags of mizuna
13 bags of kale
15 boxes of potatoes
4 bags of parsnips
5 bags of chard
52 leeks

and around 95% of it sold in under 1 hour. That was some crazy selling for us, constant taking orders, fulfilling orders, making change and refilling the baskets. Eugene and i were busy little beavers.

than it was over, we had few things left on our table and an hour of market left to go.

So I went shopping and bought 4 packs of nitrate free Organic sauasages from the Filbruns and than got ground beef from Hokebee farms and stew beef and a roast from Reserve Run and 5 pounds of honey from Scott Downing, the Apple Man who sets up next to us and sells it cheap ($15!).

Eugene bought me a new mixing bowl from the potter who was set up next to us. He had broken a favorite mixing bowl of mine, an 8" Roseville bowl my sister gave to me years ago. I have several 10" Roseville mixing bowls but only one of the 8" bowls. And I discovered it is very hard to replace this 8" bowl with a Roseville bowl or anything not made from plastic. Or at least it was until last month at the farmers market I saw that this potter (I really should learn his name as he has been selling at OFMU for 2 or 3 years and now I own one of his pieces) has a cobalt blue 8" bowl. The bowl is everything I wanted-locally made, ceramic, 8" and blue.

Ended the day bartering 2 leeks and a bag of beet greens for some bread with Pia Terranova. She wanted to just give me the bread but I had 2 leeks and a single bag of greens left over and because she took those items we could turn off the commercial fridge when we got home

So all and all a fantastic market

Pharm Photos late summer/fall 2010

It's picture time (AKA the lazy blogger's way to post)

Nate

Sunflower ready to harvest

Popcorn not quite ready to harvest but it had to be any way and did end up coloring up completely after a few days of drying.

An early October Farmers Market

Late September garden. The row cavers are there to keep as much moisture in the ground as possible as we have been in a drought most of the summer

Eugene watering the market garden

Garlic, garlic, garlic!

pears on the tree (taken about 5 minutes before they were harvested)

The Joys of Farming

I was going to post a bunch of pictures of the farm but have decided that I need to vent instead about various things having to do with my profession-market farming.

First off our season is pretty sucky. The weather has been either too wet or too dry and always too hot and humid so we can get less done in a day than is needed. This means getting weeds under control has been herculean task. Even the crops planted on mulch need to be weeded. Today i pulled about 200 pounds of crab grass and purslain from 2 beds of peppers. Still have another 7 or 8 to go. Eugene has been using the wheel hoe to weed the beds that are not cover with landscape fabric whenever it is dry enough to use a hoe but before the ground resembles concrete. I believe we have 4 days with those conditions in the past 6 weeks but, of course it was very hot and humid on those day with highs in the upper 90's.

Because of the hot humid conditions we have loads of Japanese beetles eating and copulating. I have become Ms Coitus Interruptus as I kill any mating JB's I come across and can get my hands (AKA deadly weapons, as far as the past bugs are concerned). We also are getting hit with various soil born diseases on the tomatoes. I did hit them with grapefruit seed extract a week ago and that really did a number on the various fungii attacking the maters but the rain early this morning made whatever was not destroyed by the GSE bloom abundantly so now there are many yellowing mater plants where yesterday there were 3. By many I mean around 50 to 75. At least most the plants have fruit on them so we should get a lot of maters in another 2 to 4 weeks. And I am not too worried about this as we get this blighty ick that is neither early or late blight but still kills the plants by September problem every year.

On top of that our tillage equipment is broken and Eugene so far cannot figure out what is wrong and the BCS manual is of little help other than the fascinating photos of various parts exploded so you can see the individual parts but absolutely no explanation of what they are, do or where they should actually go in order to make the machine run. I would say this is the polar opposite of a Chilton's Manual. Maybe this is Italy's revenge for losing WWII and any other complaints they have towards us Merkins.

So for the past month we have been using hand tools to keep beds weeded and prepped for planting. At some point Eugene will give up on trying to figure the problem(s) out himself and push the 450 pound 2 wheeled tractor up a hill and into the van and take it to the Arcanum Hardware store where they have a guy who works on BCS equipment. Hopefully that person can figure out what is wrong and order the parts needed and than we will wait 2 to 4 weeks for the parts to come in as they come from Italy and it always takes a while for them to send the parts to us.

Betty has been good for a dog her age which means she has not destroyed all the market garden but she is trying. She did in a lot of green beans killing a young raccoon who was doing a huge number on the Latham raspberries the past week. Since the bean patch was the first one of the year and old and we have 5 others just about ready to bear fruit this was not a big deal. And we would rather lose 20% of a green bean bed than 50% of our raspberry canes (and God knows what else) to a coon. But than again the raspberries have been a bit of a disappointment. various things are killing them and we have lost 100' this year to borers, fusarium and perhaps pythium. so that means the raspberry harvest is way down. but it turns out that is not such a bad thing because our sales, despite having the only raspberries in the region and dropping our price 33% are way down this over the past 5 to to years. I guess people just don't want poison free red raspberries anymore, I don't know. But I do know that in the past, the raspberries were one of our main revenue generators for this time of year.

And that bring me to our marketing. our sales are down across the board. we don't get a lot of people coming into the store and more and more the ones who do come buy nothing because the think the prices are too high (and generally are pretty damned rude about it too). If we lower them any more we will be back to making around $2 a hour and will no longer be able to pay the mortgage, gas and electric and will have to get rid of the farm. the CSA is beginning to get more members and it seems that most seem interested in doing it again next year but we have less than half the members we had at this point last year. I really think the fake CSA-companies that buy and resell food, claim to offer local food but rarely do and even when they do it is less than 15% of what the sell-have taken a large share of our market. And the sad thing is I personally know people who have joined them and have told me proudly the are CSA members. Sorry folks, but if you buy food from one of those fake CSA you are not participating in a CSA that grows all of it's food, and the members share in the risk and bounty of their CSA farm. It distresses me that people who should "get it" do not. Some of the people I know who use these services work closely with farmers markets and local farmers. Just makes me shake my head. Such disconnect. But I guess price and convenience always trumps the real deal of picking up food freshly harvested at the farm and getting to talk to the people that grow the food you will eat.

