farm shares – Cane Creek Asparagus & Company CSA

CSA Up and Running

By now everyone should have received an email indicating their first CSA Box harvest of the 2025 season. The first few boxes will contain Spring Greens: Joi Choi, Black Summer, Ching Chang, Asian Delight, Tatsoi, and red and green kale. We love everything chopped and mixed together for giant raw salads. I add a drizzle of honey to my EVOO to counteract the “bitterness.” Bitter is one of the flavors GOOD for us! Toss in some cranberries, walnuts, and fetta cheese and you have possibly the best salad you have ever eaten!

Here is a more desirable section of the Spring Garden.

If you are new to the CSA, I recommend purchasing some Giant Hefty Ziplock bags for storing your greens. Robert rinses off the first layer of soil, but you will need at least two more washings, in my opinion. Then I bag–draining off as much water as possible by tipping the bag. Now my greens are ready to chop for meal prep! Or bag now and wash later–your choice. The Photo ID pages on our website will help you to identify each particular veggie. Recipes are on the website if you want to saute.

This garden section is TOO wet resulting in yellowing leaves and stunted plant growth!

2025 has been a slow start due to the rain. In the above photo you can see the challenge we face farming in bottom lands during a wet season! We have drip irrigation from drilled wells for a drought scenario, but there is nothing we can do about excessive rainfall. The crops in this photo are probably a loss.

Subscribe to this Blog if you want some idea of what is coming in your CSA Box. I will update it as the contents change with the seasons.

5-Minute Meal

Certainly, I am not the only one who is crunched for time when it comes to preparing meals! Today, I am including a photo of my 5-Minute Meal. I actually timed myself this evening! I might have been able to cut the time had my kitchen knife been sharper. I first made this dish when my Grandson was three-years old. He loved helping me in the kitchen. He could assemble the tomatoes and peppers between the eggplant after I had cut all of the veggies into pieces! By the age of five years, he had his own cooking show on YouTube (with a little help from his Daddy, my son). In my opinion, it is never too young to start cooking and helping in the kitchen!

Assembled for the oven in five minutes flat . . .

This particular version has only three ingredients: eggplant (sliced in half long-wise and then sliced again, tomatoes, and sweet bell pepper cut into strips. I drizzled with EVOO and sprinkled with Italian Seasoning, garlic, sea salt, and freshly ground pepper. Bake at 350 degrees for 35 – 40 minutes until the eggplant is fork tender. This gives one enough time to make a cabbage salad to go along as a side dish! I have been known to also toss in whole green beans when they are available! Sprinkle the dish with crumbled feta cheese when serving. This recipe is good either hot or cold, too.

Out of the oven . . . sprinkle with crumbled feta cheese before serving!

The sweet bell peppers are enormous this season with luscious thick walls! Peppers are loaded with Vitamin C and nutrients. And if you can wait a few days before consuming, you will discover that a green sweet bell pepper sitting on the counter will turn into a RED sweet bell pepper!

In the upcoming veggie boxes you can expect potatoes, three different types of tomatoes, eggplant, green bell peppers, yellow-broad beans and perhaps a bit of okra or a green cabbage, depending on the day’s harvest.

And just to prove that Robert can grow more than veggies . . . here is a photo from our front yard!

Zinnia and Marigold Season–A Delight For The Eyes!!

Bean Fence Up

Robert got 100 feet of fence in place for the green beans and the yellow broad beans to climb. And this photo is outdated already because tonight he moved the deer fence over to cover the first two gardens with a grassy stretch running between the two of them!

I like to recommend these Jumbo Hefty bags for storing veggies in. They are large enough to handle anything we will be sending your way this season. The first layer of soil will be rinsed off of the veggies when they arrive. You will need to perform at least two more rinses to get the soil completely off. My preferred manner is to wash the entire box of greens and store them in the Jumbo Hefty bags. This way when I am ready to make salads, all I need to do is pull out the bag and start chopping. They will stay fresh for two weeks in this manner because they are harvest the morning you receive them!

Here is a current view of the first garden taken by looking through the seven-foot deer fencing. Humans have been known to walk right through it as it is almost invisible to us–but not to the deer, fortunately!

We are in a new phase of our CSA preparation! All plants have been removed from the greenhouse. The last of the transplants are hardening off in the driveway. Time passes so quickly! So much to do!!

Keep your eye on your Email Inbox and when you see your personal CSA Startup email for your day and your pickup location, please send me a reply. This way we know that you know we are harvesting your first box of veggies of the 2024 Harvest Season! Here’s praying it is a good one!

