The birds are chirping, the soil is moist and the wind socks all point to spring on the farm this week. Not sure if we are past all the winter storms yet, but according to Nolan Doskin, the state climatologist, a strong El Nino year often produces "normal" seasons for our area. I suppose normal is up to interpretation here, but it is time to move forward on the spring projects until mother nature tells us different. There are thousands of seedlings to start, compost to spread, soil to work, and greens galore to get out of the tunnels before we start prepping them for warm weather crops.
As we head into the last month of CSA, the boxes will be getting lighter! Not necessarily because we won't have as much food, but the food is just changing. We design the boxes based on storage-ability of certain crops and our ability to grow greens during certain times of the year. The fall and early winter are dedicated to squash, cabbage, onions, and garlic as those items do not store as well over time. We try to hold off on things like kohlrabi until it gets closer to spring because those are the foods that store extremely well and had gotten our ancestors through the "hunger moon" of April. Lucky for us, we have tunnels that will help us from getting board on the home stretch of the winter to spring transition and there are still lots of delicious things to eat right now.
