Farm Share Blog

I just posted 3 (three) new entries to the Farm Share Blog I have over at Local Harvest. These newsletters (I have the whole season to date) should give you a good idea of what goes on with our Farm Share Initiative-what kind and how much food, farm events, etc.. Check it out.

Where is Boulder Belt? Or Why Geography is Important

I am more and more amazed at how bad Americans are at geography. Over the years because our farm name has the word "boulder" in it I get a lot of hits on the Boulder Belt Farm Website (not so much on this blog) from Colorado. I understand that when you Google "Boulder farm share" or "Boulder Organic" or "Boulder Farms" you will get links to Boulder Belt Farm. That said, in the Google description it clearly says that BBF is in SW Ohio and yet they still visit looking for local food information for Boulder Colorado. Okay, but when I get emails and better yet phone calls I have to wonder if people have any clue exactly where in the USA Ohio is. I wonder because every page of the website says at the top Eaton, OH.

-Yes I realize the above paragraph will drive Coloradans to this site-

Today I get an e-mail via Local harvest from a person in Lexington, Ky (which is about 1100 miles closer to us than Colorado) wondering about joining the Farm share Initiative. I wrote back to the person and told her we are 3.5 hours north of her and that she would do better to look for more local food venues-a closer CSA or farmers markets. And in the past 2 or 3 weeks I have had a couple of queries from Colorado about the farm share initiative.

This would not be bothering me so much except Dear Abby today was all about Americans not knowing where the 50 states are located or even that states like Minnesota, New Mexico or Delaware are states. I am a bit of a geography nerd-give me an atlas and I am happy for days or even weeks on end. I was the lone person in my field archaeology class who thought that learning to use a transit and than after we used to transit learned how to plug the raw numbers we got into equations (and I have a math phobia so I should have hated this part but loved it) in order to make a topo map was fun with a capital F. As a kid I would sit and draw maps of places (including a legend and a compass rose) that did not exist. I learned my states and capitals early in life along with how to read a map and use it for navigation (I am the person you want with you if you are driving in a strange place-I do great navigation).

So this whole deal with people not knowing apparently zip about basic geography sorely vexes me. And GPS systems ain't helping out one whit. Now there is no real reason for people to have anything approaching a sense of direction. No longer do people need to know how to read a map, much less how to use a compass. Of course, if the system fails I suppose there will be masses of people wandering around completely and utterly lost.

And here is the irony (I really love this) Boulder Belt Eco-Farm is not in the GPS system. We do show up on Google Earth, though the photo is old and very poor resolution. But we will not be found if you use a GPS system to find us. GPS (and Map Quest and all the other such services) will send you to a non existent address south of Eaton.

So if you want to buy food from us you better bone up on your geography skills and learn where Eaton, OH is and how to read and map

Rain Day Musings

It's raining today. Not a heavy rain but there was enough rain overnight to make the fields too muddy to work in so we have done other things like completing our state and federal income tax returns and writing appropriate checks (the self employed almost never get refunds from the IRS). This means this summer we should get hundreds of dollars in free money from the gummint. I thought the Democrats were the ones to hand out free money. Crazy world.

Went to town to buy things we need like food and envelopes. Also went to the post office to send out an order of garlic powder and to pick up any mail in the PO Box. We had a box of brown turkey figs waiting patiently for us along with a plea from the Farm Bureau to join up so they can promote our farm. Of course that costs money and Boulder Belt seems to be on their web site anyhow so why pay money? Especially to a group who has a history of not being on the small farmers side but rather on the side of big business. Local Harvest has an incredible website that does a great job of promoting Boulder Belt Eco-Farm and they do this for free (though I have been known to contribute to their cause which gives us even better promotion).

Scored some $1 a bottle Santa Cruz organic strawberry lemonade at Kroger's. I love marked down organic food. Made up for the $1.39 a can organic black beans (which I get because they are the only canned beans without a plastic liner in the can leach pthalates into my food).

Made arrangements to give away a sewing machine that was given to me and which I have never used. It has been taking up space for over 5 years and when I saw a request for a sewing machine on Freecycle this morning I sent the woman an email saying she can have mine. I really need to get some stuff together and post it on the several local Freecycle groups to which I belong. Time to get rid of useless (to me) items. Of course, many of these items make good fodder for the 127 yard sale and that is likely where they will end up. That way they will make us a bit of money, but I will probably lose Karma points.

