Dear CSA friends,
We are back and rested after a much-needed end-of-year break. After a good deal of greeting, handshaking and backslapping this morning at 8am our crew is in the fields, evaluating how we did in leaving our crops to rest over the past few weeks. As of now, things look good- lots of carrots, broccoli, greens, cabbage, potatoes, and roots to fill your boxes in the coming weeks. Oranges had a chance to ripen and sweeten as the milder December and early January largely avoided frost or freeze damage to the crops. So we are off to another annual race to a full year of farming.
All of our hopes for the coming year and past successes stem from being blessed by residing on this gracious and generous earth beneath our feet. Its abundance has been feeding us and our extended family of eaters for more than 40 years. A benign winter without damage from a deep cold spell or too much rain allows us to harvest and begin this new year with a continuation of a harvest suspended last December. We are happy to be your farm again as we start this new year and this morning we are excited to begin that work again.
For some, the New Year begins with some resolutions. Maybe it would be good for us instead to give you Full Belly’s commitments that we have to you and to the planet again this year:
– We are committed to growing for you the most nutritious and fresh organically produced food, fiber, flowers and fruit that we possibly can.
– We are committed to stewarding our natural resources (soil, water, air) in a mindful manner, enhancing the long term conservation and improvement of those resources as we produce our crops.
– We are committed to enhancing avian, insect, microbial, plant and animal diversity on this farm, fostering healthy organisms above, below, around, and in the environment touched by our work.
– We are committed to enhancing our harvest of carbon with cover crops and compost feeding the natural soil processes essential to a diverse and robust soil ecology.
– We are committed to making a healthy workplace where our community of partners and laborers share an enjoyable workday where respect and fair compensation are guaranteed for their commitment and work.
– We are committed to integration of livestock into our system where the character of the species is allowed to express its nature and where they are respected and well cared for.
– We are committed to transparency and open demonstration of these principles.
There is continuing resolve to seeing our farm as a model of integration and stewardship, defining organic farming and humbly exploring new insights into the best ways to make whole, nutritious foods while being good stewards of this land and the life abiding here.
As part of that, we aim to make the farm as open as possible and hope you will be able to join us at the farm this year, for CSA Day, a farm dinner or pizza night, or another event. We hope to bring you up to the farm to our table, so keep your eye on your newsletter for announcements of opportunities to come and visit.
Thank you for joining us again on this journey. This year we hope to expand our CSA community and hope you might bring some friends to our table. We appreciate your commitment and hope for many great meals where the flavor of our work is evident.
Paul Muller
