Mushrooms and Bullfrogs

Posted on May 28, 2015 by Amy

Each week we provide our CSA members with a mix of the abundance growing on our farm. Soon, you may be receiving questionable mushrooms and bullfrogs in your CSA shares, as these are the things that are abundant on our farm after 10″ of rain in one month!

mushrooms               Bullfrog

I have never seen so many mushrooms growing on our farm, and now we have an amazing bullfrog population in our ponds.

Unfortunately not everything is doing as well as the frogs and the mushrooms. The soils in Colorado typically have a lot of clay and clay (unlike sand) holds onto water. The soils in our fields are saturated and with the daily rainfall, the fields aren’t getting a chance to dry out. Many of the plants are showing signs of extreme stress after the roots have been sitting in water for weeks. Spinach leaves are turning yellow and rhubarb leaves are turning red (they should be dark green!!).

Stressed Spinach               Red Rhubarb

A few of the plants are doing alright. The peas and fava beans seem to be loving the cool, wet weather. The garlic is holding up, but I wonder how long the bulbs will be alright sitting in pools of water.

Fava Beans               Garlic

The water just doesn’t have anyplace to go. The water table is at (or above!) the ground surface in many areas in our fields. The things that are already planted aren’t happy. The farm workers are exhausted from wading through the muck. And we can’t get into our fields to plant anything new.

Muddy Dogs               Trucks

The dogs are happy to wade through what used to be our farm roads. But our farm trucks are really suffering. Our farm roads are now world-class mud pits. This will result in some expensive repairs on the suspension, etc. And it will be difficult and expensive to turn the mud pits back into roads once things dry out.

Wyatt and Javier have been digging trenches all through our fields to try to move some water. It is working to some degree in that you can see water flowing through the trenches. But we keep having daily downpours that just fill everything back up with water.

Digging Trenches

Things I never thought I would see on our farm:

Ferns               Fairy Ring

Lush ferns growing along our irrigation ditches and an actual fairy ring of mushrooms.

This spring has been a wild ride. Who knows what the rest of the summer will bring. We just have to cross our fingers and hope for the best!

Posted in 2015, Farm, Newsletter | 3 Comments

CSA Week 2

Posted on May 22, 2015 by bkifergreen

IMG_1543Sloggin’ through the mud and still bringing you amazing vegetables!

This week we hope to bring you:

Regular Share
Green Garlic
Hakurei Turnips
Lettuce
Choice: Pea Shoots OR EE Radish
Choice: RR Kale OR Bok Choi OR  Mustard Greens
Choice: Mixed Herb Bunch ORTarragon OR Mint OR  Nettles OR Pea Shoots

Large Share Additions
Double Lettuce
Choice of 2: RR Kale OR Bok Choi OR  Mustard Greens
Pea Shoots

Posted in 2015 | Comments Off on CSA Week 2

Appreciation for our CSA Members

Posted on May 18, 2015 by Amy

I want to express my sincere gratitude to all of our CSA members. Your commitment to buy a season’s worth of vegetables allows our farm to stay in business. Our goal is always to provide you with great-tasting, healthy, fresh vegetables. Your support makes it possible for us to do this.

Most of the global food system relies upon chemicals or exploited labor to produce food. Growers spray thousands of acres with chemicals designed to kill pests and weeds. They rely on a constant stream of impoverished workers to exploit. They harvest food (like tomatoes) before they are ripe and then spray them with gasses to make them appear ripe.

Our way of small-scale farming is very expensive. We grow food by hand. Everything that is harvested at Red Wagon is harvested by hand—only when it is ripe. And a lot of the planting and weeding also happens by hand. We focus on keeping the soil healthy, which results in healthier plants and more nutritious food. We take care of the natural habitat on our farm. We have ponds and trees for birds. We plant flowers and shrubs to provide food for our pollinators. Our farm crew works incredibly hard, but we try to pay them as well as we can (and you can help by contributing to our Farm Worker Support fund!) The way we farm is expensive and a lot of work, but we think it is worth it to take care of our ecosystem and provide you with the best food possible.

Thank you so much for choosing to support Red Wagon this season. Small farms like ours struggle every year to stay in business. Our CSA is the foundation of our farm and we are so grateful to all of you for making our small farm possible.

Posted in 2015, Farm, Newsletter | 4 Comments

From the Red Wagon Archive: How to Store your Fresh Greens

Posted on May 18, 2015 by lnmayer

Storing Greens

Posted on June 3, 2013 by

We work really hard to get our greens (kale, chard, broccoli raab, collards) to you fresh and full of life. Here’s how you can keep them that way.

If you store your greens properly they will stay fresh in your refrigerator for a week. Modern frost free refrigerators have moving air that will dehydrate food uncovered, so you need to keep your greens sealed in a plastic bag, or some sort of sealed container.

