Community Supported Agriculture Shares

For those of you that are interested in a one stop shopping type of method of obtaining locally grown fruits and vegetables, a Connecticut CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) operation may be worthy of consideration. The basic model with a CSA is that you purchase a share, sometimes sold in whole or half shares, at the beginning of the growing season. The farmer then uses your upfront payment as capital towards the growing season, to purchase seeds, labor, etc. Sometimes, you can pay for a portion of your share by volunteering on the farm. Then, you will receive a weekly distribution from the share over a set period of weeks. This is your dividend from the upfront payment. Buyers of the share assume some risk; if the growing season is plentiful, then the weekly distribution will be equally bountiful. However, if there are weather issues, such as the CT tomato and potato blight of 2009, the result is a smaller offering of produce.

Based on my readings and knowledge of local CSA operations, it appears that most CSA’s in the Hartford region require the weekly share to be picked up at the farming location. Farm share opportunities such as Holcomb Farm in East Granby, Rosedale Farm in Simsbury, Oxen Hill Farm in Suffield, and the George Hall Farm in Simsbury offer this type of CSA model. Local pickup makes it difficult to participate if you don’t live in an area that offers a CSA, although the Grow Hartford CSA is an up and coming urban farm model, along with the Urban Oaks Organic Farm of New Britain. Many of these CSA options have sold out for the 2010 growing season, so if you are interested in purchasing a share next summer, make sure to start the process in the late winter/early spring. CSA listings for the Hartford area can be found here on Buy CT Grown and here at CTNOFA (Northeast Organic Farming Association).

Delivery

A final option, which my wife and I just tried for the first time, is the recently launched delivery service Connecticut Farm Fresh Express. CTFFE delivers once a week on a year round basis. You can select from all kinds of Connecticut grown and produced products. Their online store opens Thursday evening, and closes on Monday at Noon. Orders are processed on Wednesday and delivered to your door for a fee that ranges between $5.00 and $15.00. For delivery to Glastonbury, it was $9.50. There is no minimum order, and the products available change each week, so be sure to check back frequently. This service runs throughout the winter, so it would be especially helpful to track down those Connecticut grown root vegetables to keep the stream of fresh produce flowing throughout the winter months (see photo of crazy carrots). We ordered some baby gourmet carrots, flounder and cod freshly caught off the Connecticut coast, as well as locally-raised beef, pork sausage and ground bison. Also, locally roasted organic Ethiopia Yirgacheffe coffee from Ashlawn Farm Coffee will be sampled for the first time tomorrow morning. The Hartford Courant had a nice write-up of the CTFFE operation and its founder, Deb Marsden, and we were pleased to support such an entrepreneurial start-up business.

Well, that blog entry has about exhausted this correspondent. Keep your eyes peeled for the next entry on one of the most important factors when examining towns for a potential homes purchase, namely, the type of garbage collection services provided!

Thanks for the update, Farm Boy, we’ll look forward to your next report.

As the summer season creeps into August, it seems to be as good a time as any to discuss the local farm scene in the Hartford area. The Connecticut Department of Agriculture website offers a wide array of information on options for buying local products. In the Hartford area, there are primarily three methods for purchasing local produce and other foodstuffs, with a startup delivery option also available. Today we’ll focus on the first two, Farmers Markets and Farm Stands & U-Pick.

Farmers Markets

There are several farmers markets that operate in Greater Hartford. In fact, with a visit to the Connecticut Department of Agriculture’s Farmers’ Market website, you can find a market pretty much every day of the week during the peak growing season from mid-June through early October.

Some of the more notable markets include the Coventry Regional Farmers Market on Sundays, and the Hartford Regional Market on Reserve Road, which operates year round in the wee hours of the morning from 5:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Although I have never been, a representative of CT Grown told me, “Bring a Wagon and a Flashlight!” A web search on the Buy CT Grown website lists 63 Farmers Markets within a 25 miles radius of the 06106 zip code. Farmers Markets offer a wide selection of seasonal products at fair prices.

Farm Stands and U-Pick

Another popular initiative of the state’s Department of Agriculture has been the Connecticut Grown program. This has resulted in a great website, Buy CT Grown, which is an extremely helpful resource to locate all types of Connecticut grown and produced products, ranging from the standard fruits and vegetables to the more eclectic listings for distilled spirits and fish markets. This is also a great tool for locating Farm Stands and Pick Your Own/U-Pick opportunities.

