Those of you who have been reading these newsletters for awhile will have followed our contemplations over the past year or two regarding whether to retire the seasonal vegetable CSA. Having considered doing so last year, we instead instituted a significant make-over for 2021, basically halving the yearly share by making it every-other-week and letting farm members pack their own bags. This reduced the amount of work on our end, and seemed a workable template for a more sustainable way to manage the CSA, much as we’d intended. But it also provided scintillating glimpses, during the off-weeks, of what life on the farm might be like once the CSA was retired altogether.
These inadvertent tastes of opium have had their effect. I wish I could say I was not susceptible to the temptations of sloth, as I might have contended in my 30s or 40s, but the wages of age are hard to deny. For now, the possibility of laying in the hammock under the plum tree and falling asleep (first: to want to lay in the hammock), or to go on a summer vacation, or actually experience a summer weekend in Madison – these are enticements that have now got my work-ethic by the neck. And while I still find it difficult to sit still for more than ten minutes, part of what motivates me to drop CSA now is precisely that I want to leave some working capacity in my joints and tendons for what I’m hoping might be an active old-age (unless it already is).
The vegetable patch at the farm is likely to shrink only modestly next year, in any case. We will still be feeding ourselves and producing enough for our regular canning-runs so we can keep our value-added sales going. We may do Fall storage shares. The orchard may also increase its production if we are able to provide it more assiduous attention than we’ve been able to in recent seasons.
Our October 10 Storage CSA Share. Photo by Erin Schneider
So, the question in front of us is how to keep the community of eaters who have supported the farm over all these years involved in its continuance under this slightly altered regime. The weekly or bi-weekly interactions will stop but we will still be needing a customer base and are looking forward to new ways of engaging with folks who want to keep supporting hand-agriculture.
Stay tuned.
The What by Numbers
However much we produce at the farm, it’s never enough for our tastes. We fed the soil with 23 yards of compost this past year and got a good response,
and at the same time halved the size of our yearly share by making it every-other-week. So, we were curious if the amount we delivered was at least half or more compared to what we delivered in the past. Here’s what we found.
The 10 shares of the 2021 CSA totaled about 73 lbs, or roughly half of our 20 week total in some of the better years of the past decade, but far better by comparison to last year’s piddling 103 lbs, or 2017’s 107 lbs, and modestly better than the 136 to 138 lbs delivered in 2016, 2018 and 2019. The roughly 12,400 calories in this year’s share compares favorably with the 24,800 calories delivered in 2015’s 163 lb share, perhaps due to good results in calorie-dense crops like potatoes, onions and squash. So, I suppose the past year was a success story, in some ways.
Rob wrapping the peppers in row cover before a frost. After 29 years, our Vegetable CSA is a wrap. Photo by Erin Schneider