Winter Farm Stand and Winter CSA Pick-up #2

Greenhouse grown pea shoots!

Each day I walk down the farm road, the cold winter wind speeding through the open fields, down from Powisset Peak, striking my cheeks with every step I take.  I look across the fields with squinted eyes; no more fence, no more tomatoes, row cover tucking in sleeping strawberries, straw protecting the hibernating garlic.  The broccoli stalks and mini palm trees of kale remind us that the 2012 season did happen.  The composted fields hold the hopes and plans of next season.  

I make my way to the greenhouse, my face still cold, and open the door- just a crack, to keep the heat in-  I step in and am greeted with the warmth of spring.  Pea shoots, mustards, beet greens, arugula--all growing happily in the greenhouse.  I walk slowly, breathing in the warm, humid air.  I reach my hand into a sea of pea shoots and pull out a delicate handful.  I fold the tender stems into my mouth and grin as I am transported to another season with every bite I take.   It's december!  The salad greens are growing and the farmers are happy.  

So, in the spirit of Spring in December...come to the farm this Saturday for our December market!  If you have a winter CSA share---then come for your second winter share pick up!  If you did not purchase a share, you can visit the farm stand to pick up Powisset farm produce, including greenhouse grown pea shoots! 

For sale at the farm stand will be potatoes, onions, sweet potatoes, squash, carrots, beets, kale, hot peppers, popcorn, radishes, kohlrabi, parsnips, celeriac and more!   We will also have Powisset Farm pork for sale as well as honey and jam.  There will be a pottery sale by our favorite crafters and there will be wreaths and garlic braids for sale from the Neighborhood Farm!

Come join us for a festive day at the farm and stock your fridge for the winter!

What: Powisset Farm Winter Farm Stand and Winter CSA

Where: Powisset Farm- 37 Powisset Street, Dover, MA 02030

When: This Saturday, December 8th, Noon-4pm

Why: Because you love vegetables as much as we do.

See you at the barn,

Meryl and the Powisset Farm Crew

Winter Farm Stand and CSA at Powisset!

onions for winter share and market!

This morning the Powisset farm crew pulled on many colors of hooded sweatshirts, piled on top of many layers of Trustees T-shirts.  They tucked their pants into various sizes of rain boots and then stepped into their matching yellow, bibb, rain pants.  They cleared out of the farm office one by one, their pants swishing and boots stomping to make their way out to the fields to harvest the remaining roots from the field on this chilly, gray, Tuesday morning.  This Tuesday is special, being that it is the first day of our amazing apprentices’ last week of their 2012 season. 

Morning meeting began as usual—what do we have to do this week; mulch the garlic that we planted this past beautiful weekend, seed greens in our greenhouse to enjoy later this winter, inventory our seeds, harvest the rest of the carrots (about 2000 pounds), harvest the rest of the celeriac (a few hundred pounds), and harvest as many greens, leeks, cauliflower and broccoli that we can for the first winter share pick up and farm stand this Saturday.  Oh yeah, and have the best winter share/farm stand distribution ever! 

With quite a lot on our plate, the crew headed into the fields to get started and I took a moment to be so grateful for the people who make this farm run!  Our full-time crew arrived in April with excitement, enthusiasm and a willingness to work hard.  And each day they arrived at the farm with that spirit.  They have harvested over 120,000 pounds of food this year and likely pulled just as many weeds!  They drove tractors with skill and patience. They welcomed volunteers into the fields with kindness and educated our visitors and part-time crew with grace.  And they connected with you, our CSA members, with the hopes of doing work that benefits both our fields and the people who make up this farm community.  They invested deeply in this farm and we will miss them this winter and hope they will return next season!

So, what have the five of us been doing in the four weeks since we last saw you?  We have been harvesting!  Both of our walk-in coolers are packed to the brim with storage crops for the winter CSA and beyond!  We have been cleaning!  There’s nothing like a good cleaning project at the end of the season. You may have seen us at the Dover dump, emptying a couple truck loads of farm tumbleweeds and checking out the swap shop.  We have taken down the deer fence! The farm looks bigger now, we think.  We have planted next season’s garlic crop and done about 50 other random tasks!

We are thrilled to come together as a crew for this final week of our apprentices' season to put together a beautiful winter share and host our first of two winter markets at the farm!

We hope to see you there.  The barn will be festive.  The twinkly lights will be shining. The farm crew will be on hand to talk recipes and winter veggie storage with you!  Come enjoy a chilly fall afternoon with us!

