Winter CSA

After much pleading with Andy, I have officially signed up for a winter CSA from Jericho Settlers Farm this year. And this one is about as local as we can get without growing everything ourselves; the farm is less than half a mile down the road from us. They are a family about our age that farms the land on their own and other local farms and have quite a bit to offer.

This Sunday was an open house/potluck/listen to some great music and meet your neighbors kind of thing. Of course, the thing they failed to mention was that while they said be there by 3:00, no one would actually arrive until 3:45. Oh well, we got to know members of the band (Red Hot Juba) and the people who run the farm while we were waiting. And Little Man ran all over the place and had a great time. Although next year, we are going to show up fashionably late as well :)

Once people started to arrive, we were given a tour of the farm - or at least this part of the farm. They actually farm at 6 different locations in the community. If you look at the background of the picture above, that is called a hoop house. They actually have several of them and that is where our winter greens will come from this winter. If you look below they also house the chickens in the winter time. The chickens were just moved into this particular hoop house for the winter (they live in the field across the street during the summer), which houses tomatoes over the summer, hence all the green tomatoes still left on the ground of the hoop house for them to eat. If you look really closely, you can also tell that the chickens are running at this particular opening because they think we are there to feed them. Little Man was very thrilled by this, as well as by the two pigs we had just seen in the field. They did not move to another field with the rest of the pigs for the winter because they will be dinner a week from now.

After a tour of the farm we settled in for great food and music. Since the members of the band also happen to be members of the CSA, we hung out with their families and one of the wives showed little man how to play the trumpet. Less than 5 minutes later, she handed the spit-covered trumpet to her husband to play. Poor man didn't even know.

And all of this, was surrounded by this........