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.
Farm Blog
Thank you again for braving the blizzard to celebrate, connect with great food, and 'planting an orchard'! Just imagine all those future cherry trees (don't forget to squat:-).
I am so uplifted from all the good vibes, intentions, laughter and seeds shared and planted.
We were able to raise $850.00 in funds! This will go a long way, thank you! Additionally, with all the seeds donated today and from what I've gleaned from others, The women growers in the Sine-Saloum region will be able to plant out a couple hundred row feet/farm. In the past we've planted shared 'demonstration beds' ie since many of the farmers share space/land to grow on we've constructed seeds beds to trial different varieties, plant insectory herbs and flowers and share techniques. From there seeds are harvested and shared forward amongst the individual farmers. So in essence your generosity helped plant teaching/learning/eating/
sharing beds of veggie, herb, and flower goodness!
I will honor my commitment and extend the immense gratitude, generosity that was shared during the workshop with the women farmers in the following ways:
Work with NCBA CLUSA Farmer to Farmer Program to transfer funds and mail seeds.
I'll also email and share highlights, photos forward later this week in celebration of our workshop success.
I am tentatively set to travel there Nov/Dec. or January in 2016.
I also finally remembered the name of third grower group, JUBO (means widespread). If you're interested in learning more about how they got started, here's a link to an interview I did as part of my last Farmer to Farmer adventure in Senegal.
I Will keep you in the loop as the project evolves and thanks again for sharing your generous spirit!
For the chocolate lovers:
Becky Otte, who made the amazing truffles, has more of her chocolate goodness to share and is selling some of her creations just in time for Valentines. if you're interested send her an email: raonine@gmail.com
Also Here is a link to Roots Chocolate website.
For the Fruit Lovers:
I've enclosed a handout of some of the different fruits we grow at our farm as well as a flyer highlighting this season's events at the farm! We'd love to have you venture out and tour the orchard, come visit us (though not nearly as cool as the orchard poses we did during the workshop).
Thank you again for helping me transition from being a butterfly weed seed (ie wind pollinated, not knowing where or how my intentions, projects might stick) to more of an oak or cashew seeds - wherein I can deepen my awareness, provide support in the same place(s) in Senegal for the growers and in my backyard in Wisconsin:-). Here's to planting the seeds of the as yet to be imagined on and off the yoga mat! Wishing you all much abundance.
Happy Mid-winter!
Yours in hardy kiwi,
Erin
PS If you are into exploring the planting side as well as enjoying more local fruit creations, we'll be hosting a Local Fruit Tasting May 16, details on our website.
"Transitional Year of Wonderment" modus operandi for 2021 CSA
“Transitional Year of Wonderment” may, in some ways, have seemed a better name for 2020 than 2021 – after all, the whole of humanity basically transitioned overnight to staying six feet apart from one another. And I suppose it was a bit of a wonder that we managed to keep modern society functioning (more or less) despite this.
But at Hilltop we've taken the slogan as our operating plan for the coming year, having been inspired to imagine what might be possible after seeing seven billion normally fractious and querulous human beings pivot in unison like a school of fish. Erin exercised a long-considered decision to step away from commercial flower production, and I suppose I should have taken the supportive and parallel step of putting down the vegetable CSA – which would not have been an unreasonable move after 28 years.
But – querulous human being that I am – I decided to keep the CSA going, only with a re-imagined format that would require less work so that I could keep it running without distracting Erin from delving into new training or other avenues of interest. It remains to be seen how successfully this plan will work. Erin is nothing if not a supportive spouse, and I suspect that showing up at the garden gate with a hoe in hand will be a distracting temptation no matter my intentions to the contrary.
Read MoreTurn and Face the Strange - 2021 Farm CSA Flow
If nothing else, 2020 – and now, 2021 – have made us all adept at rolling with whatever astonishing new realities history may throw at us. Since we are as well-practiced as ever at keeping our balance in the face of change, I figured the moment was right to pile-on.
