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All the recent rain has given me time to catch up on a little reading.
 First some good news. We grow 6 of the 7 Fruits and Vegetables that Reverse the Signs of Aging. That alone would be a good reason to join the farm! To see for myself how well eating these vegetables reverses aging I dug up a couple pictures from last season – one of me at the beginning of the season and the other at the end of the season – and put them side-by-side to show the subtle changes. You might have to look closely to see the difference but I think it is still pretty remarkable.
How about more good news? Farming has dropped to 8th in the “Most Dangerous Jobs in the US” list! I feel safer already! You probably didn’t realize how much we were risking our lives every day to bring you the freshest, most delicious produce available. The last time I read a similar report farmers were 4th on the list. Moving down four spots is a huge relief! And since we can now reverse the signs of aging, survival has become even more desirable!
Enough of the good news, let’s get to news about the farm. Right now we are in a holding pattern. With all the rain we’ve had the last few days the ground is pretty saturated which prevents us from farming (but lessens our anxiety now that we realize how risky farming is). We have 1000’s of plants waiting patiently to be transplanted. Hopefully we can get a few dry days this week to get them all in. Then it can start raining again (just not so much all at once).
To date we have planted – in no particular order – snow peas, snap peas, carrots, parsnips, radishes, cilantro, potatoes, tomatoes, tomatillos, cherry tomatoes, grape tomatoes, onions, shallots, garlic, scallions, summer squash, zucchini, leeks, Brussels sprouts, Swiss chard, kale, summer cabbage, fall cabbage, red cabbage, lettuce, flowers, oregano, parsley, thyme, red beets, golden beets, bok choi, broccoli, kohlrabi, fennel and melons. Phew, I’m exhausted just writing all of this! For the most part they are looking reasonably well. The plants that were planted before the freeze followed by the 96 degrees have lost many of their leaves but they are growing new leaves. Hopefully they will recover well and produce acceptable veggies. The plants we planted just before the rain look great. A few potatoes are rising from the earth, not as many as I would hope by now but we only planted them a few weeks ago. We will keep our fingers crossed.
Recruiting is going quite well. We have the equivalent of nine FamilyShares left. If you know anyone who is thinking of joining tell them to get moving. And thank you to everyone who referred someone to us. We appreciate the support!
A reminder that payments for your shares are past due unless you made arrangements with us for a payment plan.
We are still taking orders for all the other shares (fruit, cheese, salmon, eggs, meat, coffee, flowers, winter, etc.) Please consider adding them to your account if you want to support other small, family farms/businesses.
We have free-range chicken eggs available on the farm!
 Ok, time to update my predictions for the season that I made in last week’s newsletter. As you may recall, I thought that some of the transplanted spring crops will be in shorter supply than usual. I need to update this prediction. Why? Because on Saturday and Sunday mornings we had below freezing temperatures here. Now normally this would not be a problem with the early crops; they are frost tolerant. But normally frosty temps are followed by cool to normal temps, NOT 96 DEGREE TEMPS! And as the capitalization implies, this is not a good thing.
Typically during the spring we have a few days in the 90s. This by itself will not significantly impact the production of cool season crops. But usually these 90 degree temps are preceded by normal or near normal temps, NOT BELOW FREEZING TEMPS! And as the capitalization implies, this also is not a good thing.
And to add to the capitalizations, early spring crops normally are not subjected to BLAST FURNACE STYLE WINDS with a relative humidity index IN THE NEGATIVE NUMBERS! The heat and wind are sucking all available moisture out of the ground and out of the plants! Their poor little roots can’t keep up. Now if they had been planted and growing for weeks this may not be a problem; it wouldn’t be great but it wouldn’t be horrible. Having these poor little recently transplanted plants subjected to this level of stress, to put it mildly, is a bit of a problem.
