Seasons, Change, and Continuity: The Greenhouse is Open
Jill Rotondo
We're on the cusp of spring and the change of seasons that we can expect every year around this time. Granted, there is a bit more snow and ice on this date than we might have had in past years, but we have the hope of spring coming.
Rain or shine, snow or ice, we open our propagation greenhouse around the same time every year: the first week of March. The farmers have made a detailed crop plan which includes specific dates for starting seeds, how deep to plant the seeds in the starting pots, how much water is required. If onions are started now we'll see them in approximately 90 days. Onions are always the first seeds to be started. Soon the tomatoes will be started, grafting will begin, the ground in the high tunnels will be turned over, all so that we are on schedule for our summer CSA. Of course the weather may change our plans, but we do have a plan!
The more things change...change is good, right? We rotate crops so that nutrients can rebuild and we can fight any pests that have taken up residence. We change our crop production based, in part, on member feedback (as well as growing success, seed availability, etc.) We change planting and cultivating techniques so we are more efficient with materials and labor (our tomato trolleys last year are a prime example of a labor saving practice.) What doesn't change is the high quality produce we grow for an increasing number of families in the area.
Samantha DuPont
And then continuity...from scheduled equipment maintenance to organic soil practices to high customer satisfaction, we're 30 years as a CSA because of our commitment and connection to our members and the land we farm. Key to the continuity is our staff. Andy Jones has been the Farm Manager for 26 years. Aly Martelle has been here 12 years, Silas Branson, Jill Rotondo, and Kathie Sullivan 9 years. Sara Howe and Samantha DuPont are returning for their 6th years. We supplement staff with seasonal workers who gain knowledge and experience from working beside such an expert staff. See more about our full year staff here.
You can be a part of this Burlington institution and help us usher in the next 30 years of farming in the city! Sign up for your 2019 summer share here. Tell your friends and neighbors. We aim for 650 shares but because some of those are split between families, we think we're feeding approximately 1500 people per week (which does not include the 62,000 pounds or so of food donations to area food shelves.) You can be a part of this food phenom today!
Meet the New ICF Board Member: Andrea Solazzo
As you know, ICF is governed by a nine member board serving rotating 3-year terms. The board meets monthly with Farmer Andy Jones for updates on the farm management, but they also discuss future planning for the farm’s sustainability and fiscal health. And they plan events for members!
Andrea Solazzo, courtesy Vermont Foodbank
Abby McGowan had to step down from her current term as she is on sabbatical in India for 6 months. It would be hard to attend board meetings from afar! We’re happy to tell you that current farm member Andrea Solazzo has agreed to serve out the remaining 2 years of Abby’s term.
We’d like you to meet Andrea.
Andrea Solazzo currently manages the Northern Vermont gleaning program, coordinates with area food shelves on nutrition education and works with the various fresh produce programs at the Vermont Foodbank. Additionally, Andrea supports the Foodbank through diversity and inclusion work, advocacy and story gathering initiatives. Prior to her time at the Foodbank, she led delegations to international conferences for UN based NGO’s around climate justice and food sovereignty issues, owned an agriculturally focused study abroad organization and had active leadership in various community organizing campaigns around livable wages. Andrea’s passion for sustainable agriculture evolved from first learning about homesteading in rural Appalachia, to then starting a small farm on her college campus, traveling around Mexico for a month with La Via Campesina on an international caravan with activists and farmers from around the world and then landing in Vermont eight years ago to work at the Vermont Workers Center and at various farms in the Burlington area. She is ICF’s biggest fan, feels incredibly lucky to enjoy amazing veggies from the farm every week and loves working in ICF’s fields throughout the growing season through her work with the Foodbank. Andrea is excited to be on the ICF board and support the farm in continuing their inspiring work throughout the community.
Root Vegetable Spotlight: Winter Carrots
Carrots are cleaned in the roots washer.
ICF has been known for their carrots over the years. Members consistently tell us, verbally and on surveys, that carrots top their list of favorite crops.
We plant two varieties of carrots, each suited for a different season and purpose. “Yaya” carrots are the summer and early fall variety you have been enjoying.
”Bolero” is the variety we prefer as our winter carrot as it stores well for long periods. Both Yaya and Bolero were developed by the Dutch company Bejo Seeds.
