Greetings Country Valley Farm Community,
CSA shares begin 1 week from today on May 8th! If you haven’t signed up for this year, there is still time and we have room for you.
Going forward we will only include CSA members in the weekly newsletters. Newsletters will be sent every Friday going forward and will detail the items in that week’s share. We will also include important pickup and delivery information in the newsletter this Friday.
Once we start we will number the newsletters based on what week in the season we are in, to help create a simple timeline of the progression through the weeks.
We will include other folks in our community on occasional other communications.
There is always something exciting happening on the farm. We find that sharing updates and details each week is a good way to connect with the changing of the seasons, and raise awareness to some of the wonders of nature. We haven’t included many photos in our newsletters in the past but are looking at how to best do that. We encourage folks to view our farm page on Instagram @ CountryValleyFarm for photos and additional updates. If there is info you’d like to receive about the farm or other details, we love to talk about and are happy to share.
What’s going on at the farm?
We got about a half inch of rain last night. It is needed. This time of year, we anticipate a bit more rain overall. We will begin setting up irrigation this week as we seem to be past most of the hard freezes.
The echinacea and oregano are waking up and setting new leaves. A few lavender plants are starting to resume growth, but many are still sleeping.
We haven’t see any asparagus spears emerging just yet.
The onion sets we planted last week are not showing growth yet, but we trust they are working hard below the soil surface and will send up their greens soon enough.
The radishes, turnips, and tat soi haven’t really moved much in the past week. We did have some hard freezes and cool nights, so it is to be expected. The tender baby leaves look nice and green and shiny.
The cilantro seed has still not germinated. If we don’t see growth this week we will reseed the row. This happens sometimes, farming does not guarantee that all planted crops grow and are harvested 
.
We prepared the beds for the potatoes, greens, lettuces, and early herbs – we will go back through the beds one more time with a hoe and rake this week and will get them planted.
After this week we will prep beds for late May planting and will continue our ongoing process of hauling wheelbarrows of wood chips around the farm. We have been working for years to get wood chip covering all of our fields. We learned in the early years that it takes a lot more wood chips than one may think to actually create an effective mulch. The use of wood chips is central to our farming method and philosophy – bringing the wisdom of the forest to the farm, sequestering carbon, increasing soil organic matter, supporting beneficial mycorrhizal fungal colonies, conserving water, and improving soil health.
We are still actively signing up CSA members!
If you haven’t signed up or know of someone who is interested, please reach out with any questions. You can simply sign up at our website www.countryvalleyfarm.com or you can send us an email at countryvalleyinfo@gmail.com or you can text or call Adam at (831)706-1237. We are here to help! If you’d like to be removed from our newsletter list, just reply to Adam and let us know – we understand folks are busy and it is all good.
That’s all for now.
Warm regards,
Adam Mitchel
Country Valley Farm