Owosso Organics

We will be having CSA for this Monday June 17, 2013. Hopefully everyone received my e-mails on Friday. If you didn’t, please let me know. This week more delicious greens, radishes and garlic scapes (the tender flower of the garlic plant). Look forward to seeing everyone on Monday. Here is what I saw the last few days…

Here is what I saw when I looked up close this week…

We did a major planting push last week with a full crew. We planted over 1000 pepper plants hot and sweet, 500 more tomato plants, zucchini, cucumber , beans to replace the first planting which was a bust, lettuce planting #5 and flowers. In between all that we cultivated most of the previously planted fields. All of it was done by hand….one plant at a time. It was a good week.

This weekend was the first East Lansing Farmers market today, Sunday. We rang bells with the Mayor to celebrate the market’s fifth year. So good to see old friends at the market. I’m pretty tired. I think I’ll let the pictures tell the rest of the story ….

cinnamon basil 

This week on Monday June 10 we will not have a pick up for our CSA. Due to the heavy rains in April and early May we are in the mist of a lack of vegetables to make a full CSA box. We will have some lettuce and Growers Choice for sale at both the Meridian Farmers Market on Saturday and the first East Lansing Farmers Market on Sunday. We hope and plan to resume CSA on Monday June 17. I’ll let everyone know prior to that Monday. I hope this isn’t inconvenient for folks . It is a reminder of how tied to the weather we farmers are.

In the meantime….here is a cute little baby bird I have been watching with my new vintage macro lens. Thanks.

Farm update : We got too much rain again this week and are back to drying-out mode. The fields are just now starting to dry out after Tuesday and Wednesdays rains, almost 2″. As soon as we can we will be planting the rest of the tomatoes and many, many peppers as well as re-planting the beans and peas which seemed to have either washed away or simply didn’t germinate at a good enough rate.

Monday June 3 will be CSA pick-up #3!! Look for more green leafy things in your box. Contents plan to be:

Growers Choice Salad Mix ,   Braising Greens,   Kale ,  Head Lettuce,   Beet Bunches??,  Swiss Chard Bunches??, an Herb offering of Oregano/Chive/ Cinnamon Basil, probably one of your choice.

Some folks have been having trouble getting their e-mails from me so I may be just directing everyone to this website for weekly box information/ CSA box updates. For the next few weeks I’ll still be e-mailing folks. Thanks everyone!!

Thanks all for coming out in the rain on this holiday to pick-up your CSA box. I wanted to be sure that everyone was familiar with the contents of your box. In your box you will find: Growers Choice Salad Mix, Spinach (the large leafy stuff in the zip lock, it is an old fashioned large smooth leaf spinach…looks kind of like Swiss Chard) leaf lettuce: Romaine or green leaf, garlic shoots (use like scallions only they have a garlic flavor. Jesse Hahn our friend from Fork in the Road loves to roast the garlic shoots) a braising mix (in a bag tied in a knot) the mix is baby collard greens, beet greens and Kale, and either radish or a bunch or White Russian Kale (standard share chose, premium share received both). I think that was it. Maybe I missed something.

I’ll e-mail everyone with next weeks plans. There still seem to be some folks who are not receiving e-mails from me. I have imported the e-mails you gave me but not all are going through. If you haven’t gotten an e-mail from me by Friday PM this week let me know. Here are some pictures from today.

With the chilly temperatures this week we ended up covering the early outside tomatoes just to be sure…all 400 of them. Over the years we have kept many pots stored in the loft of the big barn and we pulled them out and one by one covered all the tomatoes…for three nights in a row. There was no seeable frost. We slept better nonetheless.  It looks like we will be free from frost so we plan on lots of planting of the warm season crops  this week.

Monday, Memorial Day will be our second distribution for the CSA!! I hope everyone has been receiving my e-mails. If by chance you haven’t please let me know as I hope to be communicating regularly with folks via e-mail this summer. Also you can check out this website for info too. We are officially full for our 2013 CSA. Thanks to all who signed up. We are hoping for a great season. Here are some pictures from the farm this week.

Whew!!! We made it through the first week of CSA. There were many glitches: unreceived e-mails, missed calls… but everyone finally got their first box and we received many compliments and saw new faces and greeted old friends. It looks like we will do a distribution on Memorial Day but I’ll e-mail everyone with a confirmation.

Right in the middle of distribution we got a fierce storm that gave us some much needed rain. Today we potted up lots of plants for the upcoming plant sales this weekend and finally got to the 7 loads of laundry on the couch in the parlor and even sneaked in a rehearsal with Jim. (You can see us on you-tube. Look up PoohandJim) Thursday night is calling for a low of 38 degrees so we will put off our big planting push of tomatoes and peppers and instead tomorrow finish up the last of the onions, seed in some pumpkins and winter squash and continue with getting ready for this weekend market, maybe trellis the lizzie house. Hope everyone enjoys their week!

Today was the first CSA pick-up!! Things were quite confusing as they usually are the first day especially since we kind-of decided last minute i.e. on Friday to fire up the CSA but the lettuce was so beautiful and we had kale, garlic shoots, and leaf lettuce I didn’t want CSA folks to miss out on the first greens of the spring. Everyone was so excited; it was fun to see so many familiar faces and so many new. I’ll be contacting everyone about the next pick-up.

The Crew planting tomatoes in the Field of Dreams…meet Grace, Max and Cody…the super-crew.

Four hundred tomatoes (just a few early tomatoes) went in like a snap!!

We are at the Meridian Farmers Market every Saturday with loads of plants and a few greens.

Mothers Day bouquet

Opening the bees

Lots and lots of bees

The Queen

We have been getting lots of things planted. So often I am working and not able to take pics of the work accomplished. I’m going to try to take pics on Friday so you meet the awesome crew we have on the farm this year. We feel very lucky.

I am playing music at the Serene Bean in Owosso on Thursday night (7:00PM to 8:30 ish) with Jim Spring (great, great guitar player) and Tim Smith (accordion monster player!!). When the three of us play together  we are Coolin. Come check us out.