Red Wagon Farm

If you’ve been with Red Wagon for a while you know what I’m going to say…the biggest thing supporting Red Wagon is our CSA! It might not be obvious why it helps us so much more to have you as a CSA member than to buy our vegetables some other way—like through another farm stand or market, at a local restaurant, or even at our own farm store! Don’t get me wrong, all of these things help but it’s our CSA members that keep us going.

Our CSA gives us gives us predictability. You join early in the year then we can make a plan for the whole season based on our CSA membership numbers. We can’t change the number of tomatoes we have in August if we decided to start too many or too few plants back in March. Farming is all about the long game and we need to be able to plan in order to be successful.

Our CSA also helps us to cover many of the upfront costs each year. There are a lot of expenses at the beginning of the season. So far this year we’ve spent over $90,000—and it isn’t even April yet! Some of the biggest expenses are seeds, organic fertilizers, irrigation water, payroll, rent, insurance, accounting, and fuel. You probably think of some of these when you think of a farm, but others are just part of having a business.

Joining our CSA is about more than getting your weekly veggies. (Although, that’s a pretty fantastic part!) You’re supporting your values. It is difficult to farm anywhere but Boulder County has felt especially challenging the past few years. One reason is that it is expensive to do anything here whether you’re trying to run a business or just cover your living expenses. We are never going to win if you are just comparing prices at our farm versus the grocery store. That’s where putting money towards your values (in the form of a CSA membership) comes in. Instead of supporting large corporate farms you’re supporting a small family farm where we focus on sustainable practices and ecosystem health. You’re helping to keep money in our local economy. You’re preserving agriculture in our community and helping to strengthen our local food system (we all remember how important local farms were during COVID!). You’re supporting us while we try to navigate the challenges of our changing climate. The last handful of years have brought more frequent wildfires, hail, extreme heat, early snowstorms, and drought. We wouldn’t be able to try to adjust to these new challenges without our CSA members facing the risks with us. Do you think about all of these wonderful things you’re supporting when you sign up for your CSA share? You should!

Many of you go the extra mile and contribute to one of our funds: Farm Worker Support (extra money for our farm workers), Sharing the Harvest (reduced-rate CSA shares), and Red Wagon Supporter (helping our farm to keep going!). I don’t acknowledge these contributions as frequently as I would like to. But my heart is truly touched by the fact that so many of you give just because we asked.

I also want to give a shout out to Boulder County Parks & Open Space and the City of Lafayette Open Space Division. Did you know that we are tenant farmers? Red Wagon does not own any of the land we farm. Over time it has become more profitable to sell land to developers than to use land to produce food. That’s part of why farms have disappeared from so many parts of our country. But we are all lucky to live in a place where our local government saw this coming and had a vision of preserving our open spaces. The Boulder County Parks & Open Space department was created just over 50 years ago. One of the main things they did was purchase open space to preserve for recreation and agriculture. Our farm on N 63^rd St is on one of those Boulder County Open Space properties! The City of Lafayette has also done its part to preserve local agriculture. They purchased Thomas Open Space about 20 years ago when a developer was planning to build about 100 homes on the site. The City had the vision to keep the land in agriculture and we are fortunate to be the current tenants. It’s now where we have a large part of our farm operation, including our farm store and largest CSA pickup. I don’t think Red Wagon would exist if it weren’t for the visionary people working for Boulder County and the City of Lafayette.

Wow! It really takes a village to support a family farm like ours. You might ask why we put so much effort into our farm given the challenges. There are a lot of reasons, but the biggest one is simple. Wyatt and I and the rest of our team love growing food for our community. We are all connected through food and it feels good to be an important part of what keeps our community together. I ran into my good friend, Anne Cure (of Cure Organic Farm), the other day. We were commiserating about the many challenges our farms have faced recently. I told Anne I was determined to redouble my efforts to keep our farm strong and moving in the right direction. I said this is not the time to have small farms disappear from our communities. Anne agreed and added that our farms just make so many people happy. That feels pretty great. Well said, Anne!

With gratitude,
Amy

Hello CSA Members!

This is the final week of CSA and we are using up the remainder of a lot of our crops. This means there’s a high chance of changes to the share as we process and assess the quality and quantity of each crop remaining in storage. You will likely see some amount of carrots, beets, and celeriac show up, but we don’t quite know where yet. Everyone likes surprises, right?! Thanks for a fabulous season everyone!

Here is what we hope to bring you during Week 13:

1 – Winter Radish OR Chile de Arbol
2 – Potatoes
3 – Turnips
4 – Roasted Chiles
5 – Harvester’s Choice
6 – Kale OR Collards OR Chard
7 – Cabbage OR Choi

Hello CSA Members!

