What a difference a day makes. We had 2.65 inches of rain at the farm Sunday evening and both plants and farmers could be heard breathing out a long sigh of relief. The past month has been so unusually dry and until recently quite cold, that our crops in the field have been a bit stressed and not growing on schedule. That said we have a stellar lineup of produce for your first share. For the first time we are offering storage carrots in our starting share. We harvested this crop last fall for Wild Oats Cafe in Brunswick, who we supply with carrots year round (morning glory muffins are my favorite). It was a bumper crop and we had more than they could use this winter and spring so we are sharing them with all of you. They are remarkably sweet and are just a teaser for the fresh crop that we hope to start harvesting in July.
Pick-ups begin this week on Tuesday or Friday between 2-7:00 p.m. As always we will be in the CSA barn to check you in, keep the produce fresh and chit chat about food and farming.
In the next couple weeks look for zucchini, scallions, garlic scapes and everyone’s favorite…strawberries. This is the first time since 2007 that we have had strawberries in the upic field. After almost 10 years we are hoping that the Strawberry root maggot has moved on and we are again safe to have to pick this crop when you come to the farm. Keep an eye out in the newsletter for more info on what’s to come both in the share and in Upic.
Look to the right sidebar on our website for a recipe listing by ingredient. Here you will find a few recipes to get you acquainted with the produce in your share and kickstart your creative cooking process. Look for a sauce to go with this week’s baby bok choi, irresistible kale chips, chard quesadillas and more. Send us your favorite ways to enjoy our produce and we will add them to the archive.
We will have great produce for you next week. The greens look astounding and everything is healthy and happy. Its amazing what a few days of warmth will do. The full crew is cranking along here working towards our first harvest.
There are still spaces available in Farm Camp. We have 3 sessions running in June and July for ages 5-10. Feed thew pigs, harvest carrots and everything in between! More info can be found here.
Still Time to Add Local Products To Your Vegetable Share….
Saturday June 4 and Sunday June 5 at 3pm we will have new member orientation here at the farm. This is not a required event but if you are a new member and are available, its a chance to meet the farmers, see where pick-up will be, see our Upic field, tour the greenhouse, and visit the pigs. If you can’t attend, no worries, we will be on hand at each pick-up to show the the ropes!
We are working out the logistics of the delivered share this week. Maura will be in touch with details of delivery times and other logistics shortly.
Spring is into summer this year like the flick of a switch. We had 82 here Monday, five days ago was our last frost and five weeks ago it was snowing. All of this makes for some exciting times to bank on predictable growing rates for plants. That said things look great, just moving a bit slow. Many of the fields are still covered in row cover fabric for cold protection. These sheet give us 5 degrees extra at night and fifteen when the sun is shining.
First Pick-up Tuesday June 7 or Friday June 10, 2-7pm here at the farm.
More info next week about what to expect in our first our first share of 2016!
Add great local products to your vegetable share….
Saturday June 4 and Sunday June 5 at 3pm we will have new member orientation here at the farm. This is not a required event but if you are a new member and are available, its a chance to meet the farmers, see where pick-up will be, tour the greenhouse, and visit the pigs. If you can’t attend, no worries, we will be on hand at each pick-up to show the the ropes!
What a wild ride so far this spring. If I could distill all of my big and small decisions from a farm season more and more I would find all I think about is weather. Its always been the great unknowable for any farmer but for the past few seasons, especially in the spring, mother nature has gone manic. So much of running a farm relies on general predictability. It takes a lettuce seed 5-7 days to germinate and another 3-4 weeks in the greenhouse before we can plant it out and another 45-50 days in the field before we can harvest it as a full head. If the lettuce stopped following these dates or stopped and started growing erratically we would have a very hard time keeping salad greens in your share week after week.
Spring has always been the most erratic season. The sun gets higher and the days get longer, slowly pushing the cold out of the ground and allowing the air above to stay warm even when the sun goes down. This process of warming the greatest insulator (the soil) is a battle and all of that warm and cold energy mixes into volatile expression of wind and air pressure, pulling in weather from Canada one day and Alabama the next. Our snowstorm this past week is a perfect example. The crew was in t-shirts on Monday and we all huddled in the greenhouse on Tuesday watching the snow pile on in disbelief.
Luckily we have a really great crew this year. Kristin and Corrine have returned and with their experience here are hitting the ground running. We have two top-notch apprentices, Hannah and Virginia, and hourly staff including Anne who has been with us for a several weeks already and Emma due to start next week. With a team like this we can do anything!
The biggest change for us in the past six months has been the absence of our sheep. Selling the flock has given us more time for family and a quieter winter. But we miss them. The barns are quiet (parked tractors do not bleat and require no daily care). We also miss seeing our friend and partner in the sheep business Tom Settlemire. We moved Tom’s flock to this farm back in 2005 and began ten years together raising healthy, happy lambs on the farm’s pastures. Tom mentored me in the process of raising animals and shared a lifetime of knowledge along with his daily good cheer and enthusiasm for everything agricultural. He just returned from some snowbird travel out west and we hope we get to see him even when there isn’t work to do (or better yet, create some work for him to do).
