Helsing Junction Farm Newsletter Archive

Greetings from Helsing Junction Farm!

With the exception of the flood/narrow escape we had in early January, it has been a mild winter here on the farm! We are excited to see crocus popping out of the ground and the daffodils heading up, hooray for flowers, hooray for spring!

The 2009 season:
Nothing summons the promise of spring like having seeds arrive in the mail. We are trying out several new varieties this year. Fava beans, which we have never grown before and an early Nantes type carrot, which should be on early enough to make it into the first boxes. We really missed having a lot of carrots last year and will try to include more this year. We are also trying out an all white carrot and we plan on growing more of the all purple carrot we grew last year as well. We planted over an acre Musik garlic last fall. It seemed to be less mold prone than the strain we had been growing for the last several years.

We are switching over to recyclable boxes this year!
The most major change we will be making for the 2009 season is to switch over from the non-recyclable wax boxes we have been using in the past, to recyclable corrugated plastic boxes. For several years we have been searching for a recyclable box that would be cost effective and light enough to be practical. We think we finally found one at a trade show this year. Purchasing recyclable boxes will be an initially costly but worthwhile endeavor, since we need to purchase 3 boxes per CSA member and they are $9 each. We are asking that members help us make this $23,000 investment by paying a $15 non-refundable fee each. (For those of you who have already join, we are really sorry to spring this fee on you. Please contact us if you do not wish to pay the fee.) There really seems to be no other option, as non-waxed and recyclable boxes are not durable enough and waxed boxes are not recyclable. Most of the other plastic crates we’ve priced are in the $20 dollar each range and much heavier. The company who makes the recyclable corrugated totes that we found, are making them specifically for CSAs. It’s so cool to think that we are becoming a driving force in the market place now!

Thanks so much to all of you who took the time to fill out the 2008 survey.
Here are some of the things we learned, as well as some of the changes we are going to make…
*Everybody (well almost everybody) really likes the Sungold cherry tomatoes and wants slicers as well. We are putting up a new 40-foot greenhouse this year, which we will use to grow more starts. We ordered seeds for a nice red slicer, green, yellow sweet and jalapeno peppers and eggplant. It seems that a lot of you had strong feelings about our farm buying produce from other farms which we completely understand, so we will be growing everything ourselves again as we have in years past.
*We were surprised to hear that a lot of people don’t care for the all-purple potatoes. We will be growing them again, though in lesser quantities than last year, along with the red, fingerling and yellow Finn types we grew last year. We are also going to try out a russet, which will be more of a late season potato.
*We’re also planning to grow more yellow beets; we loved the yellow beets we grew last year, and plan on including them on a regular basis in our rotation. For some reason they seem so much easier to eat than red beets.
*We also plan on growing 2 plantings of green beans and 2 plantings of the flat Roma beans as well. We are so glad that you like the Roma beans, as they are one of our personal favorites too.
*So sorry about the bugs you encountered in your vegetables. It seems like we had more of a problem with corn earworms than ever before, and sad to say we are not sure why.

Provisions mushroom shares:
Provisions mushroom shares will be available again this year. We got a lot of great feedback from members who really enjoyed their mushroom share! Please contact Provisions directly if you wish to receive a mushroom share at promushrooms.com

Our CSA’s food bank program:
We will be running our food bank program again for the 2009 season. Last year we managed to raise $4000 dollars which sent 15 boxes to the food bank here in Rochester. We got some very positive responses from the people who received those boxes.

For those of you who haven’t joined yet for the 2009 season:
Based on how quickly the CSA filled up last year, we expect to reach capacity rather quickly this year (at least by June 1st). Past members will be given priority, but please get your applications in swiftly if possible, so that we know how many new members we will be able to accommodate this year. Please don’t hesitate to let us know if this presents a problem for you, we will be more than happy to work out alternative arrangements for you. If you need assistance arranging a payment schedule that better meets your needs, please let us know.

If you’ve already joined, welcome to the beginning of another exciting spring! We’ll be in touch again soon with more info on the start date of the 2009 season and the exact addresses of all of the drop sites in early June.

That’s all for now, we look forward to growing with you again.
Your farmers, Annie, Sue, Rosalio, Bonfilio, Tomasa, Juan, Adelfo, Oly, Pat, Christian and Zac


Helsing Junction Farm
12013 Independence Road, Rochester, WA 98579 | (360)273-2033
helsingfarm@msn.com | www.helsingfarmcsa.com

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