The positive thing about this season's CSA is our members. I really like all of them and I really enjoy puytting together the shares and news letter for them every week. Oh and despite issues with weather and the garden we have had some really great shares this year (pretty much all of them)

The farmers market in Oxford is taking a turn for the worst. Overall our sales are way down despite the fact we were able to harvest 1/2 of our asparagus full and the other half 30% this year meaning we had about double the asparagus we have ever had in the past. We also grew and sold a lot of lettuce which made May a good month for us. But June and July have not been so good. I think there are several factors going on. 1) there are 2x or 3x as many farmers and no increase in customers walking through the market, because 2) they banned dogs from market which has lead to a marked decrease in customer traffic the past 3 weeks (a lot of people were royally pissed off over this decision by the market board which I agreed with at the time, and I believe are boycotting the market.) 3) The market is getting too crafty/artsy and the farmers are losing importance. It seem that the Oxford Farmers Market Uptown is more of a social event than a place to buy locally raised foods. 4)There are more and more people selling prepared foods at market which is great for the customers but I do not believe many, if any, are sourcing the ingredients locally from us growers so that too is cutting into our bottom line. And finally, 5) we seem to be in an economic depression and people percieve farmers markets as places where food is very expensive. And This is true for some things (usually things you cannot get normally at Kroger's or Wal-Mart, like 45 different kinds of heirloom tomatoes, or other heirloom fruits and veggies that cannot take the handling to be sold at any chain. But for most things the prices are the same or even less for food that is a whole lot better.

These are just some of the joys of farming.

Betty's Emergency has Ended

The Betty Emergency has ended, today her stitches came out.

She has been allowed complete run of the farm since Friday and she seems hail and hearty.

The E collar was a godsend. That kept her away from her stitches and allowed her to heal. But sadly the Ecollar did not last very long. By tuesday it had gotten broken some how be ause we were allowing Betty to run around in the fenced back yard and while i was not watching she ripped the thing apart. but it was nothing strips of duct tape could not fix. So for two more days she sported the latest in e collar/duct tape fashion before ripping the thing apart again. Since the vet people said she could get her stitches out as early as Friday and she was not bothering them we left it off and we had one happy pup on our hands. Freedom to run and no stupid lampshade thing on her that kept getting in the way of everything.

All in all she was a good patient. Much better than I expected. We did have to stay with her pretty much all the time while she was wearing the e collar or she would do things like rip up carpeting but we live a life where that can be done. And it was hard Friday and Saturday after the emergency surgery. We could not easily stay with her on Friday and get all the stuff done that must be done to prepare for the farmers market. So the solution was to put her on a chain near where i was washing produce in the morning. Early afternoon is always nap time so we could leave her be for 2 hours but than late afternoon both Eugene and I had to get things bagged and bunched and Betty did not want to be alone so we took her to the store which she really disliked.

Saturday was worse because we both went to the market. We had considered one of us staying home but decided we both should go. So we went and got through a cold and windy market. came home and found Betty had chewed up a part of one of the carpets. Bad dog! But we were able to stay with her pretty much all the time for the rest of the time she had to wear the e collar and once that came off she quit being so needy and destructive.

We are very appreciative to all the people who have contributed to the "Betty Fund". This idea came up on Face Book conversation about the Betty Emergency, via Rose Campbell-Blake who commented that people should donate towards paying off Betty's emergency surgery. And what do you know, this has happened and the Betty Fund was born. Betty (and Eugene and me) have way cool friends.

I wish I could say the same about the vet we used. we have not been able to talk to her since the emergency surgery despite having been in there twice. We will not be returning there.

Asparagus Sighting

This morning while doing the morning walk about the garden I found an asparagus spear poking above the mulch. Looking around I found a couple more spears above the mulch and many more just emerging from the soil. We don't have enough for tonight's dinner but I will bet by this time next week we should have enough to sell to justify opening the store for the 2010 season. And it looks like the Farm Share members will get asparagus in their very first share, which was totally unexpected. This is several weeks early. This also means we will have asparagus for the last winter farmers market (or is it the first spring farmers market?) April 24th in beautiful Uptown Oxford, OH

Market Shelters

New market farmers facing an impending farmers market season will ask what is the best shelter to get. So today we will discuss what is best and what to avoid.

Many people will say get whatever is cheap. In my opinion it is best to stay away from the $100 and under shelters you can buy at any Wal-Mart, Big Lots and even grocery super centers like Kroger's . The photos below show such 2 cheap shelters. The support system for the red canopy is a bad design. It is weak and the supports have a nasty tendency to bend and break at their joints (any black piece you see in the picture below) when it is being raised or lowered. The mechanism that locks the legs is usually hard to use.

I have seen a lot of this kind of design fail at market due to heavy snow load, wind, and rough handling. I believe we own at least 5 broken frames (they make good scrap for projects and the canopies, even if ripped a bit make handy shade cloths) and one that is one piece but was frustrating for the owners to put up and down they one morning gave it to Eugene after, for the 4th time, he helped them put the thing up.


The photo below shows a cheap EZUP Knockoff (though it may be a cheap Express III or Encore II). The support system looks a lot like their "Truss System" but it is not built nearly as well. yes it does have cross pieces connecting the sides to the middle support but the material the use for the joints is weak. You can see that the frame is broken in this picture (that would be the black thing sticking out in the lower left)




What we use is an EZUP Express, which they no longer make. These days you would buy an Express II, which is pretty much the same, just more expensive. You will pay at least $200 for a decent shelter be it an EZUp or a Caravan. Sides will be extra, usually, and my experience, not needed all that often (unless you sell something like soap or something else that cannot get wet). Our EZUP is 9 years old this year and it is in great shape. We did have to replace the canopy 2 years ago but the frame is solid.



