A NEW SEASON AWAITS... Hello dear friends! What better day to send out news about the upcoming growing season than during a winter snow storm!
We appreciate your patience as it's taken us a little more time than usual to figure out what our farm and CSA program will look like for the coming year. One of the farm parcels we've been renting for over a decade was sold at the end of 2021, which means that we will now be farming on a bit less than 1/2 of the land we've had in production all these years. Sometimes things happen for a reason, and this has certainly given us the opportunity to rethink our plans for the farm and our family. After farming at full throttle for the past 28 years, we're ready to restructure the farm with a little more emphasis on a healthy work-life balance. We've missed a lot of family time with our two boys and that's time we just can't get back. Hopefully this is just a temporary downsizing!
So... We will continue to grow for our wonderful CSA community, but we will be offering fewer shares than we've had in the past. This will enable us to continuing growing for you while keeping our long-time farm team members employed. We've had to make the difficult decision to close some pick-up locations, but we've tried to keep the sites spread out evenly across Long Island so that we can reach as many of your communities as possible. Please note that we have switched pick-up days and times for some locations. You can preview the 2022 CSA Pick-up sites on our website now.
We are deeply grateful to all of you for your support and love all these years and we look forward to a bountiful growing season ahead!
Love from the farm,
XOMaggie, Matt, Galen & Zinny
We are excited to announce that we will be at our Farmers’ Markets in Port Washington and Huntington this season. There will be some changes to the market, including pre-orders and grab-and-go options. Be sure to join our Market Mailing List to receive updated notifications about our markets all season long!
Come see us beginning in June!
For the past 26 years, we have committed ourselves to growing food to nourish our family and our community. The challenges we are all facing with the current Coronavirus are ones that we were ultimately preparing ourselves for all these years. During this uncertain time filled with anxiety and fear, we want you to know that we are here for you, growing food to feed you and your loved ones. We know that a safe, reliable and local food system is one of the most important resources for a community.
None of us know what the coming weeks and months will bring, but we do know that natural cycles of life will continue - photosynthesis will take place, our plants will continue to grow, and we will tend to them with loving care. We are on track and moving forward with our planting schedules to begin harvest and delivery the first week of June. We have already seen a sharp uptick in CSA registrations as the reality of food scarcity and the frailty of a global food network is showing up in our everyday lives.
Our commitment to food safety. Our produce is grown in nutrient-rich soil that we have been building for over two decades. Not only is it 100% Certified Organic and non-GMO, every member of our staff has been trained in food safety following certification training of our management staff through the Produce Safety Alliance. We follow USDA GAP standards and protocols and we were one of the first farms to adopt these standards more than a decade ago. CSA produce is perhaps the least handled food available. It is harvested in the field, washed and packaged, and then shipped in clean boxes directly to CSA member pick-up sites. No warehouses, middle men, extra handling or consumer touching. We will continue to monitor the situation and adjust our handling protocols as necessary to ensure that our produce is clean and safe for you.
We hope that you are able to find calm and perspective during this difficult time.
READ OUR COVID-19 SPECIFIC FOOD SAFETY PROTOCOLS
Much love & light from all of us at the farm. Be well!
Maggie, Farmer Matt, Kelly, Galen, Zinny & Crew
CSA and Covid-19
We've received so many e-mails and calls from members asking the same types of questions, so I thought I'd share some of them here.
What steps are you taking to ensure the safety of the CSA
during this Covid-19 outbreak?
In addition to the stringent Food Safety Protocols already in place here at the farm, our staff will be wearing protective face masks and gloves during harvest, washing and packing of produce. Our facility is already sanitized multiple times per day, but we will increase the frequency of these cleanings. All delivery drivers will wear protective gear when making deliveries, and our trucks will be thoroughly sanitized on a frequent basis. We will share new and updated CSA Pick-up protocols with you before the start of the season to ensure the safety of all members picking up their food.