The Yaya carrots tend to be a bit smaller, tenderer, and milder-flavored compared to the Bolero. But the same high water content that makes the Yaya more delicate works against them in storage. The Bolero, while a bit more toothsome in their crunch, maintain their sugar, flavor and crispy texture much longer than the Yaya when stored at the proper temperature and humidity. We source carrots from High Mowing Seeds in Wolcott, VT, and Johnny’s Selected Seeds in Maine. If you’d like to read more details about storing carrots, see Johnny’s suggestions here.
Carrots are packed in 25 lb bags.
We started harvesting and processing the winter carrots in mid-October. The carrots are topped, put through the roots washer, packed into 25 lb bags, and stored in bulk bins in our large coolers. The bags have air holes in them so moisture doesn’t build up. Because of the storage method, we’ll have crunchy carrots for you right through May.
This year we harvested 15,000-17,000 pounds of Bolero carrots for winter storage. That a lot of bags of beta-carotene!
After the carrots are washed and bagged, they are stored in the large cooler next to the winter share pick-up bay. We used to keep them in bulk bins, but a few years ago we built cribs to store the bags. Air circulates better around the taller structure and the cribs help us pack the cooler more efficiently.
Sign Up Now for a 2019 Summer Share
It’s always a pleasure to open the sign-up for summer shares in the middle of a snow storm! Storm Harper can’t hold us down.
On Friday, Jill was counting seeds in anticipation of opening the greenhouse in a few weeks. Silas was helping me with some tech aspects of our web page. Aly was processing winter wholesale orders. Andy was preparing for conference presentations this coming week. We were all talking about a few logistics for summer.
There are a few things you should know about our summer shares. Returning members likely know the routine, but since we have about a 30% turnover in summer membership every year, it’s always a good thing to have reminders all in one place!
First, you can sign up online or download a paper form to mail in with payment. Paper forms will be available at winter pick-ups as well. While you can sign up online, we don’t offer online payments…the fees are just too much for us to consider with our volume. You can, however, add us as a Payee to your online checking account/Bill Pay system and we’ll get payment from your bank. And you’ll save a paper check and stamp.
Second, it’s best to sign up early. We usually have sold all shares a month before the first pick-up.
Third, if you pay in full before February 15 you can subtract the small discount indicated on the forms and web site. Your original invoice will show the full amount and the change to your account will be made when the full payment arrives. Why is the change made afterwards? Some members plan to pay in full and then just forget to finish the task or mail the check. The discount is applied to full payments postmarked by 2/15/19.
Finally, we are looking forward to you joining us for our 30th year of growing in the Intervale. We’ve come a long way in 30 years and we hope to be highlighting our progress as we celebrate all year.
Welcome to the farm…or Welcome back!
Watch this Space for News: Questions about Summer Shares?
Long time members of ICF know that mid-January on the calendar means summer is not far away! Summer share sign-ups typically begin in January and yes, we fill half our shares by the end of the early sign-up period.
Don’t despair…we are preparing the materials to roll out very soon. Several of you have inquired already, but you have not missed anything. We’re pretty much on schedule for opening the sign-up for our 30th year CSA!
Yes, we’ve been growing in the Intervale for 30 years. How time flies when you are eating well and locally!
We’ll also post sign-up information on our web page, our Facebook page, and you’ll receive an email blast.
We look forward to having you join us again this year.
Holiday Market and Final Pick-up of 2018
Thursday, December 20, will be a good day to be at the farm!
We’ve been rearranging the winter bay make it easier to make selections and spread out all the crates of food. We’ve installed more of the fabulous art work created with the help of Bonnie Acker and her public art projects. We were able to make more room because the storage bins of sweet potatoes and squash have been moved to our new packshed across the driveway. So come on down and explore the space!
We’ll have our usual group pick-up from 3:00-6:00 pm, the last group for the year. It happens to be a Group 2 week, but if you’ve missed other weeks in your rotation please feel free to stop by.
Also we’re having another pop-up holiday market. We started these events last winter and they were well received. We had one on the day before Thanksgiving and had a lot of traffic. So we’re at it again!
You can purchase extra items for yourself, you can tell your friends, neighbors, and colleagues to come down and get a taste of the delicious bounty you’ve raved about. We expect to have kale, cabbage, butternut squash, and a wide variety of roots for your selection. In addition, we’ll have a few dozen eggs and a few portions of goat cheese for sale.
