Category: 2012 Newsletters

With a wet start we begin our CSA harvests this week!  We’ll begin harvesting greens Tuesday morning to be ready for our first pick-up. Hopefully the water from this record 7+ inches of rain will recede from the fields a bit or we’ll all be out there in rafts and dinghies. This farm is fortunate to have well drained soils  so we expect to have few problems from this storm.

We are certainly excited to see familiar faces back at the farm and welcome new ones.  The farm crew, Ailish, Courtney, Mike, Jacqueline, and Phil have been working hard since April 1st.  Finally harvesting the produce and sending it home with you has brightened their day, even in all this rain.  Truly!

 When do I pick-up my share?

The Brunswick share can be picked up from 2-7pm on Tuesday or Friday starting this week and running through Halloween.

Bring Bags!

What’s in this week’s share…

Lettuce mix

Asian greens

Arugula

Kale

Chard

There are several new crops that we should see in the the next week or two… strawberries, scallions, turnips and zucchini.

Every Monday we’ll post about the week’s share and the goings on at the farm.

Look forward to seeing you this week!!

Best, Maura & Seth

 

 

Read below to learn about…

• Field updates
• Start dates?
• New member orientation for Brunswick members this Sunday!
• Sign up for your mushroom & egg shares
• Fish shares – CSF (community supported fishery) with Port Clyde Fresh Catch
• Opportunities for kids 13 and up at farm camp!

 

This post is coming late which means that we are busy!

Thank you to everyone for signing on with us!  The CSA reached capacity in mid-April which is earlier than in the past few years.  We are gathering the wait list for members for 2013 already.  We appreciate all of the support you’ve given by joining the CSA, and by spreading the good word about our farm to your friends.  We are ever grateful.

Field Updates  The dry weather of April has transitioned into “normal” weather for May and we are actively squeezing work in the fields between the raindrops. In addition to field work, we are getting the farm set-up for the start of harvest and washing, moving sheep onto fresh grass, teaching pigs how to turn compost and finding room for each weeks succession of new plants in the greenhouse.

The crew has been on the farm for about 6 weeks now and they are doing a great job managing the different aspects of the farm and keeping us on schedule. We have a little over 3 acres  of vegetables in the ground and hope to have over another acre planted by the end of the month. The warm dry of April was irresistible and we put a few crops out early which have been dragging a bit with the drop in temperatures and the rain soaked soils.  That said our potatoes are emerging this week and the onion crop is showing its first new leaves since transplanting. May 15th is always my go-to date for the last spring frost possibility. In most years if we don’t have cold night around the 15th and the long-range forecast has no temps below 50 at night I assume we are safe (don’t hold me liable!). For us that means tomatoes can go into or field tunnels, tender flowers can be set out in the Upic field and we have much more flexibility for everything else.

When do we start???  At this point it looks as if we will be right on time with our first harvests either the week of May 27 or June 3. We’ll make the call next week and be in contact with all of you by email and phone. If you are sharing your share make sure to check in with your partner when we set the start date.

New member orientation:  This Sunday May 20th at either 10:00 am or 3:00 pm

If this is your first year as a member of the farm we invite you to tour the farm and talk about how the CSA works. Maura and I will walk you through the process of picking up your share, show you the Upic field and transplant greenhouse as well as introduce you to the piglets.

Mushroom and Egg shares Add more local flavor to your share with an organic egg or mushroom share. Sparrow Farm eggs are pasture-raised with deep yellow yolks and tall standing whites. An egg share guarantees you a dozen each week with your produce.

Oyster Creek Mushrooms are a combination of cultivated and wild harvested mushrooms from Maine.  Each share is a half a pound a week or varieties like shitake, portobella,  black trumpets and morels.

Use our online management system to order either an egg share and or a mushroom share.  All primary members have an account already.  You access your account by going to our webpage and clicking on the green Manage Your Account button on the right.  If you don’t know your password you can hit the forgot password button. From here follow the system prompts and call (729.1112)  or email with any questions.

***Split shares.  If you are not the primary member on your account, but you’d still like to order eggs and/or mushrooms independent of your share partner (realizing they must be picked up every week) send an email to Maura and I’ll send you a link to get into our system.