Just what makes these shelter so much better (and worth the extra money)? It is the truss design
As you can see in the picture above of my EZUP the support system is completely different from the red canopy above and somewhat different from the cheap white (possibly an EZUP Express II or Encore II) shelter . You can see there are supports going across the area of the shelter connecting all four sides to a central support. And that the truss is flat not at an angle as it is with the cheaper models. This makes the whole system a lot stronger. And it makes the things a lot easier to erect and tear down.

Now lets talk costs. I will assume if you are growing for market your are serious about making your farm into a business and that you will be paying taxes on this business. These shelters are a tax write off so why go cheap. The higher end shelters look much more professional than the cheap back yard shelters and you always want to project yourself and your farm as professionally as possible. A high end shelter does tell the public "Hey, I'm serious here and I plan to be around for years".

And how cheap are the $100 shelters if you have to replace them 3 or 4 times a year? Not only will you be spending as much for a series of cheap crap shelters as you would for a really high quality EZUP or Caravan but you also will be wasting time going back to the store to buy more and will have to deal with disposal of the broken units. Not to mention the shelter will almost always break as you are putting them up or half way through market. It almost never will break at home or when you are done for the day (Murphy's Law prevents this happening other than on very rare occasions). So it will cause a crisis at market and you will be without a shelter for the day.

In conclusion, I feel it is well worth the extra money to buy a good shelter from the get go, especially if you are doing more than 2 markets a week. In the long run these will save you money and time.

Boulder Belt and the Choice Food Pantry

Many years ago when I was still on the Oxford farmers Market Uptown governing board I made the suggestion that we should figure out a way to get the left over food that farmers have at the end of every market to people who need food, i.e. a food pantry. Everyone on the board thought that was a great idea and voted it in. And we thought from there it would be easy to set up a system to get food from market to the needy.

Not so. It seems that at the time none of the local food pantries around Oxford (there were two at the time-family Resources and the Food Pantry of St Mary's/St Vincent dePaul. These merged in 2007 to form The Choice Pantry) had much, if any, refrigeration and were not open on Saturdays and had no real way to deal with perishable fresh foods. There also was no one to pick up the food and take it where it needed to go.

The first couple of years were hit and miss. It was obvious it was up to the farmers market to get things together such as coolers and humans to get the job done and this happened (we have a really great support system and community with this market). But it was not possible to find people every week to pick up food from the vendors and take it to the food pantry location and I know on at least one occasion the food pantry forgot about the Saturday delivery and the volunteers had no way to deliver the food. And there was also the issue that the needy people who were getting this food were not familiar with much of the produce being donated like arugula, heirloom tomatoes, specialty peppers, eggplant, daikon, fennel, etc., etc.. So they were not using the food and it often went to waste.

But that was 4 or 5 years ago. Than in 2007 the two pantries merged into Choice Pantry, run by St Mary's Catholic Church. They are well run and have refrigeration (because they knew about us farmers when they set this new pantry up and made sure they could utilize us). And they have Miami students hold classes to teach the food needy about cooking, nutrition, etc., so these people can use the food from the farmers market (more utilization). And we have Mike coming by just about every Saturday at noon to gather together food that would other wise be wasted (okay not exactly wasted as we and most other farmers at the market would do something like compost the produce or feed it to livestock-it would not be land filled in most cases) and he takes that food to the pantry for distribution that very day (unlike the past where the fresh food would sit around until Monday before distribution). It has become a very workable system.

So we have been donating a lot of food most weeks. Most weeks the pantry gets about 3 bushels of food. I think there have been only 2 or 3 weeks where we did not have much of anything left to give (and what we had was probably too weird for the food pantry-we do grow and sell a lot of unusual varieties). Over the season we have probably donated more than a ton of food.

It feels good to be able to do good works but it sure ain't easy to get these good works started up. But happily, in Oxford, OH they have it figured out.

Summer Summary

Fall is here which means the summer of 2009 is officially history. It was a really good summer growing and marketing season for us. the weather was cool and for the most part dry. but when we did get rain it was generally a lot and at just the right time. Still we are down over 4" on rain for the year but perhaps this fall will be wetter than normal and we will make it up.

We grew the best melons ever (and Eugene is an excellent melon grower). Maybe 2% of them were not absolutely excellent. we had several customers (and these are people who's opinions about such things I respect) tell us that our water melons were the best they have ever eaten.

The alliums out did themselves again this year, meaning they are better this year than last and last year they were incredible. Sublime garlic, gigantic leeks (and so far, all we have harvested are the small fall leeks, the winter leeks which should be 2x to 3x larger won't be ready for another month or so), beautiful onions and wonderful scallions.

The tomatoes, despite the plants succumbing to some sort of local blight (not late blight but rather something we contend with every year) fairly early, still produced a lot of huge fruits. Or at least most of them did. We did have some failures such as Black Krim which gave us few very cat faced fruits. I believe we got about 4 usable maters from 15 plants. I do not believe we will grow these again. The Paul Robeson did not do well for us but when the plants did produce typical fruit it produced some gorgeous tomatoes. I saved seed early on and this will get a second chance. The Green Zebra was something else-I believe a small red saladette type mater, something we have far too many of already. Baker Creek messed up on that and as this was about the 7th time they have messed up with us, we will not be ordering from them in 2010. I do like their philosophy but they will have to do far better with selling us correct seed, good seed and getting orders to us in a timely fashion. There are several other seed houses that do heirlooms that give us better service such as Seed Savers Exchange.

Ah enough ranting, back to maters. The great White tomato, while a bad seller, was a great producer of beautiful ivory white fruits with a good acid bite. they came on early and produced longer than just about anything else except early girls which, while early and prolific were a bit of a disappointment this year. The early girls were not as big as last year and found the flavor lacking. fortunately we had GL-18 (AKA Glick's Pride) as our mainstay red mater and they far exceeded our expectations. they were far bigger than they have been before. The shape was about perfect and they rarely cracked and had zero cat facing. It would have been nice if they could have held on a week or two longer but they got us through most of September and we had big red maters when no one else did at the farmers market, cha-ching!. The other reds we grew-the canners did really well for us but I don't think as well as last year (or was it two years ago?). We grew Amish paste and Opalka again. The Amish paste out produced the Opalka about 4:1. We grew enough of these to make and can ourselves plenty of tomato sauce, ratatouille and salsa plus we sold about 300 pounds to others so they could put up tomatoes.

