Theme: CSA

News from the Farm | August 18, 2014

August 18, 2014

The Seven Year Itch

We received this sweet story from one of our CSA members about the community that has been created at their CSA site – University Terrace. If you have any stories of community building at your CSA site, please send them to us. We would love to read them (and share them, too!). Have a delightful week – and enjoy your box! 

Seven years ago Alix Schwartz decided that the people living at University Terrace, a condominium complex housing UC faculty and staff here in Berkeley, should start to receive Full Belly boxes. We arranged the pick-up hours to be from 4 to 7 every Friday. There were also neighbors beyond UTerrace who wanted to join in, and Pancho started delivering boxes in the large re-purposed garage on our property on August 3, 2007.  [Read more…]

Dear Beet,

September 9, 2013

Shucking the beans you included in the box recently was very relaxing, as well as instructive about the meaning of the saying “as alike as two peas (beans) in a pod.”  

I am saving some of them to plant next year, and I’m wondering if you can tell me if they are bush beans or pole beans, determinate or indeterminate. Also, are they good eating as green beans?

Most of my beans are this beautiful black and white, but there was one pod containing yellow beans with an orange smile. Thank you very much!

–Cindy Fressola 

orca beans

Hi Cindy,

Thank you for writing to us.  I like the simple lessons that you drew from the Orca beans.  

These beans are an heirloom from Mexico. They are so beautiful!  We are going to grow more of them next year. We had a couple of complaints about putting something as labor intensive as shelling beans into the boxes, so it was wonderful to hear a different perspective from you. The plants are a bush variety and they are determinate. They are not meant to be eaten as green beans, but as soon as the pods fill out and the beans are formed inside, you can eat them as a fresh shelling bean. 

–Full Belly Farm

 

New Stop Waste CSA Box

July 22, 2013

Full Belly CSA members who didn’t get a box last week may have missed our newsletter article about the new boxes.  It is still available on the Full Belly website (https://fullbellyfarm.com/farm-news/).  We ask that you leave these boxes at your pick-up site and do not take them home with you!

Dear Beet,

This weeks article regarding the new Stop Waste CSA Box is long overdue. Having been a long time CSA person, I (we, my family) learned very early on to bring our own reusable canvas bags. In the beginning, we found we’d forgotten to bring back our wax boxes, and would find ourselves bringing back 2, 3 or 4 at a time, and while they were returned, they often sat out in the rain, and their reuse was diminished. [Read more…]

Dear Full Belly Family,

July 8, 2013

July 8, 2013

Thank you for yet another box of gorgeous produce this week! And given the heat, our family is especially grateful for the extra work that must have gone into getting that produce out of the field and to our home. Thank you for the care you take. The love you put into the produce fills our minds, bodies, hearts, and souls with joy and gratitude,.

Peace and blessings, Butch, Wendy, Mac, and Jamie Cliff

News From the Farm | Week of June 10, 2013

June 10, 2013

CSA members may be interested to know about a bill making its way through the California State Senate that would regulate CSAs for the first time.  Before getting worried, take note that the legislation became necessary because Environmental Health Departments up and down the state became aware of the existence of CSAs and realized that most of the CSAs in California do not have permits and were not regulated in any way.  Since Federal law requires that all food put into commerce must come from an “approved source,” Environmental Health Departments determined that CSAs were not approved sources and started trying to regulate some of their activities.

Luckily, CSA farmers started calling Community Alliance with Family Farmers (CAFF) and for the last two years, legislation (AB 224) has been in development with the goal of protecting CSAs from unnecessary interference. In order to do so, the bill had to define CSA, and says (slightly paraphrased), “CSA means a program under which a registered California direct marketing producer, or a group of them grow food for a group of California consumers shareholders or subscribers who pledge or contract to buy, on a prepayment basis, a portion of the crop.”  

[Read more…]

Jeanne Killian posted on Full Belly Farm’s Facebook page:

May 6, 2013

May 6, 2013

It was hot last week so I looked up recipes for cold soups. Using a few as inspiration, I attacked my supply of Full Belly veggies. Chopped fresh onions and fennel bulb and sautéed with olive oil. Peeled some beets and chopped some potatoes, threw them into the pot. Chopped the last bit of arugula. Added vegetable broth. Whirled it all with my submersible blender (best purchase for my kitchen I ever made), added a dash of milk, and voila – a Soup with pretty shade of pink! I can eat it cold or now that it clouded up warm it up a little. Yummy.

News from the Farm | February 18, 2013

February 18, 2013

On Saturday March 9th we will have the first Open Farm Day of 2013 here at Full Belly Farm. The main activity of the day will be our visit to several corners of the farm riding on on a tractor-drawn trailer.  We will make special stops at the asparagus to see how it is growing, and to pick some flowers from the colorful fields. The baby lambs are always a highlight of this early spring tour — the ewes are just starting to give birth this week!  We may also visit our greenhouses which should be bursting with tiny plants, the compost pile, the pig pen and our mobile chicken coops!

[Read more…]

News from the Farm | February 11, 2013

February 11, 2013

Our CSA project has always been fueled by many impulses and one of the most inspiring is the generous spirit of our members.  Full Belly started making boxes years ago, in 1992. Earnest Partner discussions were only one element in the initial decisions.  We also had a good friend, Beth, in Berkeley who organized the first delivery sites for us, managed member accounts, and still operates to this day, our most successful site in Albany.

One (one of many) of Beth’s most lasting gifts to our CSA community, was a connection to the Charlotte Maxwell Complementary Clinic (CMCC), a relationship which has continued to this day.  The clinic is a “state licensed health clinic providing free complementary alternative medical treatments to low-income women with cancer” (from their web site).  Their services include acupuncture, Chinese  herbs, Western herbs, homeopathy, massage and  therapeutic imagery.

[Read more…]

News From the Farm | January 21, 2013

January 21, 2013

News From the Farm – The Annual ‘What You Ate Last Year’ Report

We provide this report every year, hoping to impress you (and ourselves as well) with the diversity and splendidness of the fruits and veggies that we were able to include in the boxes during 2012.

Let’s start with fruit! When Full Belly started our CSA, there weren’t many fruit trees at the farm. At first we purchased organic oranges from our neighbor during the winter to provide some citrus, but over time we have planted more and more fruit trees of our own, and your boxes reflect that. Here’s a review of the fruit that you ate if you got a weekly box in 2012: Melons – 14 times; oranges – 9 times; apples – 6 times, plus grapes, pears, strawberries, figs, peaches, pomegranates, apricots and lemons. If you got a box, there was some kind of fruit in it almost every week.

[Read more…]

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