Our summary of your 2009 season

We'll be emailing our year-end survey questions to you shortly, so we summarized the season to help jog your memory and give you a sense of our perspective.  

Overall, we felt good about the season. There was a lot of variety in the shares all season, we had a bumper crop of potatoes, and when late blight struck the mid-Atlantic region we were relieved that our tomatoes survived until the end of the summer.  We also had a steady amount of salad in the spring (mostly lettuce) and fall (mostly spicy mix).

Our disappointments this season were that the shares were on the light side, so a larger household or a vegetarian one would have needed to buy a lot of extra produce.  Also, we learned from a few mistakes that cost most of our sweet potatoes (we planted in a wet field) and beans (we didn't release the bean beetle predator soon enough).  The year was cooler and wetter than average, so plants in the cucurbit family suffered more.  We had plenty of summer squash, not quite enough melons, and almost no cucumbers or winter squash. 

A few changes we made thanks to previous years' surveys:

• In the past few years we've planted some perennials--rhubarb, asparagus and mushrooms --which will continue to increase their production each year.  
• We tried celery for the first time, but it was a miserable failure.
• We made the double-skip option a permanent feature so everyone could double their shares in exchange for skipping the previous or following one.   
• We gave more choices in the share this year, so you could avoid some items and take more of the ones you like. 
• We did a better job of emailing a list of what was in the share every week.  Our listserve stopped working, so we couldn't send it to our worksharers and other interested folks, but that's easy to fix for next year.  We know many of you want to know sooner what will be in your share each week, but that has been especially tough for us to predict.
• We bought a new scale for the Dupont pick-up, but then one broke, so we're back down to two.  That's easy to replace, but there's not much we can do to alleviate the tight space--we're generously given free use of two parking spots but no more.   

You received an average of 6.2 pounds per member per week this year.  Rather than list what was in the share each week, we have merged the weeks into groups by season:

Average early spring share: 4 pounds

• bunch of garlic scallions or scapes
• 1/3 pound lettuce (or other salad greens)
• 1-2 pounds kale (or other cooking greens, incl. cabbage)
• 1/4 - 1/2 pound carrots, asparagus, kohlrabi, turnips, radishes, broccoli, sugar snap peas, rhubarb [varied from week to week]
• 1 pint strawberries (first two weeks only, along with a little you-pick)
• herbs and flowers

Average late spring share: 5.75 pounds

• garlic (1 or 2 heads)
• 1/2 pound total combined lettuce, broccoli, spring onions, chard, chiles, or a pint of sungold tomatoes
• 1.5 pounds total combined bok choi, cabbage, turnips, beans
• 1.25 pounds popcorn or zucchini

Average summer shares: 10 pounds

• 1 head of garlic
• 3 pounds of tomatoes
• 3 pounds of potatoes
• 2 pounds, total combined summer squash, peppers, eggplant, cucumbers
• 3 ears of corn or 1 melon
• ½ pound total, combined chard, chiles, beans, okra

Average late summer shares: 7.5 pounds

• 1 head garlic
• 1 pound tomatoes or 3 ears corn or 1 melon
• 2 pounds potatoes
• 1.5 pounds, total combined summer squash, peppers, eggplant
• 1/2 pound, total combined okra, cucumbers, beans, salad greens, chiles
• 1 winter squash (acorn or carnival)

Average fall shares: 4.5 pounds

• 1 head garlic (or loose cloves)
• 1 pound sweet potatoes or winter squash
• 1 pound kale/collards/ chard/ turnip greens or 1 head cabbage or bok choi
• 1.25 pounds, total combined summer squash, peppers, eggplant
• 1/4 pound salad greens (each week was a choice between 4-7 different mustards, mild and spicy)
• 1 pound daikon or watermelon radish or 1 bunch cheriette radish or 1 bunch carrots

 

If you would like to read a more thorough review of the season, here's a link to Gail's end-of-season summary. 

Stay tuned for our post this coming Thursday of what's available in the fields to glean. 

Thanks!

-Carrie and Gail