Spring 2010 CSA

Wood Duck Farm

June 28th, 2010

Seems as though we are finally beginning to get those late afternoon sea breezes, which is more indicative of seasonal June weather here in SE Texas than what we have been having. In fact some of cloudy skies last week actually seemed "fall-like" for an afternoon or two (Yeah right you’re thinking?) While we realize that more typical sultry weather is ahead of us in July & August, the thought of "turning the corner" gives us optimism as we approach the July 4th benchmark. This having been said, the plants seem to be hanging in there pretty well. The tomatoes are in full swing. The peppers are doing okay. We began harvesting some of the cantaloupe last Thursday, so all of you should have some in your shares this week. The eggplant loves the heat. The cucumbers and squash remain prolific, but are apt to probably start showing some heat related stress soon. This will be the last week of green beans. We’ll have some new potatoes in your shares for your July 4th potato salad. Speaking of which, I combined some of our new potatoes, seas salt, garlic, olive oil and our bulb fennel, wrapped together in foil and placed on the grill for about 25 mins. This was an outstanding way to incorporate the fennel. Great as a leftover too!

CSA Survey.

Hey thanks to all of you that took a moment to read and fill out the customer survey that were sent you last week. This survey provided some great feedback and gave us more ideas about how to make our CSA a better program. We’ll try and post more details of the results in the future, but for the moment the standouts are the following:

1. 46% joined the CSA seeking fresh veggies; followed by 38% desiring to know where⁄how their food is grown.
2. 77% rated our veggie quality as being good, followed by 13% saying they were okay. We even had a few "write ins" responding with excellent scores.
3. The question about "veggie variety" had 66% find the variety to be good.
4. 85% found the farm update and recipe emails to be helpful. (That’s encouraging!)
5. The results on how to "make the program better" provided lots of room for study as, 1) 88% desired the option to purchase an "add on," i.e. local eggs, dairy and meats, and 2) 83% wished to have a special order option that would add items such as extra tomatoes, arugula, mciro greens etc.

Written Feed Back

Some of you provided written anonymous feedback on the varied survey questions. We would appreciate posting some of these comments on our website and related material. Please let us know if you have any issues about us using your written survey responses. Again, no names will be associated with these comments.

Fall Program

As mentioned a few weeks back, we are targeting our Fall CSA program to begin toward the end of September and wind up in early December. The share prices for the ten-week Fall program are the same as the current program, $220 for a partial share and $330 for a full share. If you are interested, or know of someone that might be, please visit our website or contact me directly. We have updated our website harvest calendar. Click here to go to the WDF Harvest Calendar. I have a provided a list of crops below that we anticipate planting for the Fall CSA program.

Archived Updates Etc?

We have not mentioned this in a while, but wish to remind you that our updates are saved on our website at CSA Newsletter Archive. You can see recent pics of the farm by visiting Van's Journal.

Best regards,

Below is a List of Crops to be planted for the 2010 Fall CSA program. The program will also include local citrus, but not grown here at the farm:

• Cucumbers
• Green beans
• Corn
• Kale
• Tomatoes
• Sweet potatoes
• Arugula
• Basil
• Peppers
• Eggplant
• Okra
• Radishes
• Salad mix
• Green garlic
• Boc choy
• Broccoli
• Cauliflower
• Mustard greens
• Spinach
• Butternut squash
• Carrots
• Fennel
• Dill
• Turnips
• Chard
• Scallions
• New potatoes
• Romaine head lettuce
• Beets
• Cabbage
• Micro Greens
• Cilantro