The cherry tomatoes were only so so (which is actually a good thing since when they do really well that means someone has to spend several hours daily picking them and than we have to figure out what to do with the excess). We have decided never to grow green grape again since it does not sell. This means it will produce hundreds of volunteers all over the farm in the future. It is hard to get people to try the green maters. Though it seems when I can get someone to try a green grape they get hooked quickly. they are a very nice mater but for most it is hard to get past the color. The yellow pear barely produced and a lot of them were green again this year. I think it is time to get new seed. the Sun sugar did well for about 3 weeks than quit producing much and the plants now look like hell. This is good as everyone at the farmers market(s) grew this kind this year so the market was flooded and sales were way down. I think next year we will cut back a lot on the cherry tomatoes. We do not need all that many for the farm share-maybe 20 to 30 plants and it seems they have become passe at market. that will free up beds for something else next year.

Unlike last year, we have a lot of ripe peppers. Last year the peppers were very late and we got a killing frost before they got ripe. It did not help that on Sept 14th 2008 we had hurricane force winds for about 6 hours that knocked down all the pepper plants. This year things are completely different. We have a lot of huge bell peppers and they are getting ripe well before it gets cold. I have also learned to take them off the plants when they show color and they ripen up just fine indoors away from pests and diseases that tend to ruin about 50% of the ripe peppers (which is why red, yellow and orange (ripe) peppers cost twice as much as green peppers).

the raspberries out did themselves again this season. The Lathams, our early summer raspberry, was spectacular again. Heavy production and excellent quality. My only complaint was we did a piss poor job of pruning in the early spring which made parts of the raspberry patch almost impossible to harvest. Next year I am cutting back a lot more than Eugene will deem necessary (he has a problem with thinning out plants and wants to leave a lot more than should be left). The Heritage raspberries, which we mow down in early spring, had quite good production and the flavor has been sublime, far better than the Lathams (which, as I said were excellent). Eugene has this crazy notion that we should let the heritage grow and produce in spring. I have this crazy idea that he can do all the harvesting as well as tilling, seeding, transplanting and other spring chores if this happens. You see we do not need a second kind of spring raspberry when the Lathams are pumping out over 30 gallons of fruit. As it is we do not sell all the Lathams produce (we come close but in order to get rid of them we have to sell in bulk and drop the price 33%). We do sell pretty much 100% of the Late summer berries and if we allow the Heritage to have 2 crops we will lessen the fall yield by about 60% and not have enough for the FSI, store and farmers market in August and September. In other words, Eugene's idea of more spring/summer berries is a bad one on many levels.

The strawberries have not been the best. I don't think we have them in the best place and they need to be replaced this fall with new day neutral berries. the yields have been down and disease problems up. We did get a very nice crop of April may berries because we put a hoop house over them. Granted, the hoop house got nailed twice in the winter-once by heavy wet snow and than a month later by high winds. But neither incident seemed to have any effect on the berry production. it is ironic that the first year the berries have been less than great we do a farm tour and in November a workshop on sustainable berry production. I will say the farm tour attendees did not seem to care what kind of shape the berries were in. Next season we should have a new crop of berries in a new and better spot and hopefully we will be swimming strawberries all spring summer and fall next year.

The greens have been around all season. In spring we had lots of lettuce, spring mix, arugula, kale and various Asian greens. Summer we lost the lettuce-we did try to grow some several times because it was cool most of the summer but every time we started lettuce we would get 5 to 8 days of heat and humidity, always a week or two after germination and that would cause the baby lettuce to get bitter and bolt to seed. now that it is autumn we have several beds of nice lettuce growing as well as volunteers coming up around the market garden. the same thing happened with spring mix. After late June it got impossible to grow it though we did try. We did get several harvests of arugula for our efforts through the summer but nothing else from the spring mix beds. Kale and chard were the summer mainstay greens, they always are.

Broccoli did badly for us but we did get some decent cabbages. I dunno why we have such problems with broccoli, perhaps we should quit growing it. Spring radishes were hit and miss and the early red meat radishes were a complete failure. But we do have a 1/2 bed of them now that are very nice. We got really nice early rutabagas as well as red turnips. the fall red turnips are ready to harvest and store for winter, though it will be early next week before that will happen.

Finally, the Farm Share Initiative has been a great thing for us. It allowed us drop a farmers market and make more money while being allowed to stay home and get more work done. Definitely a win, win for us and the fact very few people seemed to notice there is no longer a Tuesday evening market in Oxford (maybe 10 people have asked about this this summer) tells me that we would have made less money this year than last at that market. So it is good that we are doing the FSI.

I think I will change a few things on how the FSI is run next season. This season I allowed members to sign up for the entire season but pay monthly. That will stop as it is not fair to the members that ponied up the cash for the entire season upfront. And the members who did this have all dropped out for the last month, not good. They also got a few extra weeks as I was treating them like the paid in full members as I expected them to go through the entire season. I think the monthly farm tour/pot luck will go as well since we only were able to hold two this year mostly because of a lack of interest on the part of most of the members. I think a once a year farm tour/pot luck will suffice. I am having a hard time getting it through to the members that farm visits are a very important aspect of the farm share/CSA experience. This is how one connects to their farm and without farm visits one might as well buy their food from the farmers market. I also think it is time to drop the month to month deal. This has the potential of getting very confusing which will lead to mistakes -especially when the FSI grows to more than 30 members. It will be replaced by what I used call "Share Cycles" where I break the season down into 2 or 3 month increments for those who cannot do an entire season for whatever reason.

Well, that's the summery of our summer

Raspberry World

The raspberry season has begun. As usual it starts small and slowly builds until my life is consumed by red raspberries for about 6 weeks.

