Clagett Farm

Almost ready to take your orders

Wondering why you haven't heard from us yet? 

We're chomping at the bit, almost ready to send order forms to all of you who were members last year.  We're just waiting for a couple things.  With some luck, you should be getting an order form by e-mail next week. 

The Dupont Pick-Up

We're hoping to have the pick-up site in the parking lot of St. Luke's Episcopal Church, at 15th & P Streets, NW.  We're waiting for them give us permission.  It's terrific of them to entertain the possibility.  Let's hope they say yes!  Soon!

Credit Card Payments

We're also waiting for the Capital Area Food Bank to give us a web site for credit card payments.  To their great credit, they wanted to take a little extra time to make sure the security on that page is as tight as possible.  

We actually prefer checks

We pay about 2% for the privilege of taking your money by credit card.  It's about $11 per share paid by credit, which came to $1800 last year.  We thought it would relieve us of some of the work of processing your payments, but in the end it didn't.  So if you're willing to pay by check this year, that would be a big help. 

I just went to the post office and rented a box for the spring so we can be confident your checks will arrive, in spite of any snow storms that might come our way.  Our address (for the next six months) is P.O. Box 545, Upper Marlboro MD 20773.  The regular farm address still works (11904 Old Marlboro Pike) but the post office box is more reliable.  The prices are the same as last year.  We'll send you all this information again next week when send you order forms and ask you to sign up. 

For those of you who ask about the farm dog, Cassie, you can see how she's been making herself comfortable while we work in the office...

Photo taken by Deborah Starobin Armstrong, office volunteer extraordinaire. 

Post by Carrie Vaughn,  your farmer. 

Crunching the numbers from 2011

I've been in front of a computer lately, figuring out how the season looks by the numbers.  I thought it went pretty well--we had a nice variety of vegetables throughout the season.  But we definitely had some major pitfalls, and our total pounds hasn't been so low since 2006.

 If the details interest you, I'm linking a few charts.  They are PDF files:

• Download Total pounds per crop per share This chart shows you an approximation of how many pounds you got of each crop (though it obiously depends on the choices you made at the pick-up).  Tomatoes were the winner!
• Download Number of weeks crops were offered This is a similar chart but looks at how many weeks each crop was offered.  Note, for example, that kale was available 14 weeks, which is a lot, but everyone got an average of just 1.8 pounds, which is basically enough for 2 weeks.  So you can see that we obviously made it one choice among many items.  If you love kale, that's good that you were able to choose it so often.  If you hate it, it's good that you had other choices.   
• Download Crops offered each week 2011 This is a big chart that's especially good for people who are considering becoming members of our farm.  It shows what was offered each week, and how many total pounds were in each week's share. 
• Download Yield per variety 2011 This chart will only appeal to you if you are curious about how each of the different varieties performed.  For example, Hakurei turnips yielded one sixth as many  pounds for each linear foot planted as Purple-Top turnips did.  Bummer! 

But looking at a series of dry numbers doesn't really tell a story.  Here's a general sense of how the season went, from the grower's perspective.  It's pretty long (I can't help myself), so you might want to skim to the items that interest you.

SPRING:  March and April were very wet.  In the cold weather of spring and fall, moisture does not evaporate quickly from the soil, so a single rain event can make our soils wet for weeks.  Some years we have dragged the tractor through the wet ground anyway, just to get the plants started, but this has backfired by compacting the soil, which makes it harder to weed later, and further decreases the soil's ability to drain.  This spring we decided to try planting the crops on-time by hand, without tilling the soil with a tractor.  We're hoping that decision will help our soil and crop health in the long term, but the short-term result was that most of our spring crops grew much more slowly. 

