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Author: Amy

  • Thank you for supporting Red Wagon farm workers!

    Thank you so much to those of you who contributed to our Farm Worker Support Fund. You have no idea how much it meant to our farm crew.

    If you’d like to make a contribution, click here for more details on our Farm Worker Support Fund.

    IMG_1543The Red Wagon Farm Worker Support Fund is new in 2015. So far we have collected $5,332! Over 20% of CSA members made a contribution and Tuv Ha’Aretz contributed $1,000 as a group. I have not yet promoted this fund as much as I would have liked. But despite that, my heart is warmed by the huge response we have received.

    We distributed the money to the farm crew in September paychecks. Full-time crew members who have worked the full season received $300 each and a smaller amount was given to part-time crew or people who have only worked part of the season. A lot of the crew members were not aware of this fund and many people were shocked with gratitude that our CSA members made so many contributions. Here are some comments that people sent me after they got their paychecks:

    Farm fashionI would like to express immense gratitude to those who contributed to the Farm Worker Support Fund. We rely on this type of community support so that we are able to continue growing good food! ~Kevin

    A BIG Thank You to our CSA members who gave money to the Farm Workers Support Fund. Organic farming is a way of life and practice that we truly believe in. Some of the field hands have families and are commuting up to an hour one way every day. Farm work is hardly profitable. Work days are long, begin before the sun is up, and are physically and mentally exhausting. The bonus on the paycheck keeps the motivation high and is greatly appreciated! ~Christian

    I just wanted to express my deep, heartfelt gratitude for everyone at Red Wagon and the amazing community of people who support us. The work we do out here is the most challenging work I have ever done in my life. But to be able to provide wonderful, organic food for so many people makes every day out in the field worth it. Thank you so much for your support, my gratitude for this community is beyond measure. ~Maggie

    This act of kindness could not have come at a better time. ~Allie

    Thank you Amy and Wyatt for thinking of your farm crew and setting up such a generous fund and thank you CSA members for your contributions. I speak for many of my coworkers when I say that most of us are not doing this job because of the pay but because it is work that we can feel good about in a country where farming is a forgotten craft. The work is a challenge and the reward is serving the community. Your donations have been an unexpected gift and a welcome surprise! Thank you! ~Ana

    We had to get the propane tank to heat our house filled this month and that is a big expense so the fact that this happened was pretty great! ~Sarah

    And a longer comment from Leigh:

    As the harvest manager, I get a lot of great quotes and jokes daily from the crew–but the donations from the Farm Worker Support Fund elicited some particularly great responses. Here are a couple of direct quotes from the crew:

    “This could not have come at a better time. The extra money on this paycheck is literally going to keep the debt collectors [from student loans] off my back.”

    “I just can’t believe it’s true…is this real? Is this real money?”

    I think that these quotes emphasize something really key about this donation–it could not have been more perfectly timed. Life as a seasonal worker changes from one month to the next, even from one week to the next. And our well-being fluctuates with the well-being of the crops; when the farm is doing its best we feel the most secure in our jobs and continued employment. In the seasonal work community two times of year are called mud-season–late March to early June, and mid-October to early December. It’s named after the actual mud accumulating on the ground as snow melts (spring) or starts to fall (in early winter) but is also a fairly apt metaphor for the seasonal job market. Typical employment cycles begin and end yearly or even over many years, but for us work/life begins and ends every six months. This time of year feels particularly precarious as we search for our next homes and livelihoods. So a couple hundred extra dollars on the paycheck literally could not have been better timed. I wish I could capture the smiles of relief I saw as the paychecks were passed out. Thank you from the crew at Red Wagon Farm. ~Leigh

  • Grateful for Our CSA Members!

    We have come to the end of another CSA season at Red Wagon Farm. Thank you so much to all of our CSA Members! We started our CSA in 2007 (after starting Red Wagon in 2004). We started with about 50 CSA members, all picking up at one location. We still have about 10 members who have been with us for all 9 years. (How can it be 9 years?!?) Thank you so much to all of you long-term members! And thank you to those of you who have been with us for just one or two seasons. We could not have our farm without our CSA members. You are the core of Red Wagon and you are our most stable and reliable source of support.

