• Leeks
• Carrots
• Beets
• Celeriac
• Painted Purple Potatoes
• Jumbo Yellow Onion
• Chioggia Radicchio
• Tetsukabuto Winter Squash

Oh me, oh my, Week 28! This is the last Harvest Basket of the 2022 season. Thanks for eating all those veggies!!!

One of the things I love most about farming is that no two days are ever the same. Yet somehow, when people inevitably ask me the "how'd your season go?" question, a full year of farming is always suddenly and oddly reduced to a generalized blur - with the exception of the one or two things that stand out in sharp relief. That thing that rises above the blur of the 2022 growing season for me is Spring: The. Coldest. Wettest. Most. Challenging. Spring. Ever. Yet even with unrelenting April rain, hail in June, and losing half our carrot beds to voracious slugs, somehow my answer to "how'd your season go?" is still, with a big wide grin, "pretty good!"

It's true, I tend towards the glass-half-full perspective (sidenote: I haven't actually done the books for the year yet, so maybe take my optimistic reply with a grain of salt). But it's also true that the farm is pretty resilient, thanks to the 100+ different crops we grow and the various sales channels we sell them into. Diversity is our greatest strength, and the thing that levels out the inevitable ups and downs of farming in an increasingly capricious, climate-changey world. We don't have crop insurance, but we do have biodiversity on our side.

The other thing that brings remarkable stability to the farm is our CSA members. Your 28-week commitment to the farm helps carry us through rough seas when they arise, and our promise to fill your tote with a wide array of seasonal produce creates an inarguable mandate for crop diversity. It's one good thing driving another to keep the farm humming.

I truly hope you've enjoyed traversing the seasonal arc with us, from June until now. I hope you've found inspiration in new vegetables and comfort in favorite standbys. This week's tote is full of long-keeping storage crops: potatoes, beets, leeks, celeriac, and carrots that will last for weeks in your fridge. The Tetsu winter squash will still be perfect eating in May if you decide to leave it on your counter until then, and the Talon yellow onion should keep in a cool dry place into the new year. And one more radicchio, a chioggia type, that will also keep in your fridge for weeks - unless, that is, you've learned to love radicchio over the past two months and have grand plans for it in your salad bowl this week, or better yet, TONIGHT!

If you'd like to come back for more in 2023, we'll be starting our CSA sign-up process in February (all 2022 members will get priority sign-up for the 2023 season, before we offer any spots to folks on our waiting list). Keep an eye out for our sign-up email in late January or February!

AND, if you want in on our Winter CSA (January through May), we've made a few more spots available to anyone who's interested. For more info and to sign up, click here!

Thank you, and Happy Solstice!

xoxo

Zoë and the entire VF crew!