• Salad and cooking greens, radishes: fared pretty well without tillage.  We harvested them a little later than normal, but yields were about average, and they had very few weeds. 
• Carrots:  Our first planting (un-tilled) matured a month later than we they normally would have, but they were remarkably weed-free, tasted good, and gave us a huge number of pounds for the small area planted.  We planted the second round with some lettuce in April and they never germinated.  The prior cover crop of sorghum-sudan grass was still breaking down, and its "allelopathic" chemicals were prevent seeds from germinating.  Oops!  We planted a third round 10 days later and they grew reasonably well considering how much carrots hate the heat.
• Cabbage, Kohlrabi:  No-till was OK for quick-growing Chinese cabbage, but kohlrabi and slower-growing cabbages didn't make sufficient heads before the heat ruined their flavor and stopped their growth completely.  Weed competition was also a bigger problem by June in no-till fields. 
• Broccoli:  We go back and forth about whether it's worth planting broccoli in the spring.  This year we didn't bother.  Spring broccoli plants suffer from the heat and give small, bitter heads that are more attractive to caterpillars than customers.  It's hard to justify all the space they require for such mediocre output.    
• Garlic:  This is a crop we can grow very well, so we've doubled our planting for 2012.  Hopefully we can sell our surplus and reduce some of the financial strain on our CSA.
• Mushrooms:  We have a collection of about a hundred logs in a shaded greenhouse that are inoculated with shiitake mushroom spawn.  Each year we have steadily increased the number of logs and they are finally producing enough mushrooms to have them available for all CSA members at least once.  This year Rob has begun inoculating fallen trees in the woods.  It will take several more years for them to fruit, and they will be more vulnerable to pests and weather, but in the years when those circumstances are favorable, we should see a huge increase in the number of mushrooms we can harvest. 
• Onions:  This is our second year of success growing bulb onions.  Hooray!  We are not at the ideal latitude for growing storage onions (north is better), so we have been reluctant to grow more than we can give out fresh, but we'll do some experimenting. 
• Peas: Our particular climate limits us to 3-4 weeks of peas.  No more, no less.  We've considered ways that we can warm up the soil so we can plant some a bit earlier, which could extend our harvest.
• Rhubarb:  We weed, fertilize and mulch this once a year, and then forget all about it.  It seems to work pretty well!  100 plants seems sufficient to us, but if you want a lot more, let us know. 
• Strawberries:  We had an average yield of strawberries this year.  We'll have a little more acreage to pick from this coming spring than last, so I'm hopeful for next year.  It's hard to keep such a big space weeded for three years, so that's the main limiting factor that keeps us from planting half the farm in strawberries.
• Herbs:  We had big plans for the teams of volunteers that would keep the herb beds weeded, but that never really worked out.  The biggest problem is the wire grass that spreads its rhizomes under the pathways and then pops up in the beds every time we look away.  Our big plan for 2012 is to bury aluminum flashing as a border between the beds and the paths to keep out the grass, to build up the beds with a little more compost, to use wood chips or grass clippings as mulch between plants in the beds, to move the mint and oregano into a big planter, and to come up with a system to capture the wash water from the washing station so we can water the herbs more regularly.   Will the big plans materialize?  We'll see!

SUMMER was remarkable for how dry it was.  It was a year of extreme weather!  We had over a month without any rain at all.  We also suffered from some problems in the greenhouse.  We had very low germination, and it took a long series of failures before we figured out there was herbicide residue in our neighbor's compost, which we bought for our soil mix.  Needless to say we won't be purchasing compost any longer.  As a result we had fewer tomato, eggplant and pepper seedlings than normal, and lost all of our seedlings for fall broccoli, cabbage, kale, collards and cauliflower.  Why didn't we just run to the store and buy more?  Organic seedlings are typically only available in the quantities we need if we order them 7 weeks in advance, and they are expensive.  By the time we knew we needed them, it was too late.

