Happy New Year! We wish you all to have a healthy & prosperous 2012. We have a few new projects for the 2012 Harvest Year. Believe it or not, the growing season will start in 6 weeks! Farmer Rich and crew will be starting transplants in the greenhouses and he is working on his seed order (see below if you have any special requests).

In the works for 2012:

• Ginger is being planned for planting in the Franklin Greenhouse. We have tried it off & on over the years, but never in any quantity to deliver. Some CSA members have requested it so we are moving ahead and have ordered it and believe we have a good plan for it to succeed.
• On the hill above our growing field we are going to attempt a berry patch. We had grapes many, many, many years ago there that the deer proceeded to devour. We are hoping to plant blueberries & elderberries there and will of course build fencing around the area to keep the deer out.
• One of our “trading partners”, Northstate Growers which helped save us last year for tomato deliveries, has strawberries planted and we hope to have them in the early season deliveries.
• The garlic was planted during the trip to the farm in late fall and the crop looks good as they have sprouted but not growing too much despite the warm weather we have been having. We want them to stay in this state and not grow too much before the real winter arrives.
• We have doubled our sunchoke planting (Jersulam artichokes) as we were only able to deliver them just once late in the season. This is one of the more popular unusual items that we deliver.

Seed Order: Farmer Rich is starting to prepare his seed order from a network of seed catalogs we receive during the late winter months. If there is anything special you would like, just drop us an e-mail and we will try to get it. We place most of our seed orders with Seed Savers Exchange, Fedco Seeds, Johnny's Selected Seeds, Jordan Seed, Dixondale Farms(onions) and others.....

We wish to thank those of you who contributed to the gift we received at the end of season pot-luck dinner. It will be used to purchase seeds for the 2012 season.

CSA Outreach: Our CSA membership outreach will start in February/March. We will extend an early bird discount to members who sign up early. We are preparing our budget which will then set the price for the 2012 harvest season. We will also be firming up with the coordinators the drop-off locations and times. Past CSA member will be receiving an e-mail in February as to the specifics for the 2012 season. If you are want to become a member of our CSA, please send us an e-mail and let us know which location you are interested in joining.

We look forward to a bountiful harvest year and hope that it will not be as wet as last year !