As we mentioned in our last newsletter, Hilltop will be undergoing some changes in the coming year. A number of infrastructural projects have been begging our attention for awhile. Erin will be stepping away from commercial flower production in order to free up time for additional pursuits, on-farm and off. All of which posed a great temptation to me to follow suit.
Upon reflection however, I decided that stepping away from the vegetable CSA this year didn't quite make sense. Erin and I will still be growing vegetables for ourselves in our gardens in any case, and -- what is more -- last Fall we made a once-in-a-decade investment in 20 yards of compost which we expect to boost the productivity of our soil.
Read MoreThe Food by the Numbers
We are paying more attention to numbers these days than we usually do, between Covid infection rates and the vote totals that will determine the direction of public policy over the next four years. And so, I will take the opportunity to slip in these for your review, so long as we are paying attention to sums of far greater moment. My figures are rather disappointing – perhaps, in that way, like some of the others.
Despite a meteorological year that was far more conducive to both vegetables and fruit than ones recently past, overall production on the farm was underwhelming this past season. This runs broadside against my perception of the year, which is that it was like those prior to 2016 when we had much more normal amounts of precipitation, decent heat and relatively abundant sunshine than we’ve seen recently.
Read MoreA Different Sort of Spring Ephemeral...Farm Adaptations Amidst Covid - 19
We were not expecting Covid-19 to join the suite of spring ephemerals, but here we are and here's how your Farmers and your Farm are adapting. Please take a moment to pause, digest this letter and with it the latest farm flow and stay healthy and grounded like a perennial - keeping a strong underground root network, with flexible shoots. Here is what to expect at present.
Gratitude! We are so grateful for all the well-wishes, check-in's and creativity that is emerging in our neighborwoods. Thank you! and please stay healthy, be playful and pragmatic.
Farm Menu: At this point our intention is to continue with the growing season as scheduled, and with it our commitment to growing resilience, beauty and abundance for you. As a small CSA we are not concerned about more than 10 people gathering at our drop-site(s). If circumstances require it, we can provide home delivery for a period of time, just please let us know. As your sole laboring farmers, we continue to uphold and ensure all public health and food safety precautions.
Counting on my Fingers: The Year in Numbers
Sometime in July, my left thumb began hurting. It wasn't due to any injury so far as I could tell – I'd simply slept on it badly, cocked-up under my neck to support my head. I didn't think much about it until I slowly realized that it wasn't getting any better as August turned to September. Thumbs get quite a lot of use around our farm, and Erin quite reasonably chided me for putting-off having it looked at. We were busy of course, and I suppose that was my excuse. By the time we were drawing-in the last of the harvest in October, my thumb's continuing sensitivity finally prompted me to set an appointment at the clinic, worried that twenty-six years of farm work might have taken its toll and that now, perhaps, I had left it too late.
As if to put as fine a point on that sentiment as possible, the soonest available time with a doctor turned out to be at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. I suppose the diagnosis would have been the same whenever I'd been seen, but I found Fate's additional fillip in this regard slightly amusing. Arthritis is an occupational hazard of farming, and the sort of hand-agriculture that we engage in -- with its endless hours of repetitive motion and straining of the limbs against the forces of nature -- hardly makes it less-so. Arthritis has already crept into my back and shoulder, but I've found these joints amenable to stretching and exercise as succor for their occasional creakiness and pain. Not so my thumb, which has thus far remained recalcitrant and is generally unhappy wrapped around a hoe or hammer handle. I have a bit of occupational therapy scheduled for the winter months ahead, but I admit mild concern if I can't manage to get a grip on this new challenge. On the other hand, I'm unlikely to give up farming very easily because I'm addicted to it.
From Digits to Numbers
Read MoreThe Harvest Homestretch
A single nighthawk, batting across the sky one evening last week, was enough to panic us about the end of summer. We’d already been watching the barn swallows getting set to leave. In mid-August, their offspring still romped the skies, swooping for horseflies past our ears, testing one another with their dives. Last week they sat on the wire, carefully watching the sun go down. Next week, the boreal dark one step too near, they will be off and gone.
