Hope you all are enjoying the holiday time – have yourself an amazing Christmas!
Meanwhile, this is more of an opportunity for you to give some helpful guidance to the planning for the CSA for 2025. It may not of been clear or obvious, but the CSA and indeed our time at Shilofarm were teetering on the edge in 2023. The addition of an intern and other changes make it possible for us to continue – albeit there are still chances to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
That’s all a different story from the questions here. The first one, of course, is do you want to stay on the “interested” email list as the CSA heads into 2025. A simple reply can take care of that for you – just say no, that’s all it takes. No answer is an answer, though!
Here are the major questions for those of you who are still interested – and this is not a request for commitment, it is a solicitation of opinion.
First, this is the tentative thoughts for a schedule in 2025:
Start of Winter Season (6 weeks) Week 8 Feb 17th Start of Green Season (8 weeks) Week 14 March 30th Start of Main Season (20 weeks) Weed 22 May 25th Start of Extended Season (4 weeks) Week 44 October 12th
There has been some thought to shortening the main season to 16 weeks and pushing the extended season to 8 weeks. There was a couple of cases in the last two years of people wanting in on the window from after labor day till The End. Obviously this would not be something the full year people would care about – but if you are doing a lot of travel over the summer, it might make sense.
Second, the Official Intern is probably going to take on a delivery date – Wednesday, most likely, that would cover the Yelm Highway corridor. The thinking here is that she will be needing some of the business experience, likely including doing some direct relationship development. To adequately fund the internship, growing back from the highly cut down membership of 2024 is important; sadly it also has become evident that prices need to rise somewhat.
Back in the day, there was a delivery charge. That will come back in 2025; the base cost of a personal share is targeted at a $2.50 increase and if delivered it is another $2.50 on top. The full share (big box) likewise goes up …
Share Per Box with delivery Personal $27.50 $30 Full $37.50 $40
Third, there are a lot of seeds needing to be sorted out for the year. There are some ‘capital improvement’ projects planned – especially dedicated beds for herbs, a composting system, and crop covers for protection from birds, rabbits, and maybe even voles. The late season brassicas were pretty carefully protected and came out great – which is very encouraging. Mulching was a mixed bag – it looks like we can fix that by adjusting how watering is done with the heavy grass mulch, and a light mulch needs to be used on the potatoes. All that to say, are there any veggies you would like considered? Our current plan adds the following:
- Sweet Potatoes come back
- Possibly Chicory – edible as a root or green
- Thyme, Rosemary added to the herb selection
- Obviously, fix the shortfall of winter squash and melons. We have a plan for that…
So – any suggestions?
