DECEMBER HOLIDAY SCHEDULE
Here’s our year-end holiday schedule, which is also posted on the website:
Week of Dec. 25th — no delivery
Week  of Jan. 1st — no delivery
Normal delivery schedule will resume the week of January 7th.
 Remember to that December and January payments should be made for the full monthly amount; the two week vacation is factored into our subscription rates.

SOMEBODY CALL “PETA”
Well it’s winter at Terra Firma, and out in our fields, carnage is occurring daily.   With our acres and acres of cover crop providing lots of habitat, we open our farm, as we do every winter, to hunters seeking fresh prey.  They come from all around the valley, and some from other states, to partake of the abundance.  It’s easy to understand their attraction to our lush organic fields, what with the suburbanization occurring around us, as well as the bare fields of our conventional neighbors.  To them, it must seem like we’re the only place left for them to find some fresh meat.

I’m talking, of course, about carnivorous wildlife, not humans.  Hawks, owls, kestrels, coyotes, foxes.  Even herons and egrets, who will happily spear mice and gophers with their long, sword-like beaks when they’re standing in a wet field, instead of fish in a pond or creek.

One foggy winter day last year, I was cultivating our asparagus field when I flushed a young jackrabbit.  It only made it a hundred feet or so before a Marsh Hawk dropped out of the sky and nabbed it.  The hawk couldn’t fly with the rabbit in its talons, so it was forced to eat it right there—shrieking at me every once in a while to remind me who was boss — while I circled around it in the tractor.

These animal hunters help us approximate some of the ecological balance that occurs in nature.  While much mention is made of organic farmers and insect pests, rodents are equally destructive to the crops we grow.  Ground squirrels strip pistachios and walnut trees of nuts.  Giant jackrabbits (some on the farm are bigger than Lulu the bulldog) nibble their way down our rows of newly sprouted beans, melons, and other vulnerable crops.  Mice and rats eat holes in melons and winter squash to access the seeds.

But Gophers are probably the  most destructive pest we have to deal with.  In a natural setting, gophers must labor for days to dig a single tunnel through the hard, dry soil of California.  Eating bugs as well as roots, they perform a sort of natural tillage underground, opening passages for water and loosening the soil.  Encountering a vegetable farm for them, though, is like winning the lottery.  They find the soil already loose and easy to dig, and by tunneling in straight lines down our crop rows, they find tasty plant roots at regular intervals.  They give up eating bugs and focus on vegetables, and they grow much fatter than any gopher in the wild.  In some of our crops they can destroy twenty percent or more of what we plant.  But in a young orchard or vineyard, of which we have three, they can do far more damage.  The new roots of small trees are particularly tasty to them, and they can easily kill a tree in a night.

Lucky for us that gophers on our farm get lazy.  They make their tunnels closer to the surface, where they are more easily spotted by eagle-eyed raptors.  And they are so big and juicy that the birds eating them probably hatch twice as many eggs as they normally would.  Without our army of winged and fleet footed hunters, I’m pretty sure that the gophers would have put us out of business already.  As it is, they probably eat a dozen gophers every day this time of year, and yet never seem to get rid of them completely.

 Of course, we can’t specify which fields we want the hawks and herons to patrol.  So we have to keep an eye on certain fields, especially the young orchard, and place traps in gopher tunnels that are getting a little too close to the trees.  Nonetheless, I consider predators to be an integral part of our pest management strategy.  And every time I see a Harrier hovering over my head, a Red Tail sitting on a post, or a white faced Barn Owl swoop in front of my windshield, I say “Thanks” and give them a little thumbs up for encouragement.

IN YOUR BOXES
When you open your final Terra Firma CSA box of 2006, take a moment to contemplate how amazing it is to live in a state where fresh produce can be grown 52 weeks of the year.

Subscribers can be broken down into two categories this time of year.  First, there are those who are leaving town for the holidays.  Some, in fact, have left already and won’t even be receiving this week’s boxes.  For these folks, TFF’s two-week closure conveniently fits their own schedule, and avoids them having to take vacation credits during that time.

Second, there are those who are staying in the area for the holidays.  Many of these folks will be cooking during the two-week closure, and find it to be rather inconvenient.  In fact, some have very nicely complained about how much they miss us when we’re gone.

Either way, many of you will probably find this two week period a reminder of why you enjoy subscribing to our CSA.  Don’t think you are alone.  Paul Holmes and I, heading to states back east, get a good reminder of why we decided to farm in California instead.  Those of you who will also travel to other states will experience the joy of wilted, shriveled, expensive product –- when you can find it at all.  And those who are staying in California, well, all that nice organic produce is out there, but you have to go out and find it.  Every year, something that is abundantly available in your TFF boxes is scarce and expensive in the organic section of your local store.  This year, for example, Satsuma Mandarins are few and far between — although Clementines may be easier to find.

 Anyway, that’s a long way of saying “How do you know you miss us if we never go away”.  We wish you all a happy and healthy holiday season with your families and friends, and we’ll be back in January 2007 for another year of feeding you the best fruit and vegetables we can grow.
 

                                         Pablote
 

Please make sure to include your account name, the one on the sign off sheet, in each and every correspondance.  Thank You!

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

CSA membership fees ~payment due day is first of month
 

We Up/downgrades are $5 per week per increment.

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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