It seemed a good occasion then to look back briefly on the summer and estimate what the Fall might hold in store before frost chokes the life out of what remains of the garden.
Read MoreGetting Started
An annual rite of Spring for many vegetable growers in this area is the Upper Midwest Organic Farming conference which takes place regularly during the last week of February. Some growers insist they won't start seeds until after its yearly passage.
When I originally contemplated taking up community supported agriculture I ventured to what was the first such conference to try and get a grasp on whether CSA was something I should be undertaking in my mid-30s – vegetable production has a reputation for being murderous on the back and joints, as I already knew from gardening, and I wondered if I should be diving into it more fully as I approached middle age. I remember little of the conference but the presence of a number of participants much older than myself was reassuring.
While attending, I stayed with a couple of college friends who had recently moved nearby and started a family. When I reunited with the two of them again recently – after having rarely been in touch over the intervening years – I found myself trying to estimate their children's ages and getting it wildly wrong even after compensating for the passage of time. Not only were they past high school but through college and on into adult life.
Such unpleasant shocks are a hazard of age but a good reminder, at least to me, to be thankful that vegetable farming, whatever its risks to backs and shoulders, has at least one hallmark benefit: unlike other types of agriculture - or employment generally - vegetable growers are effectively dealt a new hand to play every year.
Read MoreAvoiding the Hazards: 2018 Retrospective
I've often likened vegetable farming to golf -- each year a completely different course, unknown in its layout and length, with novel demands on one's skill-set, exhilarating to engage (inevitably) no matter how draining and demoralizing the final tee. If this comparison is apt, I can say the back nine were especially hard on us in 2018.
Farming is famous for its yearly gauntlet of perils, primarily involving the vicissitudes of weather and markets. At Hilltop, we can at least be thankful to avoid the latter since we sell primarily retail.
But Nature swings a large bat.
As growers, we hedge against calamity in whatever ways are possible – row-cover in the Spring, seven-foot deer fencing, water-catchments to bridge the droughts, obsessive mulching to hold soil-moisture and protect against pounding rains. Much of our preparation is geared toward managing the hydrologic cycle.
Read MoreFRESH Start
In the short lull between seasons that we get at the top of the year, my mind is sometimes directed toward the wider landscape in which our CSA and others operate.
Generally unseen by CSA customers are the support organizations that provide help with visibility, marketing, professional development and skill-sharing necessary to the farms which grow their food. Fair-Share, the organization that provides these services in much of southern Wisconsin, is probably familiar to eaters as the sponsor of the annual open-house at which CSA farms advertise their wares to potential clientele. In its earlier years the organization was known as MACSAC (Madison Area CSA Coalition), a group of eaters as well as farmers who came together with a mission to educate the public about sustainable farming issues in order to help kickstart the CSA movement in Madison during the early 1990s. Given the solidarity and general bon ami that exists within the community of CSA practitioners, it might seem hard to imagine that there was a brief period of schism and dissension back in the first decade of the millennium.
Read MoreReckoning
Better late than never.
With squirrely and uncooperative weather from almost start to finish this growing season, analysis of 2017's production – like all the rest the year's work – got pushed back by several weeks. But I've finally had a chance to compile the numbers. They are rather uninspiring.
While this growing season's rains (33.05” in total) were not quite as miserable as 2016 (37.88”), they were still 40% over the historical average for the April through October period. And, as usual, the specific timing of the rains was what was most significant. While last year's deluges came almost exclusively after the middle of August, 2017's were heavily loaded toward planting season – we were already 10 inches ahead of 2016 in the short period from the start of April to the end of June.
Cold weather accompanying the rains in the critical third week of May slowed drying and made soil preparation for popcorn and peppers an ungodly slog, especially since both crops were slated for a section of the garden with heavier, more clay-ish soils.