How do I know that my CSA produce is safe to eat?
We are following all guidelines from the FDA and the CDC at this time. The FDA has stated that there is no evidence of food or food packaging being associated with transmission of COVID-19. Our farm staff goes through rigorous food safety training, with ongoing reviews and modifications as needed. Your CSA produce is minimally handled by a very small, well-trained staff - usually by just two or three gloved hands before reaching you. Farmer Matt and Maggie personally oversee the handling procedures from field harvest to delivery, and we are confident that all safety precautions taken along the way will ensure a safe product for you and your family. We will ask for your participation in ensuring a safe CSA pick-up environment, so please stay tuned or more information on that front coming soon.
We are here to answer any of your questions or concerns,
so please feel free to contact us. Thank you!
Spring is finally here! We started the season back at the end of February by seeding our first transplants in the greenhouse. Starting from the beginning, we always source the highest quality ingredients to grow our food. All of our seeds are 100% Certified Organic and non-GMO. Our favorite seed suppliers are High Mowing Seeds and Johnny's Selected Seeds. They sell seeds to farms like us and to small home gardeners too! This year we purchased our greenhouse soil from Vermont Compost and we are so happy with the quality. When planning out our seeding schedule, we work backwards from the projected date of harvest. The Boston lettuce we seeded the last week of February will be the lettuce we harvest for the first CSA shares of the season in June! (Look in the photo above...one of these babies will grow into a head of lettuce and it will appear in your CSA box in June. I wonder which one is destined for your dinner table?) We also work with the Biodynamic planting calendar which helps us to understand the subtle ways that the environment and wider cosmos influence the growth and development of plants. Scroll down to see lots of photos....
Here we are seeding flats of transplants. We fill our flats (trays) with soil, dibble out little holes in each cell and plant one (or two) seeds in the cell. We then carefully cover the holes with a thin layer of soil, water the flat gently and let it sit inside our hot greenhouse to germinate. The bottom right photo shows newly germinated beet plants. Welcome to the world, baby beets!
Meanwhile, out in the fields we plant spring cover crops. This is a mix of field peas and oats. The peas are legumes and they fix nitrogen in the soil. Essentially, we are growing our own fertilizer! The cover crops also provide biomass for the soil. The plants will grow quickly this spring and then we will mow them down and incorporate them into the soil in June. Then we can plant a summer or fall crop into this field for harvest later in the season. We like to think of cover crops as "complimentary" crops. When we don't have an edible crop planted in a field, we like to have it planted in cover crops so that the soil is always being protected, replenished and nourished. These cover crops are also wonderful habitats and sources of food for pollinators. When the peas bloom, you can hear the loud humming of bees coming from this field. It is beautiful...
Remember those seeds we were seeding into the flats at the top of this e-mail? This is what they look like now! Lush, healthy seedlings almost ready to head out into their new home in the fields. We now have three full greenhouses and the first round of plants are being moved out into the fresh air every day and back inside at night. This process is called "hardening off" and it get the plants accustomed to the outside weather before they are transplanted. If this process is skipped, they can die from transplant shock if moved directly from greenhouse to field.
Here's Farmer Matt and Farmer Galen using the Trimax to prep a field for planting. The Trimax is a special piece of tillage equipment that only disturbs the top 3 inches of soil. Most traditional plows dig deep into the soil and flip it upside down where the soil microbes and earthworms are exposed to the sun and die. Many farms, including organic farms, continue to farm in this invasive manner, essentially destroying the integrity of the soil with each pass of the plow. The soil should be left intact and disturbed as little as possible. That is what we call advanced tillage! WATCH A VIDEO OF THIS IN ACTION!
The first crop up is the garlic, peaking out from under the straw mulch! Garlic has a funny planting schedule. We plant it in the ground in November, it sits dormant in the cold soil all winter and then POP! it emerges first thing in the spring. We will harvest this garlic for you in July!
