Jack’s Words of Wisdom
Greetings CSA Members!
We are just past the halfway point on deliveries for the 2024 summer CSA program. Karin and I just reviewed your survey responses from last week’s survey- thanks so much for taking the time to answer, all of you!! I thought it would be appropriate for me to “survey myself” in similar fashion about the past 10 weeks, and share my thoughts with you. First off, Karin and I hear you loud and clear about some of the issues you are reporting with the CSAware user interface and allocation algorithm. Please understand that we are working on patches and workarounds as best we can. I am a farmer, not an IT guy, so I (we!) have to rely on CSAware people to make these fixes. And please take my word for it: Karin and I are pressuring these folks as much as we possibly can. Meanwhile, thanks for your patience!
As I reflect on the 2024 growing season to date, I can honestly say that its been one of the 3-4 most difficult in my 28 years growing vegetables at 44N latitude. The spring/early summer rains were second only to the spring of 2013 in severity. And spring rains hurt crop production here not just early season, but with ripple effects we feel right up to the present. Add to spring rain the uncommonly cool nights we’ve had consistently in August (great sleeping weather, but terrible for ripening tomatoes, melons and bell peppers, the glorious fruits of high summer), and you see why the crop mix in the first 10 CSA boxes this year has been less impressive than in average years, to say the least.
In my estimation, there have been real successes this early summer, and in crops that we have really focused on in response to past CSA surveys.
Greater availability and quality of green beans.
Consistent sweet corn several weeks in a row.
There is good news still in the field, in the pipeline for late August and September, before frosts cut off the summer fruits for good. We have a lot of wonderful red peppers ripening soon. A series of new heirloom and hybrid tomato varieties coming on in the second planting; this weekend’s heat should be ripening muskmelons. The glorious fruits of summer are later than usual (see rain and cool nights…). But they are still coming on strong!!
One suggestion that we heard in surveys, I will address directly. This is the idea that we might make (1000) 1 pound bags of toms available in a given week, rather than (500) 2# bags, to “spread the yield” more efficiently.
Very fair suggestion! In my experience, however (we’ve tried just this, several
times in years past), even more members are unhappy with small deliveries (“what are we supposed to do with 1/8 cup basil?”), than with intermittent, standard size deliveries. One idea I’ve had, and are floating to CSAware: couldn’t AI be used to better allocate things like heirloom tomatoes in a cool wet year, by making sure that x# of members do not receive toms 2 weeks out of 3, when a small number of members receive 0. We will see how this plays out…
In a larger sense, however, the problem of cool, wet conditions in the field is virtually unsolvable, except by moving tomato production to the Sacramento Valley of CA (happened 5 generations ago already!). At Featherstone Farm we do grow way, way more tomatoes than we need to for CSA shares, because in a normal year we are supplying not just CSA boxes, but also food Co-ops and Whole Foods Stores throughout the region. [Think of last year, when it was super dry, we offered more toms than any customer could shake a stick at!!].
Please understand: in a low/late production year like this one, we are sending the vast majority of our warm season fruits to you in CSA boxes; our store customers will simply have to wait!!
Gratefully-
Jack