Week 7 - The SEVENTH Week of SUMMER CSA 2021!
(Want to skim this e-mail, but get the most benefit? All NEW and UPDATED sections will be titled in "RED")
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Opening Remarks
Hello Dear Supporters!
Were you at the Summer Farm Fest!? If you were, it was SO GREAT TO SEE YOU! We got to meet so many new people, it was awesome!
We had between 250 and 350 people show up IN-THE-RAIN! What a fun time we had with all of our vendors, the live music, the amazing food and of course the s'mores! We had raffles and games and lot's of fun. Thank you to everyone who came out - it was such a good time that we will be doing it again in the Fall - keep an eye out for the invite (there's a video of the event below!)!
As for on-farm, well, we are a little behind. Not only is it the transition period (the period where the weeds over-take everything as we kick it into high-gear for Fall planting), but unfortunately there have been a lot of staff injuries (off farm!), a jury duty, some illnesses and some other rare unexpected situations that have given us plenty of reasons to hustle our butts off and catch up to get all the fall planting in - so now is the push for the next two weeks! We will be hustling to catch up and get all of our major fall planting in no later than August 15th...and then there is the onion, pepper, potato harvest and (cross your fingers!) and a pumpkin harvest (though, to be honest, it looks like the extreme Spring may have hampered our pumpkin season for 2021 - we'll see!)
Most things on the farm are coming along and the farm is looking a little, shall we say, "WILD!" and "SHAGGY!" It certainly needs a hair trimming, or at least some weed-pullin'! The weeds are HUGE and they are overtaking the world, or so it seems. So, if you are reading this and you are thinking that pullin' some weeds would be a good, fun and wholesome activity for you to come out and volunteer for (bring the kids!), well, we are here for you and will let you pull them all day long! 😁 Very seriously though, we nnnnnneeeeeeeeeedddd some help pulling these suckers - can you help? More info below 📢ALSO: This coming Sunday is a volunteer day WITH FREE LUNCH!!!!
See below for event updates, new articles and announcements!
Enjoy your share this week and don't forget to join the fun and share your recipes and pictures in the Facebook Community Group!
🥕👩🌾CSA Veggie-Share Program Update and Comments
The CSA has been looking really great lately, which we are so happy about! We have also received, and greatly appreciated, so much of your feedback recently! Being a small family farm is very stressful, and it's emotional too because it very much is a labor of love and very personal. When we receive your positive feedback, it fuels us to continue to push hard and dedicate ourselves to serving our community. Thank you for your love and being such an awesome community!
As for this week, we are planning on a great harvest including the following items: Scallions, cilantro, squash, tomatoes, basil, radishes, lettuce, beans, peas, sunflower shoots, fennel, kale, pea shoots, microgreens, mint, marigolds, cucumbers and possibly a few more items (more details below).
Next week is also looking great. You can expect more of the same varieties in greater quantities and we may have our first pepper harvest coming next week too. We will also have radishes next week and chives, more scallions and we may have a harvest of leeks too. Enjoy your share this week, and as always, keep an eye our for the bag-packing list with the extras and the market-style options late Wednesday / Thursday.
Enjoy your share!
Volunteering
Our next Open-House volunteer day is not until Sunday, August 8th (WITH FREE LUNCH - see below!), but that doesn't mean you can't come before then!
We need volunteers all the time! Weeding, planting, cleaning, harvesting, bagging and so much more.
Want to volunteer? Simply e-mail our amazing Administrator, Bekka at aci@ahavahcommunity.org to get more information and to sign up!
📣SUNDAY, AUGUST 8th!! VOLUNTEER DAY AND PICNIC 📣
👩🌾farmFarm Happenins'👩🌾
A little tid-bit about what's happenin' around the farm this week!
If you came to the Farm Fest, you would have seen this amazing mural, - almost completed - and painted by our very own amazing Tess!
