Grand Street CSA

A nice piece today on our favorite local news site:

There are plenty of reasons to participate in a CSA. It’s lovely to get fresh local vegetables every week. It’s fun to figure out new things to do with some of the more exotic or abundant ones. Eating seasonally is hard to argue with, too. And it feels good to know you’re part of a community supporting a local farmer. When the weather cooperates it’s also a good deal. But CSAs aren’t meant to be a deal, and some years your biggest reward for participating will be the knowledge that you made a tough year a little bit easier for a local farm.

Read the whole thing at the Lo-Down.

Registration is now open for 2012 season. Click here to sign up online.

Max and Kerry send this update from the farm in Salem, CT:

Hello Grand Street CSA,

We hope winter in the city is treating you well. Things are good here on the farm. We have been taking advantage of this unusually mild winter and are getting ready for spring. We have to remind ourselves that is the end of February because these days it really feels like the end of March. We are enjoying our last bit of down time on the farm before things really kick into gear. Our greenhouse is all set up and we will be firing up the heaters next week! Onions are the first thing we start in the greenhouse and they go in March 5th. After that Kerry and I will be spending many long days starting our seedlings waiting for our apprentices to get here April 1st.

Our cows are in pretty high spirits these days. I am sure they can’t wait to get onto lush spring pastures but they seem content to munch on their hay in the barn. I am not sure if their optimism is rubbing off on us or vice versa but it seems like spring is right around the corner. We will be plowing, planting and seeding in the fields before we know it!

We really want to thank all of you for your continued support of our farm. Your share deposits are helping us purchase all the seeds, supplies and equipment we need to have the best season possible! We really couldn’t do this without you. We hope that Manhattan has been as warm as South Eastern Connecticut this February and we are counting down the days till June!

Your Farmers,

Max and Kerry

P.S. Don’t forget to check our facebook page for lots of photos and updates from the farm @ facebook.com/providerfarm

Our Meet the Farmers event tonight is your chance to meet our new vegetable growers, Max and Kerry Taylor, ask questions about how our CSA works and what Max and Kerry are planning to do to make the most of their farm, and register for the 2012 season.

Please join us at 7pm in the Seward Park Co-op Community Room at 268 East Broadway. (If you don’t know where the room is, please ask the security guard or follow the signs posted inside.)

We’ll have laptops set up so you can fill in our online registration form, and we’ll be accepting your checks and credit cards to pay for your CSA membership.

If you can’t make the meeting, you’ll be able to register online right here starting at 8:30pm.

(We don’t have the same limit on shares that we’ve had for the past three years, so we are opening up registration to everyone at once — old members, people on our wait list, the whole community — and we will not need to turn anyone away. So don’t worry about logging in exactly at 8:30, you are not going to lose your spot.)

Kerry wrote to tell us that she and Max are looking forward to our Meet the Farmers meeting on Monday, January 30 at 7pm in the Seward Park Co-Op Community Room.

She also wanted to let us know that she can bring down some Provider Farm grass-fed beef and veal for anyone who would like the makings of a hearty mid-winter meal.

They’re offering a beef and veal box special composed of 6 lbs of beef steaks and beef and veal sausages at $50 a box.

Or you can order by the cut from the price list below.

Email Kerry at kerry@providerfarm.com with your order, and you can pick it up and pay at the Meet the Farmers event on Monday.

The Grand Street CSA has new farmers, and they want to meet you and answer your questions.

Registration for our fifth CSA season will open after the meeting.

Tell your neighbors! We’re hoping to make 2012 our best year yet!

We had a very impressive meeting this week with Max and Kerry Taylor, who have taken over the operation of Woodbridge Farm*, the source of all our organic vegetables for the past four years. The core group was particularly interested in hearing from Max and Kerry whether they could evaluate why the farm’s yield over the past two seasons had been so poor, and what they thought could be done to improve the situation. What we heard made us feel very comfortable — and excited — about welcoming them to our CSA.

They plan to increase the amount of land being farmed from 3.5 acres to 11 acres while growing for the same number of shares. (Actually, they will be growing for more shares than they are planning on selling, giving them a buffer during their first year to make sure they have the right amount of food for their customers.) Additionally, they will be planting the fields in a tighter, more efficient pattern, adding to the yield they expect.

Finally, they will be making a big change in the makeup of the soil. Our old farmer, Julia, practiced biodynamic farming, which essentially meant that there were no outside nutrients brought to the farm. Max and Kerry believe that even organic farms need a fertilizer that includes nitrogen, and will be adding that to the land. The farm will still be organic, but not certified biodynamic.

Max and Kerry have looked at the records from last year and were genuinely critical of the amount of food we were provided with, and expect to bring us much more food this year.

But please don’t take our word for it — we’ve invited Max and Kerry back to New York so that everyone interested in the Grand Street CSA can meet them and ask questions before committing to the season:

We will begin general registration for everyone during this meeting.

Max and Kerry have years of experience growing organic produce for CSA farms in New England. You can read more about them on their new website, and follow them on Facebook.

*Woodbridge Farm is the name of the land. Max and Kerry have renamed their own business Provider Farm, which is how we’ll be referring to them from now on.

The core group will be meeting with Max and Kerry, the new farmers up at Woodbridge Farm, next week to make sure that we are ready to maintain our relationship to the farm even though the farmers have changed.

Max and Kerry both have years of experience at other, larger CSA farms in New England, and we’ll be looking to hear more about their approach. We’ll also want to ask them something they may not actually have a direct answer for: why our yields from the farm have been so low the past two years, and how they expect to get better results.

Paula Lukats from Just Food will be joining us — Just Food is the organization that help set us up, and continues to offer support to CSAs throughout NYC. We’ll be looking to Paula to help us during this transition.

Then, assuming we’re going to forge ahead, we’ll be setting up a meet-the-farmers event in short order (hopefully on Jan. 24 at 7pm, but that’s not yet confirmed) for our full CSA membership and wait list. It’s important to get that to happen soon so that everyone can make up their minds about joining for our 2012 season.

In the meantime, if you’re on Facebook you can check out Max and Kerry’s new page: http://www.facebook.com/providerfarm. (For boring incorporation reasons, the land is still called Woodbridge Farm but Max and Kerry’s new business is called Provider Farm.)

Much more news soon.

We’ve been a little slow to broadcast this information, but hopefully everyone picked up on it at Tuesday’s distribution: end of October means end of CSA. Well, almost. Vegetables and cheese were delivered Tuesday for the last time this year; but fruit (I mean APPLES), eggs, and pasta have one last hurrah this coming Tuesday, November 1. After that, it’s see you next year!

We will try to have our annual members survey up in the next couple weeks, so try to remember all your complaints and compliments. If you can’t hold it in that long, feel free to email the core at info@grandstreetcsa.org. Feedback is important, and helps us steer the CSA in the right direction (when we can).