This Is How My Share Is Filled!

Greetings Members,

Welcome to the 2024 CSA program! Over the past four months, we’ve been hard at work seeding, planting, and cultivating vegetables for your shares. Now, we’re finally seeing the fruits of our labor. The CSA program is the backbone of our operation, and without your support, we wouldn’t be able to sustain this early, labor-intensive work. So, thank you!

As we move into summer, we’re gearing up to ship a lot of produce to you and our wholesale accounts. This involves a significant process on the farm known as "crop allocation."

Crop allocation is the process of determining exactly how much product will be coming out of the field over the next few weeks. For instance, we need to calculate how many pounds of broccoli will be harvested from the one-acre field in 10 days, how many boxes of chard will be available for the weekend, and how many bags of green beans will be ready for CSA boxes two weeks from now. Once I assess all the different fields and crops, I compile availability for both CSA and wholesale accounts, projecting from a few days to a few weeks out.

For your CSA shares, this means entering the quantities—whether bunches, pounds, or units—into CSAware to be divided among our 1,100 members. Sometimes there’s an abundance, like this week’s green kale, and other times there’s limited supply, like this week’s 100 units of basil. The algorithm in the program allocates products based on your pre-set preferences.

At Featherstone, we are focusing on ensuring high-preference items like green beans, sweet corn, and watermelon are more available, despite the challenges of growing them in our Midwestern climate. This year has been especially tough with frequent rain, making these high-demand crops even more valuable due to the intensive labor required.

As I wrap up this message, three crews are bustling through the break room for lunch and their mid-day break. We welcomed 19 more visa workers on Sunday, infusing new energy into the farm that is palpable in the air! Thank you for joining us this year. We’re excited about the season ahead and ready to have a great year.

Gratefully,

Nathan