Did you know that Tess was an artist!? That's right, and she looooves to paint! She loves to paint so much that she offered to paint our washroom a beautiful mural (we are paying her, of course!! 😁).
So far Tess has made some incredible progress. Check out these pictures and when it's all done, we will share the pics of the final project - or you can come to the farm and see it yourself! 😉-ps. the next tour is scheduled for Tuesday, August 10th.
So far, so good!...
🥕🍅🥒🧅🌳🌵EXTRA VEGGIES and PLANTS FOR SALE - Every Week!🥕🍅🥒🧅🌳🌵
We always have extras for sale, but lately we have had a TON!
Please be sure to check out the extras table, available for all members and even NON-MEMBERS!
Simply come to any of the CSA locations on Thursday and Friday and pick up some of our beyond-organic veggies for sale!
And as always, remember:
DON'T FORGET: SNAP PARTICIPANTS ALWAYS RECEIVE 50% OFF!!
&
As always, all prices are
"Pay-What-You-Can-Afford."
👀GARDEN PLANTS ALSO QUALIFY FOR SNAP AND 2x DOUBLE-UP BENEFITS!!!👀
For Payment: Cash or Check at the drops or the balance can be sent via PayPal to contact@ahavahfarm.com or via Venmo to Ahavah Farm, LLC or by paying with credit card over the phone.
FALL REGISTRATION IS STILL OPEN!!
(Registration closes August 31st and there are still 30+ openings available)
CSA/Veggie Share OR Microgreen Share REFERAL PROGRAM!
Refer a friend to Ahavah Farm's CSA OR to Ahavah Farm Nursery's microgreen CSA and you BOTH will receive $35 in credit to use ANYTIME you want! Use to buy extra vegetables, or take $35 off your next CSA purchase - your credit will never expire!
New members simply send an e-mail to contact@ahavahfarm.com to let us know who referred you and you BOTH receive your $35 certificate! It's that easy!😁
DID YOU KNOW?
Did you know that we dedicate 100% of everything we grow to you, the members and we do not sell to stores or attend farmer's markets (with the exception of selling our extras at the CSA locations)? Did you also know that 100% of everything you receive in your shares is grown and harvested 100% by us, right here on the eastern plains of Colorado, by hand, without chemicals, tractors or sprays?
That means that you will never receive avocados or pineapples or lemons in your shares, as they don't grow here in Colorado 😆! You will also never receive a share with stickers on your produce 😉! As a CSA member, you receive the vegetables that can be grown during the appropriate season; which means o tomatoes in January (too cold) and no spinach in August (too hot).
We aim to provide a variety of flavors and experience, but we don't want it to be too varied
that you only get too small of a portion to do anything with, or too boring - getting too much of the same things week after week👎. We also aim to ensure the value is always more than what you paid for (This helps, especially when you may get something in your bag that you don't enjoy).
Have you noticed that the varieties in the bags vary between the sizes? Sometimes the small shares get cucumbers and the medium's don't or the large shares get kale and the small's don't. Why is that? Well, since we grow everything here on the farm, can you imagine if we grew everything to 380 members? It wouldn't work - especially with multiple sizes, let me explain.
If we grew 380 units of everything, all year round, it would be a very boring CSA and we would be limited to the length of the crop and the amount the crop yields. Most crops get harvested every week (Kale, squash, tomatoes...most everything) and they last for nearly the entire season. Therefore, if we wanted to provide all the bags with the exact same ingredients every week, we would have to be stuck with the exact same ingredients every single week of the season too - BORING! You see? All the CSA's would all receive the same items every single week and it would be terribly boring because we would have to wait until all the cucumbers were harvested before we could move onto a different crop. What if you didn't like cucumbers? There would be no substitutions or variety 👎.