We’re excited to tell you that Singing Cedars Farmstead will be on site with a selection of frozen beef cuts and whole chickens. Please plan to pay them directly to make it easier for both ICF and Singing Cedars.
We hope to see you on Thursday!
The Vermont State Vegetable: Gilfeather Turnip
I’d never heard of the gilfeather turnip until last year when I saw it listed for a farmers’ market. I certainly didn’t know it was the Vermont State Vegetable! And I didn’t know ICF was growing some for our winter shares. Now it’s my new favorite snack item!
Cut in half and ready to peel and eat raw.
I suppose I’ll end up cooking some soon, but for now I like snacking on raw slices, with or without hummus. It’s been a great snack, similar (to me) to a kohlrabi but maybe with a bit more peppery taste. We’ve had kohlrabi in the past but it doesn’t seem to store well. The gilfeather, a cross between a rutabaga and a turnip, should store better.
Daikon is long and skinny (top), gilfeather is more round and stubby (bottom.)
You’ll find them in the same box as the daikon. If you plan to eat raw, I think the daikon and gilfeather have similar tastes and textures. I haven’t cooked the gilfeather yet but there is an apparently well-known soup recipe that is highlighted at an annual gilfeather festival!
Yes, an annual festival here in Vermont to celebrate this hybrid vegetable created here! If you want to try some soups or cooked dishes, see many recipes here. In keeping with modern use of social media, the festival has its own Facebook page so you won’t miss the 2019 event.
Tell us how you’re liking this little gem and how you have been preparing it! Don’t be afraid to try something new in a salad, as a snack, or roasted with other roots.
New Wash-Pack Shed is Open
Roots washer in new winter work space.
Today I visited our new wash-pack shed, the new home of our winter washing area and additional winter produce storage. This building went up over the summer to the east of the old raspberry patch/current strawberry patch, on the east side of Intervale Road. The building is a joint venture between the Intervale Center (for the use of the Intervale Conservation Nursey mostly) and ICF. It is also what came about as a result of our successful Co-op Member Loan Program.
Aly washing baby kale.
Why did we need this additional work space? Two big reasons: we store thousands of pounds of sweet potatoes, butternut squash, cabbage, onions, etc. for our winter shares. The winter pick-up area has been getting a bit crowded with bins of produce and people at pick-ups! But also we needed a safe, warm, functional space to wash and process winter greens grown in our hoop houses. In the past we’ve hung up plastic sheeting to cut the wind and cold in the summer wash area and most recently we were heating a wash area with portable propane heaters. Making sure we had running water was always a coin toss.
With our new space, we have the ability to heat the work area, ensure running water, have additional dry storage for sweet potatoes and butternut squash, and have an additional cooler.
Totes of greens waiting to be washed.
Today the baby kale was being washed and packed for the pick-up this week. Spinach and baby head lettuce were in totes waiting for washing. Aly was happily working in a 55 degree room while it was snowing/raining out. Everything was just right at the farm on this November day.
Holiday "Pop-Up" Market at ICF
We have a winter share season with 250+ members, but sometimes you just can’t have enough ICF vegetables on hand for your holiday meals. Or your neighbors have wondered where you get all your fabulous, local produce. We have solutions and answers!
On Wednesday, 11/21 we will offer on-site purchases of our root vegetables, squash, cabbages, and kale for everyone! Spread the word to your family, friends, neighbors.
We will have things set up for quick selection and sale to get you in and out quickly with your veggies.
Carrots, potatoes, onions, beets, parsnips, rutabaga, celeriac, and turnips are available for $20/peck basket (11-12+ lbs.)
***mix up your peck contents as you wish***
Butternut squash $5 ea
Cabbage $5 ea (green, red, savoy, or napa)
Kale $3 lb
Cash and checks accepted.
End of Summer Share but We Have a Great Winter Share Ahead
Last week we finished a very successful and abundant summer season. Thank you to everyone who participated in the summer shares, attended our pizza nights, brought baked goods, shared recipe ideas, and greeted us with smiles every week. Your enthusiasm and appreciation keep us going through both muggy, hot days as well as chilly and raw days.
Share value is the difference between what you paid for your share and what you would have paid for comparable produce at retail price.
We hope that you enjoyed this productive and diverse summer share season. After 29 years, we still never can quite predict what will happen when we put seeds in the ground. In 2018, our summer CSA share value for the summer was typical, at about 50% bonus over comparable retail.
