Delivery Notice

Due to the torrential rains in early June our scheduled delivery for the 26th is canceled. We will resume deliveries on Thursday July 3rd. For all late breaking news and farm updates please check the home page on our website for specific details.

Rare Earth Farm        www.RareEarthFarm.com

Top of the season to you! Being our first delivery today I hope you’ll find everything enjoyable and up to your expectations. Spring in Wisconsin is a challenging time of the year for farmers. Trying to get crops in on time while having to wait for optimum soil and air temperatures for seeding and transplanting always gets us a little stressed out knowing we need harvestable food ready to go for our first deliveries in June. After a long cold snowy winter our spring to summer transition has been cool with inconsistent periods of rain and slow to warm. We got into our fields a little later than in some of years past, but we did get many crops planted well enough in time to offer at least something for our first delivery. Everything was looking exceptional. That was of course until 2 weeks ago when we fell into a rainy spell. The rain fall on the farm since the first of June has been a little over 10 inches. We have lost some spring crops but not everything. The challenge at hand is we’ve been severely thrown off course with our plantings.  The first couple of weeks in June have been excessively wet which has kept us out of the field. Canceling deliveries is the last option and we don’t like it but we still want to have that ace in our hand when we feel it’s necessary to make that call.  Any future  cancellations will be for the sole purpose of getting caught up on our planting so we can bring in a lot more food to you as soon as nature allows. It’s important to realize that what we do now will make the difference for the remainder of the 2008 growing season.  Many CSA farms in the area and around the state had a worse walloping by the last couple storms than what we got.  I always try to console myself by saying “It could have been a lot worse”. Keep in mind we’re working with nature.  So be patient because we have to be too. It always comes around, and when it does we’ll have plenty of food to send your way.

REF Interest

This year we’ve been inundated with interest about our farm.  For the first time ever we’ve had our “sold out” sign on our website posted since early April.  It’s always been our policy to give returning members first priority and a guaranteed share however, we’re finding it is becoming more difficult to estimate how many new members we can comfortably accept while still saving room for returning members.  In lieu of our membership limit and in anticipating a return of our past members we’re asking that if you do want to rejoin consider signing up at the earliest possible time. This would be a big help to us and a great relief in knowing the influx of new members won’t end up squeezing out our regular loyal patrons.  We don’t want anyone to miss out if they intend to re-join, but we’re thinking of having to go with a first come-first serve policy from here on. Our membership drive now begins the first of October.  The sooner we know who’s coming back the easier it will be to estimate how many new members we’ll be able to take on.

New to CSA?

We want to say thank-you to all the new CSA goers who chose our farm to subscribe with. Without anything to compare with from a previous year, people new to the program are normally a little ambiguous as to what the total experience includes.   CSA farms have been in the United States since 1988. The same basic principal and philosophy has always been the foundation on which subscription farms have stood upon. You get what ever they can grow and when it’s in season. Most of the time CSA farms and myself included have not placed a lot of emphasis as to what happens when faced with a series of unfortunate events.  The odds are good you’ll run into something at some point during the course of the season that forces a change of plan.   With the remaining deliveries for the season I encourage everyone, especially our first time CSA goers, to offer us the courtesy not to judge our program by what you see in the first few boxes. Occasionally one or two people with their unfamiliarity to growing food will prematurely determine that CSA is a big disappointment because they expected more. If this is what you’re feeling as you read this all I can say is welcome to the real world.  We’ve seen this scenario before and we’ve always pulled through, but you really never know for sure. One thing for certain with farming is nothing’s for certain.

Chickens Egg production Low

In other news at the farm, much to our surprise our hens have not been producing up to our expectations. Our laying hens are replaced every year and every year there’s always something new about them in personality and performance. This year it’s been with their egg laying. With the total number of birds at the farm we should be getting plenty of eggs to meet our subscribers demand. We’re  hoping they’ll be coming up to pace soon but it’s not anything we can be sure of. Watch for any notices at your pick-up locations for possible egg delivery cancellations. We’re hoping that won’t happen. If it does it’s a little extra work for us but we’ll be tracking where the eggs are going each week to ensure that you’ll get all the eggs you paid for, or you’ll get a credit on your egg shares for next year. Perhaps a hen birthing coach would help. We’ll give that a try.     

What’s inside your box

Occasionally you may find an item in your box that’s not listed on page one of the newsletter. Many of the crops during their complete harvest period will start out slow and then within a couple of weeks they begin to produce their maximum output. Once peaked out they begin to taper off and then it’s over for that crop. During low periods in the harvest cycle of a plant we still like to deliver what we can and so we send those items to one or several pick-up locations at a time.  We track what was sent and where so its assured that everyone will get the same amount, just not in the same week.

1 tsp. lemon rind

mayonnaise

seasoned salt and pepper, to taste

melba toast or crackers

garnish with nasturtium flowers