• Basil: We tried planting this extra-early in some small beds and protecting them against spring frost with floating row cover.  It worked well!  We finally were able to offer basil at the same time as our garlic scapes, and it survived reasonably well through the summer in spite of the close spacing.   
• Beans:  What a crazy bean year.  The drought caused them to quit producing, and then when it rained at the end of summer, they spit out a whole summer's-worth of beans all at once.  They get an A+ for effort, as do my unbelievably loyal crew of pickers (most of them unpaid!).  Did you notice the pole beans?  This was our first attempt, and we liked it enough to make plans for next year (with a better trellis).   
• Beets: We have tried many ways to grow beets with no success.  This year we included some donated seed in our summer cover crop planting, but none of it germinated.  I suspect it has something to do with our soil's deficiency in Boron, but our efforts to fertilize have not helped.
• Corn: Our sweet corn suffered an avalanche of problems this year--drought, deer, raccoons, weeds, you name it.  Some years we get lucky, but this year we really didn't!  The popcorn hit the jackpot though--rain at just the right time, and very few bugs and weeds.  So you'll get lots of pretty ears of popcorn in your first share next year. 
• Cucumbers:  For some reason, the short, squat pickling cucumbers grow well for us.  Regular slicers don't do as well, and the fancy Asian cucumbers never make anything at all.  In our 2009 member survey, several members mentioned they would like more variety in our cucumber offerings, so we keep trying new varieties anyway.  Picklers, by the way, can be sliced into a salad just as you would a slicer.  And if you prefer more tender skins, always choose the smaller cucumbers.  They often look a little ragged because the skin gets nicked more easily, but they still taste great. 
• Eggplant:  This was a great year for eggplant--especially the long, thin, lavendar ones (called Orient Charm).  We tried a green variety this year (Raveena) that didn't produce much and didn't get noticed much by CSA members.  The white one (Snowy) produced well but was prone to some unattractive black spotting.  As usual, we planted lots of the large, Italian-type (Black Beauty) because even though it produces fewer pounds per plant, our members seem to like it more.
• Melons:  were a dismal failure ths year, which was a hard hit considering how great they were last year.  I can think of a number of contributing factors, but I'm not sure which was the main culprit. (1)Last year there was moisture in the planting and flowering phases and dry weather while the fruits were developing.  This year was drier earlier, which might have prevented pollination.  (2)We used a field that hadn't benefited from a robust cover crop before planting.  (3)We lost a lot of plants in the greenhouse so we had to direct-seed a greater proportion, which tends to be less successful.  And (4), we never covered the plants with floating row cover to protect from disease during the first 3 weeks after planting.   Fortunately we did have a few cantaloupes in a different field that were successful enough to give everyone the option of a melon at least once.  
• Okra:  yielded well for us this year.  We've moved away from using a hybrid (Cajun Delight, which is no longer available) to this much cheaper open-pollinated seed.  We saved lots of our own seed this year, which we've never done before.  We're eager to see how well it grows next year.  A note to you-pickers: be sure to come the day before harvest if you want to get a lot.  We've tried leaving some on the plant for you to harvest, but too often they become overgrown and were wasted. 
• Chile peppers:  were hot this year!  And they grew well.  We try for a broad mix of varieties, although we shy away from chiles with similar shapes and colors to any our sweet peppers. 
• Sweet/bell peppers:  We had fewer seedlings to plant than we had intended, but they grew very well, so we still harvested plenty of peppers.  Like most years, the fruits often develop a soft spot before they ripen completely, so it's very tempting to pick the bells when they are green instead of waiting until they have turned yellow or red and sweetened up.  And for some reason, the plants make smaller peppers as they age, so we have lots of smaller bells at the end of the season.  We had used two types of weed barrier--one straw mulch and the other landscape fabric.  The peppers in the straw mulch definitely grew better.
• Potatoes:  It's not often I have such complete failures for which I have only myself to blame.  Yikes!  The last two years I had planted potatoes deeper and deeper with better and better results.  Until this year!  That cold wet spring was extra cold and extra wet one foot underground, and all the seed rotted.  Obviously I should have tested my new technique on a smaller section of he field instead of the whole lot of it.  So the best depth for potato seed?  6 inches.  Tattood on my brain.  
• Summer squash:  Hooray for early, self-pollinating zucchini!  The seed is expensive, but I could never get early squash before I started planting it into landscape fabric and covering it with floating row cover.  The other 3 plantings later in the season did not grow as well, but by then you were growing weary of squash anyway, so it wasn't such a big deal. 
• Tomatoes:  were very successful this year.  We didn't grow as many seedlings as we wanted, but the ones that we planted produced abundantly.  Given our short supply of plants, we weren't able to set aside a section for you-pick only, nor a separate field for late-season production--both of which we intend to do in 2012.  One test we conducted this year was on a few products that are marketed to improve soil microbial life and therefore plant health on a few rows of the New Girl tomatoes.  None of them appeared to improve the yield or longevity of those plants.  An investment we will make for 2012 is in metal "T-posts", to replace some of the wooden stakes.  This should keep all those large, healthy plants from falling over! 