As typical for autumn we are buttoning up: seeding fields with protective cover crops, tearing out our indoor tomato and cucumber crops to replace them with winter greens, picking up irrigation pipe, and winterizing our equipment. Mostly, though, we harvest crops for Winter Share.
In the last week, we’ve filled our coolers with cabbage, celeriac, beets, and rutabaga, and we are starting now on everyone’s favorite: late fall carrots. Delicious and crunchy beyond any aspiration of a summer carrot, we expect to pull, top, and wash over 16,000 lbs of carrots in the next couple of weeks. We still have a few winter shares left, so you don’t have to miss out on all of the bounty; sign up here! Winter shares start November 1 (Group 1) and November 8 (Group 2.) Winter shares are picked up every other Thursday from 3:00-6:00.
Results: ICF Board Election
We changed things up this year!
Normally we celebrate the end of the summer share season by having our co-op annual meeting in early November. We also elect new board members for the 3 positions rotating each year (9 members of the board, 3 rotate annually) after we’ve filled up on dinner.
This year we moved the meeting to September, changed the time and location, and only discussed the election. We moved to an electronic ballot this year with the hope of involving more co-op members who might not have attended the meeting.
We’re very happy to report we had a nearly 50% response rate for our election! The board is very appreciative of the high member involvement in this new process.
We are happy to announce that Diane Abruzzini will be joining the board in January. Diane worked at ICF as an employee in 2009 & 2010. She soon went on to be a manager at Jericho Settlers Farm, run her own Beet Box Farm, and open the wood-fired, all-local bakery Mtn. Seasons. Her love of vegetables, people, and all things entrepreneurial sent her through the Sustainable MBA program at UVM. Diane has experience preparing and analyzing financial statements, harvesting kale (very quickly), executing marketing initiatives, driving tractors, grafting tomatoes and working with people.
We would also like to welcome Lis Mickenberg and Mark Twery back for another three year term.
Finally, we’d like to thank Robin Berger for her completed service as a board member.
Any co-op member in good standing may run for an open board seat. Not a co-op member yet? Sign up now!
And the Survey Says...
As each of our farm share seasons wind down we like to get member feedback on their experiences to help us plan for the future.
While we enjoy chatting with members at pick-ups, appreciate emails and phone calls with questions, it’s very useful to us to have group data in one place with survey results. We might have kept notes from a chat or email thread, it’s extremely beneficial to see a graphic presentation of collective opinions. Yes, we can graph survey results as well as see comments and trends.
What do we do with the collected information? We plan, we revise, we respond. For instance, this summer we changed the size of the tables at pick-ups in response to comments about crowding. You might not have noticed the change, but you may have had a more pleasant experience without knowing why! We also plan future crops and quantities, ramp up communication methods if necessary, change procedures.
Please take a few minutes and let us know about your experience this summer. We do read and use the information we gather from you! The survey is here or you’ll find a link in an email message.
Remembering Gerard Rubaud, 1941-2018
Photo credit: mc.farine
Today we learned that our long time bread baker, Gerard Rubaud, died after a recent illness.
We had all hoped he might recover from a recent heart condition and get back to working in his cozy bakery, crafting his beloved, wood-fired loaves of delicious bread, but it was not to be.
Gerard has been providing ICF families with his naturally-leavened country French loaf since 1995. Children have become adults while eating this bread. Sometimes the bread would arrive still warm and it was always a pleasure (and a giggle) to see members tuck their loaf under an arm, start gathering vegetables, and sneak a chunk of bread between selecting roots and hearty greens. We know that the loaves were on the dinner table on Mondays or Thursdays…or there was French toast for a weekend breakfast, or homemade croutons if any loaf lasted that long.
Gerard loved baking and loved his loaves. I learned just how much when I made several trips to the bakery to get the boxes of warm bread for our pick-ups. I treated the excursions as part of my personal physical therapy after some major surgeries. Gerard only cared that I was handling the loaves properly, stacking them just so, placing the boxes in a certain position. He could be quite gruff, but he was the bread master and we learned to roll with his moods.
While I take a lot of pictures of the farm behind the scenes (tractors, harvests, etc.), I don’t have any pictures of Gerard. I have pictures of bread (I call them my “art shots” sometimes) but not of the baker. Oh, pictures of him at work exist and I’m including several links to wonderful profiles and pictures carried in Seven Days, on a blog called Farine, and on the City Market web site.
