News: CSA

As I write this, it has begun to sprinkle outside. The days have been feeling slower; we start our days at 8am now, waiting for sunlight to break the tree line. All of the signs are there – and so we enter this transitional period before we settle into winter. This winter hibernation will be filled with creative pursuits, continued education, companionship, and adventure.

This is the last time I’ll be sending the CSA newsletter to you, and I’ve been feeling particularly nostalgic. The snapdragons and dianthus that used to grace our bouquets, the poppies that once covered the field, and the seemingly endless beds of radishes are gone. When I shared that newsletter on tips and tricks for bouquets, one of the things that Rebecca remarked to me was that so much of the beauty of these flowers is that they are ephemeral. And like the beds of radishes and the bright red field poppies, they, too, must rest.

Our time for rest has come, and we’re all looking forward to new and old things!

Willow, Davis, and fluffy pup Nali will be going back to their home state of North Carolina this winter. Willow is looking forward to crafting, our farm planning class, and time to put towards other artistic endeavors. Davis is looking forward to finishing building their van and seeing family.

Jeremy will spend some time in his van with his buddy Doc, but will be returning to Persephone to continue as our crew leader for another season! He’s looking forward to relaxing, playing music, and generally having a good time.

Angie will also be coming back to Persephone for another season! She’s looking forward to some much needed rest and relaxation, as well as our Farm Planning class! She’ll be spending some time with her family in Idaho for the winter but ultimately end up here next spring once again with her pup, Lily.

It’s me, Caitlin! I’ll be back for another season of learning and growing here at Persephone as well! I’m looking forward to spending my winter days in Colorado with family. I’ll spend most of my time climbing, camping, canyoneering, and gettin’ cozy with my Eliot Coleman books in preparation for our farm planning class. I’m excited to see some of you folks again next year!

And so the season must come to an end. It has been such a pleasure seeing you all and bringing good food to you. On the farm, we talk a lot about how meaningful work can truly alter your understanding of the world around you. In a time where it can be so easy to fall into the trap of despair, with every CSA harvest, we become further confident that we are making change in the world, and creating meaning in our own lives. Through wildfire smoke and days both hot and rainy, it has been a life-giving experience to share our harvest with you.

We look forward to seeing some of you next season and hope that your winter is full of good food, good company, and overall bliss.

Thanks for a great season!

~ Caitlin
(she/her)

Learn more about our CSA subscriptions or sign up for the 2021 season!

Farming is inherently a gamble, Rebecca explained to us over our morning salad harvest. You ultimately have to play the hand you are dealt, and what a dealer we’ve had in 2020! Even if you play your cards right, sometimes the game just won’t work out. At least the weather has been favorable.

This is not a scary newsletter, if that’s what you’re thinking, but it is a glimpse into the reality of farming in all this chaos. From the beginning of the season, we recognized that certain parts of this style of farming were at risk due to Covid. In March, our fields were brimming with early spring produce and we had a greenhouse full of plant starts we’d carefully potted up to sell at the Bainbridge Island Farmer’s Market. And then, no market. And then still no market. And by the time a safe plan for re-opening was formulated, the season of selling all those little seedlings had nearly passed.

One after another, the wedding flower orders we had booked were cancelled or postponed. We wondered, is this the year to just till in the flower crops and focus on growing only food? Or will this be the year people need to brighten their homes and hearts with flowers more than ever?

We also rely on restaurants to buy our veggies, and our fresh sheet (which is a list of all of our offerings) has still been sent out to local chefs every week.

Everyone is concerned about viability for themselves and for their favorite places. We’ve seen beloved restaurants close, or struggle to stay open at partial capacity with Covid. Just when we learned the rules for how to work this modified restaurant system, then came the fires. Wildfires continue to keep people in their homes, staying safe from the smoke and away from the farmers market.

It seems that 2020 has dealt our local food system an exceptionally unpredictable hand. We’ve been growing and picking beautiful veggies – we’ve had some legendary harvests – note the copious cauliflower recently (check out the photo below!) and yet there’s always a chance that it won’t work out. As farmers, we recognize that we are tied up in a vulnerable system, one that could change at any moment. We have to follow the ebbs and flows of the world in motion and make it work. This year, Mother Nature’s ups and downs have been the easy part!