The season is wrapping up. This will be the last week for Biweekly A members. We have a good mix of roots and greens. We’re bringing one new item this week: dried chile de arbol!

Here is what we hope to bring you during Week 12:

1 – Leeks OR Chile de Arbol
2 – Potatoes
3 – Turnips OR Winter Radishes
4 – Roasted Chiles OR Celeriac
5 – Beets OR Carrots
6 – Kale OR Collards OR Chard
7 – Cabbage OR Spinach OR Choi

Hello CSA Members!

Another week of temperatures in the 60s, I’m not sure if this is lucky or not but we’re making the best of it and still harvesting veggies from the fields. This week we are giving the last of the onions, garlic, and squash.

Here is what we hope to bring you during Week 11:

1 – Onions OR Winter Radishes OR Leeks OR Garlic
2 – Potatoes OR Celeriac
3 – Turnips OR Cabbage
4 – Carrots OR Beets
5 – Kale OR Collards OR Chard
6 – Lettuce OR Spinach OR Choi
7 – Squash OR Roasted Chiles

Hello CSA Members!

We are coming to the end of the squash for the season. Probably only this week and next week, so enjoy it while you can! We have plenty of greens again though, the lettuce just keeps on coming with this warn weather we’re having.

Here is what we hope to bring you during Week 10:

1 – Onions OR Winter Radishes OR Leeks OR Garlic
2 – Potatoes OR Carrots
3 – Turnips OR Celeriac
4 – Roasted Chiles OR Cabbage
5 – Kale OR Collards OR Chard OR Choi
6 – Lettuce OR Spinach
7 – Butternut Squash

The windstorm on Friday, December 19th was the worst we’ve had at our farm on 63rd Street in the 16 years we’ve lived here! The wind tore the roof off of one of our greenhouses. Fortunately the metal structure is mostly intact but we will have to re-sheet the greenhouse.

Wind damaged bok choi

During January we normally harvest greens for our winter CSA from inside our greenhouse. It’s usually so cold by then that our greens that are growing outdoors or in our unheated tunnels are mostly dead. Unfortunately, the strong winds a few weeks ago beat up the tender greens like lettuce and bok choi that were inside the greenhouse. They might recover a bit. Or we might be short on greens in January. Fortunately, we have a lot of other veggies in storage so you won’t go hungry!

However, another unusual weather pattern might mean we’ll have plenty of greens in January after all. It’s been so mild out that our field greens still look beautiful! As of today there aren’t any really cold temperatures in the forecast. This is only the sixth year we’ve had a winter CSA and each year seems to bring it’s own surprises. We’ll see what happens in the next few weeks!

Hello CSA Members!

We hope you all had a wonderful holiday break and are ready for more winter veggies. This week we continue with our greens from the caterpillar tunnels. Enjoy them while you can because the wild wind we had took the roof off our greenhouse where we usually start harvesting greens from in January. Only time will tell what the new year will bring us.

Here is what we hope to bring you during Week 9:

1 – Onions OR Winter Radishes OR Leeks
2 – Potatoes OR Rutabaga
3 – Carrots
4 – Roasted Chiles OR Hakurei OR Scarlet Turnips
5 – Kale OR Collards OR Chard OR Choi
6 – Lettuce OR Cabbage OR Spinach
7 – Delicata Squash

Hello CSA Members!

It’s shaping up to be a beautiful week. We’re planning on another week of harvesting beautiful greens from outside and the caterpillar tunnels. We will finally be digging into our stash of butternut squash this week, along with plenty of potatoes for your holiday meals. Remember, there are no pick ups next week!

Here is what we hope to bring you during Week 8:

1 – Leeks OR Onions OR Winter Radishes
2 – Carrots OR Beets
3 – Roasted Chiles OR Hakurei OR Scarlet Turnips
4 – Potatoes OR Celeriac
5 – Lettuce OR Cabbage OR Spinach
6 – Kale OR Collards OR Chard OR Choi
7 – Butternut Squash

Hello CSA Members!

For Week 7 we’re finally digging into our scarlet turnips! Such a beautiful pop of color. We will also be bringing out flashy acorn squash. It seems like our greens survived the cold and snow and that this week is shaping up to be pretty nice weather so expect the usual selection of greens available. We MIGHT see bok choi make it’s first appearance in many, many weeks.

Here is what we hope to bring you during Week 7:

1 – Leeks
2 – Hakurei OR Scarlet Turnips
3 – Roasted Chiles
4 – Carrots OR Celeriac
5 – Lettuce
6 – Leafy Greens
7 – Acorn Squash