    Every season of farming is different, but I think 2012 has been the most unique year by far in terms of weather. It is hard for me to remember this far back, but we started out with incredibly warm weather in 2015. Lauren worked a bunch of days outside at the farm in January because the weather was so nice! We got a lot planted early and we were really busy in March. Then starting April 16 we had 6 weeks of rain totaling 12″. That is our main planting season and I can’t believe we made it through that. We will see the effects of all that rain in our crops through the end of 2015. But once the rain stopped, it didn’t start again for months. We didn’t have a meaningful amount of rain all summer. And then we’re having the longest autumn in our 12 years of farming. We had one mild frost at our Valmont Farm location, but we still haven’t had a hard frost. We were still harvesting tomatoes at the beginning of this week! In mid-October!

    A number of CSA farms in Boulder County closed during 2015 because it was such a difficult season. I feel very proud of Wyatt and all of the Red Wagon crew. We were able to bring you a good assortment of vegetables every single week and we gave you the full amount you paid for.

    Growing vegetables for a living is beyond hard. There are times during every season that I am not sure we will be able to continue. But here we are, almost at the end of the 2015 growing season and we’re still going strong. A very large part of that is due to the support of our CSA members. Thank you. We love growing food for you and we hope to see you again in 2016!

  • Storing Winter Keeper Boxes

    Here are some instructions for those of you who got Winter Keeper Boxes or have other vegetables you’d like to store.

    The items in the box have different requirements for storage. However, nothing should be exposed to freezing temperatures. One key is to periodically check your vegetables in storage. Remove any items that are getting soft or starting to rot. You know the saying, “One bad apple spoils the whole bunch.” Well, the same is true for other fruits and vegetables. One rotting squash will cause the others to rot. I try to look through my veggies every few weeks and pull the ones that are starting to go bad.

    Another rule of thumb is that larger veggies will store longer than smaller ones. Huge carrots will last a few months if properly stored. Thin carrots will last a few weeks at most. (See the photos at the bottom.)

    In a perfect world we would all have root cellars to store our veggies. I do not. I will list the ideal conditions, as well as what I do in reality.

    Winter Squash – Use any squash that have been nicked or have lost their stems first. Store squash in a cool, dry place with a bit of air circulation. Your basement or garage would be ideal, but don’t let them freeze in your garage. Reality: I store them in a wire basket on the bottom shelf on a table in my living room—my crawl space is too scary for food. We have squash that last until spring. (Although I almost always miss one that decides to liquefy and make a huge mess.)

    Onions – Store them in a cool, dark, dry place. Exposure to light will make your onions sprout faster. I try to keep mine in a cupboard or closet. Or I at least put them in a brown paper bag (to block out the light) if I don’t have room.

    Potatoes – Store them in a dark, cool, moist place. If the potatoes get too dry, they will start to shrivel; light makes the potatoes turn green and become inedible. Right now I have mine in a hemp sack on the counter.

    Root Vegetables – Vegetables like carrots, turnips, beets, radishes, parsnips, rutabagas, and sunchokes all have similar storage requirements. You can pack them in a wooden box with moist sand in your mythical root cellar. Or you can put them in a sealed plastic bag (or other air-tight container) in the refrigerator. If you think you will store your root veggies for a long time, trim the tiny little roots off the bottom as well as any greens off the top of the veggies. These parts will rot faster. Once the greens start to rot, the whole root will rot. If you trim the parts that are most likely to rot, the main part of the root will last much longer. Your goal is to trim the root to look like the carrot pictured in the second photo to the right.

    Small and Large Carrot

    Trimmed Carrot

  • Pumpkin Patch and Yarn Shop!

    Stop by our farm this month! The Red Wagon Pumpkin Patch and Yarn Shop is now open!

    Yarn ShopAfter years of waiting, we finally have beautiful yarn and rovings from our very own alpacas! The alpaca fiber is so incredibly soft. And when you pick out a skein of yarn, you can feed some carrots to the alpaca who grew the fiber for you!