FALL  Rain flooded our 2 fields of greens, radishes, carrots and turnips, carrying away some of the seed, rotting many of the newly germinating plants (farewell, sweet spinach!) and slowing down growth for a month.

• Broccoli, Cabbage, Cauliflower:  Our seeds did not germinate because of our soil mix problems.  We ordered plants to replace them, but didn't get them in time to produce heads by November.
• Sunchokes (Jerusalem Artichokes):  These are a type of sunflower, that make roots a lot like potatoes, but without all that fattening starch.  It stores its energy as inulin, instead, which encourages healthy microbes in your colon, but in large doses, also has some distracting side effects (thus the nickname, "fartichoke").  They produced a knock-out yield with very little effort, so now I'm a big fan.  I'm excited to grow and eat more next year (in moderate amounts, of course). 
• Sweet Potatoes:  They produced very well--6900 pounds--even better than last year.  We had some loss to groundhogs (at least five were eating from one corner of A6), but the deer fence continues to save us from the wild destruction we suffered before 2010.  Sweet potatoes thrive in poor soils and little rain.  God bless them.   We used to grow a lot of varieties and had trouble keeping them separate.  Since then we've found a much cheaper source of organic "slips" (seedlings), but they only offer one variety.
• Swiss Chard:  Usually our spring-planted chard goes dormant over the summer and revives in the fall.  This fall the chard was lucky to be in a field with good drainage, but it still suffered from a mold called, "leaf spot", due to the wet weather.  So we didn't get much fall chard. 
• Winter Squash:  is in the cucurbit family, along with melons, cucumbers and summer squash.  Every cucurbit standing the day before Hurricane Irene was dead the morning after.  We were able to salvage some of the earliest-maturing squash for shares.

Later this winter I'll analyze the survey results and answer members' questions.  If you are a CSA member and haven't responded to the survey, here's the link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/LTZRQ3N.  If you've already submitted a response, and you'd like to change it, you can access your old one by going back to our original e-mail invitation.  That should allow you to edit the one you turned in. 

Thanks!

-Carrie 

A few sustainable ag conferences coming up this winter

Perhaps local food and sustainable agriculture is more than just a passing interest for you?  You might be interested in one of the conferences offered in our region this winter. 

• Future Harvest (a Chesapeake Alliance for Sustainable Agriculture) will hold its conference January 13-14, 2012, in Lansdowne, VA: http://www.futureharvestcasa.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=168
• Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture, February 1-4, 2012, in State College, PA: http://www.pasafarming.org/conference2012/workshop.htm
• Maryland Organic Food and Farming Association will hold its annual one-day meeting February 18, 2012, probably in Annapolis, MD. http://www.marylandorganic.org/

Have I missed one?  Let us know in the comments!

