Happy CSA Day! What is CSA Day you might ask? It’s the most popular day to sign up for a CSA share. If you want to reinforce this trend, head over to our sign-up page to join our 2020 CSA today! I do want to highlight that as of the time of writing, we are 65% full. That means we have 26 spots left. And only 11 of those are available for Tuesday deliveries to all of our Madison locations. So if you want to guarantee your spot in our CSA, please do sign up today or soon.

If you haven’t signed up for a CSA share yet, now’s the time!

What we’ve been up to in the off-season

I suppose “off-season” is a bit of a misnomer, as we’re never fully “off.” There’s always work to do – clean-up, dreaming and strategizing, working on the website and getting sign-ups ready, communicating with past and prospective members, combing through feedback and planning changes for the upcoming season, and more. Plus we have a “toddler-in-training” and off-farm jobs that keep us very busy. Nevertheless, it is a quieter time of year than the bustle of the growing season.

In November, we delivered our storage share and cleaned up for the season. There’s equipment to clean, a barn to organize, hoses to remove before they freeze, and veggies to store and preserve for our family to eat over the winter.

December was a blur leading up to the holidays. We cut down our first Christmas tree – sustainably harvested from our very own farm! – and enjoyed celebrating our daughter Maya’s first Christmas at home. Then we headed west to spend time with my family who lives out in California, and – despite being sick for most of the time – enjoyed seeing lots of family and friends, good food, a trip to the ocean, and the comparatively warm weather.

A blue spruce thinned from an overgrown tree planting on our farm made a beautiful Christmas tree

In January I redesigned our website. I’ve made many tweaks over the years but it had had the same overall design since I first launched it back in 2013, so I decided it was time for a fresh look. I think it looks cleaner and is easier to navigate now. We also launched our 2020 CSA sign-ups!

In February we submitted our annual paperwork for organic certification. This involves lots of spreadsheets, receipts, and documenting plans for the year. At some point during the growing season a representative from the certification agency will come out a tour the farm. This month also marked a big milestone in our family as we celebrated Maya’s first birthday. She is a happy little kiddo – all pigtails and cheer! She’s one speedy crawler and loves walking around holding on to someone, so we’re sure we’ll be chasing her around the farm in no time.

What’s new this year?

Add-ons

In last year’s surveys, we asked for our members’ thoughts on add-on options and heard that this would be a very welcome offering. So, we talked over ideas with some friends and this season we’re excited to be partnering with ethical and environmentally-minded farmers to offer deliveries of apples and meat. (We’re exploring one other add-on option too, so stay tuned…)

Two Onion Farm, run by our friends Chris and Juli, will be offering certified-organic apples at two points in the season: mid/late September and again in late October. These former veggie farmers have transitioned to apples, in part to raise perennial crops that help protect their hillside soils from erosion at their Belmont farm.

Riemer Family Farm, run by our friends Jen and Bryce, will be offering a variety of meat options three times during the season: before the 4th of July, before Labor Day, and in early November (storage share week). They raise their animals without antibiotics, steroids, hormones, or animal by-products, and the animals are rotationally grazed on pasture in season with outdoor access in the off-season. They raise beef, pork, lamb, and poultry (including Thanksgiving turkeys that will be available during the last delivery) at their Brodhead farm.

Rather than signing up at the beginning of the season, the way this will work is we'll offer a few delivery opportunities during the season of these add-ons. We'll send out a link to order and pay via these partner farms in our newsletter starting a few weeks in advance. Then, whatever our members order will be delivered along with their CSA share. We hope CSA members find this to be a nice compliment to the fruits and veggies we grow here at Plowshares & Prairie Farm!

Pick-up Locations

We made some changes to our pick-up locations this year. We made the tough decision to cut the Hilldale site, which was a small site for us and involved some challenging logistics with our hosts.

On the other hand, we’re excited to expand our offerings to Group Health Cooperative (GHC) clinics and admin office. GHC is a local leader in wellness and preventative health, and a real advocate of CSAs and healthy eating. GHC is the one remaining local health care provider that offers a direct wellness reimbursement to members that sign up for CSA shares (though others have point programs). We’re glad we can offer pick-ups at more locations that make healthy eating easier and more accessible for GHC employees and others who live or work nearby. More details on the CSA shares and locations are available here.

In the fields

Though our fruit and veggie offerings are already quite diverse, we like to try some new kinds each year so we can have fun new varieties to introduce to our members and continue to experiment with what grows best on our farm. A few new veggies we’ll be planting this year include poblano peppers, radicchio, and black radishes.

This isn’t a done deal yet, but we’re hoping to add a second hoophouse this year. Our first hoophouse has been a game-changer for tomatoes. They love the extra heat and keeping them out of the rain goes a long way in preventing the spread of disease. It has also been a great season extender, letting us plant early greens and carrots in spring, and keep our tomatoes for longer in the fall. But crop rotation is really important since different families of crops take away or add different nutrients to the soil and have common challenges with diseases or pests. Rotating our crop families helps us grow the best crops we can while maintaining healthy soils. This is easy to do in our open fields, but in the hoophouse we’ve had to rely on extensive cover cropping in between plantings and rotating between rows of crops and aisles. It’s better than nothing, but we really need to do a bigger rotation if we want to keep our tomatoes healthy. So, we hope to add a second hoophouse so we have more space to rotate these important, heat-loving crops. If not this summer, it will be on the docket for next year.

We’re looking forward to a great 8th season of CSA here at Plowshares & Prairie Farm!

Your farmers,

Chelsea & Scott

CSA Day & 2020 Season Preview