Abbe Hills Farm CSA

June 6, 2010

Greetings shareholders,

The CSA season is starting this week.The first vegetable pickup nights will be Monday, June 7, and Thursday, June 10, 4:30 until 7:00 both nights. (I told you wrong in the last email I sent.Only been doing it 13 years; you’d think I could remember the times.)

We’ll have lots of very nice leaf lettuce, a little spinach (a garden miracle), braising greens like Red Russian kale and bok choi, hot radishes, hotter arugula, small onions, and likely a stir-fry kit with more leafy greens.Lots of leaves this week, so what you lack in weight, you’ll get in volume.I can’t believe that we have some spinach.It is soooo hard to get germinated.I don’t even know what I did this time that make it grow, so I’m not sure I’ll ever repeat the miracle.You’ll get a small taste, but hopefully enough to hold you over until the real spinach harvest in the fall.The radishes are hot, but I’ve been using them on sandwiches and in slaw and they add a nice bite.The arugula is not for sissies this time of year.It’s HOT.A small bit added to a lettuce salad will spice it up plenty.

Bring bags to carry your vegetables home.If it’s been raining, wear some mud shoes because no matter how hard I try, I am never going to get rid of all the mud around here.The vegetables will be in the big shed.Come around to the front door (the back door is where I store all my junk, so you can’t look there.Too embarrassing.And a very bad place for children.)There will be a small table where you can check in, pick up any flyers, see any special notices.Please check in.It helps me with my record-keeping to have a reliable idea of how many people and how much food passes through here each week.

 Please enter the farm through the farm driveway (the west driveway, not the drive that goes to the house).We have a one-way street on Mondays and Thursdays – in through the farm driveway and out through the house driveway.Drive the wrong way and you’ll get us all messed up.You’ll see me jumping up and down and you if you accidently go the wrong direction.

 It is very important that all cars are parked on the farm property, and never on the road.Any barrier to travel could attract the attention of county authorities, which is a prospect I want to avoid very, very much.So, pull into the farm driveway and find a place to park, but not right at the gate.Keep going.If you have difficulty walking, there are about 4 spaces between the two sheds that you can use that are close to the front door.If you are young, healthy, and able-bodied (which is about 95% of you), please keep driving and park in the area I have mowed that is away from the buildings and along the house driveway.

 Some people think I am compulsive about the parking around here.They are right.We’ve got to move quite a lot of cars, and occasionally, some farm machinery, through here in only a couple of hours, and we can do it if everybody follows the same plan.My goals are to minimize the congestion around the buildings, protect the kids who will be running around, reduce the probability that somebody’s car will get sideswiped, keep my insurance man happy, and prevent the formation of any new mudholes along the driveway. 

So, I’ve mowed an area on the right side of the driveway where you can park, and I think if you angle park, quite a few cars will fit in the space.(A good farm rule = never drive in a place that hasn’t been mowed.Big, pointy pieces of steel can be lurking under the tall grass.Not that I’ve booby-trapped the place if you do get off the trail!But once, one of my workers ruined a perfectly good $150 tire by driving over a mower that was slightly off the beaten path and covered with grass.)It will be a bit of a walk to carry your vegetables back to your car, but think of it as a bonus – you get both good food AND exercise.

 Please feel free to look around.You can see some of the gardens on the hill in front of my house.There are several more gardens on the back side of the hill.We’ve got a small children’s garden started east of the shed, although it doesn’t look like much right now.There are chickens in a number of spaces, kittens at the shed, tractors to pretend drive, a giant hoophouse, the stupidest ducks I’ve ever seen, and a wetland on the west side of the farm.You can look at anything you want, ask me anything, take as much time as you want.I’d love for you to make yourself and your children familiar and comfortable with the farm.

 Remember to check the farm website, www.abbehills.com , to get the latest word on what’s going on around here.I update it frequently, so the information on the first page is usually current.Please call me if you have any questions that aren’t answered there.

See you this week,
Laura