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Meet the Farmers and Last Chance to Sign Up for 2011

Tomorrow night is our Meet the Farmers event — Tuesday, March 29 at 7:00 pm at Abrons Arts Center (466 Grand Street).

It’s an important evening for new and returning members to find out about life on the farm and ask questions of everyone involved in the CSA (e.g., “What’s this !@#$ cold doing to our crop?”).

Heather DeWolf, field manager at Woodbridge Farm, will be on hand to answer all your questions about this year’s vegetables. We’ll also have representatives from Henry Street Settlement, Abrons Arts Center, and Our Lady of Sorrows Food Pantry, to round out our CSA distribution system, as well as Grand Street CSA core members who help keep this whole thing running.

It will also be the last day we are accepting any new members for 2011. So for anyone who has been procrastinating, don’t put it off any longer — come by, say hi, and sign up!

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Event: Local Agriculture at the Museum of the City of New York

We’ve been specially invited to an event uptown this Friday at 6:30, “Is Local Agriculture Good for the Environment: The Hidden Costs of Food in New York City”. (What does specially invited mean? If you tell them that you belong to the Grand Street CSA you’ll get in at the $6 membership price.)

Here’s the blurb:

When it comes to eating sustainably the question of locally sourced agriculture versus importing food is far from settled. Are New Yorkers willing to eat in season only and only what New York has the comparative advantage to produce? New Yorkers penchant for eating out adds for an additional complication. What does that mean for the city’s carbon footprint, given that restaurants are often more wasteful than home kitchens – even those committed to the new ideal of “farm-to-table” production? What are the real environmental costs associated with New York’s food system? Peter Hoffman, chef and owner of Savoy; Gabrielle Langholtz, editor, Edible Manhattan; James E. McWilliams, author of Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly (Little, Brown, 2009); David Owen, author of Green Metropolis: Why Living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less Are the Keys to Sustainability (Riverhead, 2009); and Jennifer Small, owner and farmer from Flying Pigs Farm evaluate the environmental and social costs and benefits of the city’s food infrastructure.

The Museum of the City of New York is located at 1220 Fifth Avenue at 103rd Street.

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Meet the Farmers — Tuesday, March 29

Please join us on Tuesday, March 29 at 7:00 pm for our very important Meet the Farmers event at Abrons Arts Center (466 Grand Street).

Heather DeWolf, field manager at Woodbridge Farm, will be on hand to answer all your questions about this year’s vegetables. We’ll also have representatives from Henry Street Settlement, Abrons Arts Center, and Our Lady of Sorrows Food Pantry, to round out our CSA distribution system, as well as Grand Street CSA core members who help keep this whole thing running.

If you’re a new member, this event is an important chance to learn more about what you’ve gotten yourself into. But we hope returning members will join us as well to get to know the people who grow our food. We believe the CSA is not just a buying club, but a partnership between our neighborhood and Woodbridge Farm.

We’ll have genuine Woodbridge cheese to taste, and a few bottles of grape-based beverages to wash it down. We hope to see you there!

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Notes from Woodbridge Farm

We have germination!

This week we have onions, scallions, and tomatoes sprouting up in the greenhouse! It feels like the season has really begun now, even if the work has never stopped. Walking down the hill at midday when the door to the greenhouse is open, you can see this glimmer of green across the table tops! The onions were the first to come up and are finally popping straight up. We had some worries over the weekend as the onions began showing signs of dampening-off disease, a mold that can grow and suffocate the new plants when there is too much moisture and not enough sunny days to air out the soil. Since we had so much rain and clouds over the weekend, the first hints of that white fuzz began to appear. But with the sun these last few days, they have dried up and are doing great.

Read more on Woodbridge Farm’s Facebook Notes.

(And if you’re into it, friend them … and friend us too.)

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NPR: How to Define ‘Organic’

Organic farmers aren’t allowed to plant GMO seeds. But most conventional corn in America is genetically modified, and among all grains, corn is perhaps the most promiscuous cross-pollinator, so its genes often migrate into organic fields via windblown pollen that lands on the tassels of organic corn.

As a result, most organic corn in the U.S. typically contains anywhere from half a percent to 2 percent GMOs, according to companies that sell such corn to organic dairies or poultry farmers. It has been that way since genetically engineered corn and soybeans became popular, more than a decade ago.

Read more at NPR, or listen below.

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2011 Registration Now Open to Everyone

Returning members and people on our wait list have had their chance, but we still have a few shares available for 2011. If you’re interested in fresh, organic, locally-grown produce for the 2011 season, sign up right now.

It’s probably a good idea for you to read a little bit about us first. And take a look at the shares we are offering this year, so you know what you can sign up for.

You can also whet your appetite by looking through our (nearly) complete sharelog from last year (photos taken by core member Michel Walkley):

But don’t take too much time … shares are going quickly. If you’d like to join for 2011, now is your chance.

Please let us know if you have any questions.

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Info on 2011 Shares

We’re just a few days away from opening our 2011 registration to returning members. In the meantime, we’ve collected information and pricing for our 2011 shares — click over and take a look so you can start to decide what you’d like to get this season.

Unlike last year, when our extras were not available for sign-up until later in the spring, we have our offerings all set and are asking that you sign up for everything all at once. If paying everything at once is too difficult, we offer a 3-month installment plan, details of which will be emailed to you after you register. But please keep in mind that part of the economic mission of the CSA is to get money to our farmers as early as possible, so if you are able to pay for your entire membership up front, we would very much prefer that you do.