CSA

Community Supported Agriculture

Save 10 to 15 percent (and help the bees)

April 29, 2012 in CSA by Persephone

It’s spring at Persephone Farm, the peas are growing and the flowers are blooming bright and beautiful. Our CSA is still welcoming members for the coming season. In addition to a bounty of fresh vegetables and flowers, members save 10-15% when purchasing a share from Persephone.

Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is a collaboration between grower and eater, rather than a mere exchange of dollars for vegetables. We aim to provide 10-15% more value over the season than the cost of similar produce at other local outlets. It is our way of thanking you for paying in advance, which helps the farm at the beginning of the season to defray the cost of seeds, tools and other inputs. To extend the season, subscribers also receive a 10% discount at our Bainbridge Island Farmer’s Market stand, open early April through late December.

Flowers are another special part of a Persephone CSA share. As ecological farmers we appreciate our flower beds and borders for not only their beauty, but also for their ability to attract precious pollinators and beneficial insects.

Flowers help us add diversity to our crop rotations, and are essential to our farm’s sustainability. Our CSA subscribers tell us that choosing their flower bouquet is a high point of their week, beautiful selection – and beneficial to the bees too!

Read more about our CSA here.

Thank you to Lisa from Gluten Free Foodies for the beautiful video of Persephone Farm.

February News from the Farm

February 19, 2012 in CSA, News by Persephone

Like many of you home gardeners, we’ve avidly scanned our seed catalogs looking for interesting new varieties to try out this season. So much seems possible from the comfort of our arm chairs this time of year, doesn’t it?

It’s only a matter of weeks until the four new interns arrive: one from Montana, two fromWisconsin and one from Seattle. The recent string of warm days tempted the farmers out into the greenhouse and fields to get a few early seeds started. But we’re trying to hold back our enthusiasm in order to allow the new interns to join us in starting at the very beginning of the farm cycle. Persephone Farm is extremely proud of our internship program. Training the next generation of sustainable farmers is one of our farm’s most important objectives.

Katt, Adam and Tess from last year will all be managing their own farms in New England this summer, Tess in Maine, Katt and Adam in Vermont. Hiram has followed his new Lady Love to Maui where he is developing a business as a personal chef, specializing in local, organic cuisine. (Ah, to have pineapple and passion fruit as part of our 100 mile diet!)

Community Supported Agriculture is another of our most rewarding endeavors. Seeing the kids excited about their veggies warms every adult heart, parent and farmer alike. Have you noticed, too, how fully children take in the sensory pleasure of the flowers? They’re so alive to all aspects of the fragrance and color. It’s a thrill watching them try to choose the family bouquet. Your support for our farm is integral to our overall success. Thank you for taking the annual leap of faith with us as we step into a new growing season.

Even though the 2011 season started out with unprecedented cool temperatures well into July, Mother Nature came through with a bang in the fall. The “summer that wasn’t” still produced one of our best tomato harvests ever. Onions sized up well with all the dampness. And cucumbers exceeded everyone’s expectations. Sweet peppers were late but prolific. Winter subscribers can attest to the bounty even in November!

Overall, last year’s shares yielded 16% more produce than the price of the shares!! Whooohooo!!

The corn crop was less happy. Incomplete pollination made for small and misshapen ears in all varieties. We’ve not seen this before and must attribute it to the unseasonable weather. Corn is wind pollinated, so, thankfully it’s not a result of bee colony collapse disorder. This problem seems not to be affecting us .The zucchini crop attests to this, as each blossom must be visited by a pollinator at least five times in order to produce a normal fruit.

We look forward to seeing you and your families at our Orientation and first veggie pickup, Wednesday June 6th.

Please feel free to call Rebecca with questions: (360) 297-1877

Spring feels just around the corner!

Photos by subscriber, Leslie Newman

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Subscriber Orientation & First Pickup June 1

May 21, 2011 in CSA, News by Leslie

Wednesday, June 1 5:30-7:30 pm

Hors D’oeuvres • Lots of New Information • Garden Tour • First Produce Pickup

CSA subscribers: You are invited to bring your family and join us for an evening at the farm. See your summer vegetables growing! Taste a leaf of sweet Fennel or sour Sorrel as you stroll the fields. (No dogs please. Our chickens and peacocks are free-ranging) It is quite important that at least one member of each subscriber household attend. After this meeting, our pickups will be on a self-serve basis and must run smoothly for everyone to get his/her share of the just-harvested bounty.

We’ll explain the system at the orientation, as well as sign you up for bread, cheese or egg shares, or other delectable additions to our own farm’s harvest, if you’re interested. Each of these is an add-on to the CSA, a delicious way to support local producers, and an opportunity to collect an even more abundant basket each week.