-Carrie

 

Christmas Trees, Wreaths and a great spot for a picnic

We still have plenty of trees of all sizes for sale.  Bring your friends or your kids or your dog or all of the above.  We've been impressed by the people who have taken advantage of the gorgeous weather and made a fun event out of picking out a tree.  Even adults can appreciate a little hay ride, and there's something incredibly peaceful and relaxing about strolling around with a breeze in your hair, the smell of pine, and hawks and clouds drifting overhead.    

Rob and I have been getting practice making wreaths.

Make your plans to come out this weekend!  One of our cows just had a calf yesterday, so if you bring kids, give yourself time to visit the cows and chickens.  And if you bring some old bread or lettuce or any other kind of kitchen scraps for the chickens, you'll have an instant avian fan club.

Cut-Your-Own Christmas Trees

Clagett Farm

11904 Old Marlboro Pike, Upper Marlboro MD 20772

Saturday and Sunday, 10am - 2pm

or by appointment (301-351-4940) for another day or time.

• Locally grown
• Pesticide, herbicide and fertilizer-free (you won't find that from any other tree dealer near you)
• Served as a great nesting and hiding place for birds and critters. 
• A fun outing for the whole family.  
• We'll help cut the tree and strap it to your car. 
• Just $40 for any size!

All trees are Scotch Pine and White Pine, which are the best type for our region.

 

Gleaning--come on over

I'm surprised to see it, but indeed, the greens did grow a bit in the last 2 weeks.  Here's what's available:

• kale
• collards
• watermelon radishes (a few)
• purple top turnips
• carrots
• various salad greens, such as spicy mix, frisee and a wee bit of lettuce
• daikon radishes (lots)
• herbs (cilantro, sage, onion chives, oregano, mint, sorrel, a little parsley)

We also have eggs for sale ($4/dozen) and garlic ($4/pound). 

All CSA members, and any worksharers who came at least twice this season are welcome to come glean as much as they want from that list, beginning Friday.  It is a standing offer for the rest of the year, but we suspect most things listed will be picked by the end of the weekend, and anything left will be frozen solid not too long after that (depending on the weather, of course).    

At the washing station, there is a map on the dry erase board showing you where to go.  The eggs and garlic will be there, too. We'll post signs in the field Friday morning, which we'll leave up until sometime next week. 

Gleaning is not an activity for everyone.  You'll be picking it yourself, and because the pickings are slim, it will take a long time to get a significant amount of anything (with the exception of the daikon radishes, which are super-abundant, since they are part of the cover crop).  Bring a knife to make cutting the salad greens easier, and a bag.  Wear sturdy shoes, and be prepared to walk about a quarter mile to get from your car to the field.  You can drive there with a rugged vehicle, but don't forget that walking is good for you!  And I don't want to pull anyone's vehicles out of a ditch with a tractor on my day off. 

Coming Saturday morning?   From 10am to noon, Michael will be distributing beef in the parking area in front of his house (which is also the office).  To get to the fields with most of the items listed (A1and A2), we would normally suggest that you park at that house and walk.  But Saturday morning, parking at the house will be limited, so you will need to park beside the set of three barns. 

 

Christmas trees for sale soon

Thinking of buying a Christmas tree this season?  Our trees are especially large and beautiful this year, and they're all priced at just $40. 

Christmas Trees straight from the farm!

Chesapeake Bay Foundation's Clagett Farm

11904 Old Marlboro Pike, Upper Marlboro MD 20772

10am - 2pm on the 3 weekends after Thanksgiving

Nov. 26 & 27, Dec. 3 & 4, and Dec. 10 & 11

or by appointment (301-351-4940) any other day.

• Locally grown
• Pesticide, herbicide and fertilizer-free (you won't find that from any other tree dealer near you)
• Served as a great nesting and hiding place for birds and critters. 
• A fun outing for the whole family.  
• We'll help cut the tree and strap it to your car. 
• Just $40 for any size!

All trees are Scotch Pine and White Pine, which are the best type for our region. 

