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Wednesday, April 01, 2009

 
THE LOCAL HARVEST
The Newsletter of Honey Brook Organic Farm CSA, April, 2009

CONFIRMATIONS AND HANDBOOKS
Farm pick-up membership confirmation postcards were sent out as we processed applications, so please check your label for confirmation of your pick-up day. Delivered Boxed Share confirmations will be mailed out shortly. Please check your label for confirmation of your pick-up day and location.

It is extremely important for members to read the Members' Handbook prior to the CSA program's Opening Day. It is also helpful to read it before calling or e-mailing the farm for answers to general questions, such as how to find out when Opening Day will be, what to do when you come to the farm for pick-up, etc., as most everything you need to know can be found in it. The Boxed Share Handbook and farm pick-up Handbook will be downloadable from our website shortly. Just go to the “Join Us” page and click on “On-farm pick-up” if you are picking up at the farm, or “Boxed Shares” if you have a Delivered Boxed Share. The handbooks are toward the bottom of the pages. If English is not your first language, please consider having the Handbook translated, as there is much useful information found in it.

Please also call or email the office ASAP if you have a change to your or your share partner(s) information. We will be printing our membership cards soon, and once they are printed there will be a $5.00 fee for changes that need to be made to your card.

WHEN WILL THE FARM OPEN?
Opening Day varies from year to year, so either call the Veggie Hotline at 609-737-8899 or check this webpage after May 10th to get an update. Remember, everything we distribute is grown locally, so local weather conditions determine when Opening Day will be!

SPRING TILLAGE STARTS EARLY THIS YEAR – Sherry Dudas
The drier than normal late winter allowed staff to work the ground early this spring. Jess and Israel spread leaf compost and Jim and Israel have been cultivating the fields, preparing them for the transplanting of kale, collards, lettuce, beets and other spring delicacies. Now that David our field manager is back, planting will begin. It’s always an exciting time at the farm in the spring. I love the smell of freshly tilled soil, especially after a gentle rain.

Seeding in the greenhouse is still going strong, and will continue throughout the spring until May. We started by seeding the snow and snap peas, onions, scallions, some tomatoes, flowers, lettuce, kale and broccoli. We’re excited about growing, for the first time, the Moreton F-1 tomato, made available by Rutgers. Rediscovering the Jersey Tomato is a Rutgers project to refocus research and extension efforts on the "Jersey Tomato flavor” for which our state is known. Part of the project includes identifying excellent eating tomato varieties that were well adapted to the state’s growing conditions and commercially grown by New Jersey farmers many years ago. This tomato is an early variety and has a soft texture.

In the fields, our strawberry plants will soon bloom and bees and other pollinators will pollinate the flowers, doing their part to promote healthy fruiting. We are entering relationships with two beekeepers that are new to us, and we anticipate that their bee colonies will improve our pollination. Garlic and some of the perennial herbs and flowers are showing signs of new growth, especially our chives, thyme, anise hyssop, sage and horehound. In the brambles, staff has pruned the old canes, giving our perennial blackberry and raspberry a refreshing “hair cut” of sorts.

In the office this month, Susan and Lynne are working on the new Member Handbooks and having our membership cards ready for Opening Day. They’re still fielding requests for shares for the 2009 season, but we are completely sold out, even for former members.

Several tours of the Pennington farm are planned or have taken place. Students from Hopewell Valley Regional High School came to learn about our greenhouses and compost operations and Jeff Hoagland of the Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed Association answered their ecological questions and helped them find insect “composters” in the compost windrows. Students from Princeton University will also be visiting us and pitching in with some volunteer labor, and we’ll be celebrating Earth Day with HomeFront clients who just love coming to the farm!

Jim and I are going to be taking our last spring trip out to Lancaster, PA to pick up the rest of our supplies. We’ll also be pricing a new PYO station we plan on having at the gate of the PYO fields this season. The big change for this year is the expansion of our farm stand hours. We will now be opening a half hour earlier than last year, so on Mondays, we will now open at 9:30am, Tuesdays through Sunday we will open at 8:30am.

Chip the farm-dog-in-training is doing well in the aftermath of his “surgery”. How on earth is one to keep a puppy quiet and restful for two weeks, I’d like to know! We’ve also discovered that in addition to his fondness for carrots and shallots, he also loves spinach. If we knew that when naming him, we would have called him Popeye!