Today I picked 1/2 pint, tomorrow it will likely be 3x that amount and by this time next week I should be harvesting about 10 to 20 1/2 pints a day. By the end of the month it will be about 50 1/2 pints a day. Maybe more as the plants are a lot bigger this year and are loaded with berries that undoubtedly will get big because now that spring is just about over we have lots and lots of rain, which the berries need in abundance to be big and sweet.



I took this photo in early May. At this point the canes were about the same height as they were last year. Since than they have put on an addition 2 feet of height and back towards the middle (where they already had started to lean into the aisle way) the canes have pretty much collapsed for about 25 feet. I have tied them up with bailing twine but it is still a mess back in there and will be a bitch to harvest but by no means impossible. And hey, they are thornless canes so no biggie.

I have been amazed at the variety of pollenators on these plants. Every kind of bee we have around here (at least 10 species) has been busy collecting nectar and pollen along with various moths and butterflies. I have noticed that the squash vine borers love the raspberry flowers and seem to get drunk on the nectar making them very easy to grab and squish. Normally it is hard to catch these moths as they are very fast and agile. This is something I really love about harvesting raspberries is watching all the activity in the canes. Spiders, daddy Long legs, flies, plant pests, preying mantids, wheel bugs, bees, moths, butterflies all either live there or come by to visit. I find evidence of great drama that has happened in the raspberry world. Husks of bug and spider bodies, a Daddy long legs sucking a plant bug dry (okay on that one I got to witness the drama), wheel bugs lying in wait for their next victim. For a bug nerd such as myself it is a fascinating world.

We have a small amount available at the store today and certainly will have a nice amount for the Saturday farmers Market in Oxford. The farm share members will start to see the raspberries in their shares starting next week.

What doesn't sell will either be made into raspberry jam (which will be available at the store eventually) or frozen for later use-mainly frozen rum drinks and yogurt smoothies.

First Farmers Market of 2009

Saturday May 2nd was opening day at the Oxford Farmers Market and here are some pictures from the day. Despite the rainy forecast, the day turned out to be beautiful. Sunny and not too warm

The market around 8am. It was pretty slow early on, but things picked up later on and we ended up selling out of almost everything

Joel Parks, opening day's Chef at Market took advantage of the light crowds and bountiful harvests to shop for his cooking demo that was held later in the market. Here he and Brent Marcum of Salem Road Farm talk about produce

People talking to Larry Slocum, the market manager, about renewing their Friends of the market membership

Calamity Rain played live acoustic folk music


Karen selling her hand crafted soap to Roger Adkins

Joel parks doing the cooking Demo. Jane Stripple is sampling some of his fare.

Norma Hurston dealing with a crowd of eager buyers of her baked goods

Marge Glaser taking a picture of me taking a picture of her in front of Norma's booth

Me and Doug

The Myth of HR 875 and SB 425

There has been a lot written and posted all over the world wide web and Internet about 2 bills in congress, HR 875 and SB 425.

Paranoid people with an agenda to kill all government regulation have interpreted this bill as one that will kill organic farming, criminalize the back yard garden, fine housewives for cooking food that they have grown in their own kitchens and make what I do for a living virtually illegal as small farmers will be forced to comply with the draconian regulations that may be imposed on the interstate/international corporate farms and food processors. I have even seen people claim that the NAIS is a part of these bills (it is not).

Amazing what a few writers good at arousing emotions can do on the interwebs.

The trouble stems from two emails that I guess started out life on a couple of anti government/pro farming blogs.

Here is one of them

http://shepardpolitics.blogspot.com/...aw-family.html

HR 875 Would Essentially Outlaw Family Farms In The United States

I get a lot of e-mails each day and one today (hi Cheryl!) pointed my attention to HR 875, a bill introduced into the 111th Congress for consideration. SO, I went and did something that members of Congress rarely do and actually went and read the bill, or more accurately, at least glanced through it which is still more than they ever do. It was introduced by Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT 3rd) and has around 36 co-sponsors including Congressman Andre Carson (D-IN 7th) as of this writing. It immediately strikes me as being terribly bad legislation.

Under a heading described as protecting the public health and ensuring the safety of food it creates a "Food Safety Administration" within Health and Human Services. Oddly, not just adding regulations to the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) which is also under HHS. And don't we have the USDA as well? The bill applies to all manner of "Food Establishments" and "Food Production Facilities" (note the following excerpt).


(14) FOOD PRODUCTION FACILITY- The term ‘food production facility’ means any farm, ranch, orchard, vineyard, aquaculture facility, or confined animal-feeding operation.


The bill would appear to even cover fishing boats and your downtown hot dog street vendors. In fact, the bill probably would also apply to your family garden since no exemption is apparent.

What it essentially does is place a tremendous regulatory burden on all of these organizations and individuals by requiring them to have "food safety plans", consider all relevant hazards [note: I wish Congress would consider all "relevant hazards" or unintended consequences of everything THEY did], testing, sample keeping and to maintain all kinds of records. The bill also allows the government to dictate all manner of standards related to fertilizer use, nutrients, packaging, temperature controls and other items.

This massive bloat in government regulation (and taxpayer expense to support it) would add additional cost and headache to every farm, fishing boat, restaurant, slaughterhouse, processing plant, CO-OP and anyone else associated with growing, storing or processing food. The bill authorizes fines of up to $1,000,000 (one million) dollars for "each act" and for "each day" of a violation.

We'll skip over the concern over how important food production and distribution, largely recession proof, could be if our economy continues to decline and inflation takes hold and just address this on the apparent lunacy that it is. As those familiar with history know, large dominant corporations often will use government to demand industry regulations that force the small competitor out of business or introduce barriers to entry that prevent new companies from starting up to compete. In the early part of the 20th century a tremendous amount of regulation was written by the industries themselves to be enacted into law.

In this case, I think this bill could do tremendous harm to family farms or independent food operators. Only massive companies have the ability to meet these regulations and imagine the legal expenses that could be incurred to defend oneself? Never forget, the government has near unlimited resources where you might have to cough up $200 to $500 an hour for a good attorney to defend yourself, your farm, boat, truck, restaurant, orchard, vineyard or hot dog stand. And what about the increased cost of food associated with the cost of compliance, it's not unreasonable to think that many places would have to hire staff or outside assistance just to comply with the law.