Fresh Fish Share each week

Once again we are a host site for Port Clyde Fresh Catch CSF (community supported fishery). They will be delivering a fresh fish share to the farm each Friday beginning on June 15 and going for 10 weeks.   New this year you have to sign up for all ten weeks.  If you are a fan of fresh Maine landed fish this is a great deal and the fish is of the best quality.  Seth and Maura do not administer this share.  You pay Port Clyde directly & they handle all the admin.  We are simply the host site.   To download the PDF with sign up info, and prices click here.

 

Junior Counselors!!

We still have a few spots left in our Junior Counselor Program this year.  A great opportunity for kids ages 13 and up who are looking to spend the day outside, having fun, leading younger children, learning about sustainable agriculture, cooking, crafting, reading, and playing. Volunteer to help lead our campers in exchange for great work & life experience!  For the dates and more information see our webpage at:  http://crystalspringcsa.com/farm-camp   For a description of the program and application email Maura or 729.1112.

 

 

 

Ahead in this newsletter blog…

• Weather or Not
• Only a few CSA shares left!
• Online signup: it’s new, easy, and helps busy farmers…
• Community Shares go electronic
• Meet the New Crew
• A letter from the Brunswick-Topsham Land Trust

What’s going on at the farm these days? Plenty. The past two weeks have been clipping along like a train on schedule. Our new farm crew is getting their feet under them and together we have opened several acres, planted a long list of crops, and even set up our irrigation system (which we used today – a first in the nine Aprils we’ve been here).  All of the plants both in the greenhouse and in the field look great and if the weather continues (or even goes back to normal) we’ll be looking at an amazing year.

Everywhere we go, people have been asking how this warm weather is impacting our plans in the fields.  The warm dry weather has allowed us to get ahead in the fields and naturally, it has also allowed the fields to get ahead as well. Weeds like shepherds purse and campion are blooming almost a week early and we have our first pests arriving to the table early as well with flea and click beetles making an April appearance for the first time in our experience. The sheep are getting restless in the barn, especially those ewes that look out over the greening pastures. We may start grazing this month as well – which would be yet another first.

There are two ways to think about all of these early developments. One is to take them in stride and hope for a great year. The other is to wring your hands and wait for the other shoe to drop.  Like most farmers, we are optimists who temper a sunny view of the world with a teaspoon of worry and many helping of preparation. Part of the satisfaction of getting so much done early is the it allows time later for adapting to bumps in the road that will surely come next week or next month.

Only a few CSA shares left!

As the season has arrived early, so have most of our CSA shares for this year.  If you are thinking about joining or just haven’t gotten in touch with us yet please click the Join Our CSA button at the farm webpage and follow the easy online sign-up process. As always payment plans are available.

Online Sign-up: It’s new, easy and helpful to busy farmers.

If you have signed up in the past six weeks you’ve seen our new online sign-up system. For the uninitiated, its a fast easy way to sign-up pay and follow share balance. This system has already helped us keep up with all of the administrative duties of managing multiple payments from all of you.  You can sign up online and continue to mail in your checks, and we also can now take electronic checks, credit cards for your share! Check it out if you haven’t already…

Community Shares Go Electronic

We expanded our community share program this year by making electronic donations available via our website. This program is in cooperation with Midcoast Hunger Prevention Program who matches us up with local families that may not be able to afford a CSA share. Your donations are matched by us to offer shares at the farm in Brunswick. Last year we had three families who participated. Already this season we have five shares with more donations coming in each week. Many thanks to those of you who have given so far.

Meet the crew!

We have an all new crew this year.  We welcome Ailish, Courtney, Mike, Jacqueline, and Phil.  Phil is currently a junior at Bowdoin College.  He has been waking up early a few mornings to join us for our 6:00 am starts before classes.  Once school is on break for the summer, he’ll be with us full time.  The other four are settling in to our long work days, learning the tractors, seeding, tilling, transplanting, field planning, irrigation, fencing…a ton of learning for the first two weeks.  As we’ve had in the past, we have a group of smart, hard-working, college graduates who are motivated to learn as much as they can about growing food. We’ve had a stellar first couple weeks with them.  As you can see below, we’ve also practiced the importance of supporting our downtown and community with a trip to Gelato Fiasco’s successful People Plus Fundraiser.

