[Friday Five] – February 23 #CSADAY

Hello all,

Here are my top 5 stories from this week.

  1. Today is #CSADay. In 2015, Small Farm Central released the 2014 CSA Farming Annual Report, which gathered data from more than 250 CSA farmers and almost 53,000 memberships. Among other interesting facts, the report showed that the most popular day for CSA Signups in 2014 was Friday February 28. So in 2015, the first National CSA Signup Day was held on Saturday February 28. CSA farmers offered special CSA Signup Day discounts and promotions and enjoyed an influx of signups from members wanting to support local agriculture. This year, CSA Day is about more than getting lots of CSA signups; it’s a whole day dedicated to the celebration of community-supported agriculture.
  2. For once, I thought I should include our own story. This past week, we asked ourselves what we like about offering a CSA program. Looking back at our 2 CSA seasons, we felt a lot of gratitude from our CSA members returning week after week to get our produce. Just like in any other business, we felt appreciated through those “repeat customers”, it showed value for our work. At the same time, knowing that someone will be coming to pick up our vegetables, makes seeding and planting all the more fun. It’s a great feeling to know that the produce we grow goes to people who cherish fresh, nutritious and local grown food.
  3. 31 Things To Do With Confusing CSA Vegetables: Unknown or weird vegetables are often a topic during CSA talks. Most of our members were not familiar with kohlrabi, eggplant and groundcherries.  But introducing those unfamiliar vegetables sparked curiosity among our members and soon we started trading recipe ideas. This website I found has a great collection of recipes for some of those “odd” vegetables.

  4. Honey: We’re excited that we’ll be hosting beehives on our farm this year. We think we have wonderful mix of flowers and other blooming plants in our garden. I can’t imagine how any bee would not like this. If it all goes well, we’ll be able to add a bit of honey to our CSA shares this season. How fitting that the Vancouver Sun published an article about flowering plants in the winter time. Read for yourself to find out how to extend the season for those tireless foragers.
  5. Albeit being a stretch from the CSA theme, this is a great story: 3 Dogs Are Rebuilding Chilean Forests Once Devastated By Fire. We’ll be planting out a lot of seedlings this spring in our own forest, therefore I was curious about this story from Chile. Turns out that those 3 dogs got a special basket over their back, filled with seeds. Following their intrinsic nature, the dogs are running through the forest, shaking off some seeds with every step. You gotta love this idea.

 

 

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