The primary advantage to Farm Stands and U-Pick is that the prices tend to be more reasonable than Farmers’ Markets or other purchasing opportunities, because you are saving the producer the time and effort necessary to bring his or her products to market.

While there are many great farm stands in the area, South Glastonbury stands out for its U-Pick opportunities when it comes to fruit, especially berries (Strawberry, Blueberry, Raspberry and Blackberry) and tree bearing fruit (several varieties of Apples, Peaches, Pears, Plums, Nectarines and Cherries). Several of my favorites include Belltown Orchards, Dondero Orchards and Carini’s Berry Farm, although a trip to Rose’s Berry Farm for weekend breakfast is most likely in order for the first time visitor. Come fall, be sure to visit Woodland Farm for fresh pressed, unpasteurized apple cider.

Come back tomorrow for more on the Greater Hartford Farm Scene, including Community Supported Agriculture Shares and Delivery!

Grant, thanks for the pictures!

In previous years I had always gone to Rose’s Berry Farm in Glastonbury. I’d stick to the Hebron Avenue field because it was closest on my trip over from Hartford. These folks were raving about Carini’s Berry Farm in Glastonbury. I had been to the Carini’s farm stand on Chestnut Hill Road before, but never ventured into their fields to do any picking.

Until this afternoon. Kyle refused to go with me, as he always does, claiming that the strawberries are so far for him. He’s 6′3″ and says he has bad knees. I think it’s just a lame excuse to get out of manual labor. Our daughter is too small this year, so I was on my own. Next year she’ll be my helper.

The weather was perfect for picking. Sunny, but cool with a breeze. I spent about an hour in the fields with the retired folks that apparently have a flexible schedule like me. The berries were still plentiful and I appreciated that Carini’s lets you roam around and pick within several rows, rather than confining you to just one. I ended up picking 11 pounds of berries for a grand total of $22. Not bad. Just make sure you have cash, as they don’t take credit cards.

As I was leaving I admired the blueberry, raspberry, and blackberry bushes that were filled with unripened berries. Looks like I’ll have to make a few more trips back here later in the season. If you’re looking to pick strawberries, you might want to get on it in the next week before the season passes, it was a little early this year.

We’re getting into the warmer weather now, so it should be time for us to start planning and planting our vegetable garden. Maybe you followed our Tomato Experiment last year. It was the fifth year of lukewarm results. Disappointing to say the least. This year we needed a better solution.

Back in February someone mentioned to me that they were going to be signing up for their CSA share again and asked if I was interested. What’s a CSA, you ask? Community Supported Agriculture. Essentially it’s a farm where local residents “join” and their membership fees help to cover the cost of running the farm. In return, members receive a weekly distribution of fresh produce grown without the use of toxic chemicals.

I had heard good things about the Holcomb Farm CSA in West Granby before, but never really thought about joining. We had been trying to grow our own vegetables and if I wanted something specific I could just go to the West End Farmers Market right around the corner from where I lived. But after thinking more about our cruddy results in the last 5 years, this year we decided to take the leap.

Kyle and I signed up for a full CSA share with Grow Hartford, which is a project within the Hartford Food System. Grow Hartford promotes a sustainable and equitable food system in Hartford by cultivating youth leadership and civic participation through agriculture. They operate three sites in Hartford’s inner city that serve as outdoor classrooms for hundreds of Hartford young people and families. Sounds like a good thing, doesn’t it?

On Friday we received an update email letting us know that we’ll be picking up our vegetables on a weekly basis at their Laurel Street garden, which is just a mile and a half from our house, starting in mid-July. They’re growing garlic, beets, red cabbage, fava beans, onions, cauliflower, potatoes sweet potatoes, carrots, peppers, tomatillos, chard, basil flowers, all sorts of heirloom tomatoes and more.

Can I just tell you that I’m extremely excited about this? I believe we’re helping a good cause, we’re getting a variety of fresh, organic vegetables throughout the summer, and it’s close to our home. Yay! My primary concern is going to be figuring out how exactly to prepare and consume the massive amounts of vegetables that we’ll be getting on a weekly basis. But we already have some friends lining up to take the extras off our hands when we need help. Phew!

