Greetings all!
At this time of year, we are usually wishing that there are more hours in the day so we can keep working. There is always something that could be done! Well, this year is going great and we are right on track, keeping up with weeding, transplanting and seeding. I think it’s partially to do with having good early spring weather, and partially because our experience is catching up with the farm.
Some CSA Share members know our “story” of how we came to be, for those who are interested in learning-
Ben & I met in college while he was going for Horticulture and I was going for Natural Resources. After graduating, we started our family and got married. Ben had previous experience working for the neighbors’ greenhouses and farm for about 20 years so after we had our oldest, William, he decided to start his own farm to support our family.
In the first year of our CSA Share program, we grew for 18 families. The second year we doubled it, 40 families. The third year we quadrupled it, 160 families, and we are now on our 5th year of offering CSA Shares and we are growing for 250 families!
When people think of “Brown Family Farm” they think there is a 100 year old farmer standing behind it, but we are a first generational farm. What does that mean? We started with nothing. Literally didn’t even have our own tractor the first year, digging holes for thousands of plants with shovels; no equipment. At one point in our second year it was so hot that we were going to loose an entire squash field because it wasn’t irrigated (not all fields are). Instead of settling and watching it die, Ben and I used ice cream pales and watered every single squash plant in that field, a few thousand mind you. One bucket at a time.
What does that mean for you, as a CSA Share member? We will continue to work our hardest and provide your families with all of the fresh produce we are able to! We want this to work as much as you do and we are willing to bust tail for our farm families.
Back to the field update-
As many of you know, we received an entire month’s worth of rain in 4 days. Since then it has been over a week and no rain. The plants that are recently transplanted into the fields are just taking root now, so they are pretty delicate for another couple of weeks or so. The won’t fry- but this upcoming heat will definitely be stressful on them. Please pray for rain!
The fields in Zimmerman look great, Ben is already saying that he thinks the kohlrabi could be big enough for the first week of Shares. That is where a lot of our cold crops are, broccoli, cauliflower, sugar snap peas, lettuces, Swiss chard, etc. I will be headed out there to plant tomatoes and peppers this morning as well! In the past couple of days we have weeded the beans by hand, planted a few thousand winter squash plants, planted all of our herbs in raised beds, and run irrigation lines.
We are off to a great start & can’t wait to start packing CSA Shares!!!
~The Farmer’s Wife