Your first vegetables of this season will be ready for you to take home. The distribution will come at the end of the evening for new subscribers. Returnees may pay their balance, grab veggies and go if you like. Bring a bag or box to carry your bounty down the driveway. Please park on Midway or in the designated pasture area halfway up the drive. Our parking area at the orientation site is limited, please, to those who cannot make the 100-yard walk up the hill.

Your final payment will be due at the orientation. Most full shares have already paid a $250 deposit—the balance is $400. Split shares sent a $150 deposit and have $350 remaining. Checks should be made payable to Persephone Farm.

Rebecca, Louisa, Bill and our apprentices are very excited to see this program starting for another glorious season. We look forward to meeting all our new subscribers and seeing the familiar faces of friends and neighbors.

PERSEPHONE (Greek Goddess of Spring, Flowers, and Rebirth)

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Wild and Fancy Salad Greens – Oh yes!

May 13, 2011 in CSA, News by Leslie

Persephone Farm's Wild & Fancy Salad Greens

Persephone Farm is very proud of their salad greens. Rebecca considers them their “signature product”, the first (and most unique) offering the farm produces. She says…

“We started the mix way back in 1991, before the baby salad green craze was even a notion. One thing I like to say about our Wild and Fancy salad mix is that it was never meant to be merely a platform for dressing (as is the case with so many bland dumbed down salad mixes these days.) We strive to have an exciting mouth feel, a variety of flavors, textures and leaf shapes in every batch. We painstakingly comb the fields for wild crafted ingredients in every picking. Some of these are: chick weed, lambs quarters, wild amaranth, (lemony) sheep sorrel, purslane, wild cress, cheese weed, and dandelion greens. It is my belief that these plants offer us nutritional and medicinal benefits not often found in cultivated crops. They are here in symbiosis with us humans, co-evolving to benefit both plant and animal species. Not to mention that they offer unique and special flavors not found in commercial mass produced greens mixes.”

Oh yes! I can testify, this is very tasty stuff—so many textures and flavors of green goodness. A light dressing of olive oil & lemon juice, a bit of shaved Reggiano Parmesano on top and viola, that’s serious good eats (as Alton Brown would say). Oh, you can try to forage around your own yard (I have), but it’s so much easier to pick some up from Rebecca at the Bainbridge Farmer’s Market or better yet, become a CSA subscriber.

Persephone Farm’s Wild and Fancy salad greens are served at many fine restaurants, among them The Four Swallows, Hitchcock, The New Rose Cafe at Bainbridge Gardens and The Port Gamble General Store. Subscribers often get a bag in their weekly share and can add-on extra salad greens if they choose. Buon appetito!

Fields of greens (wild & fancy)

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Spring is just over the horizon!

February 17, 2011 in CSA by Leslie

Bill has written a new post at The Season he describes the pre-spring activities on the farm and explains the CSA model. Most importantly, he say’s that spring is just over the horizon. We’ll it can’t come soon enough, this winter has been harsh, wet and cold. The mention of planted pea shoots gives me hope. I look forward to a bountiful season of fresh veg from the farm. And so it’s time to sign up for the 2011 CSA.

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Fava Bean Bonus

July 23, 2010 in CSA, Recipes by Leslie

As Persephone split share subscribers, we got a bag of fat fava beans for the second week in a row. These are mysterious, possibly magical beans. Until last year I only knew of fava beans as the side dish favored by Hannibal ‘The Cannibal’ Lecter in the oscar winning “The Silence of the Lambs“. Creepy! Don’t let that turn you off to fava beans, turns out they are delicious and it’s a treat to get them fresh from the farm down the street. A bit of googling and chatting with apprentices, Caitlin and Greg inspired my fava bean lunch…

Fava beans with Walla Walla onions

Fava Beans with Walla Walla Onions

Fava Beans with
Walla Walla Onions
Shell the beans, drop into boiling water and boil for 2 minutes. Drain the water and, so you can handle them, rinse a bit with cool water. Then remove the outer skin of each bean. Just pinch the fat end of the bean and cut the small end with a paring knife. Pinch a bit more and the bright green inner bean slides out. Easy enough. Although you can eat the outer skin, the inside is the good stuff. Heat up a bit of good olive oil, add some sliced Walla Walla onions (also in this week’s box) and gently saute until they soften a bit. Add the fava beans and heat them up. Then you’re done. I added some of Judith’s fresh chèvre, and salt and pepper (oh and some Parmesean cheese too). It was lovely.

Here’s some more info on fava beans. Did you know they were the only beans Europeans ate before they discovered America and all its legumes? So says this NPR article by Bonny Wolf.

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