 

A message to Crystal Spring Farm CSA members from the Brunswick-Topsham Land Trust (BTLT):

As a member of the Crystal Spring Farm CSA, you probably are more intimately acquainted with this beautiful piece of land than most people in our area.  But did you know that Crystal Spring Farm is owned by the Brunswick-Topsham Land Trust?  And did you know that the BTLT created and now maintains the wonderful system of trails that winds through the farm property on both sides of Pleasant Hill Road, in addition to extensive trail systems at the Skolfield Preserve in Brunswick and the Bradley Pond Farm and Cathance River Nature Preserves in Topsham?  And did you know since 1985 the BTLT has preserved over 1,900 acres of farmland, forest, fields, and shoreline in Brunswick, Topsham, and Bowdoin?

Crystal Spring Farm was conserved in 1998 through the dedication of the BTLT and generous support from the people and businesses of Brunswick.  It quickly became an invaluable community resource, hosting farm days, pumpkin tosses, sledding, and other outdoor activities for the public.  In 2003, BTLT’s commitment to local agriculture led us to Seth and Maura, who lease the farm and run their farming operation independently.  Through this relationship, BTLT’s dream of restoring the agricultural potential of Crystal Spring Farm was realized, and we all benefit from Seth and Maura’s careful, sustainable stewardship of this jewel in Brunswick’s agricultural crown.

If you appreciate the relationship with Crystal Spring Farm that your CSA membership affords you, we hope you’ll show equal appreciation for the organization that saved this farm from development and made the Crystal Spring Farm CSA possible by becoming a member of the Brunswick-Topsham Land Trust.  Joining is easy.  You can do it online or by downloading our membership form and sending it in with your check.

Many of you are already members of the Land Trust, and if you are, we thank you.  If not, there’s no better time than now to become part of this organization.  A generous friend of the Land Trust is currently matching new memberships dollar for dollar, so if you join now your membership will go twice as far, leveraging grant money and providing funds to safeguard the BTLT’s stewardship of Crystal Spring Farm and its other properties, and to help us protect additional farmland and open space near the farm and elsewhere in the Brunswick-Topsham area.

Click here to learn more about the Brunswick-Topsham Land Trust.

We look forward to seeing you out at the farm!  And, please Join Now!

 

 

 

 

Happy Winter!  Hope you’ve been enjoying the winter, bizarre weather and all.  We’ve been busy closing up from 2011 and getting ready for 2012. This means crunching production and financial numbers and making decisions that will guide our choices as we look to the coming year.

Please read below for farm camp registration, lamb open house dates, and how you can help feed your neighbors!

Thank You

Thank you to everyone who has joined on board already for this season.  If you’ve been meaning to sign up – it’s not too late!  The price of a share this year is the same as last at $515.  If you haven’t sent a payment yet, you can catch up with our suggested payment plan by sending $238.33 this month ($138.33 due in April and June), or pay in full, or send what you can now with your own payment schedule to follow over the next few months.

If you are following our suggested payment plan, February payments of $138.33 are due this month. We appreciate your help in keeping the wheels turning as we prepare to make payroll, heat the greenhouse, and buy soil, compost, and lime along with all the other supplies we need for the coming year.  Like most small businesses, we struggle to balance our increasing costs with trying to keep our prices affordable.  As we move into spring and your options for spending your local food dollars increase, we appreciate your commitment to our CSA.

Value

As in years past, after tallying pounds upon pounds of produce and balancing them against dollars, you spent $1.32 per pound for fresh local organic produce.  A great value on any scale and one of the reasons why we love doing CSA.

At the Farm

So…how has your farm been faring this winter?  While it was nice to be outside in November and December we tend get worried when the temperatures don’t dip and the ground doesn’t freeze.  Cold weather does a lot to keep the farm balanced in an increasingly topsy-turvy weather cycle.  Pests, diseases and weeds all take a hit in a prolonged cold winter, which makes the coming spring and summer a bit easier out in the fields.  In addition snow cover protects perennial crops (for us strawberries and winter grains) from the harsh process of freeze and thaw.  Let’s hope that the remaining months are “normal,” whatever that is.