I don't know what I will do with the rest of the day. I know some pepper seeds are beginning to germinate and there are several trays of lettuce to go out to the cold frame so they can be put in the ground next week some time. And I should start more lettuce plants for transplanting in 3 to 4 weeks.

Yesterday after planting asparagus all morning I spent a great deal of the afternoon planting broccoli seedlings while Eugene planted snow peas and snap peas and got the area ready for the new strawberry plants. Oh and talked to some guy who stopped by wanting us to sell his eggs for him. We are not licensed to resell eggs, dairy or meat products. Though I suppose now that we have retail refrigeration it would not be too hard to get an RFE (retail Food Establishment) License. Than again the store building has no running water and that is likely a requirement. The solution, of course is for us to get back into the pastured laying hen biz and raise our own eggs and sell those. Just need a coop for the girls and a supply of new egg cartons. Oh, and the commitment to never leave the farm for more than 18 hours ever again.

Soon it will be time to start dinner which is salmon with some veggies from the freezer. I am thinking wax beans and perhaps some boiled potatoes (which are not frozen) and brownies with walnuts for dessert.

Boulder Belt is in Ohio Dammit

I was googling myself, really Boulder Belt Eco-Farm, and found BBEF is listed on a Boulder Colorado site as a local farm. They had a link to my Local Harvest store but not this blog or my farm website. This explains why, in the past several months, I have gotten the occasional call from Boulder, CO wanting local food or, in one case, a guy wanting to sell me plastic to package chickens in.

In the past, many people have assumed Eugene and I are from Boulder because of our farm's name, we are not. Neither of us has even visited the state of Colorado. I do not know why it is so difficult for some people to realize that Boulder, CO does not have a monopoly on boulders, that they do exist right here in SW Ohio. On our farm even, hence the name Boulder Belt, named for the Bloomington Boulder Belt that cuts a NW to SE swath through Preble county.

Boulder Belt is in Ohio, Dammit!

Almost Famous

Wednesday after a final push to get everything covered and ready for the hard freeze we took a trip down south to pick up our allotment of raw milk for the week. Because we had not been to the post office in many days and I had a catnip order to send out from an order recieved from my Local Harvest virtual store front we went to the PO to get the mail out of the PO Box we have.

In the PO Box was a large envelope with 2 copies of the April edition of the Country Folks Grower (Midwest edition) that has Boulder Belt Eco-Farm as the featured farm. This article was from an interview I did with the author Kelly Gates about 6 weeks ago. It should be on the web in a month or so, maybe less.

Also in the PO box was a yellow card telling us we had something too big for the box to pick up at the front counter. So while I was mailing a package of catnip to Manassas, VA I also picked up the package that was from Seattle but not from my sister. Inside the package was a book, "To Buy or Not to Buy Organic" by Cindy Burke (available on Amazon, Barnes and Nobel and at some local book sellers) and a letter thanking me for for my time. I was puzzled by this. I did not remember at the time being interviewed by this person. But there was a pink post-it in the book and it was marking a nice profile of the farm plus some of my rantings on why Boulder Belt is no longer certified organic by the USDA. I later read through the end notes and found the date of the interview and it all came back to me.

Talk about short to medium memory loss...

The other thing that happened on Wednesday before we got on the road to pick up the milk and mail was I got two phone calls. One from a loyal blog reader from Loveland, OH (I am sorry I did not get your name, feel free to leave it in the educations) asking if his garlic would be okay during the hard freeze. I said I thought so but putting down some extra mulch won't hurt anything.

The other was from some woman from Youngstown looking for organic farms/CSA's in her area. This woman got my name from my GreenPeople listing and seemed to be of a mind that the only good food was industrial organics and if a farmer was not certified than by default they are using chemicals and GMO's. I tried to explain to her this is not usually the case with us small farmers but she seemed to have her mind set about this opinion. I believe she needs to buy a copy of Ms Burke's book and learn more. At any rate, I gave her the OEFFA web address and assured her that NE Ohio has more than its' fair share of sustainable and organic farms and CSA's as she was convinced that NE Ohio was a wasteland as far as organic foods are concerned. I hope she finds the farm of her dreams and buys the book too.

So Wednesday was a day of a me distributing information to people I have never met or a series of coincidences, but since I do not believe in coincidences there had to be a cosmic reason for the calls and the mail.