We have been busy the past month partnering with many local food producers to bring a smorgasbord of possible farm share add-ons. In addition to organic eggs and Maine mushrooms we also have artisan bread from Standard Baking in Portland, organic yogurt from Wholesome Homestead in Winthrop, Maine. We are still working on a cheese share which we hope to have ready for sign-up next week. All of these Maine products are, in our opinion, outstanding and they pair up with our produce to make summer meals even more of a celebration. For more info on these add-on shares and to sign up follow this link.
In the next month we hope to break ground on our next big step in farm sustainability. The front pasture will soon hold enough solar panels to meet close to 100% of the farm’s electrical need. We have been working on this effort since last summer along with a group of committed friends of the farm. Our solar array will be a net-metering solar farm, producing energy every time the sun shines and dumping that power back on the grid, producing a credit against our electric bill. We were able to make this work using the economy of scale, teaming up with several other Brunswick residents and building solar array that is large enough to support the power needs of not just the farm but seven other households. Our part of the investment in the array will be paid for over the next 10-12 years and was made possible through some creative financing and generous donations. Soon the sun will not only grown your produce but help keep it cool by pumping water to our washing station and running our coolers!
Crystal Spring Farm Camp has a few spaces available for all sessions! If you know any interested families please send them our way!
Kids get their hands in the dirt and participate in many stages of growing vegetables and caring for farm animals. We also play games, cook, create art, and explore the trails and woods. See the farm camp webpage for more info.
Well the longest fall in my memory has made a quick turn the past few weeks. The unusually warm weather in November and December kept us outside working on projects and doing clean-up. But this means we are way behind on office stuff like seed orders, taxes, field planning and the like. Luckily, like real winter is here so no excuses!
Giving a farmer in New England an extra month of warm, snow free weather is overwhelming. We didn’t know what to do first or just how long the clear days would last. After we planted the garlic the second week of November we settled down and got organized. Kristin spent almost an entire week flail mowing pasture and hay land, knocking down dead growth that will keep next years hay clean and high quality while I tore out the rotting wooden side boards and end wall of our seedling greenhouse and replaced them with new lumber. I also stained and prepped some beautiful pine to finally (after 12 years) finish out the inside of the CSA barn. Add to this a few days of barn clean out, massive potting soil delivery, some machinery repair and the month of December went by very quickly.
Thank you for joining us for another season of organic produce! We have had a record number sign ups so far for 2016. Memberships that come in during the winter help us save money and time by allowing us to make our orders of seeds, soil, and supplies early and and at a discount. If you haven’t signed up yet, please do. We will run out of shares! You can go to a link on our website or follow the links here for Brunswick or Delivered shares.
On that note, it is also time for February payments for those of you on our winter payment plan. For on-farm Brunswick members this payment is $155. For delivered share members this payment is $85. Here’s a link to our payment form but you can also find it on our website (green “make a payment” button on the right). Remember you will need your member number to make a payment (look for the confirmation email that followed your deposit in the fall). If you have paid in full we thank you!
We know you’ve been wondering what Tom, Gisele, and their kids eat. For those of you who missed this short article, they are huge fans of organic vegetables…I mean if Tom and Gisele are doing it, it must be good. Pat yourselves on your back, we are on to something here folks. Go Pats!
After eleven years we decided this fall to sell off our sheep flock. While we loved these animals and will miss them on a daily basis we came to the conclusion that we needed more time for family. This is especially true in the winter months when daily care and lambing during subzero temps and frequent blizzards could often take the entire day (and night). Like all changes on the farm it will take an entire season to make and understand but for now we are enjoying some extra time. More than half of our flock went to Kris Coleman’s farm in Yarmouth and we hope to be able to continue offer her lamb for sale starting this fall.
Not having sheep on the farm will mean a couple of major changes to the farm’s production systems. For one, without animals to harvest the grass from our pastures we will be cutting a lot more hay and silage to sell. We are looking for new customers for these products. Another concern is on the other end (pun intended) of sheep — manure. We have leaned heavily on 30-40 yards of compost made from sheep bedding each winter and another 100 yards of raw manure these animals would leave on the pastures. The fertility of the farm has been built around having animals and we are now having to adapt to new systems without them. A big part of our new plan is the relationship we have with local breweries Maine Beer Company and Allagash Brewing Company. Both of them provide us with various waste products from the brewing process that include grain, yeast, and hops. We have been experimenting with these products and believe that they, if used in combination with green fallow periods, can help us to continue the farm’s growth in fertility.
In addition to our popular egg and mushroom add-on shares we will also be offering a yogurt and cheese share from our friends at Wholesome Holmstead. Incredible farmstead yogurt and an delectable line-up of cheeses that will rotate each week. This is the yogurt that we sold here at the end of last season to rave reviews. We are working out the details now and will let you know when sign-ups are available!
We are also planning a late fall vegetable share. This will be every other week for the months of November and December with greens, squash and roots. This first year we are offering this as a Brunswick pick-up option but hope to offer delivery to Portland area in the future. Price and produce list to follow soon!
We are thrilled to have our assistant manager Kristin returning for another season with us. She and I have been hard at work on the field plan for the coming year and have several new varieties of tomatoes, peppers, flowers, squash, asian choi/greens and cabbage to grow for you this year. Each winter the process of looking over our harvest records, sifting through academic reviews, and reading multiple seed catalogs consumes us for weeks. I still remember lettuce varieties I grew in California twenty years ago (some of which I still grow in Maine). This process is still fun for me and when we boil down everything we do, selecting the varieties we grow is the most important.
Here’s to spring and fresh produce!