We have an excellent history in the United States of safe food, but as Obama's Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel suggested recently, "You should never want a serious crisis to go to waste." He spoke those words relative to looking for opportunities to do things that people would not otherwise accept without some crisis. We should be very careful not to let the very rare instance of something like the recent peanut problem be used as such a "crisis". There is no impetus to point the bureaucrats of government and the guns they control, their ability to not only deprive someone of life or freedom but to destroy whole families, careers and reputations, at everyone in the country who might be involved in ensuring we have stuff to eat.

We're doing just fine without this legislation.

Here are a couple of diatribes by Lin Cohen-Cole who writes for OpEdNews.com
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Goodbye-farmers-markets-C-by-Linn-Cohen-Cole-090303-287.html

and
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Monsanto-s-dream-bill-HR-by-Linn-Cohen-Cole-090309-337.html

These articles talk about things that these congressional bills do not touch such as seed saving and NAIS (both under the jurisdiction of the USDA and not the FDA). She writes to scare people and get them all in a tizzy about a brand new bill that will not make it in to committee for many months, if ever.

Now here is what Tom Barlow has to say about these bills
http://www.walletpop.com/blog/2009/03/12/will-proposed-national-legislation-kill-the-farmers-market/ he does not see these bills as doing anything close to shutting down farmers markets, criminalizing organic farming etc., etc..

Nor does the Organic Consumers Association which calls this fear mongering "the Internet Myth of the week"

This week, we received numerous calls and emails from OCA supporters who came across alarming YouTube videos and emails circulating on the Internet that claimed a new food safety bill (HR 875) introduced in Congress would make "organic farming illegal." Although the Bill certainly has its shortcomings, it is an exaggeration to say that is a secret plot by Monsanto and the USDA to destroy the nation's alternative food and farming system. In actuality, HR 875, the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009, is a limited-vision attempt by moderate Democrats and Republicans to craft food safety legislation to address the out-of-control filth and contamination that are inherent in our industrialized, now globalized, "profit-at-any-cost" food system.
This being said, OCA does not support HR 875 in its present form, given the fact that, if the Bill's regulations were applied in a one-size-fits-all manner to certified organic and farm-to-consumer operations, it could have a devastating impact on small farmers, especially raw milk producers who are already unfairly targeted by state food-safety regulators. Although the OCA deems this Bill as somewhat well-intentioned, we are calling on Congress to focus its attention on the real threats to food safety: globalized food sourcing from nations such as China where food safety is a joke and domestic industrial-scale and factory farms whose collateral damage includes pesticide and antibiotic-tainted food, mad cow disease, E.coli contamination and salmonella poisoning. And, of course, Congress and the Obama Administration need to support a massive transition to organic farming practices.

Food and water watch has this to say about these bills:

Food & Water Watch’ s Statement on H.R. 875 and the Food Safety Bills



The dilemma of how to regulate food safety in a way that prevents problems caused by industrialized agriculture but doesn’t wipe out small diversified farms is not new and is not easily solved. And as almost constant food safety problems reveal the dirty truth about the way much of our food is produced, processed and distributed, it’s a dilemma we need to have serious discussion about.

Most consumers never thought they had to worry about peanut butter and this latest food safety scandal has captured public attention for good reason – a CEO who knowingly shipped contaminated food, a plant with holes in the roof and serious pest problems, and years of state and federal regulators failing to intervene.

It’s no surprise that Congress is under pressure to act and multiple food safety bills have been introduced.

Two of the bills are about traceability for food (S.425 and H.R. 814). These present real issues for small producers who could be forced to bear the cost of expensive tracking technology and record keeping.

The other bills address what FDA can do to regulate food.



A lot of attention has been focused on a bill introduced by Rep. Rosa DeLauro (H.R. 875), the Food Safety Modernization Act. And a lot of what is being said about the bill is misleading.

Here are a few things that H.R. 875 DOES do:

-It addresses the most critical flaw in the structure of FDA by splitting it into 2 new agencies –one devoted to food safety and the other devoted to drugs and medical devices.

-It increases inspection of food processing plants, basing the frequency of inspection on the risk of the product being produced – but it does NOT make plants pay any registration fees or user fees.

-It does extend food safety agency authority to food production on farms, requiring farms to write a food safety plan and consider the critical points on that farm where food safety problems are likely to occur.

-It requires imported food to meet the same standards as food produced in the U.S.

And just as importantly, here are a few things that H.R. 875 does NOT do:

-It does not cover foods regulated by the USDA (beef, pork, poultry, lamb, catfish.)

-It does not establish a mandatory animal identification system.

-It does not regulate backyard gardens.

-It does not regulate seed.

-It does not call for new regulations for farmers markets or direct marketing arrangements.

-It does not apply to food that does not enter interstate commerce (food that is sold across state lines).

-It does not mandate any specific type of traceability for FDA-regulated foods (the bill does instruct a new food safety agency to improve traceability of foods, but specifically says that record keeping can be done electronically or on paper.)



Several of the things not found in the DeLauro can be found in other bills – like H.R. 814, the Tracing and Recalling Agricultural Contamination Everywhere Act, which calls for a mandatory animal identification system, or H.R. 759, the Food And Drug Administration Globalization Act, which overhauls the entire structure of FDA. H.R. 759 is more likely to move through Congress than H.R. 875. And H.R. 759 contains several provisions that could cause problems for small farms and food processors:

-It extends traceability record keeping requirements that currently apply only to food processors to farms and restaurants – and requires that record keeping be done electronically.

-It calls for standard lot numbers to be used in food production.

-It requires food processing plants to pay a registration fee to FDA to fund the agency’s inspection efforts.

-It instructs FDA to establish production standards for fruits and vegetables and to establish Good Agricultural Practices for produce.

There is plenty of evidence that one-size-fits-all regulation only tends to work for one size of agriculture – the largest industrialized operations. That’s why it is important to let members of Congress know how food safety proposals will impact the conservation, organic, and sustainable practices that make diversified, organic, and direct market producers different from agribusiness. And the work doesn’t stop there – if Congress passes any of these bills, the FDA will have to develop rules and regulations to implement the law, a process that we can’t afford to ignore.