So my prediction that spring transplanted early season crops will be delayed and less abundant isn’t quite accurate. In fact, with the BELOW FREEZING TEMPERATURES FOLLOWED QUICKLY BY THE OVER 90 DEGREE TEMPERATURES and the BLAST FURNACE WINDS we will have even fewer early season spring planted crops. Plants just aren’t designed to be transplanted, then subjected to temperature fluctuations of 65+degrees in a little more than 48 hours! Weeds on the other hand don’t seem to be negatively affected. So some of our little transplants may meet an early demise. This might be a good time to mention the fine print about crop failures…
Anyway, we put the sprinklers on the crops starting with what we felt were most susceptible – lettuce – and moved them to other susceptible plants as the day/week progresses. It is looking more positive as the week goes on with the weather forecast to be closer to normal and significantly cooler. Hopefully this will save them. Only time will tell.
On a positive note it seems like it will be a good week to transplant warm season crops. However, with this random spring it is a little frightening to put something in the ground that will parish in freezing weather. Is it possible to have frost after we hit 96 degrees? Let’s hope not.
Other than all hell breaking loose here on the farm things are going quite well.
A couple announcements:
We have free-range eggs available at the farm. If you are interested please let me know. Price is $5/dozen. Supplies are limited.
We still have shares available. Tell all your neighbors, friends, relatives and co-workers.
We are still taking orders for all other shares (egg, cheese, fruit, salmon, etc.)
Payment for your shares is due unless you made other arrangements.
 Lettuce Transplants What has been happening on the farm this week? Transplanting, transplanting, transplanting. I calculated we transplanted 13,760 plants the last two and a half days. That’s the most we have ever transplanted in recorded history (mostly since we have never actually recorded the number before). This would have been a good year to have a transplanting machine other than Rebecca and Simon. But they held up well and didn’t breakdown the whole time. The combined length of all the rows we planted was 12,400 feet. That’s equivalent to over 41 football fields or 2.3 miles in length. All done on the ground on our knees. I think we all are thankful for today’s rain.
A few people have recently asked me, “Hey Chris, when do you think the season will be getting underway?” That is an easy question. I don’t know. But if I were to put on my speculation cap (it looks a lot like a thinking cap but far less precise) I figure around June 19th would be a good guess. That isn’t much later than last year and probably about the same as most years. “How can that be with this late spring? You’d think it would have to be a later start”. Sure, that’s what you’d think. But you’d be wrong. June 19th is a really good guess since, well, because June 12th is too early and June 26th would be too late. So it has to be June 19th.
“Ok, so let’s say it is June 19th. What will we be getting that week?” Another easy question. I don’t know. But putting on the conjecture cap I would surmise that it would be some type of spring vegetables. Most likely green onions and lettuce and bok choi and maybe radishes. But it is still over a month away so I may be wrong.
Another question I’ve been frequently asked is, “How is this late spring going to affect the season?” Such easy questions. I don’t know. But if I were to put on my pondering cap I figure it will look something like this:
Any fast growing spring crop will not be affected. These include lettuce, bok choi, beets and radishes. They will not be affected since they will be planted at the usual time for them to be planted.
Any cold season slow growing crop will be smaller than usual. These include leeks, Brussels sprouts, and celery. These will be smaller due to their later-than-usual transplant date; they won’t have as much time to grow.
Any warm season, slow growing crops will not be affected. These include tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, melons and winter squash. Unless the winter extends to the end of May these plants will be transplanted at their usual time and therefore shouldn’t be affected.
Any fast growing, warm season crops shouldn’t be affected with one possible exception. Cucumbers and summer squash are examples here. Summer squash may be delayed since we sometimes are able to plant it early in May even though it is frost sensitive. Since it is fast growing if we plant it too soon and it dies in a late frost we can easily start over with a new planting. This year we won’t be planting it until late May.
Direct seeded early crops will be delayed and some likely less abundant. These include snap peas, snow peas and carrots. Our April planting of peas did not happen. So there will be one less planting of peas and therefore fewer peas. The carrots were planted later than usual so they will be ready later than usual, but the quantity should not be affected.