Read MoreOf Tides, Foxtail Lilies, and Vase Life Tips
I woke up from the mystery of the night thinking of flowers and the resurrection of the morning, of tides and foxtails.
Rainwater dreams, muffled by the excitement of distant thunder (maybe Tuesday into Wednesday we will see rain?). This past week was tidal. Washed ashore from Ghana and teaching—beached at the foothills of my flower beds—I traded sand for silt loam between my toes, ripening mangoes for a hearty saskatoon set, and bright pink red hibiscus petals for equally showy peonies. No time to linger, the blossom tides are peaking.
Read MoreKeeping Mechanics at Bay
Like my back, our pickup truck creaks a lot more than it used to, but still functions. I take this as an augury that another season of vegetable growing is possible; indeed, with an April share already behind us, it seems to have leapt underway.
Both back and truck are indispensable to the enterprise of farming, though I got along without the second for a number of years simply by using my Geo Metro as a truck instead. I hauled uncountable tons of compost to my farm in it, which eventually led to blowing two of the three cylinders, as you would expect from a vehicle rated at 550 lbs live load. (Incidentally, the car operated fine, if wimpily, on one cylinder). After having the valves replaced I was able to keep hauling compost for several additional years. The setup was fuel efficient and cheap, minus the valve-job.
The '97 Nissan pickup is also often overloaded since this is the most efficient way to move things, though perhaps not cheapest in the long run. Road gravel is the usual cargo which I find myself schlepping a dozen times or more each year from the local materials yard to throw, by shovelfuls, into the ruts which climate change + gravity conspire to carve down the slopes of our driveway.
Farming involves an awful lot of moving things against gravity, so I'm glad my back has lasted. Like the truck, it has slowed down but still moves, so I am thankful.
Read MoreCSA - For the Love of Fruit, Flowers, the Land and Community
While I am welcoming the snow's return, don't let the illusion of winter cloud the weather's reality these days. If you're thinking, "...it's too early for red-wing blackbirds to arrive at the ponds and too warm for February," yes, you are correct. The 68 degree F high temp this past Wednesday set a new record for the entire month at the Madison reporting station, besting the old mark of 64 degree F set on the 25th back in 2000. (Incidentally, the previous record for the day was 60 degree F, set in 1984). So that's five high temp records in a row, from Saturday February 18 on through Wednesday February 22. It appears from the instrumentation at both the Boscobel and Janesville National Weather Service Sites ---which hit 72 degrees F on Wednesday, that we've set an all-time record for the entire state for the month of February.
Read More2016 By the Numbers
2016 was a good growing year in many respects.
At 178 days, the frost-free period was exceptionally long, even after a relatively late last-freeze on May 15th. We harvested sweet peppers well into the month of November, after what was already a banner-year for the crop. Potatos also performed spectacularly despite over-planting and tight spacing, cranking out almost 300 calories per square foot. Many warm-season crops were 10 to 14 days earlier than normal. After a couple of beautiful broccoli harvests in late June and early July, we thought we might be headed for another 15-week season like we saw the previous year.
And then the rains came.
Read MoreAlphabet Soup of Farming Gratitude
I was out walking 'Up and Down the Hill' with my mother and a friend as part of the La Valle celebration this past summer and we were talking of relationships with our mothers and all the gratitude, headaches, tensions, and celebrations that come with it. My friend shared that in coming to terms with her mother's aging, she and her sister were putting together the ABC's of appreciation –a reflection of what they have learned and learned to appreciate about their mother over the years.
As I tuck in the farm for the winter months, exhaling from the frost-nipped fields, I thought I'd share in the ABC's of all the things that I have learned and appreciated from Mother Earth at the farm community this season beginning with:
Autonomy - and interdependence. Our food forests continue to subtley and not so subtely teach us about how to best design perennial polycultures of multi-purpose plants so we might share resources, create networks of mutual support in growing our own food, fodder, fertility, fuel, 'farm-a-cueticals' and fun. And like our orchard guilds, personally, I farm in part because I enjoy the autonomy in decision making, running a small business, and finding my niche. At the same time I reminded of how much as farmers, we rely on others to grow food in partnership with the land and our community.