When you pick up your CSA share it would be best to put your greens in a plastic bag or container immediately at the pick up. We have bags available if you forget to bring your own. If you don’t want to use plastic you can use a cloth cotton bag. You need to rewet the cloth bag every day or the greens will wilt as soon as the cloth bag dries. You don’t want to pack the greens too tightly in the any bag or squish them either. they need to be stored loosely so some air can move around the leaves.

This is a bunch of kale that was harvested Friday and kept in a plastic bag in my refrigerator for three days. It looks just like it did when it was harvested.

kale

This is a bunch of kale that was kept in my refrigerator unwrapped for 12 hours.

kale

I’m sorry kale. I did it for the good of the blog.

The second bunch of kale is still edible. It is just dehydrated. You could cook it and it would be fine. If I left this bunch of kale much longer uncovered it would start to get slimy. Slime happens when the cell structure breaks down and the kale starts to decompose. When that happens you don’t want to eat it.

So, sealed and wrapped greens store nicely for one week in the refrigerator and unwrapped greens store for less than one day.

Posted in 2015 | Comments Off on From the Red Wagon Archive: How to Store your Fresh Greens

CSA Week 1

Posted on May 15, 2015 by bkifergreen

Radishes and TurnipsWe are excited to start our first week of CSA pickups!

This week we hope to bring you:

Regular Share
Egyptian Walking Onions
Hakueri Turnips
Choice: Lettuce OR Spinach OR Braising Mix
Choice: RR Kale OR Broccoli Raab OR Bok Choi
Easter Egg Radishes
Choice: Oregano OR Chives OR Sage OR Tarragon OR Mint OR Nettles

Large Share Additions
Rhubarb
Choose 2: Lettuce OR Spinach OR Braising Mix
Choose 2: RR Kale OR Broccoli Raab OR Bok Choi

Posted in 2015 | Comments Off on CSA Week 1

WANTED: Farm Worker Housing

Posted on May 9, 2015 by Amy

Here is a unique opportunity to support our farm and farm workers! I am writing to see if anybody might have affordable housing for rent. I am trying to help out our farm workers.

Our farm workers are looking for anything from a roommate situation to a single family dwelling.

There’s a mix of people who work on our farm. Some are single, some have partners, and some have families. Some are young Americans and others are immigrants (mostly Mexican).

Some have immediate housing needs and others will need housing in the future.

Housing prices in the Denver/Boulder area are soaring and the rental market is becoming increasingly expensive. This year we are hearing more and more that our farm workers can’t afford to rent a place to live in Boulder County. I am reaching out to our community to see if I can help a few of our farm workers find something affordable. You hear a lot about supporting your local farms. Here is another way to support local farm workers!

Let me know if you have any potential rental housing. Thank you so much in advance!

Posted in 2015 | Comments Off on WANTED: Farm Worker Housing

Now taking 2015 CSA memberships

Posted on January 16, 2015 by Amy

We are happy to say that we are now taking CSA memberships for the 2015 CSA season! Click here to join!

With love, Red Wagon

With love, Red Wagon

You can find all the details on our website, but here’s a summary of the highlights:

Our CSA season is 23 weeks long from May 18 to October 22. In the past our CSA has been 22 weeks, so we’re excited to add an additional week!

We have four pickup locations operating from 4-7pm:

  • Mondays in Central Boulder—2600 Pearl St at the Google offices
  • Tuesdays in North Boulder—1925 Glenwood Dr at Nevei Kodesh
  • Thursdays in East Boulder—5001 Pennsylvania Ave at Unitarian Universalist Church of Boulder
  • Thursday in Niwot—7694 N 63rd Street at Red Wagon Farm

We offer several sizes for our Veggie Share:

  • New in 2015! Friends of Red Wagon $1615.98 (plus sales tax) (see details below)
  • Regular Veggie Share $635.49 (plus sales tax) ~$27.63/week
  • Large Veggie Share $923.91 (plus sales tax) ~$40.17/week
  • Biweekly Veggie Share $331.56 (plus sales tax) ~$27.63/week

We also offer some additional options for purchase:

  • Fruit
  • Eggs
  • Mushrooms
  • Coffee
  • Beef
  • Pork

We also have two new programs in 2015:
Friends of Red Wagon
Farm Worker Support

Friends of Red Wagon
New in 2015! Our Friends of Red Wagon share is for people who want to go above and beyond in supporting our farm. Let’s face it, there are so many things stacked against small farms. Do you truly value Red Wagon produce and the benefits Red Wagon brings to our community? Are you in a strong financial position? Then the Friends of Red Wagon Share is for you! You will be helping to ensure the long-term viability of Red Wagon.