Transplanted, early cool season crops will be delayed with some less abundant. These include broccoli, cauliflower, kale, cabbage and kohlrabi. We missed one planting of broccoli that usually goes in in April so there will be less broccoli overall, plus it will be delayed due to our starting with the second crop. Cauliflower, cabbage, and kohlrabi will just be delayed. The amount should be about the same (though we did cut back a bit on our cabbage planting this year).
Summer direct seeded crops should not be affected unless the winter continues into June. These include green beans and edamame.
Potatoes and garlic will be delayed but the quantity should not be impacted. The size of the garlic bulbs may be smaller than usual due to the shorter growing season.
Sweet corn will be delayed a bit since we aren’t sure yet when we it will be warm enough to get the transplants going.
So overall it won’t be a huge change from a usual year. Mainly the early shares will be smaller due to the missing early cool season crops (e.g. peas and broccoli). But the season will work out in the end.
A couple quick announcements:
The corn planting event reschedule for this weekend is postponed until we feel the weather will cooperate. Once the corn is seeded and growing in the greenhouse there is a small window of opportunity when we can transplant it out into the field — generally between 10 and 14 days from seeding. So we want to make sure the weather has warmed sufficiently to ensure we can transplant it when it is ready.
We still have a few more shares available. If you are planning on joining and haven’t yet please do so soon. I’ve sent out monthly reminders. If you haven’t received them check your spam folder. If you are not sure if you rejoined please contact me and I will let you know.
We are still taking orders for all our other shares (fruit, cheese, eggs, salmon, meat, coffee, winter, flower). These are great, tasty additions to the veggies and you’ll be helping out other small farms with your purchase.
Don’t forget about our Pinterest boards. As a reminder we and fellow members are pinning recipes to the different Fresh Earth Farms Pinterest boards for us to enjoy during the season. If you’d like to participate simply start following the farm’s Pinterest boards and we will invite you to pin to them. I appreciate all who have added recipes. I think this could be quite useful this summer!
Here is the usual reminder about the First Annual Fresh Earth Farms Fall Film Fest on September 7th. Mark your calendars and send in links to films you think others would enjoy. Requirements: must be family friendly/appropriate for children to view; no longer than six minutes.
Here is the usual reminder to send in your payment for your shares (unless you made payment arrangements).
With yesterday’s snowfall I felt it was appropriate to publish an Extra newsletter edition this week. What else is a farmer to do when you get this much snow in May?
Here is a picture of the table on the back deck. As you can see we received about eight inches of snow.
 8 inches of snow! Here is a picture of where we planted the potatoes on Monday. Maybe we shouldn’t have done that…
 Potatoes Here is the outside of the hoop house. Looks just like it did back in February!
 Hoop House Here is what it looks like from inside the hoop house looking out. The two birds inside the hoop house will have to enjoy the warmth a few more days.
 Inside of the hoop house This melon plant seems to be staying warm inside the hoop house. Having the two layers of frost protection certainly helps!
 Melon plant This tomato plant seems to be surviving. I’m sure it would prefer it to be a bit warmer.
 Tomato plant under protection Not the type of plowing I would have expected this time of year.
 Plowing Two days ago these benches were covered with onion plants waiting to be planted in the field. I’m glad we waited! We put them I the hoop house. There is no room in the cold frame or the greenhouse…
 Outside benches Here is how we are keeping it warm in the cold frame. The cold frame is where we start acclimating the transplants to the challenges of living outdoors. Adding a space heater with a gentle breeze blowing over it keeps the temp inside around 40 degrees compared to 32 outside.
 Cold frame heating system Let’s hope for some warmth and no more precipitation for a while. We’d like to get this party (re)started!
 First a quick apology. As many of you have noticed the weather hasn’t been its usual self these days. My bad. We’ve been experiencing some “glitches” in our weather control system (the WCS 10000) that seems to cause it to randomly reboot. And as you all know, when it reboots it resets to January 1st. On the bright side this has been a warm January! We’re not sure if it is a hardware or software problem but we hope to have it fixed shortly. In the meantime, please work around the weather the best you can. We should have it up and running within the next month or two – as long as we can get the replacement parts. Much like all the other equipment on the farm, our weather control system is older than I am.