Where to Buy (and not buy) Seeds

Found a nice article on the site Groovy Green called Where to Buy your Seeds and Where Not To. The only problem I had with the article was there was no mention of the fact lots of small farmers using organic methods are selling seeds over at Local harvest. In the past I have listed my seeds for sale there but moving the farm has meant putting the breaks on seed saving for the past couple of years. But 2008 should be the year we get back into the swing of saving seed for sale to the public.

Where To Buy Your Seeds, & Where Not To

By Sharon Astyk

If we're to become a nation of farmers, and a nation of people who take home and small scale agriculture seriously, I think it is important to think about our seed sources. After all, without good, safe, reliable sources of seed, there is no agriculture - period.

I'm a big advocate of buying locally, but as I just told a friend, seeds are one thing that I don't always purchase from my local retailer. There are several reasons for this. The first is that my local retailer tends to carry commercial garden center varieties of seed, which come from very far away. There are good reasons to want to buy local seed, from plants that have already adapted to your particular climate. Often the seed I mail order from far away is more local than the seed that I would buy from my neighborhood garden shop. The second reason is that I can often get organically grown seed if I buy by mail - and even though you don't eat the seeds themselves, there are excellent reasons to want to avoid drenching the field your seeds are grown in with pesticides and chemicals. Also, small seed companies often struggle to get along, and they need all the business they can get. Finally, there is so much variety out there in food plants that buying locally simply wouldn't allow me to try as many different things - if I had to rely on local sources there'd be no Glacier Tomatoes coming early, no Stein's Late Flat Dutch Cabbage hanging on in my garden until December.

There has been a heavy consolidation of the seed industry in the last few years, to its detriment.

The darkest force here has been the evil Montsanto, the Satan of agricultural corporations (and that's saying something since there are quite a few other dark angels out there), who bought up Seminis a couple of years ago. Now Seminis is the wholesaler that provides much of the seed for the seed trade, including many classic hybrids and non hybrid varieties. And recently, I've just learned that Seminis has bought Burpee seeds - the largest single mail order supplier. http://groovygreen.com/groove/?p=868. Now I have a fondness for the Burpee seed catalog, and there are a couple of non-hybrid varieties of theirs I love - a red french marigold, a cherry tomato. But I won't be buying there again. Pity, but I have no desire to support Montsanto's chemical agriculture, their attacks on farmers, their attempts to patent seeds created through laborious home breeding. And I try very hard to avoid Seminis varieties of seed. Because Seminis is a wholesaler, and sells to many of the seed companies that send out your catalogs, it can be difficult to tell where your seed originated. That means that I'm pretty much limited to some of the funkier catalogs out there. The good thing about that is that those catalogs have a large selection, a lot of neat stuff, and are usually good stewards of the environment. Giving them my money is an excellent thing....

Read the rest at: http://groovygreen.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=328&Itemid=58

Another Nondescript Post

It's the last day of January, it is cold and a bit snowy (enough to make it look wintry but not enough to play in).

Things are at their slowest point. The seed ordering is mostly done for the year (there are still some rare and funky tomatoes to order from Seed savers Exchange, one of my favorite seed companies-a seed bank and seed growers network really). The real seed starting has not yet kicked in. We have started onions under lights and Eugene sowed some radish and lettuce seeds in one of the hoophouses a few weeks ago but the real work is still ahead of us.

Today we did house cleaning. Eugene was in the kitchen and decided to pull the stove and fridge away from the wall and clean underneath, next he was attempting to get the floor clean and swept and mopped it twice. It still looks like crap but at least we know it is cleaner. Mopping floors is something I do not like doing though I have had many jobs where mopping was in the job description and I learned over the years how to do a good and efficient job. I guess if I were paid $10 an hour to mop I would do it daily instead of monthly. While he tackled the kitchen I did laundry, cleaned the bathroom and tidied up the living room. Later on Eugene vacuumed the living room (now a daily occurrence) while I hung the laundry up in the spare room upstairs (no, we do not have a dryer and if we did I still would not use one. I have dried clothing about 4 times in the past 13 years using a clothes dryer, they are such an energy waster).

Yesterday was errand day. We go to get our share of raw milk every Tuesday and try to combine that with as many other errands as possible. So we hit the credit union to make a deposit, paid the mortgage, went to the post office to pick up mail and send off an order of garlic powder (I sell garlic powder I make from garlic I grow via my local harvest store, among other things). Than we drove south to Wehr Rd to pick up our milk and talked to Janet and found out she had had a nasty fall walking between the barns on her farm. She slipped on some ice and hit her head and had likely sustained a concussion. We also found out their newest cow had calved (bull calf) on Monday evening. That means more milk production for them. drove back to Eaton and stopped at Kroger's for food we cannot source locally and did our shopping for the week. Got home and made burritos for dinner.

