Summer is about to begin and it is so very exciting and busy around the farm. Planting, planting, planting is the name of the game right now! The rain is delaying us a bit, but not enough to make a difference yet.
Memberships: We are around 20 memberships short of our goal of 600. Now is the time to notify your co-workers, family, friends and parents of your kids’ friends that we have only a few spots left. If they intended to be members this year, they need to join right now! It’s fast and easy now that they can join the farm right online! Several distribution centers (DC’s) are full and closed including: 6th & Downing, 1st & Logan, Colfax & Colorado and Wheat Ridge at 26th & Sheridan. All other DC’s are open and still have spots for new members!
What to expect: We anticipate the season will start the second or third week of June with leafy greens, garlic, a few peas and possibly summer squash, turnips & Kohlrabi. You will hear from your DC as soon as Mother Nature indicates the season is about to begin. At that time you will get an email with their name, address, phone number, email address, hours, day of week, what to do if you forget and what to do when you go on vacation. Please respond to this email so they know you received it. Otherwise, they will have to call you to make sure you have their information!
The season will start out light. We live in a very hot, dry area of Colorado; therefore we cannot grow greens all summer long. Those will fade off and something new will fill their place. By the end of July, the variety of produce will start to compound and grow!
Your produce will be dirty. We do not wash any produce so crops that grow in or on the ground will have dirt on them. We use mesh onion bags so dirt can filter out as we travel. But it is a great idea to add a couple of boxes to your car; one for the bag and a second for watermelon, muskmelon, corn and tomatoes.
June 7th is the last chance to add fruit, honey or oil to your order. I must contact all my vendors to tell them the total sales for the summer. You will not be able to add these items later, so please take a look at what your needs may be and let me know if you want to add anything ASAP!
The hardest year for new members is the first. You do not get to choose what you get each week. Therefore, you will be eating in season. You have to get your produce from the farm before you can create your menu for the week and go grocery shopping. This takes time to wrap your head around and get into a routine. Some tell me it took the whole summer! The second year was so much easier because they were now accustomed to the whole procedure. So don’t give up~ keep working at it! Remember, you are doing this for the health of yourself and your family!!
You are not locked into the share size you have chosen. If you are getting overwhelmed by produce, you can switch down to a smaller share. Same if it looks like you have too small of a share, we can switch you to a larger share. You have until the first of September to make this decision. I will prorate the difference between the two shares and will expect full payment immediately. It is precisely for this reason we have divided up the payments into three with the last due in September. Don’t be afraid to call me and discuss what is happening and we can brainstorm how to make this as easy as possible for you! Talk with your distributor because they are a wealth of information standing in front of you!
Fruit: Talked with the orchards and it sounds like everyone is (so far) going to have a good season. Rancho Durazno tells me that it was a mild winter in his valley with some wonderful spring rain. He says his apricot, cherry and peach trees look great! Ela Family Farm is inviting you to tour the farm on June 8th & 9th. Visit their website, click on “About Us” for more details. They tell me that all the apples, peaches and pears have already bloomed & it all looks very good!
Honey: Lazy Bee Ranch was gliding in Monday to check on the beehives; making sure they are healthy and have plenty of food. They tell me everything looks really good with some very healthy hives out there. Interesting stuff they were telling me. Did you know that there is a queen in every stack of beehives? Of course we all know that bees talk to each other through the vibrations of their wings. But the queens will actually scream at each other if they get too close. It’s their way of saying, “Hey, this is my territory (hive) … buzz off!”
Olive Oil: Karl, who runs Healthy Harvest, tells me he has switched vendors for his olive oil. He was working with a Co-op of organic farmers in Greece, but every year they seemed to have some reason to hike prices and not by just a little. He found a new vendor on a small estate north of Athens. This farm grows an heirloom olive variety called Koutsourelia. It is a variety of Kalamata olive. Your oil is cold pressed and unfiltered and most importantly: unadulterated with other oil! The demand for olive oil has increased over the years and harvests have been poor due to bug & disease problems. This will only increase the price for oil. Don’t be surprised if you see store prices increase over the next few years!