Stay tuned in the upcoming months for updates on our CSA adventure. I can’t wait!

We’d love to get one of these in some of our vacant factory space … another business leasing space, more jobs, and fresh food. The building in the picture isn’t ready for prime time, but there are large spaces in Hartford that are much further along in the rehab process that would make excellent locations. Surely there is some space in the Colt complex that could be adapted quickly and easily.

This upcoming Friday and Saturday you have a great opportunity to get some wonderful plants- annuals, perennials, herbs, vegetables, and hanging baskets- all while helping out a good cause.

The Knox Parks Foundation is holding their annual plant sale fundraiser at their greenhouse space in Hartford. Stop by at this location during the following times…

Funds raised from the plant sale benefit The Knox Parks Green Crew, an award winning youth development program. Hope to see you there. Happy planting!

There are only 2 magazines that I immediately sit down and read cover-to-cover, and this is one of them (the other is Wired). It is a perfect mix of interesting stories, tasteful design ideas, and moderate skill project suggestions. Each issue is full of useful tips and addresses issues that relate to me, since we actually live in an old house.

This month I learned that…

1. We can grow purple shamrocks (four-leaf clovers) in our yard since they require indirect light. We’ve struggled to grow something other than hostas in the part of our yard shaded by the ginormous maple trees, so this might be a way to add some color and interest to the area.

2. After looking at pictures of kitchens both in the ads and in the articles, I’m more comfortable that darker knobs will look good on our white cabinets. Although Amy found some interesting crystal knobs yesterday afternoon, so it may be a moot point.

3. The article about “the best place to buy an old house” really shows how interesting and diverse residential architecture was throughout the country 100 years ago. One of our clients actually commented on this yesterday after we showed him a very unique brick tudor within walking distance of West Hartford Center. We were sitting in the car debriefing and he pointed out that all the houses would have looked nearly identical if the street had been developed since 1960.

4. Spring comes early in the This Old House world. There were two articles about tidying up outside which will need to wait at least two more months for those of us in the Hartford area. Even our friends in the warmer climates are getting slammed with winter this year, so I’m not sure if there is anywhere entering spring at the moment. Washington DC is a mess, and apparently it’s snowing in Atlanta today.

I picked up all of these tidbits in the first half of the magazine. But wait, there’s more! Secrets to Curb Appeal … Reader Remodel of an American Foursquare… Garden Junk … All About Wood Windows. This Old House is terrific for homeowners interested in learning about little things they can do around their place, inside and out. And there are ideas on just about every page for those who aren’t likely to pick up a hammer themselves.

Now, about those wood windows…

So, what are you going to do with these fish? And then what are you going to do with the resulting hole that’s left over once you’re done with the water feature?

I know this might seem odd, but I’ve had a handful of people ask me about this exact issue. We get close to the closing and they say “Can we ask the owner to take their fish with them?” This is a delicate subject because the home owner is typically very proud of their Koi pond and see it as a selling feature for the house. What the buyers typically see it as is a headache. And unfortunately the seller’s next accommodations usually aren’t equipped for the fish. The little finned friends stay, much to the dismay of the buyers.

My recommendation for getting rid of the fish, and really anything house-related that you don’t want, is to post it for free on Craigslist. Or Freecycle. Time and again, someone will reply and come get whatever it is that you don’t want. Swing sets. Used furniture. Old windows. Extra scrap wood. Even fish. You know the saying, “one man’s junk is another man’s treasure.” It certainly holds true.

And what about the hole that’s left after the Koi pond is gone? Turn it into a sandbox. Or go to Craigslist or Freecycle and look for someone looking to get rid of fill. Continue the reuse cycle!

And please, don’t flush the fish down the toilet or leave them outside without the heater on so they freeze. That’s just cruel and unnecessary. There are plenty of people out there that will take your stuff.

Our five remaining tomato plants still have tons of tomatoes on them, it’s just that we lose about 15 tomatoes for every 1 we harvest. These are some ugly tomatoes…

This past week we did declare a small victory, as we were able to save one nicely-sized, non-blighted tomato. We promptly put it to good use. There’s another one that should be ready for picking tomorrow. Not the bumper crop we expected about a month ago, but enough of a victory to plant again next year.