Services or memorials are unscheduled at this time. We’ll let you know when we have details.
Fall Harvesting: Potatoes
Last year at this time we were scrambling to harvest our fall potatoes, planted late due to July flooding. Not so this year!
As with many root crops, harvesting can be labor-intensive. If you've ever grown potatoes at home, probably you dug them up with a pitchfork. You dug under the buried treasure of clumps, shook the dirt off, gathered the spuds. Well, we do essentially the same thing at ICF except we have a "potato digger" that is dragged behind a tractor and releases the potatoes. All of our potatoes are harvested in the same way (reds, whites, yellows, sweets.)
The front of the digger is a blade which reaches several inches down to "raise the bed." The potatoes land on a chain conveyor belt on the digger and as they move up the platform, the dirt falls off and back to the ground. The potatoes drop off the back end, to the ground but on top of the beds, and are then gathered later by farm staff or crop mobs! (Thanks to the City Market Crop Mob on September 29, 7,500 lbs of sweet potatoes were picked up. Total haul of sweets: 11,500 lbs.
Sweet potatoes are cured at high heat for several days and then stored for the winter. The other potatoes go into the winter cooler to be distributed during the winter share. We store the potatoes in huge, wooden bulk bins. This year’s harvest: 8,700 lbs of reds, 8,000 lbs of whites, 12,500 lbs of yellows. It might be time to look for new potato recipes!
Recap: 2018 Annual Meeting of the ICF Co-op
About 45 members attended the annual meeting of the ICF Cooperative on Sunday, September 16. We had the meeting earlier this year, at a different location, and at a different time with the hope of having a large than usual attendance. We were hoping that being outdoors on a perfect fall evening and grilling vegetables would be a good draw! (If you did not attend, please let us know if the time and location were barriers. And if you did attend, should we do this time of year and location again?)
This year was our 25th annual meeting and pot luck. We had the luxury of a wood fire/grill at the Intervale Center, so board members chopped and sliced and prepared all kinds of grilled vegetables to accompany the creations from attendees. Grilled corn, fennel, onions, sweet peppers, and zucchini were just the right touch for the transition to fall.
Farmer Andy Jones reviewed the summer season for us, complete with pictures and graphs. From the major flooding and icing in January (75% of the fields were covered) to the heat of the summer (which the corn, melons, peppers, and eggplant loved), we’ve had a successful season. For some unknown reason the birds left the corn alone and we harvested 28,000 ears of corn!
Andy explained how our new custom flame weeder works (pulling weeds often makes the seeds spread; flaming doesn’t disturb the soil and is done 2-3 weeks ahead of planting and then again right before germination.) We are also using sileage tarps this year, covering weeds to suffocate for 2-3 weeks. We’ve used them on the salad greens this year, but they are heavy and cumbersome to use.
We heard an update on the new packhouse project, our gleaning and food donation program, research projects we’ve partnered on in our fields, and our upcoming pumpkin ride/picking day.
Board member Abby McGowan explained the rotation schedule for our board (every year 3 positions will be open; the total number of members is 9) and that we are moving to an electronic ballot this year so that more co-op members will have an opportunity to vote in elections. In the past, paper ballots were distributed at the annual meeting and only those in attendance voted.
You can see Andy’s slideshow here even though it doesn’t have audio. Send us your questions on any slide if you want to know more! (Click on “play” and sit back to watch!)
Fall Activities at ICF: Crop Mob and Pumpkin Day
Yes, the calendar and finally, the weather, tell me it’s fall.
Warm days with sun and light breezes but mild temps mean we are putting on sweaters and hats. Some of us have put on heavier blankets or flannel sheets (but still keep the windows open) to have cozy sleeping.
And some of us are already thinking about new soup recipes and using the oven again.
At the farm, we’re harvesting root crops for late summer distribution and winter storage. The onions are drying, the hoop houses are in the early stages of being turned over to winter production (bok choy and kale seedlings are ready), and we’re pulling crops in from the field.
YOU CAN HELP WITH FALL HARVEST!
On September 29, in conjunction with City Market, we’ll have a crop mob. You have the opportunity to be in the fields and help harvest the butternut squash this year. City Market members can earn work hours. Crop mobs are the perfect example of “many hands make light work.” Along with staff, it’s possible to get the entire harvest (or the majority of it) gathered in one morning of work. You can sign up here.
