Theme: winter

Saturday Walk Around –

We have had a week of heavy rainfall, so our fields are very wet.  None of the farm work can be done by tractor when the fields are so wet and a lot of mud gets tracked into trucks, our office, and the packing shed. The crews tread heavily in boots that pick up the sticky mud in the fields.  Their rain gear is coated with mud and everything is a little bit slower, adding to the costliness of keeping the doors open and the crew working during rainy weather.  The crew only came in for 4-hours on most days last week since we were mostly only picking for farmers markets and CSA boxes.  And besides, it was cold and messy work, not a nice walk in the rain to jump in the puddles!  Full Belly has a commitment to providing year-round work for our crew, as well as a commitment to showing up at markets and CSA pick-up sites year-round without fail.  But when the weather is cold and wet, it can take a toll. [Read more…]

This week we will be harvesting and packing fruits and vegetables for the first CSA boxes of 2019. If all goes well, there will be 47 additional CSA-box-weeks in 2019 and we are ever-hopeful that each week will deliver a surprise, a well-loved favorite and the inspiration for nourishing meals. At least, that’s our aspiration! We are also likely to send you stories from the fields that touch on the weather, the soils and the people that are growing your fruits and vegetables — the stories behind the fruits and vegetables in your box. The meals we all create and consume are strongly linked to our health and well being, as are the connections back and forth between farmer and CSA member. [Read more…]

What was most notable about the farm this last week was how a series of gently warm afternoons created just sufficient enough enticement to inspire many plants and crops into an explosion of blooms and young leaves.  The nights and mornings were cold, which meant cold fingers in the packing shed when the first of the day’s harvested crops arrived to be rinsed and packed.  But by early afternoon the days were warm, and the blessings of life were impossible to ignore in this beautiful Valley.

At this time of year many of our fields are growing cover crops.  These are crops that we grow to feed the soil — we don’t harvest them for sale.  Cover crop roots harvest deep nutrients and bring them to the surface for future crops.  Cover crop leaves harvest nitrogen from the air.  When turned back to the soil these crops build organic matter and feed microbial life, and those microbes in turn play a miraculous part in feeding the crop roots that follow in our fields.

[Read more…]