Welcome from Your Local Holistic Farmer! Get connected with the healing power of whole food and explore the world of benefits that eating healthy, all natural, seasonal, local and sustainably grown vegetables creates for you and your family. I am inviting WE CSA memberships now and throughout the season. Scroll down for general info & click the link below for details or email me for the latest Harvest Season Membership Packet. I'd love to be your farmer!

What's Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) all about?

Participating as a member of a CSA is a lifetsyle shift into a unique form of eating close to the seasons and the ecosystem we live in, and in direct relationship with the person who grows your food.

Community Supported Agriculture works because members of the community offer the monetary resources necessary for the farmer to grow vegetables for them for an entire season to feed their families well and with high integrity. In essence, I become "your" farmer. When I receive your request for membership, I commit to buying seed, planning enough variety, type and amount of crop to grow, preparing the soil in a sustainable manner, and planting, weeding and cultivating enough crop for the appropriate number of members. I make a commitment to each member to personally harvest and deliver a bountiful, diverse, fresh, nutritious, all natural, labor intensive vegetables for the whole season.

For their part of this relationship, CSA members commit to pay for their share of the harvest, and pick up their vegetables during their chosen pick up hours for the whole season. Of course, flexibility is assumed in this arrangement on both sides for lots of reasons, for example, some vegetable varieties that are planted aren't successful and therefore are not harvested, and some members go on vacation or forget to pick up their share some weeks. This is expected and not perceived as any "failure" of the general commitment.

I am always working to provide information about the experience of being a member of our CSA so you may make an informed decision about whether this unique way of eating, buying, and relating to your food, the land and your community will work for you for the season you commit to. Above all else, CSA's are about developing integrity in human relationships, to each other, to what we put in our bodies, to the place we live, and the planet.

Whole Earth CSA members generally express that their CSA experience has exceded their expectations. It's an adventure for us all as we grow in appreciation of the benefits of a CSA that we could not have predicted without experiencing them. As any partnership, this is an evolving, creative process. We all learn together.

HARMONY & ABUNDANCE!

Shyryn Joy

Our Pick Up Location at The Yoga Studio in Goodyear

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

New Veggie Releases on the Farm - Now Growing Near You

We are embarking on yet another planting cycle and thought you'd be interested in what's coming up for next season. Today was a great day for planting Green Calabres Sprouting Broccoli, Romanesco Broccoli, Purple Sprouting Broccoli, Rapini, Podding Radish, and Artichokes. We chose this day in the week to plant these because according to biodynamic research, the astronomical influences present today created conditions that help these particular types of plants develop to their fullest potential. What do these vegetables have in common? Well, though it may not be obvious, we eat each of these for their "fruit" or seed. Maria Thun, a biodynamicist, conducted exhaustive detailed planting trials that indicated a strong correlation between the constellation the moon was in and the part of the plant that developed during those astronomic influences. Yesterday for example, the moon was in the constellation of a water sign, influencing the water aspect of plants which corresponds to the leafy parts. Cauliflower and cabbage among others, so we planted Violetta Italia Cauliflower and Snowball Cauliflower and Nero di Toscano Cabbage. Over the next week or so, we will be planting

  • Siamese Dragon Stir-Fry asian greens
  • Lacinato (a.k.a. Toscano or Dinosaur) Kale
  • Lettuce Heads
  • Hon Tsai Chinese Broccoli
  • Deep Purple Bunching Onions
  • Fingerling Potatoes
  • Purple Dragon Carrots
  • Easter Egg Radishes
  • Shunkyo Radishes
  • Daikon Radishes
  • Purple Top Turnips
  • Hakurei Japanese Turnips
  • Golden Beets
  • More Beets...

We'll plant these vegetables and herbs during the astronomical conditions that will nurture the particular aspect of their growth that we all enjoy so much as food. In order to create a continous harvest, we plant crops every month or so. This agricultural technique is referred to as "succession planting" and we plan according to this schedule so you may reap delicious veggies continually throughout the season. As with all things, we plan and nature decides. In this case, while we successively planted since October, the low temperatures have stunted the growth of many of our crops leaving them at about the same size they were a over month ago! In fact, our last planting had such low germination that we need to replant just about everything. Meanwhile, you are getting to enjoy the beautifully developed vegetables that matured just before the cold snap, like bok choi's, kale's, rapini, different types of scallions and of course, citrus!

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