CSA Farm Share 2009: Week 16 and then some

[surrealestate]

Last week, Parker Farm said that due to this year's horrid conditions, shares would have to be canceled for the rest of the season. I was, of course, quite sad over the news, but given the situation all over the state, it wasn't entirely surprising. A few days later, Steve changed his mind and announced that, with some small changes and understanding that hauls would likely be smaller, things would, in fact continue. Yay! Too bad he didn't just start out by saying there'd be no drop-off that week, which would have saved an assortment of annoyance on various sides.

Ironically, despite that, last week was the biggest total haul of the year, because my share partner and I went out to Red Fire on Monday to harvest and came home with a metric buttload, then I helped Steve a bit at the farmer's market Saturday which yielded as much as I could carry on my bike. A lot of CSA members had stopped by to say hi and offer support. It was good to see. And because Steve is awesome, he sent us all home with extras.

The official drop-off:

• [no Parker drop-off]
  --
• 1 lb sweet peppers
• 4 small hot peppers
• 2 eggplant
• 1 bunch kale
• 1 head lettuce
• 1 bunch dill
• 1 small winter squash
• 1 small head cabbage
• 11 oz broccoli
• 1 lb summer squash
  --
• 1 lb peaches
• 1/2 peck apples

Harvest at the farm included four qts of cherry tomatoes, 4+ qts yellow and green beans, 2 qts raspberries, dozens of hot peppers, and over 30 pounds of tomatillos.

Farmers market yield included 2 bunches arugula, 2 of Asian turnips, a gaggle of purple-top turnips and parsnips, 1 bunch cilantro, 1 head lettuce, and an embarrassing quantity of hen of the woods mushrooms.

And on the food preservation front:
Canned: tomatillo salsa verde, more tomatillo salsa verde, roasted red pepper spread
Dried: tomatoes, apples, apple powder, oregano, parsley, rosemary, green & yellow beans, mushrooms
Froze: blackberries

I hope everyone who went for it had an easy fast (mine wasn't too bad).

Comments

[desireearmfeldt]

Hm, having thought a little bit more about where I agree/disagree with your position: I think the bothersome thing is the lack of...power? input? consultation? on the shareholders' side, when the deal is being modified. If it's a business deal, then each side should stick to its commitments and not change the rules. If it's a team effort, then all the stakeholders should have some sort of way to affect decisions that affect the enterprise (even if that's as little as "I warn you what's going on, ask for your thoughts, and make a unilateral decision" -- though it'd be nice to know in advance what the mechanism was). You're looking at it as a team effort, and I think that's great (and admit I am not as good about that as I should be) -- but the initial announcement didn't feel like we were being treated as a team, and I suspect that was part of what got to people, and why they/we didn't share your perspective.

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

To be clear, I'm not saying anybody was wrong to be upset or angry. I was pretty distraught when I heard the news and felt like I'd been kicked in the gut. I was also upset that I hadn't previously heard about the Facebook page -- he could have announced it on his MySpace blog, after all, which we'd been told about via email.