Mostly, we are so grateful to have a CSA full of wonderful folks, and that we can bring this food to you all. Without it, this food would have no home. But even with the largest CSA we’ve ever had, we’re still trying very hard to make sure that we don’t let food go to waste. With fewer restaurant orders due to Covid and wildfires and with smoky markets keeping folks home, we’re still uncertain about meeting our financial goals off of the care and time we spend weeding, harvesting, and washing our crops.

We’ve donate produce to Sharenet and Helpline House and participated in the Farm to Food Bank program, but farming on a small scale, it’s not in our budget to be able to give much food away and still remain profitable. In the upcoming season, our CSA subscribers will be able to donate to our local food banks through us. That money will be translated directly into produce that goes to these valuable organizations, and ensures that we are able to continue doing what we are doing.

With all of these gambling metaphors, I’ve just been listening to The Gambler by Kenny Rogers, and enjoying the fact that the sun decided to peek back through the smoke and fog today.

Until next time,

• Caitlin
  (she/her)

What was supposed to be a week of continued bountiful, 80-degree harvest has become smoky, yellow-tinted days, looking up at the strange sun. The wildfire smoke has reached far into the peninsula, as I’m sure you’ve noticed.

Nonetheless, we wake up, check-in with each other, and continue about our week. The farm provided us with a bunch of N-95s, and we’re doing our best to stay healthy in this smoke. We’re still in the part of the season where food is so plentiful, our walk-in cooler is filled to the brim. A lot of farming is timing and waiting, and it’s a beautiful dance to watch beds come ready with food, then later become a new crop, while the bed just across the way comes ready.

My heart breaks for those farmers across the West that have to abandon their farms, their source of livelihood and fulfillment. It’s truly a life-giving practice to be a farmer. There is so much joy in bringing good food to good people.

Farmers feel a calling to this work: a strong, deeply-embedded desire to grow food, to supply the essentials for human life at any cost. Dr. Mike Rosmann writes about this, that farmers feel a call to meet others’ need for food. Notably, he writes on the distress caused when farmers are unable to fulfill their basic desire to do this work. Farmers often express the sentiment of “letting down” their community, in both their families and their consumers.

We’ve known since the beginning of this season, with the phrase “essential workers” being passed around, that our work was needed. While many of our friends, and myself included, were let go from jobs in March, Persephone continued to prepare for the summer. We adapted our market booth, our CSA orientation – making it work.

So here we are, masked up in the yellowish, hazy afternoons. Most of all, we’re grateful for the ability to answer this call to the land and continue to bring good food to you all. Without it, I’m not sure what else we would do.

We wish the best for our fellow farmers affected more seriously by these wildfires along the West Coast, and hope that you all are staying safe as well.

As the gloominess of the smoke lingers, I hope that you find something that will bring joy and meaning into your life, as growing food does for us.

– Intern Caitlin 
(she/her/hers)

We love hearing about how much you love your bouquets! With that in mind, I’d like to offer some tips and tricks shared with me so that you can make your flowers last even longer!

For a long-lasting cut flower, it all starts on the farm. We do our best to keep our flower buckets clean, our snips sharp, and cut flowers in cool, dark places before they’re made into bouquets and set out for you. 

After you take home a dreamy bouquet of your choosing, there are a few steps you can take to ensure long vase life. First, make sure your vase is absolutely clean. Farmer Rebecca shared the adage with me: “keep your vase as clean as your teacup.”

You can cut the stems 1/4″ once you get home; this gives your flowers a great, happy start to their life in a vase. You can cut the stems daily and replace the water, too, if it works for you!

Recipe to extend the life of cut flowers

Cut flowers enjoy a combination of things in their water – some food, a bactericide, and slight acidity. Sounds tricky, but can be easily done with home ingredients! To accomplish this, you can add a tiny bit of sugar, a tiny bit of bleach, and a tiny bit of citric acid to your vase water. The sugar feeds the plant, the bleach eliminates bacterial build-up, and the citric acid will keep the water ever-so-slightly acidic.  You can buy citric acid at any grocery store if you don’t have it already!

Clean water is crucial

If the water gets murky, the flowers will try to drink up the murk, the stems get clogged up, and you can imagine how the flowers begin to change. Cut flowers will always prefer a cool, shady place. They don’t like hot spots, open windows, or bright direct light.

Ultimately, flowers can’t stay the same forever. Part of their magic is the ephemeral nature of their bloom. We watch them open with youthful eagerness, care for them, and see them through to their end — perhaps we see them next summer. As with other things in this life, they were not meant to last forever, so we cherish them while we can.

– Intern Caitlin 
(she/her/hers)