CSA Harvest in process, Sept 19, 2012

There is no such thing as cheap food.
All the food that we eat germinates and grows from hard work and an overwhelming amount of input of minerals and nutrients…and love, if we are lucky.  The food we pick up as cheap in the grocery store is born on the back of underpaid laborers and fossil fuels. It exhausts our population and natural world for the sake of saving pennies. YOU, my dear shareholders, have chosen to make a commitment, and a commitment it is, to eat locally and organically and help to mend our broken food system.  It really is a commitment, from weekly pick-ups to planning and preparing healthy, fresh food. I understand and appreciate this and keep it in the forefront of my mind as I grow and tend and harvest your food for you all season long.

I thank you for this. For doing a good thing for a local farm, this farm, our community, and our world.

This is the post that causes me the most anguish every season — the final CSA newsletter. I do get get a bit melancholy, so bear with me.  Yes, I am relieved, after this PARTICULARLY difficult and challenging growing season, fraught with drought and pests, to have finished the long marathon, from March to now, but I really do love feeding all of your families.  I hope that you have enjoyed it. That you have taken more from it than just nutrients.

I will miss feeding and seeing all of you. I hope you will join us again next summer, and possibly this winter, if I can manage to offer a winter greens subscription. Thank you for keeping Echo Bend growing.

From the rapid drop in production this week and the loss of fall squash and melons to pests, full baskets do not look possible after today’s share.  If you are interested in just greens and some random things here and there for the next couple of weeks, please contact me directly and we can work something out.  The rest of you, I say thank you and thank you and thank you.

Until next season…

SHARE BASKETS:
Here are the contents of your share basket this week:

• Asian Braising Greens
• cabbage, Green Acre baby green head
• cabbage, Napa
• carrots, Nantes  and Sugar Snaxx and Cosmic Purple
• cucumbers, Marketmore
• eggplant, Nadia
• garlic,  “Music” or Pylong Ylang
• Onions, Copra sweet
• Peppers, sweet Bell California Wonder
• Tomatoes, Stupice, Sungold, German Orange Strawberry, Black from Tula, Kellogg’s Breakfast, Tigerella, Caspian Pink, Striped Roman, Amish Paste, Cherokee Purple, Wapsipinicon Peach
  

SWAPS:  There is a spot on the farmstand fridge labeled “swaps” where you can trade something in your basket with someone else.  Leave something — take something!

TIPS:  Angelic Organics has a handy guide for how to store various kinds of produce:  http://www.angelicorganics.com/Vegetables/vegetablescontent.php?contentfile=vegstorage

Remember to bring your share bag/basket/box back  this week!!!