But simply shooting down any attempt to fix our broken food safety system is not an approach that works for consumers, who are faced with a food supply that is putting them at risk and regulators who lack the authority to do much about it.

You can read the full text of any of these bills at http://thomas.loc.gov

___________________________
Sarah Alexander
Senior Food Organizer
Food & Water Watch

1616 P St. NW Suite 300
Washington, DC 20036
salexander@fwwatch.org
www.foodandwaterwatch.org

So you can see these bills while they need the wording tweaked a bit are not the death knell to small organic farms selling their products direct to the public.

All that said, NAIS Is a real threat to small farms that raise animals and NAIS is in committee and can be commented upon right now here is where you do that http://www.regulations.gov/fdmspublic/component/main?main=DocketDetail&d=APHIS-2007-0096

Feburary Farmers Market

A line of folks waiting to buy organic meat from the Filbrun's

We did the February edition of the Oxford Winter Market Series last weekend. We missed the January edition because it was way to cold to have produce out doors without it freezing and being ruined. The weather profits predicted a not too bad day. The reality was a cold, windy day with snow/ice pelting us until about noon when it cleared up a bit. The temperature was warm enough to not worry about the spud or spring mix freezing but cold and nasty enough to keep the crowds down a bit. We were still able to sell out of all leafy greens and around 98% of the red onions, 90% of the leeks and about 1/2 the parsnips along with a lot of garlic. I was also able to buy lots of pastured eggs and organic meat the few minutes we were not busy.
All in all a good if windy and damp market

From left to right Artistry farm with goat cheese, art and goat's milk soap, Tahapsia'a farm (sorry for bad spelling) selling fine hand made soaps and other body care and Greenbrier farm selling hand crafted pastas

Eugene selling produce to our Buddy Scott

Happy but chilly OFMU regulars

Getting Ready for a Winter Market

We have a farmers market this coming Saturday so we have spent the week getting ready for it. Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning we harvested greens. During the main growing season we would not think of harvesting so far away from a market but in winter cold gets in the way and if you can get a day of two of above freezing weather a week or less before the farmers market you harvest on those days. We can get away with this because we have found in winter, greens (and everything else) last a lot longer than thing harvested the rest of the year. My theory is that the bacteria that is on all fresh produce and will eventually cause it to rot is dormant in the winter. This means that lettuce that might last a week after harvest in summer will last about 3 weeks after harvest in winter. The other thing we have noted is in winter it is best to harvest greens late in the day. During the other seasons these are best harvested early in the morning. Winter is a backwards time to grow and harvest things.

On Monday I was making sure we have enough dried herbs and garlic powder ready to go. In doing that I discovered to forgotten products in the freezer-dried apples and dried cherry tomatoes. So I made up about 10 bags of each. Now we have two new products to offer at the farmers market and to the farm Share folks in April. Along with the tomatoes and apples I found we were short on dried basil and catnip so I made up more of those.

Wednesday I spent time going through all our table signs and tossing out what we no longer needed and making new signs for products that did not have a sign or things with a new price (we lowered a couple of prices) or new products. That took more time Than I though because the printer decided it did not want to print card stock paper (I have had this argument before with the printer and thought I had resolved it). Eventually I won the argument and got around to printing the pages I needed.

Today I went and bought a ream of paper so I can print out some more brochures and Farm Share Program fliers (which are about half way done). I also wrote and sent out an email to my 300+ subscribers alerting them to this market.

Tomorrow we will put spring mix, mizuna, baby lettuce into 6oz and 1/2 pound bags and about 100 pounds of parsnips into 1 and 5 pound bags. We also need to grade the leeks and put the small ones into bunches of 2 and 3. Than turnips and potatoes will need to be boxed up. That should take the two of us about 1/2 the day. But when it is all done we should be ready for a cold winter market.

The rest of the year we would easily do all of this work in about a day (actually about 3 or 4 times this much work) but cold weather really slows down the harvest

Winter Greens

It is one of the colder and nastier Decembers in the past several years and yet, remarkably, we have leafy green crops growing just fine under row covers. What's even more remarkable is these crops seem to be doing far better than the crops in Hoop houses and under row cover. This gives them a lot more protection, in theory. Thus the hoop house crops should be doing a lot better than the crops that have only a double layer of row cover over top.

And yet they are not. I suspect that in Feb they will either take off and give us lots of high quality leafy greens or they will decide it is time to reproduce and bolt to seed and be unusable as food crops (but we will likely collect the seeds for future use).

I am not sure why this is happening to the hoop house crops but I suspect because they have been too protected and too coddled. The plants in the hoop houses have never been exposed to wind, full sun, rain or any other weather other than cold temperatures and the cold temps have not been good for a lot of crops in the hoop houses. The crops, especially the leafy green crops, in the houses are rather tender. In contrast the outside crops were exposed to all sorts of weather before being ensconsed in a double layer of row cover so these crops are much more hardy, much more as it turns out, as there is hardly any frost or wind burns on these things. This is good, because there is a farmers market this coming Saturday and I can harvest literally whole beds of small heads of heirloom lettuces that will probably not get any bigger than they already are. There is also nice arugula and mizuna along with spring mix. The Napa cabbage is not looking as nice but I will be willing to bet the cold conditions have made it much more yummy. Frankly, I don't know why Napa keeps being planted, we rarely sell any despite being told it is a very popular vegetable at the farmers market (if it is so damned popular why are we the only farm with it and why is it not selling at all?). And yet there it is in the garden, again.

I wish the hoop house crops were doing better and the crops not in hoop houses had all died because it is much much more enjoiable to go into a hoop house and harvest. In hoop houses, especially if it is at all sunny out, it tends to be spring like-warm, no winds, humid, nice. Contrast that with the plants outside that tend to be harvested in cold, windy wet weather, not nice.