Weather we Like it or Not

The changes we have been seeing on the farm over the last years are echoed in a new “plant hardiness zone map” published by the USDA.  Zone maps tell farmers and gardeners the average high and low temps for their areas and help them match these temps to plants that will thrive in their fields and gardens.  An article in last weeks Press Herald explains the maps in detail and gives a snazzy side by side comparison of the old and new zone maps. Check out the article and a larger version of he map here.

 

Here We Go

Seeds are in!  We generally order seed from six or seven different companies trying to spend the bulk of our money with Maine and Northeast seed houses. We spend on about $4000 on seed and plant stock each year, which always seems like a big check to write but in the scheme of farm expenses it’s better than buying diesel.  Now we just have to wait until the first week of March to get into the greenhouse to get the season started.

New Lambs

Any day now I expect to see new our first lambs of the season. These fat ewes look more like boxcars as they waddle out from the barn to the round bales of silage hay. Joanne (who is with us for the winter) and I are checking the barn several times a day and then again before bedtime, watching for that first birth and the start of what we expect will be a month of new lambs. We have 71 ewes that were exposed to a ram last September and if we’re lucky we’ll have about 115 lambs when the process winds up. Twenty to twenty five births a week doesn’t sound like too much when you break it into days and hours but the ewes don’t generally space themselves out perfectly.  Inevitably we will have long stretches of quiet followed by back-to-back arrivals.  Two years ago we had a stretch that gave us 36 lambs in 36 hours!

Lamb Open Houses

If you would like to come see the new lambs we have a couple of days on the calendar set to show off the new arrivals.

• Saturday March 3 11-1pm CSA members lamb open house – bring your friends!
• Sunday March 25^th from 11-2 open house for the general public

If you can come on the 3^rd you’ll beat the crowds that turn out for the larger open house on the 25^th. You are welcome to bring your friends, family, and neighbors on the 3^rd.

CSF Online

Please share our website with friends, family, neighbors, and colleagues.  Check out our new slideshows, some simplified pages, member testimonials and as always our recipe index by ingredient. Follow the “Home” tab at the top of this page or click here.

Help us Feed Everyone

For the past eight years we have been working closely with the Midcoast Hunger Prevention Program (MCHPP), delivering our excess produce to their soup kitchen and food pantry. We’ve always wanted to find new ways way to make this great food we grow available to more people, especially those that may not be able to afford a CSA share.  Last season we started a pilot program to offer four shares to families. We donated three shares and one share was paid for by a generous summer resident who wanted to help.  MCHPP was able to identify four families who were good candidates for our share. The feedback we got from the families was resoundingly positive, for one family it was “absolutely a blessing for us.”  This year we hope to expand the program with your help.  When making your share payments this spring round up any dollar amount you can afford to put toward the project, making a note in the memo of your check. We will match this amount and donate shares to appropriate families MCHPP has identified. We are working on making these donations tax deductible through MCHPP, we’ll keep you posted. Our donor from last year is on board again for one share and we have matched him with a second share.  We would like to be able to offer ten shares to MCHPP families this season so we just have eight to go!

2012 Farm Camp Registration!

Since farm camp has filled up quickly in the past years, we will give CSA members a one-week head start on registration beginning on February 13th.  New this year is a week of yoga-farm camp.  Details on the Farm Camp page of the website.

Portland CSA Shares

Help us connect with your friends in Portland.  Last year we began delivering boxed vegetable shares to neighborhoods and offices in Portland and  hope to continue the program this year.  Please pass the word to all of your urban friends who are jealous of your farm share! Any connection in the following neighborhoods are especially helpful:

• South Portland-Willard Square
• Old Port
• Woodfords

Winter Babysitting

Our winter shepherd Joanne (you’ll remember her from the summer farm crew) is available for babysitting this winter…if you’re interested contact her at 603.657.6072.