See you at the barn!

Meryl (on behalf of the Powisset Farm Crew)

Powisset Pumpkins!

Winter CSA and Winter Farm Stands!

Even though the summer CSA ended a while ago there is quite a lot of produce still out in the fields to be excited about!  We are expecting to be selling (this isn’t a perfect list, there may be more, or less, if we get a very cold snap in the next few days)—kale, cauliflower, broccoli, arugula, spinach, cilantro, parsley, sage, potatoes, sweet potatoes, squash (butternut, delicata, acorn), parsnips, beets, carrots, turnips, rutabaga, radishes, storage kohlrabi, onions, leeks, garlic and more!  We will also be selling Powisset Farm pork, Brambly farm eggs, jam, granola and baked goods!  Come visit us!

The farm Stand is open:

This Saturday, November 17^th from noon-4pm

Saturday, December 8^th from noon-4pm

(pottery for sale at the December market)

For the Winter CSA folks:

Your pick-ups are:

Saturday, November 17^th

Saturday, December 8^th

Saturday, January 26^th

Saturday, February 23^rd

All pick-ups are from noon-4pm at the farm!

Winter CSA members: be prepared to take home about 40-50 pounds of produce this Saturday!

If you still want to participate in the winter CSA, there are a few spots left!  Please contact meryl at: mlatronica@ttor.org

We can’t wait to see you at the farm this Saturday!

CSA Survey and Share Report

It's Saturday afternoon, Tessa is upstairs cleaning and counting garlic to distribute at our winter share pick up and hosting the last few farm stand visitors of the day.  It's a little chilly in the office and very quiet--this being the first Saturday since June that our CSA hasn't been bustling all day.  Even the farm crew has the day off and there is no mistaking that the summer season has ended.

And what a season it was!  I felt lucky this season to get to spend time up at the barn on a few Saturdays, allowing me to connect with many of you one on one.  I always appreciate your kind and supportive feedback and your honest and unique perspectives on how to grow and improve our CSA!  I can't wait to dig into the planning for next year after having one more year of learning under my belt and one more year of imagining what this place could grow to be!  Thanks to you all for making this farm such a special place.

Please read on to see your 2012 share report and to find the link to our 2012 CSA survey.  

See you in the soon-to-be snowy fields!

Meryl LaTronica

 CSA Survey

Powisset Farm CSA Survey 2012--Please click the link below to fill out a short (14 questions) survey! Let us know what we did well!  Let us know how we can improve.  

We really appreciate your feedback.

Powisset Farm CSA Survey 2012

Powisset Farm 2012 Share Value Report

Our 2012 farm season ran for 20 weeks, beginning on June 5^th and ending on October 20^th.  

The value of the share distributed at the barn (not including pick-your-own crops) is $696.35. 

That is an average of $35 per week of Powisset veggies, not including PYO crops.

 Including PYO crops, the value of our farm share this season was $899.10! 

We compiled our share data by tracking the amount given each week in the share multiplied by the price of each vegetable.  In our report you may see a range or a fraction of a bunch given—this represents when a vegetable was part of a choice—maybe you could choose between Kale or Swiss chard, we would enter that in our records as distributing a half bunch of each item. 

As you can see, we exceeded the amount that you paid for your share! Each season, we strive to provide you with the produce that you paid for and maybe a little more (this season our share price for TTOR members was $590). This season we went a bit overboard, providing you with 20% more produce in the barn and nearly 50% more including pick-your-own!  It is not our goal to way exceed our share value (and it’s not the best business model either), but we couldn’t help sharing the abundance with you this season.  We just hope the amount of produce wasn’t too overwhelming for you!  Some highlights of this season’s share are; 40 pounds of tomatoes, over 20 pounds of potatoes and over 20 pounds/bunches of carrots distributed! Wow!