But the outside crops have not died and are quite high quality so we put up with harvesting when the weather allows and doing it in generally pretty nasty conditions

Boulder Belt in Winter

Winter is here-it is cold, snowy and most everything that is not we covered is dead. This means things have slowed way down for us (yay!) It is nice to be able to kick back for a month or so before the 80 hour a week grinds starts again.

People want to know what we farmers do in the off season. For us, we spend a lot of November cleaning up stuff like the store, the garden beds, popcorn, catnip, onions. Crunching numbers on the various produce items we grow so we have an idea as to what is selling and what is not selling so we know what seeds to plant for the coming season. Eugene does not do much on the computer so it is me who keeps the blog and website updated and that can be time consuming, especially this year since it looks like Boulder Belt is back in the CSA biz and that means at some point I need to design an informative CSA page for the Boulder Belt Website.

December is too often spent removing snow from hoop houses and driveways. It is also the time we put in our main seed order with Johnny's Selected Seeds (our favorite seed house). In the past we have waited until after Christmas to put in our order but there are rumors that there will be seed shortages this year so I believe I will get at least part of the order in in early Dec. or even late November. December is usually the Month that we start the onions and leeks indoors, though this year I believe the onions will be started today or tomorrow (that would be mid November). The reason for moving up the date is due to the fact we have quite a few Copra onion seeds left over from last year and We decided that those should be planted to see if they have strong germination. If they do than we do not need to order more seed. If they do not than we will know by Dec 1st if the seeds are working or not and can get an order into Johnny's early enough to avoid the dreaded back order that can set one back several months.

If December, January and February are mild (which is the NOAA prediction for us this winter, but I will believe that when I see it) than the crops in the hoop houses will continue to produce pretty much all winter and someone has to go and harvest and package the crops periodically (weekly-as growth slows way down in the winter even if it is relatively warm and sunny). We than sell the greens, leeks, etc., at the Oxford Monthly Winter market and this year the CSA gets their share as well. We also sell through the store via email appointment and occasionally to a restaurant or Miami University.

If the winter months are cold with a lot of precip, than most things quit growing until Late Feb and cannot be harvested, the exception to this are the leeks and scallions. Than we sit around twiddling our thumbs waiting on the greens to come back to life. Okay, we don't spend much time thumb twiddling (but we do start craving greens in a big way and are delighted when things are harvestable again). If it is a snowy winter than we are spending lots of time removing snow from the hoop houses, otherwise they get flattened and are unuseable and have to be repaired or replaced. this has happened a couple of times to us and incredibly the crops under all the snow and plastic are generally unharmed and producing very well when we finally get to them

What we are doing by Feb is starting seriously seeds indoors. This starts out slowly with around 15 pots of onions and leeks planted in Dec/Jan. Those are followed by the brassicas-kale, broccoli, cabbages, etc., and lettuces in mid to late Feb. Those crops are repeatedly seeded indoors through April/May so we have a continual harvest April through June/July. By late March we are also starting early tomatoes, peppers, zucchini and melons to be planted in mid April in hoop houses. In April the main crops of tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, celery, celeriac, parsley, flowers, etc., are started which fills up the grow room along with cold frames and hoop houses with thousands of seedlings.

Once the seeds are started we are tied to the farm. The seeds need daily tending-watering, fertilizing, pricking (this means to re pot into a larger container), making soil (we make our own soil mix for seed starting as we have a hard time finding soiless mixes that don't contain petroleum products or chemical fertilizers. Add to that, we start seeds in soil blocks and we make our own soil blocks so the soiless mix has to be just so for it to work for us. Making our own soil blocks means we use very little plastic when starting our seedlings. It probably saves us around a thousand bucks a year as well (of course it increases our work load by at least 100 hours as we have to make a lot of soil and a lot of soil blocks.)

So you can see that we small sustainable farmers really don't have much down time at all. Some day, perhaps, we will quit this idea of winter growing and marketing and will shut the farm down in November and go to the Caribbean for 4 months.

Winter CSA; Week 1

The first installment of the CSA went very well. All the shares were picked up and I ended up putting far more food into the shares than I had planned on because we have a lot of stuff coming in that has a fairly short shelf life and needs to be used. And who better to use the food than the CSA members.

I realized this week that I made an error in planning this CSA. Past CSA's have been weekly affairs and I have created shares and charged accordingly. But this winter CSA is bi-monthly which means the shares should be twice as big as what I am used to putting together (though the shares for the first week are close to a 2 week share) and I should have charged the members twice as much as I did. So what is likely to happen is I am going to dole out big shares (except in January when I expect winter to come in and shut the fresh greens growing down for several weeks) and the members are going to be very happy and I am going to rip off the farm by selling food at too huge a discount. This is what I get for throwing the CSA together so quickly-I did not think out all the minute details. Ah, c'est la vie.

This is not all bad. We are getting additional income from the CSA that we would not have gotten otherwise and low cost with lots of food should make all the members happy campers and thus loyal customers and repeat CSA members. And this is making me think hard about the details of a main season CSA

So what did the Boulder Belt Eco-Farm CSA members get this week?

They got:

2 pints of strawberries
3 leeks
4 peppers
1/2 pound baby heirloom lettuces
1 pound Napa cabbage
1 small bag of either tarragon, thyme or dill
3 heads of heirloom garlic
1 bunch Easter egg radish
1 charantais melon
1 pound turnip greens
2 pound keiffer pears
2 pound Dr Matthews apples
1 pound yellow onions


Which is worth $45 if I were to sell the stuff at the store or farmer's market. Great deal for the CSA members but not a great deal for Boulder Belt Eco-Farm if Boulder Belt Eco-Farm wants to be economically sustainable (and we do, otherwise we go out of the farming biz, sell the farm and get jobs as Wal-Mart greeters or fast food "cooks". Okay it probably would not be that bad). Now all that said, the winter CSA and it's huge shares will not shut down the farm. But if I were to continue to do this for into the spring summer and fall we could end up in financial difficulty.

I have learned in the 15 years of selling what we grow is underpricing one's harvest is a sure fire way to put yourself out of business (as can overpricing. Setting prices is an art and a science)