So, what do we do instead? Well instead of growing 380 cucumbers, 380 tomatoes, 380 carrots, 380 lettuce etc. every week, we vary the amounts based on popularity and based on spreading the crops out throughout the season. We grow 200 units of something like cucumbers per week, and 200 units of beets, 100 fennel, a few hundred carrots and lettuce etc. We grow less units of "this" crop or more units of "that" crop. By doing things this way, it is the only way that we can provide a truly varied share so that you can experience all the local, seasonal flavors (which is one of the most-favorite things about our CSA - the fact that we grow almost 100 varieties of heirloom vegetables. Imagine experiencing that from the store!?😮)
Every year we do surveys and we base what we will grow based on popularity and although it's not perfect, we try to do our absolute best. We know that not everyone loves all the varieties we grow, even the most popular items, and so we attempt to pack the bags varied from week to week so you don't get stuck with eating the same thing week after week (even if it's your favorite! 😀). Therefore, we simply can't provide the same things each week and in each bag and that means small bags will get something this week and medium bags next week and large bags will sometimes get it a different week. It also means that sometimes we can't get all the varieties into all of your bags throughout the season, but we try (one great part of the market-style shares!).
No, it's not perfect and we can't make everyone happy all of the time. Some members love our style, and some members choose to move on and that's ok. However, we are very proud of how well we have been able to do this and how hard we have worked at perfecting this over the years (we are very proud that we have one of the most recognizably successful CSA programs in the country - and have even been offered to write a book on the subject!). We aren't perfect yet (nor is that even possible), but I feel that we are only getting better and better at it. Thank you all for your amazingly positive feedback this season - even with Covid-19 and our extremely cold Spring it has been fairly successful.
I hope after reading this article that you have a little more insight into the how's and why's of Community Supported Agriculture.
2021 Summer Farm Festival & FaRmily Reunion
Despite the rain, the Summer Festival was a wonderful success and a great time was had by all!
We had such a great time and we hope you did too! Thank you so much for everyone who came out and celebrated with us!
There were so many new faces and so many reunions! Thank you, thank you!!! What a blessing to see and hug on so many wonderful members of our community! The music, all the vendors, the food, the games and of course the fire and s'mores were AWESOME!
🔥🔥We hope you all enjoyed it because we're doing it again for our Fall Festival on October 17th from 3PM - 8PM!🔥🔥
🔦 Ahavah Community Initiative SPOTLIGHT 🔦
Whether it is tours, kids classes, major events, educational outreach, donations or adult classes, our mission is to SERVE.
Founded in April of 2018, our mission is to connect people who are facing food insecurity due to financial struggles to locally-farmed, regeneratively-grown produce, and to provide education centered around healthy living and environmental consciousness.
We do this by offering donated memberships to a local CSA program and more. Memberships include a weekly bag of produce along with discounted (often free) farm tours, classes, and events.
We want to help participate in the creation of a local food-system-economy, build on a
diversity of local and regenerative food education and provide activities and children's events centered around environmentally responsible agriculture and pure, beyond-organic, local food.
Ahavah Community Initiative is a one-of-a-kind, very special non-profit organization that serves our community in a unique and wholesome way. We believe in this mission so much that all board members (including the Camire family) donate personally to it. Do you believe in this organization too? Please, if you do, consider donating if you have the ability...
Interested in making a tax-deductible donation to ACI? Ahavah Community Initiative is registered as a 501c3 with the State of Colorado as a non-profit organization and all donations are tax-deductible.
Want to get involved with either ACI or as a volunteer on the farm? E-mail us to let us know. We are always looking for volunteers and we would love for you to join the party!
AHAVAH COMMUNITY INITIATIVE
BRING-A-BUCK!
"Hi, nice to see you! Did you bring your buck today!?"
These are the words you should hear every week when you show up at the CSA locations to get your veggies for the week. That's because, supporting ACI, and therefore families in need, is the MOST IMPORTANT and BEST part of being a CSA member with Ahavah Farm! ACI does some amazing things, and you can be a MAJOR part of that simply by bringing your buck every week. We thank you! 🙏
Bring $1 every week and be a part of supporting, directly, families in need.