What else have we been working on other than trying to fix the WCS 10000? Well, we’ve been moving plants around quite a bit. We’ve even put a few of them into the ground… in the hoop house. We put in melons and tomatoes with some lettuce between the plants. We came close to transplanting the onions into the field but decided with the cold January weather there’s the potential to lose all the onions (though they are pretty frost tolerant once they are hardened off); we felt it wasn’t worth the risk. The cold weather also prodded us into covering the hoop house plants with a double layer of floating row covers. This should keep them warm enough to survive until the weather control system is repaired.
What else have we planted? Well, the Potato Planting Party on Monday was a success though only the farm workers got to enjoy the festivities. I was surprised more people didn’t get a sudden sore throat that required them to stay home from work on such a beautiful day. We had the WCS settings tweaked perfectly that day! But it could also have been the short notice and your need to follow us either on Facebook or Twitter to get the message. Hopefully next year will be more conducive to Spring member events.
Beside potatoes we also planted snap peas, snow peas, carrots and parsnips in the ground. Since we direct seed them they should be fine as long as we get the WCS 10000 fixed quickly to prevent a long, cold wet streak; this could cause the seeds to rot. That is pretty much as far as we got in planting in the field this year.
I’m not sure when we will do the corn greenhouse seeding. It will not be this weekend though that is for sure. Unlike a lot of other plants, corn transplants have a small window of opportunity to be successfully transplanted. Too soon and they are too small to hold the soil around their roots. Too late and they get stunted and don’t grow well. Usually – though it depends on the variety – we transplant the corn 10-14 days after they are seeded in the greenhouse. Until we have a confirmed repair plan for the WCS 10000 we’ll have to put this off. I’m starting to think this piece of equipment is more important to the farm than the tractor!
Announcements time!
Herbs should be ready in about two weeks (say the week of May 13th). Stay tuned.
Payments are due unless you made other arrangements. Please send in your payment at your earliest convenience.
Keep sending in films and links to films for our Fresh Earth Farms First Annual Fall Film Fest. We have four films so far. It could either be a short film fest or we’ll have to watch them over and over again.
We are still taking orders for all our shares: Veggie, Fruit, Meat, Cheese, Salmon, Egg, Flower (Mother’s Day is coming up!), Winter, Coffee. Prices are on our order form. To add any of these items just send me an email; no need to fill out an order form. Shoreview is sold out, unless we use different boxes that take up less vehicle room. Other days/locations have room but could fill fast. If you plan to rejoin and haven’t yet please do so quickly. If you have friends/neighbors, etc. who mentioned an interest send them our way soon. It looks like we will sell out this year (though keep selling until we do).
We like referrals. In fact we like them so much we credit your account $25 for every new member referred to us by you. Don’t be shy. Please spread the word!
Be sure to check out/use/etc. all our social media sites — or not. Here is the list:
www.FreshEarthFarms.com
www.facebook.com/FreshEarthFarms
www.twitter.com/FreshEarthFarms
www.YouTube.com/FreshEarthFarms
www.Pinterest.com/FreshEarthFarms
FreshEarthFarms.tumblr.com
As always do not hesitate to contact me with questions, comments, jokes, brain teasers, etc. In the meantime, I’ll be busy installing the new part on the WCS 10000.
 I found out that this week is National Volunteering Week and US Veg Week. Who’d like to volunteer to come out and shovel the snow off our vegetable fields?
The other day I was looking for someone to deliver our drop site boxes to River Market in Stillwater. As I was trying to figure out who would be a potential deliver person I decided it would work best if I could somehow ”see” where all our members live. “Hmm, why not use Google maps?” I thought. But entering in all that data seemed tedious. So of course I decided to use The Google to find a free way to get this to work and low and behold I found it. In fact there are a couple of services that do this. The one I used, BatchGeo worked well but didn’t have all the features I wanted at the price I wanted, which of course is “Free”. But it is able to load in addresses and map them for me.
