Mountain Harvest OrganicsCommunity
Supported Agriculture providing you with
locally grown organic
produce |
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Volume 6, Issue 1 |
May, 2006 |
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Greetings Everyone!
Happy belated spring! Sorry that we are a little late in sending our annual newsletters and renewal applications. We are grateful for the calls from many of you hoping that you haven’t missed out in rejoining the CSA for another season of fresh, local produce! We hear that many CSA’s have a high turnover rate so obviously they don’t have members like you! Your phone calls have helped us get excited about the upcoming growing season and sharing our passion for healthy, fresh local produce. We are happy to say that we have
transplanted broccoli, kale, kohlrabi, lettuce, cabbage, and other cool
loving veggies. This Spring as we
plowed, we noticed the soil just crumbled rather than rolled over which was
an indication that it is unusually dry for Spring. This had us a little
worried about our Spring crops since they enjoy a lot of moisture. After transplanting April 1st, we had no
rain for over a week, so we said our prayers, and then waited a couple more
days, but still no rain. Since broccoli
loves at least an inch of water each week, Carl spent Tuesday setting up irrigation
then we irrigated that night. Low and behold, come Wednesday we had 1.4
inches of rain! Over the next five
days we had another 5 inches! We are
ever so happy that our prayers were answered; however, we prayed a little too
hard because now it is too wet to plant or plow! It seems that when we have a dry spell our
neighbors call to find out when we will be irrigating so they can decide if
they need to water their gardens! |
Your First Delivery
Your first delivery arrives either Saturday May 20th or Wednesday May 24th or depending on which day you choose to pick up your produce. Your first basket of the season should contain those vegetables that love the cool spring days. We plan to include lettuce, arugula, spicy greens mix, swiss chard, kohlrabi, and radishes. The Wednesday and Saturday pick
up locations for the Waynesville area will be from Saturday pick-up for the Will the deer eat your food this season?Those who enjoy a little gambling in their life might
consider starting a pool as to when our deer fencing project will be
completed! How many years have you
been hearing us say, “we have finally found a way to keep the deer from
eating your crops!” This past January we began the “Ultimate
Deer Fencing” project which is to be an 8 foot tall fence around 4 acres of
our production area. We thought to
ourselves, what an easy project; we only need to dig 40 holes, with each hole
4 feet deep, then concrete 14 foot tall posts in the holes and hang 8 foot
tall high-tensile woven wire onto the posts – easy as pie! For the past five years, we have been
pulling rocks out of the fields |
and piling them along the edges of the field assuming we would never be using the edges of our fields. Unfortunately, we have been piling rocks exactly where the fence is to be installed. So we spent the month of January moving rocks to another area of the farm, which we are now calling “the rock pile”, and believe us, it will FOREVER, as long as we farm this land, be a rock pile and never again moved! (famous last words) Next we started digging the post holes 4 and ½ deep. That is easy until you hit a rock! I am certain the folks who designed this fence are in areas with no rocks! We have diligently been digging post holes and are happy to say that have most of the posts up and will soon be ready to hang the wire. Need Bedding Plants? Once again Mountain Harvest Organics will be participating in an art and plant sale, The Whole Bloomin’ Thing, in Historic Frog Level. We are relying on plant sales to generate additional revenue and help offset the propane costs associated with operating our greenhouse. This year we are growing the following herbs and flowers for plant sales; Rosemary, Lavender, Parsley, purple coneflower, black-eyed susans, Heirloom Tomatoes, Sweet and Hot Peppers, Mints, several varieties of Basil, Flowers such as salvias in the color of Red, White, Purple and Blue, Snapdragons and Zinnias. Visit
The Whole Bloomin’ Thing in historic Frog Level, Saturday May 13th
from |
Volume 6, Issue 1 |
May, 2006 |
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What else is happening
on the farm
Mandy, whom many of you met last year, will
be working with us for another season as she prepares to buy her own land and
start her own farming business. She
has taken on even more responsibilities and has been keeping us on schedule
with seeding, transplanting, and hoeing, as well as many of the other farm
jobs the come up on a regular basis.
We are blessed to have her another season! We have a beautiful crop of garlic in the
field which she has been taking excellent care of – it might be our best crop
of garlic yet – as long as the rain doesn’t take it like in previous years!
This upcoming season we have been invited to sell at the Saturday
North Asheville Tailgate Market. This
is exciting for us because it is the largest tailgate market in the area and many
farmers actually earn a decent paycheck. (That is a decent paycheck in
farmers terms, which is completely different than a decent paycheck in
software consulting terms!) In order
for us to continue providing the Waynesville area with organic produce, we are
discontinuing all Wednesday Asheville markets so that we can focus on having
a bountiful harvest for our Wednesday Waynesville customers! We highly recommend that you choose
Wednesday as your pick-up if that day works with your schedule!
This is the year of the “Cultivating Tractor”. A couple years ago we purchased an old
Allis Chalmers tractor who we call |
means of cultivation. Besides
harvesting, we probably spend the majority of the season hoeing. We are hoping that
Alice whom
will save our backs!. Goat Babies!We have freshened a couple of our dairy goats so that we on the farm can once again enjoy fresh milk. It seems to us that the first Spring milk is the best of the season. (Perhaps since we haven’t had any fresh milk in a few months!) The goat kids are so cute playing and jumping about. We are weaning them and we do have one kid, Frankie, who is having a hard time figuring how to nurse from a bottle. We are hoping she catches on soon! How much energy is required to produce your food?The Organic Consumers Assn. published an article we found especially
interesting both because of the rising costs of oil and of our dependence on
it. Since you all |
prioritize buying local, your food takes
less energy to produce than that of the average American. The article stated that it takes about 10
fossil fuel calories to produce each food calorie in the average American
diet. So if your daily food intake is 2,000 calories, then it took 20,000
calories to grow that food and get it to you. In more familiar units, this
means that growing, processing and delivering the food consumed by a family
of four each year requires the equivalent of more than 930 gallons of
gasoline (The average U.S. household annually consumes about 1,070 gallons of
gasoline). Strawberries anyone?Last fall we ordered strawberries with anticipation of having a deer fence to protect them. The plants arrived and needed planting yet we hadn’t started the deer fence so we planted the strawberries and put up a temporary 5 foot high fence around them. We think this temporary fence will work since it is a small area and deer are hesitant about jumping into small enclosed areas. The strawberries have small fruit and beautiful blossoms with plenty of deer footprints all around the perimeter of the fence, so say your prayers that either we get our deer fence up before the berries begin ripening, or that the smell of the ripening berries is not too tempting for the deer!
Strawberries
blossoms and fruit!. |