The following article was reprinted with permission of Jim Sluyter from the Winter 2009 issue of the Community Farmer:

CSA AND THE ECONOMY

With regard to vegetables, “you don’t sell more by lowering the price, but you don’t sell much less if the price goes up or the economy weakens”.

“Consumers, faced with less income as well as less wealth, have moved price back to the top of the list, after some years of price being less important than convenience, taste and health…”

These quotes come from different articles in the same issue of the Vegetable Growers News, December 2008. Both may be true, as consumers ‘trade down’ to lower cost options for food. Discount outlets like Wal-Mart and Aldi are seen as the winners in this process. But wait! “Trading down for consumers [also] means giving up some convenience, cooking more from basic products, eating more at home” according marketing expert John Stanton, quoted in one of the above articles.

So where does the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm fit into this analysis? Will CSA be seen as the high-price option (even though there is good evidence to suggest that it is not) or the place to get basic products that can be cooked at home? I decided to ask some growers how sales for the 2009 growing season are going.

“So far it has been pretty positive getting members back,” according to Nic Welty at 9 Bean Rows CSA in Michigan. Phyllis Wells (Wells Family Farm) is not quite as certain. “I have a feeling we may end up with fewer than we want.”

Other growers agree that memberships may be harder to sell this year. Prairieland CSA coordinator Anna Barnes found that “Some members that had been with us for years are not returning this year. So we asked the members who stuck with us to beat the bushes for any of their friends and coworkers who have been meaning to get a share, but never quite got around to it. They have done a fabulous job. We are now looking at 4 percent growth and beating our original goal.”

Most growers that I contacted seem to think that the economy’s woes will not seriously impact their farm. But there may be some challenges, and changes in people’s allocation of food dollars. “I think we’ll probably see a little bit of a struggle getting members to commit for the season but anticipate a higher number of folks shopping at the farmer’s markets,” suggests Karin Nead Velez of NV Ranch in Missouri. Others are making concessions the way they run the CSA to accommodate changing times.

“I am working with some on payment plans so they don't have to come up with that much money all up front,” says Nic Welty. Those offering work shares may see an increase in requests. “We also have a couple of folks who paid last year looking for work shares this year,” according to Jim Schwantes of Sweeter Song Farm.

Honey Brook Organic Farm in New Jersey, on the other hand, has had no problem with membership sales. According to Sherry Dudas, “We have not heard from anyone who is leaving due to economic concerns…and we are not the cheapest CSA in our area.”
As I see it, the consensus from my small sample is that there may be some need to find ways to help farm members struggling with their budget, but that the impacts on CSA will not be particularly significant.

This sentiment is echoed in a more general – and more forceful - way by Don Kretschmann, writing for the January 5, 2009 issue of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “The local food business is thriving – despite the ‘real economy.’” He adds, “Throughout this fall there was a steady drumbeat -- like never before – from those wishing to buy our local produce next season. I hear from other farmers around the state and other regions the very same thing.”

Maybe part of the reason is that the reputation that local food may have for higher cost is overstated. A survey from localharvest.org (despite some admitted shortcomings in the survey) indicates “that for both organic and conventional produce, the average price paid at the farmers market for all surveyed items was slightly higher than at a 'regular' grocery store, and slightly lower than at a 'upscale' grocery store like Whole Foods.” Specifically, organic produce was less than a dime more per pound at the farmers market than at a conventional grocery, and conventional produce was less than 20 cents more at farmers markets.

“Spending those food dollars for local foods promotes in one action many things most of us want – the freshest things the earth can provide for our table at a reasonable price; the comfort of knowing where our food has come from and how it was produced, i.e. transparency and trust; and beautiful agricultural landscapes in one's vicinity. Locally produced food does all these things while tasting so ... good,” asserts Kretschmann.

Furthermore, say the folks at localharvest.org, “If the produce at the store is a little cheaper but goes bad in your crisper before you can eat it, it wasn't a very good bargain. If produce from the farmers market is fresh and flavorful and a joy both to buy and to eat, then that IS a good deal, even if you paid a few cents more for it.”

Research on the price of CSA produce compared to the conventional market is scant. But all that I have seen has generally shown the CSA to be a good value even with price as the only criterion. None of the studies are current enough to take the recent rise in price of conventional food into account.

It may be too soon to know all the effects of the economy’s troubles on CSA, but it looks to me as though this is one part of the economy that is at least recession resistant.

posted by Jim 4/01/2009 09:48:00 AM

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