What I couldn’t figure out was how to create the map so I could display it without exposing the addresses. Why did I want this? Mainly because as I looked over the map I realized there were many situations where several members live very close to one another. In fact there were a few instances where they look to live across the street from each other. “Did these members realize their neighbor is also a member of the farm?” I wondered, “Would they be interested in knowing this?” “Would it be fun or intrusive to know such intimate details of your neighbor’s eating habits?” Putting myself in this situation I would find it interesting to know that I have neighbors who share my interest in eating locally grown produce and even more so knowing that they are a member of the same farm as I am. I think that would be fun. Buy maybe that is just me and that our members are more private than I am. So I don’t want to expose everyone’s address to everyone else. That seems creepy to me. But I would certainly be willing to share contact information between families if both families agree to find out. Maybe they know each other. Maybe they are typical Minnesotans and don’t want to be intrusive or get to know their neighbors. But I still thought it would be interesting to show people that they are not alone. So I did a screen capture of a Google map. It doesn’t allow good zooming but you can at least see you are not alone. If by looking at this map you feel you want to get to know your neighbors feel free to contact me and I can check with the other person to see if he/she has a similar interest. Maybe the two of you can carpool, or swap pick-ups, or make life less chaotic by sharing the load. Just a thought.
What else is going on at the farm? We are still planting in the greenhouse. It is now overfull and we are putting flats in the aisles. This should work fine as long as we are able to get some of the plants out of the greenhouse before these aisle-flats sprout and require more sunlight.
I installed the bees into their new hives this past Sunday. Not the best bee installation experience. Lots of rain. A few angry bees. And an installer who wasn’t patient enough to remember to do everything right. The result? The bees are in their new home except for the two that stung us. This is the first time I ever got stung installing bees.
We are hopefully going to plant in the hoop house this Friday. We were planning to get in there earlier but it has been quite cold at night and I didn’t see any benefit in risking all our hoop house tomatoes and melons. The forecast mentions a warm-up by the end of this week. Will we finally move into spring?
Speaking of spring and volunteering: once the snow melts, the ground warms up and dries out we will need a lot of help getting 3-4 weeks of transplants into the ground. If you have any interest in coming out and putting your hands in the dirt please contact me. We generally work Mondays through Fridays when it isn’t raining (or snowing) and the ground is dry enough to plant. No need to commit now but if you get a hankering for a little mental health time off of work please come out and soak up the fresh air and sunshine! Contact me first to ensure we are working that day.
Speaking of volunteering, as we all know the potato planting and corn planting events have been postponed. I still don’t know when we will have these events.
Payments are due unless you made other arrangements. Please send in your payment at your earliest convenience.
Keep sending in films and links to films for our Fresh Earth Farms First Annual Fall Film Fest. We have four films so far. It could either be a short film fest or we’ll have to watch them over and over again.
We are still taking orders for all our shares: Veggie, Fruit, Meat, Cheese, Salmon, Egg, Flower (Mother’s Day is coming up!), Winter, Coffee. Prices are on our order form. To add any of these items just send me an email; no need to fill out an order form. We have one spot left for Shoreview. Other days/locations have room but could fill fast. If you plan to rejoin and haven’t yet please do so quickly. If you have friends/neighbors, etc. who mentioned an interest send them our way soon. It looks like we will sell out this year (though keep selling until we do).
Be sure to check out/use/etc. all our social media sites — or not. Here is the list:
www.FreshEarthFarms.com
www.facebook.com/FreshEarthFarms
www.twitter.com/FreshEarthFarms
www.YouTube.com/FreshEarthFarms
www.Pinterest.com/FreshEarthFarms
FreshEarthFarms.tumblr.com
As always do not hesitate to contact me with questions, comments, jokes, brain teasers, etc.
