Every day is Mother’s Day to every thing
Happy mother’s day to our community’s miraculous matriarchs! Our last email update was delivered on Earth Day weekend, a time to be intentional and specific about celebrating and appreciating our Mother Earth. This weekend, as we thank and honor our essential female human predecessors- our mothers, our mother’s mothers, our mother’s mother’s mothers- we’re given an opportunity to visualize our deeply rooted, widely branching trees of descendance, endurance, and proliferation. We ought to reflect on our perennial, often dormant, living historical root systems, the lush vegetation of the present, and the bolting, flowering buds of the future.
We accept or assume that one doesn’t decide to grow crops for 40+ families, or choose to support such a purpose, without an omnipresent appreciation for the natural world and her mother. Whenever we travel into Columbus from the farm just outside of Granville, we pass a billboard alongside route 161 that reads “Every day is earth day to a farmer.” Its message provokes thought, reliably. Is it a call to action? Is it just a subtle reminder to appreciate the farmer or to appreciate the planet? What kind of farmer are we talking about and is this farmer truly a representative of Mother Earth or simply a capitalist? None of us would be involved in a CSA project like ours if we weren’t somewhat skeptical about the idea that conventional farming values sustainable stewardship. So what should this mean? What does earth day mean to a farmer and what does every day mean to a farmer? What kind of reflection does a message like this provoke for you and your family?
Every day is Mother’s Day to… every thing
It seems the purpose of Earth Day is to insist that our citizens prioritize what is most basic and essential to our health, wellness, survival, and general existence: the environment of which we are all a part and on which we are all dependent. And what of Mother’s Day? If every day is Earth Day to a farmer, every day is Mother’s Day to… every thing. Every thing has a mother and every thing owes existence to its mother. The sun was formed in the nebulus womb of the Milky Way, the solar system and its many bodies owe existence to the motherhood of this star and her gravity, and all life within our biosphere is offspring. We all have mothers, our food had mothers, and our food’s food had mothers. It’s mothers all the way down.
This feeling of “appreciating the obvious and easily underappreciated” is a pervasive sensation on our farm and within our lifestyle. As the formality of Earth Day inspires individuals to redirect their attention toward what is truly critical, as the federal Mother’s Day holiday insists we take time to honor the one individual responsible for our precious consciousness, we hope the CSA season is a formal way for you and your family to stay directly connected to environmental and communal authenticity.
With the current accommodating mild and dry weather and the risk of heavy frost now in the past, we have been hurriedly preparing summer garden beds and filling them generously with tomatoes, peppers, and squashes with interplantings of herbs & salad greens. While our spring growth has dragged a bit, We are making great progress preparing for summer vegetation. Our indoor grow room is officially cleared out of young seedlings and our propagation hoophouses are thinning as the spring procession of transplants reach their final destinations in fertile field soil. Once the hoophouses have been ultimately emptied of herb, flower, and vegetable starts, we will transplant cucumbers under the plastic tunnels, stringing and trellising them up to the structure itself, keeping them hot & humid for what we hope to be an extended growing season.
Our first of 20 harvests will be distributed Sunday, May 21st and Wednesday, May 24th, about a week behind when we had hoped to begin harvests. Worry not though, families will still receive 20 weeks of harvests throughout the summer, skipping June 18th and 21st (family vacation), with the final delivery being the second week of October.
Logistically, vegetables & herbs will be packaged/displayed in a cardboard box. We purchase more than enough boxes for our membership, but please leave your used box at the delivery location to be replaced the following week. The same system applies to egg cartons. Please leave your used cartons out to be replaced at the next delivery. Flower bouquets are delivered in glass jars. If you have jars you can donate, we would be happy to re-purpose them. We will also take your organic food scraps, egg shells, and/or compost!
We’re a week away from our first harvest and the following spring crops are nearly eligible: Mixed Brassica Greens, Spring Mix Lettuce, Spinach, Bok Choy, Kale, Collard Greens, Head Lettuce, Microgreens, Parsley, Green Garlic, and Arugula.
Thank you all again for your support. It’s going to be another crazy growing season but we are ready for it! We look forward to meeting/interacting with old friends and new shareholders. Our first harvest is only a week away!
Erin & David