I dunno what we will have for dinner tonight but it will involve some pork chops I cooked up Monday. I'm thinking biscuits made with souring raw milk from last week and sauteed cabbage and onions. What ever I cook it will make the kitchen floor dirty. Some habits one learns from working for years in professional kitchens are hard to break and getting food all over the floor is one of them. It would not be so bad if I had a pantry cook/dishwasher to clean up after me.

Tomorrow one of my most favorite people in the world is coming to visit. My friend Julie from college who is visiting her folks up in Van Wert, OH from California. She will be arriving with her son Patrick and we will have lunch and conversation. Maybe some sledding if it snows enough (doubtful, but you never know)

Killing the CSA

A few weeks ago the Free Will Astrology in the Sunday Dayton Daily news told me I would have a complete change of heart about something I really believed in. This being astrology outta the paper I thought to myself, yeah...right.

The next day I was reading a post on the marketing section of Garden Web about CSA and how ATTRA polled a lot of CSA farmers and CSA shareholders and found the two had wildly different ideas about CSA. farmers see CSA as a way to market, sure. But more importantly as a way to connect people with their food and a farm by getting them to interact with the farm. CSA members, on the other hand, see CSA as a way to support local farms by buying shares and picking them up at a drop point with little/no interaction the farm or farmer.

This has been my reality with CSA for the past 10 years (with the exception of year 3 when we had 5 members and all 5 were huge into participation and came out several times a week to help work and came to all the potlucks and other on farm events. Of course, every one of these folks moved out of the area that fall/winter so none rejoined the next season). I want a CSA that will connect the members with the soil and the members basically want a delivery service. For many years I tried to make this work in my mold and I was basically hitting my head against a wall. I would require some sort of on farm participation and would get fewer and fewer people rejoining each year because everyone wanted less interaction with the farm and more convenience. So around year 5 we started delivering the shares to remote drop points and farm interaction swiftly went away. By year 7 I could not get any members to even come to a farm dinner and this past season (year 10) I decided that if I was going to deliver I would charge dearly for that convenience because I really feel that CSA members need to see the farm where their food is grown.

So 3 weeks ago I had a talk with Eugene, who has never been very high on the CSA idea, about killing Boulder Belt CSA and he was into the idea. And after having only one member for 2006, who chose to pay a hefty price for delivery so he would not have to have any interaction with the farm, I decided it was time to put Boulder Belt CSA out of its' misery.

2 weeks ago I deleted the CSA from my Local Harvest Store and this afternoon I deleted the CSA page and all links to it on my website. It took all of 3 seconds to delete the page. It's kinda sad and kinda freeing. Yesterday I went around the web to various sites that allow free farm pages and deleted the CSA from several of those. But I am sure there are a few I have forgotten about and there is at least one I cannot update but in time Boulder Belt CSA will be gone from the net.

Bye bye CSA maybe I will visit you again some day. But until than, I will put the energy I was throwing at the CSA into the farm store and the farmers' markets

Have a Heifer Christmas

I have finished most of my Christmas shopping simply by giving money to Heifer international, an NGO that gives livestock and training on how to husband the animals to the poor people of the world so that families can feed themselves and eventually feed their villages when their animals reproduce and add more animals to the area.

For the past 5 years my family (me, my 2 siblings and my dad and Step-mom) has pooled money to donate to heifer. In the past, we have bought bees, geese, goats, llamas.



This year we bought a water buffalo for a family in SE Asia. That Buffalo, if it is a cow, will provide milk for the family, plow fields and pull a cart and will eventually have offspring the family can give to other villagers (which is a part of the agreement with heifer, when your animals start to reproduce you are to give the extras away to others in need in your area until everyone has enough and there is surplus to sell on the open market).

This year my brother bowed out of Christmas altogether and is not participating. I guess he feels he is in worse shape than someone who lived through the Banda Ache tsunami or a person who lives about anywhere in Africa. Not. But the rest of us pitched in to make lives of some people we will never meet a bit better.

