CSAs and the weather?

Between the warm early spring followed by frost and the current drought, I really feel for Midwestern farmers this year. For those of you who subscribe to CSAs, I'm curious as to how this season's wacky weather has affected your subscriptions.

I'm in my first year subscribing to Big Head Farm's CSA, so I can't compare it to prior years. They pushed back their start date and stop date by a few weeks thanks to the weird weather this year.

Angelic Organics started on the same date, but we are well into "summer" produce and seem to have skipped the usual first few weeks of all greens all the time. They still load up with kale, kale, and more kale, but we got things like broccoli and cucumbers much earlier. Produce all is of good quality-- perhaps better than last year. Lots of earworms in the corn this year-- makes me miss my dearly departed pet turtle, who would eat the worms as a treat-- her share of the CSA.

Jen

Hi,

Last weekend, I visited my favored farmers along the Wisconsin-Illinois border. I bought 50 pounds of tomatoes, because I worried tomatoes might be winding down due to frost. I was advised a new crop of sweet corn would be due this weekend, if there was no hard frost during the week. Until there was a hard frost, tomatoes would still be available, too.

At the next farm, I asked how things were going. "Terrible!" I thought he was joking and asked one more time. I learned foot traffic to his farm (and I presume the others, too) was way down this year. He blamed the news related to crop failures had discouraged people from visiting. While crops planted earlier failed and some plants did not produce as well, he still had plenty of fruits and vegetables from later plantings.

I also learned non-commodity crops, which is most of the fruit and vegetable farmers who sell directly to the public, cannot be insured. Apparently because there is no contract or reliable price benchmark to value their crops, they cannot be insured.

This promises to be lovely weekend, drive out to your favorite farmstands. They could use your support.

Regards,

montalbano 4-week fall csa

we're sorry to be wrapping up the last week - it's been great with no signs of the rough spring and summer seasons.
we have been very happy with the quality, variety and value.

some of the produce included: spinach, lettuces, herbs, carrots, radishes, turnips, broccoli, green onions, shallots, leeks, beets, braising greens, celery, winter squash, potatoes, cabbage, the list goes on....

Montalbano Farms
www.montalbanofarms.com
Sandwich, Illinois 60548