Happy New Years!

Greetings All,

I hope everyone is having a great holiday season so far!

I feel like I'm coming out of a little bit of a hibernation to check in with you. We had the flu over Christmas and missed out on a bunch of activities but we're recovering and feeling much better now!

Pretty picture of the night sky, we're just a couple days from the full moon!

MEMBERSHIP

We start accepting CSA Memberships TOMORROW January 1st and I hope you'll consider signing up with us again. I'm sure you know by now, but we love what we do. We're pretty passionate about being able to produce all-natural veggies, hogs and now we're pasturing poultry too.

We are proud to be your Farmers and hope you'll consider joining us again!! PRICES I want to start by explaining that we haven't increased our prices since January of 2024. All of our CSA prices, add-ons, heritage hogs, etc. all cost the same right now as it did in Jan 2024.

Needless to say, we don't take this decision lightly. We raised the prices by $20 a Share for the season, which we think is approachable for our Members. So for example, instead of $575 for a Family Share, the price is now $595.

The Add-on Shares prices will remain the same, no increases.

Whole Chicken is going up a little bit (.75/lb) so it'd be the difference of about $3.50 on an average whole chicken which is appx 5#.

So it's not a huge increase, but we wanted to be up front and cover it here for you to see first.

CHICKEN We were happy with how our pastured poultry did last year and we're even happier to announce that you guys have new options this season!! There is a lot more info on the website too but to quickly touch on it here: we're offering pre-sale to our CSA Members only. We'll be taking it down on Jan 31st. I'm not sure if we'll be offering the pre-sale to New Members yet (who would start signing up on Feb 1st).

We're offering Whole birds (in groups of 3), and Parted birds (in groups of 3). We're going to have a pickup here at the farm the weekend of June 13th, date/time TBA. We'll also have a backup time for those who are unavailable that weekend. We'll work with you to make sure you get your chickens.

Complete details are available on the product page, which will be available tomorrow when I send out the Sign-up Invite. HERITAGE HOGS will also be available for sign up on January 1st! You can submit an online deposit and select your butcher date for this fall (or "flexible" is an option too).

DRAIN TILE

This is something that's gotten a bad wrap over the years. When Ben first mentioned it to me a few years back, I thought back to my years in college as a Natural Resources student, drain tile was the worst thing you could do to the landscape.

If you're new to the term- it's where you dig a deep trench and lay pipe that has small holes all throughout, to help move water away from the field. It's got a fabric covering on the outside of the pipe. The fabric is to keep the sand and gravel from getting into the pipe and clogging it. Then you lay the pipe in the trench, and gravel on top of the pipe. You can bury it in with dirt on top of the gravel, depending on how close the water is to the surface. The whole point is to help move water.

The picture above shows the trench after it was dug out but it doesn't have the pipe or gravel in the trench yet. Look at all that water!!!!! It appears that the water was a little too close to the surface maybe?!! It was flowing out of the field as soon as we finished trenching. Even without the drainage pipe.

We put drain tile in 3 different fields to improve drainage. Something you guys probably noticed over the past 2 years of excessive moisture in your CSA Shares- there were crop losses that we were all unhappy with. The drain tile will move water when it comes down too fast, the water permeates through the gravel and then goes into the hose (the drain) and then it flows off into the wetland. This was a huge investment but we know it'll benefit all of our CSA Members' experiences for decades to come, and it'll make our lives a little less stressful. Remember back to last year when we were moving pumps around the field to move water off the plants... drain tile is a lot less labor intensive once it's set up and it's preventative (i.e. helps the plants before there is an issue). Let's loop back to why these have had a bad reputation (and still do in some cases). Over the history of agriculture in the United States, things have been getting a lot more automated, and the goal is to make more money in less time. In the past, farmers would use cultivators to knock weeds down or other physical implements but then round-up came into the picture and makes that task a lot cheaper and faster. A lot of other supplements came into play as well, in addition to sometimes using excessive fertilizers to promote yield. Nutrients are necessary; but not always controlled well. When you have drain tile and you use all sorts of chemicals it's basically a runoff pipeline into a wetland; point source pollution you could say.

Why we are different? Because we're not using chemicals! We don't have to worry about runoff and wetland mitigation because the only thing coming off of our fields is water.

What about drought? Someone close to me asked if this would make us susceptible to drought. Valid question.

There is evidence that drain tile has the potential to actually help in a drought. It causes the roots to grow very deep and strong even early on in their life, making the plants more resilient to prolonged drought. Not to mention, we run drip tape irrigation on everything at our farm so if we do need to water, we're ready at the drop of a hat!

Every year we get different weather patterns, but I am happy to say that we're better prepared for the coming seasons at our farm here!

***If you need another reason to join us: We know a lot about the soil, the plants, drainage, irrigation, weed management, nutrients, etc. We are experts in our field (pun intended)!!! We'd be happy to grow for you again!

WRAPPING IT UP:

I hope ya'll have something fun planned for New Years! With friends or family, today is a special day! For our kids, I geeked out and bought one of those NYE boxes with a few different decorations in it. Can't wait to try and get one of those party hats on our kids, haha! They're 10, 12 and 13, so this is a perfect opportunity to step up to the plate and be a "cringe" mom while sporting a sparkly hat and a noisemaker ;)

Thank you for the opportunity to grow for you this past season, from our Family to yours, THANK YOU!!!

Chat soon, ~The Farmer's Wife