 The unfortunate thing about the internet is that anyone can say anything and someone somewhere will believe him/her. Nowhere is this more prominent than in the discussions revolving around organic agriculture. A lot of people – and more importantly corporations – have a lot of skin in the organic ag game. This creates a lot of incentive to obfuscate the truth about what organic is all about. With platforms like Facebook and blogs/articles that allow comments, the opportunities have increased exponentially. Winter provides me a lot of time to get frustrated about what people are saying and believing when it comes to food and the raising of crops. I can’t count the number of times I’ve read completely false information presented as fact. And unfortunately either we don’t have the time or we don’t care to find out whether what is being said is true or not. We tend to form our beliefs and move on with our ever increasingly busy lives – ooh, did you here Kim Kardashian is scared about her pregnancy? I can only think of the George W. Bush quote when asked what newspapers he read: “I don’t read newspapers. I don’t want the facts to influence my opinions.” Maybe it wasn’t George, but you get the point.
Item number one on the list of obfuscations is the whole Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) thing. There are a whole range of interesting perspectives on GMOs. The one I find most interesting is the comment that goes something like this: “There is nothing wrong with GMOs. Humans have been manipulating the genetics of plants since the inception of agriculture thousands of years ago. We have saved the best seeds from this year’s harvest to plant next year thus influencing the evolution of the plants. We have planted and eaten hybrid vegetables for over 100 years. All genetic engineering does is increase the speed of developing new hybrids.” Wow. Talk about sticking your head in the sand (or somewhere else perhaps?) There is a HUGE difference between hybrids and GMOs. Hybrids are basically plants where humans (or bees, or other bugs) have taken the pollen of one plant and pollinized the flower of another plant of the same type creating a new variety of that plant. For example, you could take the pollen from a Black Krim tomato and pollinate a Hungarian Heart tomato and perhaps create a Black Heart tomato. There is no guarantee that this is what you will get but you could certainly try.
How is this different from Genetic Engineering (GE – the technology that creates GMOs)? With GE humans take the DNA from one species – say a flounder – and insert it into the DNA of a completely different species – say a tomato – thus creating something that could never occur naturally. Flounders do not find tomatoes attractive so they just wouldn’t ever mate with one – even in a darkened room with lightly scented candles and Barry White playing on Pandora! So humans are creating new life forms that never existed before. They are creating new life forms that could not ever exist if not for human beings. Humans are playing God. Or for you non-believers, humans are creating a whole new evolutionary path that would not otherwise occur. I’m not going to get into the discussion of whether this is good or bad – I certainly have my opinions and those could take up a couple more pages – I just want to point out that this argument people are using in favor of GMOs is ridiculous.
 My favorite comment on organic food goes something like this: “The whole organic movement is all hype. It is a marketing tool for companies to charge you more for what is the same thing as regular food. All food is organic. All food is natural. Food comes from the earth. It is made up of carbon molecules. Look up the word organic in the dictionary. It says ‘Of, relating to, or denoting compounds containing carbon’. Food contains carbon. All food is therefore organic.” The interesting part of this argument is that it is correct. Organic is a marketing tool. The USDA makes this very clear. The USDA Organic label is a marketing program administered by the USDA for the benefit of farms and food producers who adhere to certain requirements in the way they grow and produce their food. It does not dictate how to grow, raise or produce food. It only limits what can be used in the production of food and in a few cases insists on certain procedures or requirements. As an example let’s look at a small part of what it takes to raise an organic chicken. Most people believe a chicken raised organically would be running around free, enjoying the outdoors, eating bugs and grass and getting lots of sunshine. The organic standards do say organically raised chickens must have access to the great outdoors. However access to the great outdoors can be one small door at the end of a 20,000 square foot building – housing 20,000 chickens – that opens up to a four foot by four foot “pasture”. This is hardly what the intention – nor the expectation – on how organic chickens are raised. So yes, in some ways organic is just like regular food but at a higher cost. (Maybe this is a good reason to buy your chickens from a farmer that actually raises chickens the way you feel they should be raised).