Don't say your $1 isn't important! IT IS!! The only way crowdfunding works is if we all participate. Therefore, your $1 is vitally important and it is directly through this program that we raise the majority of ACI's food donation funds than any other fundraising program, and yet it is the absolute easiest for all of our members to participate!
Everyone can afford to Bring-A-Buck and if we ALL bring $1, the impact can be enormous - to the tune of feeding 1 family for an entire season for every single week we all participate!!!! WOW!!
Thank you members! The last few weeks of Bring-A-Buck have been great! Thank you so much for your donations! - EVERY DOLLAR COUNTS!
📰NURSERY NEWS📰
No news is good news as things have been nice and quiet around the nursery lately! Lorin just got back from a much-needed and well-earned vacation and now we are gearing up for Fall!
Lorin and Tess are starting all the broccolli and lettuce plants, all the kale seedlings and tons of indoor plans too! Fall plants are getting ready to be brought to to your CSA locations (see below for locations) in abundance! As you know, our seedlings can't be beat and they are grown to absolutely the most purest standards on earth!
Lorin and Tess will be bringing tons of indoor plants, cactus plants, living herbs and fall garden plants to all of the CSA locations and they will be coming in more and more of an abundance as we get closer and closer to Fall.
No space for a garden? Don't worry! We have got you covered with our BRAND NEW all-in-one options!!!
Get your garden companions of choice potted up with companions and an already sustaining eco-system! Just give them water, light, and love! No need to ever transplant these babies, just let them grow right from your container!
We will continue to be bringing living herbs and we will be increasing our house plants too. keep an eye out for Fall planting seedlings - like Broccoli, cauliflower, kale, greens, cabbages etc. We will have them and more available every week as we get closer to fall.
👉ALL CSA MEMBERS STILL (ALWAYS!) RECEIVE 15% off!👈
Microgreen CSA Share!
Love our microgreens!? Than this selection is for you! Receive 3 types of microgreens every week of the year and save 17% every single week!
✔SIGN UP ANYTIME AND START YOUR SUBSCRIPTION AT ANY TIME OF YEAR! AND CANCEL AT ANYTIME TOO!✔
Our microgreens are fresh and will last - unlike anything you can find in the store. We pride ourselves on our microgreen quality as being not only absolutely pure - grown without chemicals, fertilizers or inefficient energy (we grow with 100% solar, renewable energy!), but they are absolutely beautiful, long-lasting and delicious! We really can't rave enough, they are THAT good! (Packaged in a 100% plant-based, commercially compostable container)
WHAT'S IN A SHARE? In your share you will receive a combination of 3 microgreens every week with the option to purchase add-ons and extras when available. Every week we will be growing a mixture of microgreens and you will receive 3 selections of the following: Sunflower Shoots, Pea Shoots, Radish, Kale, Kohlrabi, Basil, Cilantro, Lettuce, Brocolli and more.
Pickup locations and times are the same as Ahavah Farm Veggie Share CSA but you do not have to be a veggie-share member to be a microgreen CSA member - these are two independent programs combined into one.
Go to https://www.ahavahfarm.com/microgreen-csa to learn more and to sign up!
COMPOST
Be a part of our ZERO-WASTE mission here at Ahavah Farm and bring us your compost! PLEASE REMEMBER - NO PLASTIC BAGS. Want more information? CLICK HERE to learn about the program. Thank you everyone who has been bringing their compost! We are so excited that we can help on your mission to become Waste Free!
CSA PICKUP LOCATIONS AND TIMES
NOTATE TIMES: Times are subject to change due to unforeseen circumstances. Please be aware that it is your responsibility to check Facebook and this blog on ahavahfarm.com for updated information and changes.
THURSDAYS:
COS North / Monument @ Beasts and Brews (7 Spectrum Loop, Ste. 140) (THIS WILL BE CHANGING SOON!!!)