CSA members--your feedback needed, and other updates

We've just e-mailed a survey to all of our CSA members.  If you are one such member and you didn't see the e-mail, here is the link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/LTZRQ3N.  We need your feedback so we can make the CSA match YOUR preferences next year.  And if you're not planning to re-join, we need to know why! 

We'll post the results here in a month. 

Some of you asked about gleaning next weekend.  If there's anything to pick, we'll post a note here by Thursday November 17, and all CSA members will be welcome to come pick freely beginning Friday November 18. 

We'll send you an e-mail in December or January inviting you to re-join our CSA for 2012 (we have to wait until we know where the Dupont pick-up will be).  If you didn't get the survey e-mail we sent today, please tell us!  We need to be sure we can reach you when it's time to re-join.  

It's a blustery, sunny day today and we're preparing a winter coop for the chickens.  And just this morning, in a burst of optimism, I ordered 1350 pounds of seed potatoes for next spring.  Farming continues, even in the winter!

Take care,

-Carrie

 

Fall Beef Sale

As you many of you know, we have beef cattle on our farm. They are the responsibility of Michael Heller, our farm manager. He sells the meat once or twice a year, and one of those sales is coming up on November 19th. There are still three "lateral quarters" (explained below) that haven't been reserved yet. If you would like to buy our beef, act fast!  [Sorry, they are now sold out.]  To reserve a quarter, you must send an e-mail to Michael at mheller@cbf.org.  Below is the information he sent to his customers.  Be sure to note there is a 2-hour time window on the 19th when you must come to the farm to pick up your meat. 

If you can't buy it now, but would like to hear about beef sales in the future, send Michael an e-mail he will add you to his list.

Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s Clagett Farm
Chesapeake Grass-fed Beef

Your purchasing choices can help ‘Save the Bay’!

Fall 2011 Beef Sale

It’s that time of year!  We had a lot of rain in September, which means the grass is growing!  So the cows have been grazing some fine pastures and will soon be heading off to the meat shop.  By feeding our cows only grass we avoid the use of herbicides, pesticides, and commercial fertilizers used to grow grains (corn, soybeans, and wheat) that fatten traditional beef cows.  Also the cows, as good ruminants, know what’s good for them – great grass.  This leads to healthy cows, healthy meat, and a cleaner Bay.  The cows are raised without any hormones or antibiotics.  There is a reasonable, but limited, amount of meat available so, if interested, please don’t delay in ordering.

High Quality Beef Processing

• Meat is frozen and vacuum packed (which helps retain cold, prevents freezer burn, and greatly prolongs storage life).
• Meat is dry-aged for 2 weeks at the meat shop to enhance flavor and tenderness.
• Our butcher is Mount Airy Meat Shop, a family run, well respected, and USDA certified shop.

Meat is sold in ‘lateral quarters’.

What is a ‘lateral quarter’?  The front quarters of a steer produce mostly ground beef and the back quarters provide a variety of steaks and roasts.  So we mix a front and back quarter and then split them to provide more variety.  A ’lateral quarter’ will weigh between 85-100lbs and will include approximately the following: 35-45 1lb packages of ground beef, 2 T-bone steaks, 2 porterhouse steaks, 3 sirloin steaks, 1 tip roast, 3 rib steaks, 3 1lb packages of beef cubes, 1 eye roast, 1 bottom round, 2 London broil.

A ‘lateral quarter’ will come in two boxes approximately 2’x2’x16”. Soup bones will be available at no cost for any who would like some. (If you want specialty cuts such as liver, tongue or heart, please indicate in your email specifically which cuts, as I must make special arrangements for these cuts.  These cuts are sold at the $7.00/lb price.)

A ‘lateral quarter‘ is sold @ $7.00/lb.

The weights will vary based upon the individual cows.  You can request to have a smaller quarter or a larger quarter, depending on your needs. (Soup bones are available free of charge.)  Checks can be made out at the time of pick up when the exact weight and cost of your quarter is known.