A Look Ahead
As you can tell from looking in your share bag each week, the season so far has been unusual in its pace and general fecundity – cabbages, beets and currants have shown up weeks ahead of schedule; potatos and carrots (July 4 share) are as early as they've ever been; and virtually all remaining crops (cross your fingers) look to be vigorous and likely to produce at, or ahead of, schedule. We can thank June's heat and restrained but adequate rains for much the largesse.
One possible exception is cucumbers. Cucumber beetles – 1/4-inch long yellow- and black-striped sap-sucking insects – have descended on our little patch and begun chewing holes in the leaves. Their damage is not excessive in itself since the insects are so small. But they tend to spread viruses and other pathogens as evidenced by the yellowing and drying of a noticeable fraction of leaves even at this early stage.
Read MoreRiding out the bumps and over the hump - CSA Underway
The start of year 23 at Hilltop has had its bumps, but been auspicious in some ways too.
The bumps include the first week of April which managed, with its Siberian cold, to kill our bees after an otherwise successful ride through the Wisconsin winter. In March, the workers thronged the entrance to the hive, enjoying the warm sun and searching for the first apricot blossoms and dandelions to appear. The following week, their exoskeletons poured from the frames of comb in piles as I lifted each from the box that had been their home.
Read MoreFlowers on the Vegetable Farm?
Every farmer in her/his career hits the pause button and considers a re-invention. For me it's been steadfast, subtle, and soaks in a mix of the personal to planetary when it comes to optimal growth for our farm and finances. With seeding needs just around the corner, taxes due, body restored from a restful winter and farm plans in tow for the year ahead, I never knew that my farming re-invention would embrace so many F-words! I am moving away from the vegetable realm (my husband Rob's terrain) and honing in more on fruit, food forests, financial footing, and flowers. The latter, flowers, I've been marketing direct through CSA and providing wedding flowers for the past three years -slowly, mindfully This season, I am looking forward to stepping into my new role as Farmer Florist, experimenting with how to take flowers to the next good dance.
Read MoreMid-Season Prospectus
We routinely refer to memberships in CSA farms as “shares,” but until recently the aptness of that terminology hadn't struck me. But the other day I wondered what a CSA “bond” would look like.
In a sense, we already know. There are a number of farms – often larger ones, but not exclusively – which make arrangements to buy-in produce from CSA colleagues or another local farm in the case that certain crops fail or do unusually badly on the home soil. In one way, this may be looked at as simple conscientiousness on the part of the grower, but it is not uncontroversial in CSA circles. Many Community Supported Agriculture traditionalists view the at-risk nature of the buy-in by the member as essential to a model in which the community truly supports the agriculture. With too much guaranteeing by the farmer, the relationship with the eater turns into something more like bond-issuance than the purchase of an equity share. The farmer essentially lines up “backing” (albeit from other farmers rather than a bank) so that she/he can guarantee a return on a subscriber's membership fee, presumably one which, at worst, represents a modest premium for the purchaser over the value of food that could be got at market during the same time-frame.
Farmers who hew to a more share-based approach can occasionally be heard to cluck their tongues at this sort of arrangement, but it would be wise to be careful and not just because our colleagues deserve our respect. The CSA market has broadened enormously over the past 20 years and – as in the financial markets – bonds may be more approprite for some than stocks, especially if it gets them to eat from fields in the nearby countryside rather than California. Though I've not yet heard of such a thing, I wonder if farms seeking to expand might capitalize by issuing multi-year bonds in addition to their shares, paying out modest dividends in vegetables while using the cash-flow to incerease their productive capacity.
But that's not what I sat down to write about.
Read More