On October 6, from 10-2, you’ll have the opportunity to take a wagon ride to the pumpkin field and select your own pumpkin for carving or eating. This event is always a good time for young and old alike and a good way to experience the farm from ground level. Rain date will be October 7, same time and place. Watch our Facebook page and web site for updates, or call 658-2919 for a message.
Don’t forget: after Fall comes Winter. Sign up for your ICF Winter Share now!
Crop Mob September 29!
In conjunction with City Market, Intervale Community Farm is hosting a Crop Mob Saturday, September 29, 2018, 9:00am-12:00pm. If you aren’t familiar with a Crop Mob, it is an opportunity to get out into the production fields at ICF and lend a hand harvesting some of the thousands of pounds of crops we store for summer and winter shares. This year we plan to harvest butternut squash with the Crop Mob, subject to weather. Snacks and good company are provided, and everyone generally leaves with a smile. City Market members can earn member work credit for joining in the fun.
Sign up here to help out! Wear layers and sturdy shoes, bring gloves, hat and a water bottle. See you there!
Onions!
I'm always grateful to have a supply of onions year round. It would not be an overstatement to say I use them in something nearly every day. They add flavor, texture, fiber, and vitamins to any dish I make. Sweet onions, red onions, yellow storage onions: I love them all.
The first of the short-term storage onions (yellow cooking) are being harvested and processed in the late summer hot weather.
It's really a process to prepare the onions for storage, starting with drying them after pulling out of the ground. This first batch pictured (Highlander variety) are for short term storage for the remainder of 2018. They were field dried for about 2 weeks and then gathered in the large bulk bins for processing.
Processing? Don't we just pick them and eat them? Nope.
Onions have tops on them...the tall, above ground leaves and after drying, those leaves need to be removed. This can be done by hand, pulling or clipping each bulb, but we have an onion topping machine which saves a lot of hand work. it works by snaring the dried onion leaves between metal rollers that then pinch and snap the tops off. The topper was recently refurbished by Bob Pomykala with a variable speed sewing machine motor. This allowed us to slow the rollers down to 1200 rpm (from 1700 rpm) resulting in less damage to the onions, and a consequent increase in quality and storage.
So the harvest process in full: pull up, dry, gather, move indoors, wait for a rainy day, run through the topper, pack in crates, store, EAT.
Irrigation: Out With the Old and In With the New
While we have had rain this summer, later June and July were dry at Intervale Community Farm. And then August late heat nearly broke records. Hot weather, limited rainfall, and sandy soils add up to irrigation. We move pipes, lay out drip tape, hook it all up, turn on the water, unplug sprinklers, patch the drip tape, and finally, water the crops. After we’ve watered sufficiently -- which varies a lot depending on the crop, stage of growth, sandiness of the particular field, and, of course, the weather – we take much of the system apart so we can move through the field for harvest and tractor work. In hot dry conditions, we repeat this cycle twice a week or more.
We appreciated any rainfall, but a July full of irrigation meant the end of our tractor-powered irrigation pump in our main production field. After 10 years of good service, we are relegating our well-used Hale pump to emergency back up status, based on a lengthening crack in the main shaft, and an old enough unit that parts are no longer available. All of the tractor-powered irrigation pumps are apparently made in Italy, and our new Ocmis TN080 is no exception. We are optimistic we will have years of trouble-free irrigation while enjoying significantly improved performance over our old pump.
This year ICF is participating in a study investigating irrigation water use sponsored by the US Department of Agriculture Northeast Climate Hub and University of Vermont Extension. Researchers have very little data about how much water is actually used by vegetable farms in the Northeast. Water use has not been much of a focus of research, in part because irrigation necessity is intermittent in the Northeast, and many growers choose to rely primarily on natural rainfall for their crops. In hotter and sandier locations like ICF, this has not been a viable strategy, so we have been investing in irrigation equipment and moving lots of water for most of our 29 years of growing. As of 7/27/2018, we pumped 771,522 gallons into our main production field: a lot of water by any measure!
Although we never want flood conditions, we do appreciate a good rainfall and are always anxious to check our many rain gauges!
Winter Share Sign-up is Open
We're starting to plan for winter-spring shares and you can ensure your spot by signing up early.
Sign up online here or print a form here.
Read more about what to expect with your winter share here and read how we gear up now to feed you through the winter here.
We look forward to seeing you through the winter and to helping you use our storage crops effectively.