Pick up - Meat must be picked up at Clagett Farm on November 19th between 10a.m. and noon. (Directions are available upon request).  An email reminder will be sent out to all who order.  Meat will be vacuum packed and deeply frozen.  (We recommend that you bring a cold storage chest to carry the meat home.)

TO ORDER – Send an email to mheller@cbf.org and request a lateral quarter.  At this time mention if you would prefer a larger or a smaller quarter.  Also, if you are interested in specialty cuts (livers, tongues, heart, etc) mention this in your email as well.  Because of the limited supply, meat is sold in the order that emails are received.  If you have questions let me know and I’ll get back to you as quickly as I can.

The Final Share: Sunchokes, Carrots and Beets

(Photo of sunnier days from CSA member Euodia)

It's our last update for the weekly shares for the 2011 CSA season! But first, a bit of housekeeping:

• Thank you! Thanks for all of your support and comments this season. I've very much enjoyed posting here each week and sharing news about the farm with you.

• Survey is Coming. Sometime soon, Carrie will be issuing a survey to all CSA members, so that you can weigh in on your experience with the CSA this year. You can see the 2010 survey results here on the blog. 

• Gleaning. We may offer some gleaning the week before Thanksgiving, once we access the fields. We'll post an update here if we do plan to offer that. 

• Dupont Pick-Up in 2012: We have a strong lead on a new pick-up location for the Dupont Circle area for the 2012 season. We'll share details on that as they firm up. 

And here are the details of the final share:

• 1 1/2 pound total carrots (juice carrots) and beets (red beets and striped beets -- Chioggia variety) . We were able to purchase these from the Tuscarora Organic Growers Cooperative in the Pennsylvania Juniata River Valley. 

• 3/4 pound garlic (we ask that you take 1/2 in loose cloves, and 1/2 in bulbs). 
  • Since you're getting a lot of garlic, here are some storage tips: The bulbs store better than cloves, so use the cloves first. Garlic can be either be stored out on the counter or in the fridge. If you want to preserve garlic, you can chop it up and freeze it in small quantities in olive oil, inside ice cube trays.

• 1 pound total combination eggplant plus sunchokes. Here's a recipe we like for Pan Roasted Sunchokes. 

• 2 1/4 pound total combination peppers (most of them are green peppers) + radishes + turnips 

• 1/2 pound total combination greens (chard, kale, collards, salad greens) + rhubarb + green tomatoes + chile peppers 

 

On U-Pick:

• Herbs remain on U-Pick.   

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask.

Thanks!

-- Clay

Fall Festival and Potluck wrap-up

(Photo from CSA member Krossbow on Flickr)

We had our fall festival October 1st, and it took me until now to sit down and give you a tally of the results.

Due to the morning drizzle, we had to move everything into the barns. Though the rain stopped, it was still a pretty cool afternoon. Attendance was about half of what we would expect on a sunnier, warmer day. 

Thank goodness those 60 or so people came, or we would have had a lot to eat by ourselves! It was a terrific pot luck. As it was, we were left with most of a keg, which we shared afterwards with the party-goers celebrating our co-worker's new baby. Thank you, Carole Grunberg, for donating the beer! 

We auctioned a lot of goodies. The most popular items were 10 tickets to dance performances at the Kennedy Center, donated by Janet Cochran.  We also sold eggs, homemade preserves (donated by Susan Sanders), homemade hot sauce (donated by Ray Steiner), fig trees (donated by Judy Kosovich), and canvas Clagett Farm tote bags.  All told, we made $569!  Not bad for a cold day. That pays for two low-income shares, and we had a great time doing it. 

Throughout all of it, we were treated to the Clagett Farm String Band (Bill Humm, Sue Straney and Stan Haley).  They made the whole barn feel cozy and festive. 

Lesson for next year?  Hope for a warmer day.  And if we don't get it, serve warm mulled wine instead of beer. 

Below you can see some photos of the event that were taken by CSA member Krossbow on Flickr.

Your farmer, Carrie.