Rising River Farm CSA Newsletter

Rising River Farm
13208 201st Ave SW Rochester, WA 98579 360-273-5368
info@risingriverfarm.com www.risingriverfarm.com

June 25th *** Box 2

Hello,

We hope you enjoyed your first CSA box. Thankfully the weather seems to be on a more summery trend and the plants in the field are responding. We’ve even seen little green tomatoes on the plants. This week’s box will be similar to last week’s but with 2 new items:
*Mustard Greens: We usually avoid growing mustard greens because the flea beetles love to munch them (you’ll see some evidence of this…) and every time we try it they end up looking like Swiss cheese and we vow to never ever do it again! But this spring I got a wild hair, pushed aside all unpleasant memories of mustard failures and threw some seed in just to see what we could get away with. Yeah, they got munched again and it will probably be another few years before I try again. This is the one and only time you’ll get them. Use them to spice up your salads or put them in a stir-fry.
*Strawberries: We also picked strawberries from our organic farmer neighbor Helsing Junction Farm. We planted our own strawberries this year and should be getting our own fruit next spring. If you see white fuzz on the berries, fear not. It is only cotton wood fluff from the cottonwood trees. (At a glance it looks like mold.)
*Herbs: Regular shares get cilantro and smalls get dill. Next week we will switch it. The peas are getting closer. Shells will be ready first then snap and snow will follow. Carrots, kohlrabi and beets are close as well.

It is interesting to see how the unusually cold and dry (relatively speaking) spring is affecting us now. This morning, as I was waiting for my coffee to kick in (my early morning muse), I was trolling through our old late June newsletters from the past 7 years. I swear each one started with “it has been so hot lately” or something to that effect. Not this year….
The down side to the coolness is that the crops are taking their own sweet time to ripen. The upside is that the weeds are also growing slower and it has been consistently dry allowing us to keep up with them. There are days Jim and I have to scramble around to find work for the crew. The fields look better than they ever have for this time of year. It all comes in cycles, though. When harvest starts in earnest our time devoted to weeds will be less and then it gets interesting….

We have a good crew this year. Rigo, Sergio, Greg, Jonathon, and Isaac are all returning. Lillian and Meghan are new in the field and Leah will be our market helper. We relish the year’s when most of the crew is returning as it saves us all the time in training. This job has a high turnover. The work is hard so people either decide to do it on their own after a few years or move on to other work. The fact that it is seasonal and the hours are unpredictable in spring, make it even more challenging. But those who do it are forever changed by learning so much about how food is grown and what it means to work hard. We hope they’ll all look back at this time with fondness.

Last week I mentioned that a market customer asked us to find a family in need to donate a share to. We found someone to donate the share to. Thank you for offering suggestions. Sounds like there is a great need out there and we are interested in having a scholarship fund for next year. But more about that in the fall….

Lastly, if you do not want to get this newsletter in your email anymore and prefer a paper copy, let me know and I will take you off the list. Also, rest assured I would never give out your address.

Jennifer

PS-Please bring your boxes back each week so we can re-use them. Break them down carefully, so as not to tear the tabs, and stack them neatly at the site.