The best part of this is I did not have to step foot in a Mall, something I try to avoid at all costs. I did not buy plastic crap no one really wants or needs made by child labor in Cambodia, China, Sri Lanka or some other place that has zero laws to protect workers (and ironically, these are places that might have the family that gets the Buffalo we donated). Crap made from non renewable resources that will be landfilled eventually (the packaging will be landfilled right away). I did not buy crap that will only take money and resources AWAY from the local economy.

Unfortunately I have not finished my Christmas shopping. I still have to buy for my brother and sister in law and a nephew. I will shop for them at the Oxford Farmers' Market Uptown Winter Market next weekend and buy an assortment of handmade soaps and candles and who knows what else. I will be keeping the money and resources in the local economy as well as buying things made from natural materials with little to no packaging that will NOT be tossed in the landfill.

If you do not have a winter farmers' market if you area try out Local harvest. True, you might not be buying from a local person but you will be buying from small independent farmers and artisans and not from a huge multinational corporation who only cares about profits and not people. And you will be buying something that was not made by slave labor and that is comprised of natural, non toxic pure materials. it's a win win situation when we think before we buy and try to buy either local or at the very least from the small guys.

Remember there are only 21 shopping daze left and not one has to be spent in a mall or box store.

Yay local Food

I found this post surfing blogs via Blog Explosion called Do you Know Where Your Food Comes from posted on the blog Mando's World. Nice little treatise on why we should all be buying/growing/eating locally grown food. has links two two good food sourcing sites-Local Harvest and Food Routes

Buy and Eat Local This Thanksgiving

Give Thanks with the Right Food
November 2006
(from The Union of Concerned Scientists)

In the hubbub of planning and preparing a Thanksgiving feast for
friends and family, it can be easy to forget the environmental impact
of our food choices. Growing, harvesting, and transporting the
ingredients for a typical Thanksgiving meal consumes a significant
amount of water and energy and contributes to air and water pollution,
habitat degradation, and global warming.

Fortunately, you can make a holiday meal that is not only delicious but
also kinder to the environment and your family's health. Here's
how:

Look for food produced in your region. Food travels an average of 1,500
miles or more from the farm to the supermarket, consuming fossil fuels
and emitting air pollutants and heat-trapping carbon dioxide.
Regionally grown meat and produce not only travel a shorter distance to
your table and arrive fresher, but may also come from smaller farms
that often follow more environmentally friendly practices.

Choose organic. Organic standards prohibit the use of synthetic
fertilizers, toxic pesticides, and antibiotics (today's
industrialized animal production relies heavily on antibiotics to
accelerate growth and prevent diseases that stem from overcrowding).
Overuse of these substances generates air and water pollution and makes
it more difficult to treat human diseases and ward off agricultural
pests. If organic turkey is not available in your supermarket, choose
turkey that has been raised without antibiotics. Also look for organic
apples, celery, potatoes, and green beans because these holiday
favorites are among the fruits and vegetables that typically carry the
highest pesticide residues.

Support genetic diversity. Today's large-scale farms focus on only a
select few varieties of livestock and crops; for example, of the more
than 250 million turkeys sold in the United States each year, 99
percent are the Broad-Breasted White variety. And of the thousands of
potato varieties available, a small number now account for the majority
of commercial production. As our agriculture system becomes more
homogeneous, so does the risk of catastrophic losses if a disease
spreads rapidly throughout a plant or animal population upon which our
food supply depends. Choosing heirloom (or "heritage") varieties
such as American Bronze turkeys and fingerling potatoes helps support
biodiversity and ensures a reliable food supply for future generations.

Go meatless. Meat production can deplete environmental resources more
than other food production, so consider a meatless main dish.

At Boulder Belt we will be feasting on locally raised, pastured, organic turkey along with salad, sweet potatoes, apple and squash pie from our farm.

Check out Local Harvest for locating local food in your area

CSA Blogs

I was just cruising Technocrati and decided to see what was listed under CSA. There are a lot of french blogs using the acronym as well as a lot of blogs devoted to Confederate state of America but what I was looking for are the Community Supported agriculture blogs and there are quite a few out there and below are links to several I found surfing this morning.

Beets
Adjective Noun
Anna & David Love the Dog
Alice Q. Foodie Love the name
Peak Oil Blues
The Holistic Kitchen
JAM*intake
CSA Cycle Tour This is a blog done by a group in Michigan touring Michigan CSA's this summer. Facinating. Really shows the individuality of each CSA farm.
Buy Local...

If you got here because I linked to your site please put up a link on your blog to this site (than we all get more traffic and more people get to learn about the wonders of local food and CSA's).