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    Pick out a pumpkin, let the kids run through the straw bale maze, visit with the farm animals, and relax in a beautiful spot in Boulder County.

    We’re open 10 – 6 every day through Halloween at 7694 N 63rd Street.

  • CSA Harvest Celebration

    Thank you so much to everybody who came to our harvest celebration yesterday. We had so much fun with all of you and the weather cooperated–not a drop of rain!

    BonfireShire horsess

     

     

    Special thanks to:

    • CSA members Casey and Dave of MacKenzie Shires for bringing their beautiful Shire horses and doing a bazillion wagon rides!
    • Clay and his band, The Alcapones, for filling the air with their great music
    • Kirsten Boyer (my favorite photographer), for sharing her incredible photos of the party
    • Avery Brewing Company, for generously donating beer for the party
    • Mo McKenna, for making yet another batch of yummy chili
    • Everybody else who pitched in to make this such a fun celebration!

    The AlcaponesSend us your party photos–we’d love to see them! Email them to CSA@RedWagonOrganicFarm.com. Here are some of the beautiful photos Kirsten shared with us:

    Scarecrow FamilyHorses from behindAccordianDistant horsesS'moresWagon ride

  • Second Fruit Share Update

    I know that many of you are anxious to hear more about the Fruit Share for this season. If you didn’t see it, you can read my first Fruit Share Update here. It has been a very difficult season for both First Fruits Organic Farms and Ela Family Farms. Both farms lost the majority of their fruit crops for 2015. We are still hoping to get a little bit of fruit from one or both of these farms. We are also trying to get good-quality fruit from other farms. But we will certainly fall short of the full Fruit Share this season.

    We will check in with you again in mid-October as we get close to the end of the CSA season. At that time we will give you two choices for the money you paid for your fruit share:

    1. In the spirit of a CSA, you can choose to give the money you paid for your fruit share to Ela Farms and First Fruits. We will divide the money evenly between these two farms. OR
    2. We will refund your money for the fruit you did not receive.

    Again, we will reach out to you in October, so there is no need to indicate your preference now. And thank you for hanging in there with us, as well as Ela Farms and First Fruits, in this very difficult fruit year!

  • Grilled Zucchini

    This is by far my favorite way to have zucchini. I feel like squash and zucchini often get mushy when you cook them. Grilled zucchini is crisp and has a slightly carmelized flavor. They key is to make your zucchini slices an even thickness so they cook evenly. Thinner slices are crisper, but burn more easily. Thicker slices are a little more forgiving. Start by heating up your grill to a pretty high temperature. Slice your zucchini while you’re waiting for the grill to heat.

    Zucchini Edge SliceSlicing Zucchini

    Trim the top and bottom off your zucchini. If you’re cutting the zucchini with a knife, start by cutting a thin slice down one edge. Now you can put that flat edge face down on your cutting board and it is somewhat easier to cut the rest of your slices without having your zucchini roll around.

    Zucchini in the mandoline

    I am not great at cutting straight, so I like to use a mandoline slicer. (I highly recommend getting a mandoline slicer if you don’t own one already. You can use it to make even slices of all kinds of vegetables. McGuckin has a good selection of inexpensive mandoline slicers.)

    Coat ZucchiniPut the zucchini in a bowl with olive oil, salt, and pepper. Stir until the zucchini slices are thoroughly coated.

    Grilled Zucchini

    Grill for about 5 minutes on the first side–until there are nice grill marks. Turn the zucchini only once. It will take about half as long to cook the second side. The zucchini is great served straight off the grill. You can also sprinkle it with a little bit of grated Parmesan. Or you can dip it in my favorite secret guilty pleasure–ranch dressing.

     

     

     

  • Alpaca Yarn!

    Why am I posting about alpaca yarn??? Those of you who have been out to our farm have almost certainly seen our alpacas. For five years I have been shearing the alpacas in the spring and then stashing away the fiber to clean up “over the winter”. Many winters have come and gone and I never seem to find time to deal with the fiber. But this past winter was different! With the help of Chayo and Leonie, I got all the fiber “skirted”. Skirting is the process of removing unwanted items from the fiber – straw and other plant matter, coarse or otherwise undesirable bits of fiber, second cuts, and anything else you don’t want in your final product. This is a time-consuming process–and completely overwhelming once you have let five years’ worth of fiber accumulate! But the Chayo, Leonie, and I were determined to get it done. Finally it was ready to take to the fiber mill! (With much rejoicing!) At the mill, the fiber is run through many machines where it is washed, picked, carded, drafted, spun, and plied.