The second part of the argument that is also correct is that all food is “organic”. Yes it all contains carbon atoms. The error in this argument is that the commenter is using the chemical definition of organic, not the USDA definition of organic. Since I am quoting presidents this would be a good time to take aim at Bill Clinton, “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is”. Or maybe a more appropriate quote would be, “It depends on how you define ‘alone’…” By choosing the chemist’s definition or organic we can say all food is organic. But most people wouldn’t use the chemist’s definition when talking about food. But if we pick and choose what definition we use we can make whatever argument we want, including all food is organic.
 First sweet corn The third comment I frequently see goes something like this: “I do not want to eat GMOs. The only way to avoid eating GMOs is to buy organic. GMOs are in everything we eat. So eat only organic fruits and vegetables.” Ok, what is wrong here? First of all again there is some truth to it. Somewhere around 90% of the soybeans and 70% of the “field” corn grown in the US is genetically engineered. Almost all non-organic manufactured/processed food contains corn and/or soybeans (e.g. high fructose corn syrup partially hydrogenated soybean oil). Therefore almost all processed foods contain GMOs. But that doesn’t mean all foods. Let’s look at vegetables. Though the following argument will be changing over the next few years this is valid as of the writing of this article. There are very few GMO varieties of vegetables on the market. It has only been a year or two since GE sweet corn became widely available. There was work on and the release of a GE tomato in the 1990s that was supposed to store longer than standard tomatoes. It failed in the marketplace due to – despite the name Flavr Savr – its lack of taste. There are a few other GE veggies out there like zucchinis and potatoes but they are not very common and haven’t been widely accepted by farmers. I suspect the farmers haven’t found them beneficial enough for the increase in cost. So to say I will only buy organic veggies because I want to avoid GMOs is not a very good argument. There are certainly many other reasons to buy organic but to avoid GMOs is currently not one of them – unless you are talking about sweet corn.
However, I predict this is about to change – and change dramatically. Over the last ten years or more there has been a huge consolidation in the seed vendor marketplace. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 50+% of the seed business is controlled by three companies. Monsanto has been acquiring vegetable seed companies and with their acquisition of Seminis a few years age they’ve catapulted themselves into one of the largest vegetable seed companies in the world. Why would they do this? Well, they feel that they have saturated the commodity marketplace with their GE corn, soybeans, etc. and now want to move into the vegetable side of the food market. It is only a matter of time before they start testing and releasing GE vegetable seeds. This is the time we need to be more vigilant in what seeds we purchase. By selecting the right varieties from the right suppliers we can reduce the risk of accidentally purchasing GE vegetable seeds. One of the most helpful things Monsanto does is require farmers to sign agreements to purchase and plant their seeds. This makes it much easier to avoid them; if I have to sign something to purchase the seeds I won’t purchase them. Pretty simple really. But that unfortunately doesn’t stop Monsanto and other chemical companies from manipulating, exploiting and dominating the marketplace. The number of varieties of seeds available has dropped in lockstep with the consolidation of seed companies. These large companies are quickly reducing their product line eliminating seed varieties we have loved in the past. I wouldn’t be surprised if eventually most of the non-GMO varieties are eliminated – much like what has occurred in the commodity seed business – as the number of GMO varieties increase. I think this is something we all need to concern ourselves with. Do we want chemical companies dictating what we use to nourish our bodies? Seems like a scary world to me.
Hopefully we can all take our nose out of the latest People magazine to increase our knowledge of what is fact, what is fiction and maybe even more importantly, what is still to be determined. Making alarmist comments does not help the cause. Making false statements helps even less. Being educated and having cogent arguments will only make the organic case more effective.
 Some more important announcements.
Payment Due
Final payment for vegetable shares was due at the end of March. If you haven’t made arrangements for a payment plan and haven’t sent in your final payment please do so at your earliest convenience.
2013 Shares
We are still taking orders for all our shares. Please spread the word! If you’d like to add fruit, cheese, meat, coffee, salmon, winter or herbs to your order you can just send me an email with what you want and I will put it on your account. Follow-up with payment when you can but no later than the end of May.