Here are some of the benefits of being a Friend of Red Wagon:

–You will be allowed to take up to $40 in produce each pickup.
–You will have more flexibility in your pickup location–including being able to pick up at the Boulder farmers’ market on Saturday. Farmers’ market pickup will give you access to the full range of vegetables we harvest each week. (Note: We do not have a farmers’ market pickup option in our CSA signup. Just select a pickup location that might work for you. Once the growing season starts we will contact you to work out your pickup preferences.)
–You will have additional access to our farm and there will be additional farm events for you.

This is your way to give additional financial support to our farm. You will not receive the full dollar amount in vegetables.

Friends of Red Wagon is a new program for us. We would like to hear from you as to what benefits you would like and what you would value. Please contact us directly if you would like to discuss this program more. Send an email to Wyatt@RedWagonOrganicFarm.com.

Farm Worker Support
At Red Wagon we recognize that our farm workers are one of our biggest assets. They are the ones who grow your food and harvest it for you each week. Without our farm workers we would not be able to bring you our amazing produce.

We start our farm workers at $10/hour, which is high for farm worker pay. But realistically, this is not enough for the work they do. It is not easy being a farm worker. The work is incredibly hard, the hours are long, there is no reliable source of income in the off-season, and the list goes on and on. We try to pay our farm workers as much as we can, but the economics of food and small farms currently do not allow us to pay more.

We have had a lot of incredible farm workers over the years, but we have not been able to keep most of them at Red Wagon for more than a season or two. Most people cannot afford to live on a farm worker income. We are asking our community to help us invest in our farm workers to give Red Wagon more long-term stability.

As an example, a contribution of $10/week would increase the pay of one farm worker $230 total over the course of the CSA season. Any amount you can contribute is greatly appreciated. The money you contribute will go directly into farm worker paychecks.

We want to be transparent and accountable in our endeavor to financially support our farm workers. Please contact us if you would like to be on a committee to help monitor our Farm Worker Support program.

For all the details on our 2015 CSA please see our website. We hope you will join us for a delicious season!

 

 

 

Posted in 2015, Farm | Comments Off on Now taking 2015 CSA memberships

Good Food – Is it important?

Posted on January 2, 2015 by Amy

CarrotsWhat is “good food”?
Is “good food” important? Why?
Where does “good food” come from?

I never make new year’s resolutions.  But this year I am making one and it is one I am going to keep. In 2015 I resolve to engage people more in conversations about “good food”.

I am starting out with a series of questions, beginning with the questions above. You can just think about these questions on your own. Or I would love for you to share your thoughts. You can do that by commenting on this blog post. You can also post your thoughts on our Facebook page.

I look forward to hearing your responses and continuing with more questions.
Amy

Posted in 2015, Farm | 3 Comments

Collecting Clothes for Farm Worker Babies/Toddlers

Posted on November 21, 2014 by Amy

Farm Worker Baby GirlTwo of our farm workers have young children and we are collecting gently used clothing for them.

We are collecting clothes for 3 GIRLS–especially winter clothes:

Scarlett needs clothes that are size 3 months and older.
Samanta needs clothes size 2T and shoes size 5.
Jimena needs clothes size 3T and shoes size 8.

You have several options for donating the clothes/shoes:

1) You can bring the items to the last Boulder farmers’ market of the season on Sat 11/22 and drop them off at the Red Wagon booth.

2) You can drop the items off at Red Wagon Organic Farm at 7694 N 63rd Street. Leave the items in a bag outside the gate. It might be a good idea to let us know you are coming so we look out for the items.

3) We can possibly pick the items up from you if you are in Boulder County.

Thank you so much for your help! I know our farm workers really appreciate it!

Posted in 2014, Farm | Comments Off on Collecting Clothes for Farm Worker Babies/Toddlers

“FED UP” Movie Screening in Boulder

Posted on November 7, 2014 by Amy

Fed UpJoin us for a screening of FED UP

Sat, Nov 15 at 7pm
(doors open 6:30)

At Unitarian Universalist Church
5001 Pennsylvania Ave, Boulder

No Charge (donations accepted), Refreshments
For information call 303-494-0195 ext 3

About the Film
“Narrated by Katie Couric, FED UP blows the lid off everything we thought we knew about food and exercise, revealing a 30-year campaign by the food industry aided by the U.S. government to mislead and confuse the American public. Exposing the hidden
truths contributing to one of the largest health epidemics in history, the film follows a group of families battling to lead healthier lives and reveals why the conventional wisdom of exercise and eat right is not ringing true for millions of people struggling with diabetes, childhood obesity and other serious conditions. Including captivating interviews with the country’s leading experts, this vital information could change the way we eat forever.”

Sponsored by: Red Wagon Organic Farm, Hazon, Tuv Ha‘Aretz Interfaith CSA, & its partner congregations: Boulder Jewish Community Center, Congregation Bonai Shalom, Congregation Har HaShem, Congregation Nevei Kodesh, St. Aidan’s Episcopal Church, & Unitarian Universalist Church of Boulder.

Posted in 2014, Farm | 1 Comment