Dear Friends, Neighbors, and CSA Members
The wind certainly worked up an appetite for our final Friday harvest, whipping the row covers about and almost carrying away a few harvest boxes. Carmine came by to help out just in time for the rain to start. With Jon and my rain gear way down the field in the greenhouse, we hunkered down in the van for a few moments respite, and successfully waited out the shower. Somehow we both still managed to get soaked today! Now, though, I write you from the warmth of dry clothing in our apartment, looking out at the still breezy yet completely brilliant, bright, and blue sky.

Last week was a busy, frost-filled daily harvest, bringing in the last of our sweet peppers, our storage capacity of hakurei salad turnips, beets, and most of the different winter radishes. The eggplants, cherry tomatoes, flowers, and okra bit some serious dust, but such is to be expected (even looked forward to!) as we move quickly through fall towards winter. We also got some of the hardy yet still somewhat delicate greens covered with row cover, to protect those precious leaf tips from frost burn for a while yet. Why, you may ask, do we go to all this trouble just as the regular season CSA is ending?

Well, for one thing, if you haven’t heard yet – we are offering a bonus share to folks who sign up for next year now. Poughkeepsie, this means sign up by Sunday for this Tuesday’s bonus delivery. Brooklyn, you’ve got a few extra days – sign up by Thursday for the next Saturday. In fact, we’re still delivering some restaurant orders to Greenpoint, so signing up by any of the next three Thursdays would guarantee you a share for that following Saturday! Offer valid for November only! Hudson and on-farm members, sorry not to have had any literature or firm decisions by your last pick-up this week, but talk (or email) with us – you’re so close by, any time by the end of November would work for us (deposit in exchange for a bonus share).

If the $100 deposit feels a bit weighty to you and your budget at the moment, talk with us! We are flexible folks, even though neither one of us reaches our toes too easily at the moment.

Also, if next year is a bit too far away at the moment for you to predict your whereabouts and vegetable eating habits, but you know you’ll be craving more carrots by the end of next week, take a look at our bulk order offers below. Email lineagefarm@riseup.net with your orders at least 48 hours before the next time we’ll see you, and we’ll happily pack up a sack for you.

The baby is now firmly rooted with one foot in my ribs (or so it seems), growing quickly as my ever expanding belly attests. With somewhere in the ballpark of 6 to 10 weeks to go, we’re busy cleaning up, arranging, and setting up our new household-to-be. Jon has spackled many cracks in the soon to be freshly painted bedroom and nursery walls, and I keep busy dreaming up new projects that just have to be done before mid-December. Thank you everyone for your well-wishes, funny and heartwarming baby and birthing stories, bed-time books and newborn swaddling blankets. This is bound to be one happy new community member, eager to meet you all as next season rolls around.

Your Farmers,Jen and Jon

What is a CSA?
What is a CSA? When your friends or neighbors, your visiting parents or grown children ask where it is that you go each week, what it is that you are doing, how it is that you return with a bag full of fresh vegetables without setting foot in a store – what is your answer? Do you relegate it to the simple form of outward appearances – a trade of up-front money that gets you so many vegetables each week? Or do you enter in depth to the ways in which a CSA carries the potential to alter the market, re-configure the economy, and birth new, virtuous, and loving forms of community?

When approaching those unfamiliar with Community Supported Agriculture, the simple, practical description of a CSA’s weekly vegetable shares can be a helpful starting point. In exchange for providing our farm with funding early in the spring in the form of membership fees, we (your farmers) deliver a variety of vegetables to your neighborhood each week for 22 weeks, from early June to the beginning of November.

In further conversation, and in furthering your own understanding of just what you’ve gotten yourselves in to, you may find the following to be quite thought-provoking.

Community Supported Agriculture is a concept describing a Community Based Organization including Producers (Farmers) and Consumers (that would be You, Current and Future Members). The Consumers agree to provide up front support early in the season to help the farm secure funds for the upcoming season when many of the larger annual purchases are taking place. The Farm provides, to the best of their abilities, a selection of high quality vegetables throughout the growing season – as well as a space for the community to come together around shared values and beautiful food. The interaction and cooperation inherent in a CSA’s arrangement create certain possibilities:

Location: Mellenville

Categories
CSA Farms | Community Supported Agriculture