Here at Terra Firma, we escaped the cold completely, with the lowest temperatures in our fields hovering several degrees above freezing.  Which is a good thing, since almost every crop we currently have planted would have been hurt by the cold, from asparagus and apricots to pistachios and zucchini.  Our hearts go out to all the farmers who were hit, especially our neighbors to the north in the Capay Valley.

IN CASE YOU NEED TO KNOW MORE ABOUT TERRA FIRMA
Many of our subscribers may find our current methods of communicating with you adequate.  The website provides important information about the service we provide, as well as the newsletter and recipe archive.  Through email with Valerie, we hope that we are responding to basic concerns about billing and service.  This newsletter offers a space for me to communicate with you every week.  And our annual Farm Day offers you the opportunity to actually visit the farm, say hi in person, and touch the soil and plants yourself.

Nonetheless, I know there are subscribers who want more.  Over the last year, I have been compiling photos of the farm showing the processes we use to grow crops and how they progress over the year.   Rather than try to add them to our website, I have recently decided to start a blog.  This gives me the freedom to organize the photos myself, flesh out the photos with captions explaining them, and give our subscribers a better feel for the daily rhythm of the farm.

This is an exciting project for me because it will allow me to document “a year in the life” of Terra Firma, at least from my perspective.  Still, it is a time consuming project for someone who doesn’t always have much free time.  I have set up the blog to allow comments from visitors, but I am not going to promise that I will be able to respond to any or all of them.  However, if there is something about what we are doing that interests you and you want to see and read more about it, let me know and I will add it to my list of subjects I want to explore.

It very important that any TFF subscriber visiting the blog knows not to use it for  any “official” communication with the farm regarding their subscription.  I have tried to make this 100% clear on the blog, but the architecture of the host makes it difficult to post this kind of perpetual disclaimer statement.

Since the newsletter already offers me an outlet for writing, it is my intention  to focus “Pablito’s Blog” primarily on photos.  I will upload photos as often as I can into the general photo area (Farm Photos) as well as assign them to special categories including specific crops (i.e. tomatoes or summer fruit), general subjects (such as irrigation or greenhouse), and anything else I think subscribers might find interesting.  I will do my best to keep the photos dated and narrated.  After a year or so, the blog will be a pretty comprehensive visual depiction of the day to day life of a CSA farm.

I have already made a few entries to the blog and uploaded a dozen or so photos, with more to come soon.  The address is: www.terrafirmafarm.typepad.com/pablitos_blog/

For the time being, I will continue to write the newsletter the way I have for the past 13 years, and we will continue to print it and send it along with our boxes.  Maybe at some point in the future, our subscribers will get used to the blog and we could simply post the newsletter there every week.

DROP SITE ISSUES
We are currently recruiting new drop sites in the SF Mission area and will be shifting boxes away from the Capp St. drop, which is being closed for safety reasons.
We were lucky in this case to get a great response from the community to our request for alternative drop sites in the area.  However, it reminded us once again how critically important it is for us to keep our drop hosts happy.  We ask that all of our subscribers do their part in this department, too, by picking up their boxes on time, keeping the site clean, and giving your drop host a big “THANKS” whenever you see them.

IN YOUR BOXES
If you saw the TV ad sometime last year that showed thousands of colorful balls bouncing down a steep street in San Francisco, you might have a good visual of how it feels to hang out in our strawberry field last week. The cold weather this winter put the plants into a deep dormancy, which often leads to a heavy fruit set.  Then, the dry spring with no frost provided the thousands of berry blossoms the perfect conditions to pollinate and set fruit.  Finally, this weekend’s heat wave set the fruit ripening quickly.  On Saturday, we created a CSA pick list that included two baskets of berries for each box.

Unfortunately, Mother Nature giveth and she taketh away, too.  Temperatures hit 95 here on Sunday , bottomed out at just 70 on Monday morning, and hit 93 Monday afternoon.  We began harvesting at 6:30 on Monday, but had to quit at 1 pm because the ripe fruit was melting in the boxes.  And much of the almost-ripe fruit — the berries we would have been harvesting Tuesday and Wednesday for the boxes — was cooked by the heat as well.  It has cooled down again now, but as always after these types of heat events, the amount of fruit that we get has dropped off.

So once again everyone is getting one basket of berries in their CSA boxes.  The difference this week is the variety.  Last week’s berries were Chandlers, which are soft and juicy.  This makes them more susceptible to the heat.  This week’s berries are Camarosas variety, which are larger, firmer, and thus more heat-resistant.  While Camarosas grown on the foggy California coast have a reputation for being bland, the same variety grown here in hot weather is sweet and flavorful.   They also keep a day or two longer in your fridge, not that that will be much of an issue for most of you.

For pictures of our strawberry field prior to the heatwave, as well as “sneak previews” of some of our other late spring fruit, check out my blog.

Thanks,  Pablito
 

Please make sure to include your account name, the one on the sign off sheet & on the box, in every correspondance to Valerie

Recipes............................

CSA membership fees ~payment due day is first of month.~~ Quarterly discounts are given for any 3 month period only if paid in advance.
They are given as an extra credit when the payment is applied, you won't see your monthly rate change.

For mid-month changes,  Up/downgrades are $5 per week per increment.  Small to large is $10.

Vacations & Billing Inquiries
We need seven days notice before a vacation hold or other change of service.
Contact Valerie through voicemail at (530) 756-2800, or e-mail Goldenbell@aol.com.  Include your account name in full (what's on the sign off sheet).

Account Balance Inquiries The account sheet is hiding under the sign off sheet each week with your account balance on it.  Mid month I've been e-mailing statments, so if you're not getting it send me an e-mail requesting to be added to the list. To be able to read the statements you need to be logged in as an administrator on a PC, and virus programs may corrupt the file. Some Mac operating systems do allow the file to be viewed.  We can't resend them, and it wouldn't work any better the second time anyway.

MAILING ADDRESS:
Terra Firma Farms, Inc
P.O. Box 836
Winters, CA 95694
(530) 756-2800
www.terrafirmafarm.com
Goldenbell@aol.com

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