Asparagus and Strawberries: Asparagus is on! We will be picking this patch over the next four or five weeks. I will get everyone out here (schedule dependent on your end), but flexibility is a must! Please return my phone calls so I can call others to come pick if you cannot make it! I will not be sending email notifications. There is still room for you to get on the Wait List; if you haven’t already! There is no cost to you other than your time to help me pick the entire patch. I will keep some and you will go home with the rest!
Poor strawberries. Ask a farmer if you want to know if there has been any weather changes over the last two decades! The last of the three strawberry patches died off this last winter. Kyle has been studying different techniques for raising strawberries and plans on planting a new strawberry patch this year. But it will be a year before they will be ready to pick….if they survive the winter! This is what is happening: Our winters are so up and down for temperatures. The plants come out of hibernation too soon (February) and when it freezes in late March or April, it kills the plants. Not much we can do unless we get back to our winters staying cold until spring and then slowly warming up.
Pork and Lamb: We picked up 44 piglets from a farmer in Eastern Kansas. If all survive we will have four more hogs to sell this fall. If you are interested, get on the Wait List and we will call you if it looks like we have an extra hog to sell. We have sold 26 lambs, but Jerry is still not exactly sure how many we have because they will not stand still long enough to be counted! We have a Wait List for this too. This also means now is a good time to visit the farm. We have both baby lambs and piglets to show off! Call me to make an appointment to visit and get a tour!
Blog: When you sign up with Monroe Organic Farms, llc, we sign you up for our blog. However, in order for you to access the information, you have to accept the invite! This will give you access to our newsletters but more importantly, if there is a sudden change with the farm, we post here first. We also try to post to Facebook. Please keep in mind that members run these social outlets for me, and no one from the farm checks comments – you need to contact us directly. It is not a perfect system and things sometime slips through our fingers! You will always have the option to pick up a hard copy of the newsletter at your DC. But if there are sudden changes, we will post to the blog first.
Office Hours: I will be delivering produce on Tue, Wed and Thr mid-June through mid- Oct. So the only days I will be in the office is Monday 7-12 and Fridays 7-4. I can also be reached on Tuesday and Thursday 4-5. Wednesday I do distribution at the farm and cannot be reached that day. Dani’s summer hours will begin in June and continue through mid-August. She will be in the office on Tuesday and Thursdays 9-3. You are welcome to call anytime and leave a message and we will get back to you just as soon as we can! Please Remember: If you need to make any changes to your share, you must notify us no later than two days in advance of your distribution day!
No-till Planter: Yep! Kyle found something in Nebraska. We had to make three or four trips back and forth because some adaptions needed to be made so it would work with pieces of equipment we already have. This brought the cost down tremendously! This kept the cost within the scope of our collected donations. We will know more this summer after using the equipment to see how it works on our soils and the groundcover Kyle planted last fall. It may take a few years to get the process down. Kyle cannot wait to see what kind of an impact this will make on weed infestation in our sweet corn and green bean fields. Thank you again to all who donated!!!
Conclusion: May is a huge month for planting. Kyle, Sam, Jerry and The Crew have been and will be planting non-stop through the month of June. Kyle tells me that he plans on planting your second crop of red & gold beets & carrots and the first planting of turnips, lettuce, cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage and kohlrabi the 6th and 7th. And since we have cloud cover, this will put less stress on the tender plants too.
We like to take a few chances with our planting schedule and under row cover the team has planted your first planting of summer squash, cucumbers, watermelon and muskmelon. This month is also when sweet corn, green beans, peppers, eggplant, tomatoes, honeydew and popcorn are planted. It’s busy now and this kind of work will not stop until the first week of August. Crops such as beans, corn, squash and cucumbers have to be repeatedly planted in order to get them throughout the summer. If our schedule gets interrupted for any reason, we will miss a week (or several) of that particular crop. It’s sad, but it happens; and usually it’s Mother Nature who you can blame for this!!
Monroe Organic Farms 