    Skeins of Alpaca YarnAlpaca Rovings

    Wyatt and I got our first alpacas in January 2010. Yesterday, with much delight, I picked up my first alpaca yarn and rovings (for hand spinning). Stay tuned for the Red Wagon fiber CSA…

  • Interview with Wyatt on KGNU

    Wyatt was recently interviewed by KGNU. He talks about the heavy rainfall we received in the spring and the lasting effects of the challenging weather.  Click here to listen to the interview.

  • Fruit Share Update

    This growing season has been a difficult one for Front Range farmers. We are still feeling the effects of the 6 weeks of rain from mid-April through May when we couldn’t get into our fields to plant. Thankfully we have been able to eek out enough food for our CSA shares each week. But we will see the effects of the difficult spring for the rest of this growing season.

    I think the growing season has been even more difficult for fruit growers on the Western Slope of Colorado. I just finished reading this update from Ela Family Farms. In it they explain the particulars of why the weather was so hard on their fruit trees. There was an exceptionally cold night in April that killed almost all of the blossoms on their fruit trees. Then the rainy weeks that followed meant that the pollinating insects couldn’t get out to do their work on the small number of blossoms that remained. For those of you that don’t know the cycle of fruit production, the spring blossoms on the trees are pollinated and those pollinated blossoms later turn into fruit. One night of temperatures in the 20s at just the wrong time in the spring can kill all the blossoms and wipe out the fruit for an entire season.

    As Steve Ela explains in his update, he still does not know what to expect in terms of fruit production for the season. Their harvests will be intermittent, so he can’t plan for labor to pick the fruit. Steve told us that he might have one variety of peaches that is productive, but then the next variety that should be ready has been lost for the season. Unfortunately, you can’t have skilled fruit pickers magically appear and then disappear as you need them. As with the rest of us, they need reliable work and can’t just work for a few days here and there. So the fruit growers might be faced with the sad circumstance of having a crop ready one week, but nobody available to harvest it.

    We have worked with First Fruits Organic Farms (Paonia, CO) and Ela Family Farms (Hotchkiss, CO) since 2002. They have the highest quality organic fruit we can find in Colorado. We work with two fruit growers as a sort of hedge. If one has a crop failure for a particular fruit, the other will often have better luck. Unfortunately this year, both farms suffered from that very cold night in April. They have both told us that they will have fruit intermittently and will try hard to get it to us.

    Last week were lucky enough to get some cherries from First Fruits–an unexpected surprise! They said they thought they would be able to get cherries to us again this week. But sadly, once they started picking for this weekend, they realized there weren’t enough cherries and many of them were damaged, so they don’t have anything to delivery to us. And if we had ordered enough cherries last week to get us through this week, they would all be moldy mush by now. They pick their fruit when it is ripe, which is what gives it that unbeatable flavor. The only downside is that the ripe fruit is more perishable, so we can’t order enough to get us through two weeks at a time. We will just have to take things week by week. That will be the sad theme for this season – unpredictable.

    Wyatt and I have been thinking a lot about what to do with our Fruit Share this season. When there is a shortage of fruit, like this year, we can’t simply go to another farm to buy fruit because they are also short on fruit and need to supply their regular customers. We also don’t want to get low-quality fruit that may be under-ripe, bruised, or otherwise damaged. This has been our experience with many other fruit growers we have tried over the years.

    We will do our best to fill our Fruit Share this season and hope for some happy surprises. In the meantime, Wyatt and I will evaluate the options if we fall short on fruit. And we will be thinking a lot about the families at First Fruits and Ela Farms. Steve Ela told us that he will likely get by this year, but they will need a good year next year in order to survive. Farming is risky work and we wish our friends on the Western Slope well as they endure this difficult season.