Valley Mama

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2013 Share information

This year there are several ways to buy our veggies, so you can find the option that works best for you!   

   

1) As requested, we are offering a more traditional CSA share this summer.  For those who want veggies every week, this is your best value option.  The cost is $260 for the summer, which averages to $20/week for 13 weeks.  Each week you will get the full order of veggies, and you are guaranteed to get a share every week.  You also have the option of adding on delivery service for an additional $20 for the summer (Alamosa area only please!).  This week will be the first pick-up, so please let me know by Friday if this is the option for you!  If you are worried it will be too much food, consider going in with someone else.  Also, you can always order extras of items from week to week.

                                                                                             

 2) We are also continuing our weekly order system, where you can choose which weeks to order.  I send out an email every week with what is available and you let me know if you want an order that week.  Please order early, as there may be a limited supply of certain things depending on demand that week.  The cost of a full box varies week to week (from $15 to $35), depending on what is available.   

                                                                                         

3)We are also selling at the Farmer's Market this summer, and will be sharing a booth with Melinda of Green Frog Juice!  Anything that we still need to harvest after our shares and orders are filled for the week we will take to the market, so we can't guarantee what we will have available from week to week.  Also, prices will be slightly higher to account for the cost of the booth.  

                                                                   

For more details please send me an email to get on our mailing list:   [email protected]

First Harvest

This past week was our first harvest of the season for the CSA.  It is still early in the season for us (we have a very short growing season here), but there is already quite a bit ready for harvest.  The box had spinach, lettuce mix, baby greens (like kale, mizuna, arugula), young spring onions, and radishes (mostly Easter Egg this week).  We do lots of bagged greens early in the season when things are small, but switch to bunching for just about everything later on.    

The spinach is amazing this year and we've been putting it in and on everything!

The baby greens are so tender, still mild, and perfect for eating raw.  They are also great lightly cooked. 

The Easter Egg radishes are mild and a favorite of the farm kids.  If they had their way we would probably not have any left.  We are planting more all the time to try and make up for how many they are eating.

I love young onions.  We eat the whole onion, from the little baby bulb to the tips of the greens!

It's the season to welcome back fresh-from-the-garden salads.  We can't get enough.

Of course, this is just the beginning of what we will have available this summer.  I'm working on creating a page on the blog of our complete planting list, so check back soon for that.  

Besides the veggies, we are trying something new this year...look for salad and basil boxes at the market!

 

It Takes a Village

I like to keep these posts fairly current to give you an idea of what is happening around the farm now.  This post is about something that happened a few weeks ago, but I never got around to posting because we left for a cross-country road-trip shortly after (ten states in ten days!).  It is still important to share because it is a great example of why we grow here.       

I love living here in the San Luis Valley.  Really.  I do.  I will admit that from time to time I think about what it might be like to live in a place where there's a little more green than brown.  Where it rains more than a few days a year.  Where you can throw seeds outside and watch them grow.  Where it does not get to thirty below zero and hang out there for a few weeks in January.  

And then, I look out into this beautiful high desert valley, surrounded by mountains, and I think about the community that we have here.  I am rooted to this land, to the valley, but most of all, I'm rooted to this community.  I've lived several other places in my life, but I've never experienced community like I have here.  

Aaron sent out the word about a work party to put up a new fence around the garden and the field after our garden expansion and septic system nightmare.  It was kind of last minute, but so many friends showed up to help.  Aaron asks for people to bring post hole diggers if they have them, and Mark shows up with this...

  They had the holes dug for the aspen posts (which Aaron cut the day before in the mountains), in no time.  A few hours later, we had this...

The garden and pasture are now completely fenced in, keeping the chickens and goat and sheep out...for now.  Buttercup (the goat) always finds a way in.  It's crazy to look at this picture.  All of those rows are now filled with green, and it has only been a few weeks!  

Other work got done that day as well, like some prep work for the base of the new greenhouse and some new beds around the old greenhouse.  We are so thankful for everyone who came over to help!  Thank you all so much!

River did her job of playing in the dirt...

While the farm boy did work of his own...

Thanks to some amazing people, it took one day to complete what would have taken a week on our on.  These are the kind of things that happen all the time in our community, and why we choose to make this place our home.  

We grow here...and we grow so much more than food.  

Garden Babies

Little seedlings are emerging everywhere!  It is such an exciting time in the garden.  Melissa and I have been working hard the last two weeks to prep and plant row after row, entrusting seeds to the brown earth...and now, we have green.  

Potatoes, onions, spinach, lettuce, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, radishes, peas...these are some of the plants whose little leaves have come up from the soil so far.  Speaking of peas, we are amazed at our pea germination rate this year.  We usually have a fairly low germination rate for peas here, even when we use innoculant.  This year we soaked them for two days with the innoculant and then planted them.  So many peas.  We are amazed.  We should have lots of snow, sugar snap and shelling peas to enjoy this year.

We're not quite done planting, though we're getting close.  We'll, I suppose we're never completely done...there is succession planting of  certain crops that will happen all summer...but we are nearing the end of the big, two-week planting push.  We just finished planting carrots, beets, chard, kale and many other varieties of green things.  Now we're on squash, cucumbers, beans, basil, herbs and flowers.  I'm sure I'm leaving a few things out.  

And the two cutest garden babies are growing like weeds as well.  Eating dirt, pulling out drip lines, splashing in water, exploring bugs and tools...they are doing their own important work.  

Not a bad way for them to spend these first summers of their lives...here's to many more.