I told you there wouldn't be a newsletter this week because I was supposed to be gone on a horsepacking trip, but due to thunderstorms in the mountains our adventure got postponed a few days. That means you get a newsletter this week but not NEXT week! Here's what's popping at Valley Flora right now:
- Last of the sweet corn
- Eggplant - enough to make it the centerpiece of a meal! Our crop is peaking right now but will begin to taper off over the next couple weeks.
- Rossa di Milano red onions
- Sweet Peppers
- Painted Purple Potatoes
- Tomatoes
- Poblano Peppers
On Rotation:
- Head Lettuce
- Napa Cabbage (should be in this Friday's CSA totes and next Tuesday's)
Meet EVie, our New Delivery Van!!!!
Since the first seed went in the ground at Valley Flora, our bottom-line vision has to been to make the world a better place. We want to feed our community well, to steward this piece of land with utmost love and care, and to tread as lightly on our planet as we can. We have made one conscious choice after another to realize that vision as a community-based organic farm, whether it's forging partnerships with Double Up Food Bucks to make our CSA accessible to low income families, or us using draft horses in the field, or hosting fieldtrips for local schoolkids, or obsessively planting cover crops and making compost to build healthy soil. We took a huge leap towards realizing our vision in 2018 when we put a 12 kW solar array on the roof of our barn, which provides all the electricity for our coolers, irrigation pumps, greenhouse and packout facility. We dreamed of someday switching to an electric delivery van that could be powered by our PV system, but in 2018 that technology was still nascent and cost prohibitive to our little business.
Then, unexpectedly, the stars aligned a few weeks ago when three things suddenly happened at once:
1) With the end of EV incentives looming, we were approached by a dealership about buying an EV Sprinter van that had been sitting on their lot for over a year. They needed it gone before the incentives expired in September and offered it to us at close to half price. That got our attention, but even at a steep discount it was still too much money for the farm.
2) USDA funds that had been allocated by the Biden Administration were released belatedly to eligible farmers. The program was intended to help specialty crop farmers like us get their product to market.
3) The Bandon Dunes Charitable Foundation awarded us a $5000 small grant to help with the purchase the EV van.
And just like that, we found ourselves driving EVie home and plugging her into our solar array at the barn at the end of August. Now all of Valley Flora's produce is delivered thanks to the sun! For us it's an amazing realization of a long-time dream and we are deeply grateful to the Bandon Dunes Charitable Foundation and the USDA for their help in making it come true!
The VF solar array - and the barn, greenhouse and delivery van it powers!
And Finally, A Word from Emo, the Eggplant:
Hi everyone, um, I'm Emo and, um, I know maybe not all of you like eggplant, but um, I just wanted to say maybe you should try me, because you know, sometimes there's things you think you don't like but then you try them and you're like, wow, this is actually kind of good, you know? So maybe, um, you can try a recipe with me, instead of, you know, putting me on the curb or tossing me in the compost, cuz some people think I'm nice, well at least, um, I know of one person, and there's enough of me this week to make something special like that dish that's called Moussaka, or whatever, you know? Anyway, never mind, um yeah, I guess I'll go now.