If you want to join a CSA after reading so many good things about them click on the local harvest link on the side bar and you will get listings of CSA's near you.

If you thought this was about civil war stuff, sorry...

Let's Talk CSA

Lemon cucumbers, one of the many heirloom veggies we offer our CSA members

No I am not referring to the Confederate States of America when I talk about CSA. I am talking about Community Supported Agriculture. Which is, in a nutshell, an investment in a local farm. You join the CSA farm which is essentially investing in the farm. And like the stock market there is risk in that the CSA members share the risk of farming with the farmers. in a good year your dividend is a weekly "share" of the harvest. In a bad year your dividend will also be a weekly share of the harvest but the share will not be as big or diverse as one from a great growing season. The other thing a CSA member gets is a unique experience in that they get the opportunity to visit and support a real working farm. This is something about 90% of the US population cannot do because fewer than 2% of the population farms in the US and even fewer of those farmers grow on a small human scale. There are far more people in US prisons than there are growing our food.

Now the Boulder Belt Eco-Farm CSA is going into its' 10th season with zero members. This is nothing new we have gone into the month of May before getting members but this does make me wonder if I should keep the CSA going any longer. I realize I have changed a lot of things about the CSA this year. I have pretty much done away with the conivence by charging for delivery (okay we still have conivence but it will cost). But I have done this because I feel if a person joins a CSA they should have regular contact with "their" farm and take the opportunity to learn about how food is grown and to see their food growing. I have found over the years that delivery pretty much prevents this from happening.

Folks, we do two farmers' markets a week in Oxford. OH. If you need our food but do not want to visit the farm to pick up your CSA share (though you may want to pay the membership fee so you can get the newsletter I publish weekly and also have the privilege of being allowed to tour the farm, getting invites to exciting and fun on-farm events such as farm tours, potluck dinners and the occasional bonfire by the pond). We also will be opening up a farm market in Mid May that will have for sale what we have harvested that day plus things other local farmers have grown (or that's the plan).

I was working on my Local Harvest listing to day and found that Local Harvest lists 103 CSA in Ohio alone. 10 years ago when I started my CSA I believe there were around 20 CSA in the state. So I can see this is an idea that is gaining steam and yet in the Preble county area I cannot seems to generate much interest in the CSA idea. I guess I am still ahead of my time with this idea. And I will probably keep on doing a CSA even if it means only 2 or 3 people become members this season.

The CSA is my labor of love so I guess it is not important that the CSA actually make the farm money (of course that sort of kills our economically sustainability now doesn't it?)

Actual and Virtual Farmwork

because the weather is so unseasonbly mild I have been doing farmwork today, both actual and virtual. The morning was spent doing actual work. Picked up fluff from some sort of camping gear (a sleeping bag probably) that was becoming a part of the soil. It was a muddy and somewhat unpleasent job and it is only partly done as the fluff ran under a pile of lumber that is partly under a pile of dirt so some serious excavation must be done before that job can be completed. I also got rid of a cattle rub the dog, Nate, had chewed through a couple of months ago causing a lot of chemical soaked yarn stuff to spill out of the rub tube. Eugene put the remains in a small ditch and today I put it all in a trash bag and got it off the ground. I just hope I did not get a good dose of organophosphates from cleaning the stuff up.

We moved one of the cold frames up behind the store front under the apple trees on some nice black soil with the intentions of planting onion seed in the ground there for spring transplanting. Onions are one of the few seeds that will germinate in cold soils but even so we have to wait a week or so before planting in order to give the ground within the cold frame a chance to warm up a few degrees.

Before moving the cold frame I helped Eugene move a pile of lumber from behind the store front to in front of the barn. A lot of wood was left here and we are in the process of seeing what is useful, what is suited only for burning. I'd say after several months of steady work on this project it is about 2/3 done.

After the actual farm work was done I realized it is high time to start marketing the CSA for this year and that meant composing an email (which is about 3/4 of the way done) and because of the email I realised the CSA webpage needed updating to include a membership fee for joining the CSA, a listing of days of operation, when we will be starting (mid May)and the weeks we will be running (through November at least, maybe longer. Really depends on the weather).

So I spent several hours this afternoon modifying the CSA webpage's content and layout. I think I did an okay job but if you find mistakes or anything that is unclear let me know in the comments. Now I am off to update my Local Harvest CSA listing. Again take a look and tell me what you think.