Our report below shows you how much of each item you received during the 2012 season:

Crop	Units distributed	Price per unit	Value in share
Arugula-bunches	4-5 bunches	$4/bunch	$16-$20
Basil-bunches	4.5 bunches	$2.00/bunch	$9.00
Beets-bunches	10 bunches	$2.50/bunch	$25.00
Beets-loose	7 pounds	$2.50/pound	$17.50
Broccoli	7 pounds	$2.50/pound	$17.50
Cabbage	4-6 heads	$2/head	$8-$12
Carrots-loose	13.5 pounds	$2/pound	$27.00
Carrots/bunches	6.50 bunches	$2.25/bunch	$14.65
Cauliflower	1.5 pounds	$2/pound	$3.00
Celery	1.5 bunch	$2/bunch	$3.00
Celeriac	2 pounds	$1.50/pound	$3.00
Chard (not in pyo)	3-4 bunches	$2.50/bunch	$7.50-$10
Collards	3-4 bunches	$2/bunch	$6-$8
Corn	2 dozen (1/2 dozen for four weeks)	$5/dozen	$10.00
Cucumbers	10.25 pounds	$1.25/pound	$12.80
Eggplant	11 pounds	$2/pounds	$22.00
Escarole	1 head	$1.75/head	$1.75
Fennel	2-4 bunches	$2/bunch	$4-$8
Garlic	.5 pounds	$10/pound	$5.00
Garlic Scapes	2 bunches (12-15 pieces)	$1.75/bunch	$3.50
Specialty Greens bunches/heads (tatsoi, mizuna, broccoli raab, bulls blood, komatsuna, radicchio, bok choi and more)	14 bunches/heads	$2.00/bunch or head	$28.00
Herbs (cilantro, dill, sage, parcel, savory, parsley—not including basil)	8 bunches	$2/bunch	$16.00
Hakurei turnips	6 bunches	$2.00/bunch	$12.00
Kale	6 bunches (not including pyo)	$2.25/bunch	$13.50
Kohlrabi	2-4 bunches	$1.50/bunch	$3-$6
Leeks	5.50 bunches	$2.25/bunch	$12.40
Lettuce	30 heads	$2.25/ head	$67.50
Melons	1 pieces	$2/piece	$2.00
Onions	6 pounds	$1.50/pound	$9.00
Parsnips	2 pounds	$1.50/pound	$3.00
Peppers, bell	13 pounds	$2.50/pound	$32.50
Peppers, sweet	6.50 pounds	$2.50/pound	$15.00
Peppers, hot	1 pound	$2.50/pound	$2.50
Potatoes	21.50 pounds	$1.50/pound	$32.25
Pumpkins	2 pieces	$2.50/piece	$5.00
Purple Top Turnips	2 pounds	$1.25/pound	$2.50
Radishes-bunches	6 bunches	$1.50/bunch	$9.00
Rutabaga	1.5 pounds	$1/pound	$1.50
Scallions	8.5 bunches	$2/bunch	$17.00
Spinach	4.5 pounds	$4/pound	$18.00
Summer squash	16 pounds	$1.25/pound	$20.00
Sweet potatoes	6 pounds	$2.50/pounds	$15.00
Tomatillos	1/2 pound	$2.50/pound	$1.25
Tomatoes	40 pounds	$3/pound	$120.00
Turnips, purple top	1.5 pounds	$1.25/pound	$1.25
Winter squash	7 pieces	$3/piece	$21.00
Total share Value without Pick-your-own:			$696.35

The total value of PYO crops offered was $202.75.  That is an average of $10 per week over 20 weeks.  We know that you didn’t always make it out to the fields to participate in the pick-your-own part of our CSA, so you probably didn’t take home all $202.75 worth of PYO produce this season.  But, most of you spent time picking and we are proud to have a CSA that continues to provide the opportunity for you and your friends and family to get your hands dirty, find joy in picking your favorite bean, and bending low to get that last pint of husk cherries.

 Below is our Pick-your-own report for 2012:

PYO crop	Units Distributed	Price per unit	Value in Share
Bush beans	16 quarts	$1.50/quart	$24.00
Chard	15 bunches	$1.75/bunch	$26.25
Cherry tomatoes	12 pints	$3/pint	$36.00
Cilantro	3 bunches	$1.50/bunch	$4.50
Dill	4 bunches	$1.50/bunch	$6.00
Fava beans	2.5 quarts	$2/quart	$5.00
Hot peppers	4.25 pints	$2/pint	$8.50
Husk cherries	5 pints	$3/pint	$15.00
Kale	4 bunches	$1.75/bunch	$7.00
Peas	8 pints	$3/pint	$24.00
Strawberries	3 pints	$3.50/pint	$10.50
Flowers	12 bouquets	$3/small bouquet	$36.00
Popcorn Stalks	unlimited
Herbs from herb garden	unlimited
Raspberries	A few handfuls
Total Value PYO Crops:			$202.75

we had some big sweet potatoes this season!

the awesome crew with those delicious pumkins!