11:30pm to 12:30pm (Drive Thru / Market Style)
Denver @ JCC (350 S. Dahlia St.):
3pm to 4:30pm (Drive thru / Market Style)
FRIDAYS:
Colorado Springs @ Ranch Foods Direct (4635 Town Center Dr.):
1:30pm to 3:00pm (Drive Thru / Market Style)
3:00pm to 6pm (Inside store - 🚨TRADITIONAL SHARE MEMBERS ONLY!!)
Peyton @ Ahavah Farm (7545 Log Rd.):
10am to 11am (Drive Thru / Market Style)
This Week's Harvest
As always, nothing is guaranteed. These are the items that are "in season" and are anticipated to be ready this week (which may or may not be available at the CSA).
Small = 4-6 items per week
Medium = 7-9 items per week
Large = 10-12 items per week
Redbor Kale- Our kale is one of the most amazing things we grow. Highly sought after, it was our kale that gave us our reputation 7 years ago and it's the kale that continues to be a CSA winner week after week. This redbor kale is our new, favorite variety and staple! (don't forget to massage it - no really!).
Scallions - Tall green onions. Use the whole thing.
Peas - Amazing snap peas. the best heirloom variety we have grown for years. They are super-sweet.
Cucumbers- Our cucumbers are spectacular. We have both tendergreen burpless, a smooth and tasty slicer and we have the picklers which are great for both pickling and slicing.
Beans - 🎶Beans, beans the magical fruit the more you eat em' the more you...well, you know the rest! These beans are to die for! Perfect for eating raw, or saute them up with onions and garlic or just go wild and load them up with butter - yum, yum!!
Squash - What can be said about squash that hasn't been said?. Well, how about this: Choose the pattypans, slice them, batter them and then bake them...it will become your favorite meal on the planet - just ask Havah! Wow! Check out this recipe and die a happy person.
Fennel - Fennel has lovers and enemeis, but I will tell you that even the greatest fennel hater out there can still enjoy it! Check out this article to discover a new way to eat fennel and absolutely LOVE IT!
Mint - Mint, it's amazing! Perfect for lamb...but also perfect for adding to an ice-cold tea on a hot summer day!
Tomatoes - Oh yes! The tomatoes are fully in now and they are fruiting like crazy! We have enough for all members to receive tomatoes for the next 10+ weeks!
Basil- Delicious and amazing! This basil is the BEST for pesto - and let me tell ya, we eat lot's of pesto!!
Cilantro - Our fiesta variety of cilantro is incredibly aromatic. If you love cilantro, you'll be regretful for having ever missed out on ours!
Red Fire and Green Muir Lettuce - A beautiful red and green lettuce with big, fluffy leaves.
Radish Microgreens - Next to the barley grass and the sunshoots, radish microgreens are some of the most nutritiously-dense items we grow on the farm and not only that, but during our annual survey last year, they ranked as the #1 most requested and love item we grow! They have a fantastic bite to them, last considerably long in the refrigerator and are beautiful in appearance.
Pea Shoots - One of the most desired and sought after items we provide are these pea shoots! Quite literally the best you added to any dish or salad. Our favorite way is to add them to stews and soups. A perfect topper too! Here are four fun ways to use Pea Shoots: http://blog.bostonorganics.com/4-fun-ways-to-use-pea-shoots
Broccoli Microgreens - Last week we told you that Radish Microgreens were the #1 most loved item we grow, well, these microgreens weren't on the list then! I have a sneaking suspicion that these microgreens are the real winners!
Sunshoots - Our sunshoots are certainly some of the nicest, most high-quality sunshoots you will ever find (that actually goes for all our microgreens). They are one of the most beloved items we grow as well and a regular staple to our CSA. Here are some ideas to use your sunnies this week: https://www.martinsgardenacf.com/sunflower-shoots-recipes
That's it for this week! We love you to pieces, are incredibly grateful for each and every one of you and we are blessed to the core to be YOUR farmers!!
Yosef, Havah, Kids and Team The Camire Family
