This is our final week of regular deliveries. After the make-up deliveries next week, the 2012 season will be over. Where has it gone? We have had many trials and tribulations our first year:  hail, wind “events”, blistering  (and early) heat, drought, voracious and overwhelming bean beetles, weasels, and one highly destructive little black cat.  Even after 25+ years of gardening we learned so much, and accomplished more than we thought was possible. Now the temperatures are dropping, the summer crops are showing their age, the fall crops are at their peak, and we start our preparations for the next season.

Next year we will apply the lessons we learned this season to make some changes. Some of them we have already mentioned. Based on your feedback we will grow more varieties. Over the winter we will add information about nutritional content and how to handle the veggies to our webpage. We will post more recipes.

We are now open for applications for the 2013 season. In your baskets this week will be flyers with an application form. There are some extra, so if you know of anyone who is interested please hand them out or direct them to our webpage. We will have a copy there also. All applications, new and renewing, received before November 1^st will have the discounted price.

We will keep this newsletter going, although not as frequently, through December 1^st and will show the preparations for the next season so you will know exactly where your food comes from and how it was grown. After the holidays we will start the new season in January.

In closing, let us both say it has been such a pleasure doing our deliveries! Going through the baskets with you and talking about the vegetables is a pure joy. We enjoyed hearing about the special meals you made with produce we grew. It is humbling to realize that we made those meals and memories possible. You know exactly who grew your food and how fresh it is. It truly reminds us that we are not only supplying produce, we are establishing a community. For this, we thank you.



We will leave you with a few shots:

Fall bok choi

Tatsoi

 



Sweet Basil

Fish pepper

Red Bells

 

 



Yellow and red Swiss chard

 

Chive blossoms

Juliet tomato

Sun Sugar tomato

 

 

Jeff and Sandra

9/10/2012

Here we are in the second week of September and it is so very hard to believe that the 2012 season is just about over.  For most of you there are only two more deliveries left, with your last delivery during the week of 9/17.  For those who took advantage of the ability to defer a week for vacations, you have your make up delivery during the week of 9/24.

The weather has certainly been….interesting this season. Yesterday was no exception. The high winds and heavy rains played havoc with the greens. Most are lying sideways on the ground. The good thing about greens is that they should all pop back up to normal with the blue skies and warm sunshine scheduled for the rest of this week.



 

The view across the street. Is that rotating?







Sideways bok choi

Our fall greens are now coming into their prime. The bok choi, mizuna, kale, and tatsoi have all grown well and will be part of this week’s baskets. (More about tatsoi in your basket info sheet.) Now that we have hot peppers we have been able to make an organic flea beetle repellant with hot cayenne, garlic and basil mixed with a little dish soap. It worked really well, until a few days of rain prevented us from re-applying and the flea beetles feasted. The pinpoint holes on the fall green’s leaves are cosmetic only, but we were hoping to prevent it from happening. Oh well, we needed the rain. We’ll dry the cayenne and try again in the spring.



Mizuna and kale

Purple bok choi

Speaking of rain, the tomatoes are, well, having “issues”. With the rains came the dreaded tomato blight. It is caused by the same fungus that caused the Great Irish Potato Famine and is just as deadly. Growing heirloom tomatoes using organic practices pretty much makes it inevitable. In fact, a new strain showed up in 2009 that is particularly aggressive.  Crops throughout the United States are being devastated. We have actually been lucky holding out this long-the dry summer helped prevent the blight (the silver lining?) until the recent rains.

Notice the dead leaves?

All we can do is remove the infected leaves (NOT compost them!) and hope the remaining tomatoes will ripen before the plant completely dies. Oh well, once they finally ripened it was a good tomato season, and there is always next year

Bare stemmed plants

 



As we wind down the 2012 season, we are looking ahead to the 2013 season. In fact, many of our plantings are being done now for the spring 2013 harvest.

If the winter is mild these will be next spring’s broccoli

We are taking time to look back on this year’s experiences and see what we did right and where we can improve our practices. We had a very good response to the Survey and will be incorporating many of your comments and suggestions. Next year we will include more of a selection of herbs and produce.  We will increase the quantity of some items, and not overwhelm you with others.  We will switch to two ten week sessions so that everyone will have the opportunity to have both cool and hot weather crops. We will give more guidance on how to handle your produce, and how to preserve surplus. (Tomatoes and peppers can be frozen.) We will expand the webpage to include more produce information. (Some is there already, take a look!) We will be starting the 2013 season earlier to better match the asparagus season.  We also plan to resume our egg offering now that we have increased the coop security from predators and once we purchase more chicks this fall. We will look at our succession planting practices to see if we are maximizing our available real estate. As always, if you have any comments or suggestions feel free to call, email, or leave a comment on our webpage at http://www.jsminifarm.blogspot.com.

Also, the price for gas continues to rise with no end in sight. We deliver 100% of our shares. We must take into account the financial well-being of the business. Thus, next year the share prices will be $24/week. However, for our returning shareholders, and any friends and family members whom you refer and sign up by November 1^st, we will discount the price to $22/week.

The price schedules for the 2013 season are as follows:

Discounted-sign up before November 1st

Session I (10 weeks) Late April/early May-early/mid July	$220
½ Share Session I (delivery every other week)	$120
Session II (10 weeks) early/mid July-mid/end September	$220
½ Share Session II (delivery every other week)	$120
Full Season (Sessions I and II) 10% Discount	$396
½ Share Full Season (Session I and II) 10% Discount	$216
Egg subscription-1 dozen per week  Session I or Session II	$30
*Egg subscription-1/2 dozen per week Session I or Session II	$20
Egg subscription Full Season (Sessions I and II)	$60
*Egg subscription-1/2 dozen per week Full Season (Sessions I and II)	$40
*If you also sign up for a ½ share of produce you will receive 1 dozen eggs every other week with your veggies.   Egg shares only available with a vegetable subscription.

 Normal 2013 Price 

Session I (10 weeks) Late April/early May-early/mid July	$240
½ Share Session I (delivery every other week)	$130
Session II (10 weeks) early/mid July-mid/end September	$240
½ Share Session II (delivery every other week)	$130
Full Season (Sessions I and II) 10% Discount	$432
½ Share Full Season (Session I and II) 10% Discount	$234
Egg subscription-1 dozen per week  Session I or Session II	$30
*Egg subscription-1/2 dozen per week Session I or Session II	$20
Egg subscription Full Season (Sessions I and II)	$60
*Egg subscription-1/2 dozen per week Full Season (Sessions I and II)	$40

 We hope you have enjoyed this inaugural year as much as we have! While the weather has been challenging to say the least, and the predators (for both plant and animal life) overwhelming; we can honestly say that this has been a very good year. In these growing conditions we count ourselves lucky to have had such a good harvest with only a few crop failures. Many other small farmers have lost everything. We take a moment to think of those in worse drought stricken areas, or who suffered even more severe weather than we had. Remember the connection between Mother Nature and your food supply!

In closing, here are some shots of other, non-vegetative varieties in our garden. Sights like this are why we use no pesticides.

 

 

Ok, the last two we could do without. Forrest strikes again.

Until next time,

Jeff and Sandra