Merry Christmas from all of us on the farm side! We are thankful for many things and it gives us great pride knowing how many mouths we fed this past year and knowing we provided food for someone’s table.
A total of approximately 80,000 man hours were spent raising and harvesting our vegetables. The farthest we shipped anything this year was Houston Texas and the closest was Apple Valley Cub Foods. We shipped close to 16 million pounds of fresh produce around the upper Midwest and Canada with sweet corn being the leader. Cabbage was second, winter squash was third, pumpkins fourth, and peppers (green bells, jalapenos, serrano’s, habaneros, anaheims, poblanos and red fresno) were fifth. Cucumbers would have been fifth in order of most pounds shipped, but unfortunately our cucumbers were wiped out by the hail storm that came through in August.
This past year was perhaps one of the most difficult years to raise a crop from start to finish in this area. Spring time temps were cold and wet, followed by 6 weeks of no rain. The only saving grace was the nice fall through October which allowed the maturity of some of the crops that were planted so late in the spring. Next year will be here soon so we can forget about the past and look to the future and start the process once again.
New things are something we are always looking to do around the farm and this coming year we are starting our own CSA program (Community Supported Agriculture). CSA programs allow city residents to have direct access to high quality, fresh produce grown locally. This program will allow members or subscribers to become more involved in our farming operation by purchasing shares at the onset of the growing season. In return members receive fresh homegrown produce straight from our fields to your table from mid-June through the end of October. Stay tuned for more information on this exciting program coming in January!
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