EggShare
We found a supplier for EggShare. And we didn’t have to look very far. Castle Rock Organic Farms, the supplier of our CheeseShare also sells eggs. Who knew? And why didn’t they tell me? Well, now I know and now you know and now you can start ordering EggShare.
Castle Rock raises their hens on pasture. They free-range up to a quarter mile from their home eating grass, bugs and anything else they can find. They are also fed organic feed and organic hay in the winter. They are not certified organic but are raised to organic standards (actually beyond organic since they get to run around outside a whole bunch).
Since Castle Rock delivers every other week we are selling an every other week EggShare. Of course it you want a dozen eggs every week you can always buy two EggShares. The price is $45 for nine weeks of a dozen eggs/week. We will deliver them with your veggie shares for our drop site members.
I will put this information on our web site and the order form shortly but no need for you to print more paper. If you want EggShare just send me an email with the quantity and follow it up with payment. Contact me if you have any questions.
Pinterest Recipe Boards
The farm Pinterest page is off to a good start. Our SOP (standard operating procedure) is if you “follow” us we will invite you to post on all of the recipe boards. Feel free to ignore the invite if you want to just lurk or even better, accept the invite and share some of your favorite recipes with other farm members. If there are other recipe categories/boards you’d like to suggest please send a request my way and I will add them. And if anyone knows how to make this all much easier (I have to invite each person to each board individually 12 people, nine boards = 108 individual invites so far – Yuck!) please let me know.
First Annual Fresh Earth Farms Fall Film Fest
Just a reminder to send in your videos or links to videos you’ve found on the internet. No need to wait until the last minute. So far we have two submissions – both are videos found on the net. Don’t be shy. The only criteria are: 1 – Must be suitable for viewing by children, 2 – Must not be longer than six minutes in duration. It would be nice to have a lot of the videos – at least those found on the net – sent in before things get overly busy here at the farm. That way we can start organizing them now.
Spring Potato Planting Event
We are still planning on an April 20th potato planting and pot luck event. Hopefully the snow will be gone by then. This is a great opportunity to see the farm, do a little work and get a little dirty, followed by delightful conversation and delicious food. Many hands make light work. And it is a great event for the kids – little hands can easily grasp potatoes. Please RSVP with the number of people who will be attending.
What is happening on the farm?
For the most part we are just sitting around watching the snow slowly melt. This seems to fill an enormous amount of time these days. We are also ordering more stuff, planting more seeds in the greenhouse and planning activities and events. I purchased a few more herbs this season; these are herbs that are grown from cuttings or divisions. The plan is to grow them larger and over-winter them so we can offer plants next season. Depending on how quickly they grow we could include some of them in the shares this season. Only time will tell. We ordered French tarragon, spearmint, peppermint, lemon thyme and lemongrass. All wonderful and flavorful!
Speaking of ordering, our three new bee hives will be arriving April 13th. Hopefully we can get them off to a great start so we can have honey this fall. I will try to take pictures or video of the installation of the bees. And of course if anything funny should happen during the installation of the bees, and it is caught on film (film?), you can be sure it will be one of the films shown at this year’s film fest.
That is all for now. Send in your comments, questions, jokes, films, etc.
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Growing your Food. Growing your Mind! Insights from a fearless farmer.
Based on Actual Events This blog is an acurate betrayal of life on our Community Supported Agriculture farm. It includes events, happenings, upcoming produce, witty commentary, snazzy pictures, wonderful aromas (once I get the smell widget working) and anything else we deem worthy of posting.
Feel free to comment and we will feel free to post or not post your comment. So make it interesting!
Here are the most recent posts
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First some good news. We grow 6 of the 7 Fruits and Vegetables that Reverse the Signs of Aging. That alone would be a good reason to join the farm! To see for myself how well eating these vegetables reverses aging I dug up a couple pictures from last season – one of me at the beginning of the season and the other at the end of the season – and put them side-by-side to show the subtle changes. You might have to look closely to see the difference but I think it is still pretty remarkable.