The Days Are Long

Typically on hears the phrase “the days are long, but the years are short” in regard to child rearing; however, it also applies to CSA farming. The greenhouse seedbed and transplanting stage is nearing an end as all of the spring crops are growing nicely and filling their individual peat pots. The nightshade veggies are the last to fill the seedbeds. Today those seeds are starting to break though the soil which means by the end of the week, I shall be transplanting the tomatoes, eggplant, and peppers into their individual peat pots. And then, except for monitoring and watering the plants located there, my daily greenhouse hours will have ended!

The last seedbeds are popping through the soil.

The first and now largest plants have left the greenhouse so they can get acclimated to the real world of direct sunshine, unregulated temperatures, wind, and rain. This means I must be careful when I back out of the garage! Robert put a small fence around this “nursery” to keep wandering animals from walking through and damaging the plants. These plants get watered every day. Once they have adjusted, they will go to the gardens to be transplanted for the final time into our field/garden soil.

This is our driveway “nursery” where plants harden up before going to the gardens.

At the same time, the garden soil must be turned and fluffed. This step is done with our tractors. The remainder of the season is all really hard, manual labor. The ground covers between which we plant must be laid down. The drip irrigation lines must be laid as well. Only then can we begin putting our plants into the gardens. Robert is busy today preparing the gardens for the first joi choi, tatsoi, kale, lettuce, romaine, broccoli, cauliflower, kohlrabi, and cabbage transplants. We trust each plant will mature into a lovely, tasty vegetable to fill our early CSA Boxes.

Robert is hooking up the drip irrigation which runs down each row.

Producing a veggie crop is a long and labor intensive process which begins the first of March. Each year when we start up our CSA Farmshare pick ups in mid-to late-May, we comment, “It will be the 4th of July before you know it!” And then it is!! Then the first of August arrives with its harvest of tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant. Typically, by this time, we have “hit the wall” in terms of our energy levels and need to rest and re-group. This is when we say, “The harvest season is halfway over.” Turn around a few times and the end of September has arrived and our supply of fresh produce is dwindling. Then, if all goes well, by the end of October or mid-November, the gardens will all be cleaned up and put to sleep for the winter months. One fact remains–the days are long and the year is short!

The first spring garden is ready for its seven-foot deer fencing and plants!

2024 Season Underway

Our greenhouse is full of seedbeds and seedlings awaiting transplant. Indeed, many, many hours are required in the greenhouse this time of the year. Broccoli, cauliflower, kohlrabi, cabbages, lettuces, and all the Asian greens are crops which we start from seed in our greenhouse. This greenhouse work is ongoing into the month of May. Each seedling will grow into a head of broccoli or cabbage or lettuce, etc. YUM!!! Other crops such as carrots, beets, turnips, potatoes, peas, beans, squash, cucumbers, etc. will be direct seeded into the gardens later when the time is right and the gardens have been prepared.

We expect these plants to provide a crop of delicious and nutritious local vegetables. If you have been thinking about joining our CSA Community, but have not yet submitted your information, we strongly encourage you to do so now. We have openings at the Troyer and Frugal Decor pickup locations. We ask for your commitment to purchase your CSA Boxes every other week for as long as we have vegetables available from our farm. We trust the season will run from late-May through the end of September.

Seedbeds And Transplants

Daylight Savings Time Begins! We appreciate the extra hour of daylight as CSA Farmers. It has been too wet to do anything in the fields, so Robert has been helping me transplant seedlings from the seedbeds into their little, individual peat pots where they will grow safely in the controlled environment of our greenhouse until it is time for them to go outside to adjust to the “real world” of wind and rain and more direct sunlight.

In the last two plus weeks, we have filled the greenhouse with thousands of tiny plants! Time flies when is busy . . . We still have a few farm share openings in our CSA mostly for Thursday and Friday pickups. When these are filled, we will begin a Wait List for later in the summer if our crop exceeds our expectations. 2023 was a bountiful year. We are praying that 2024 will equal or surpass last season!!

The weather has been great for the first flowers of the season. We love looking out of our greenhouse and seeing this view. Welcome Spring! Sign up now if you want to receive our CSA Boxes.

Outcome Independence

There is a phrase we rather like here on our small, Fairview family CSA Farm. The phrase is Outcome Independence. It means Robert and I are able to feel successful regardless of the outcome of any given growing season. Another way to say this is the “doing” is more important than the “result.” This phrase applies so well to the many, many crops we attempt to grow each year on our CSA farm.

Of course, we always “prefer” to have every crop reach its full potential because this results in an exceptionally bountiful harvest season. We plan and prepare and do everything within our power to make this happen from choosing seeds to digging drainage ditches to monitoring for insect pests. Still, sometimes the best laid plans go astray and our harvest “preferences” are not met due to some factor beyond our control. This is when our Outcome Independence allows us to understand we did all that we could and enables us to feel successful none-the-less. This really is an excellent way to deal with the stress of all of life’s worst-case scenarios.

If you have ever attempted to grow a garden, you know exactly what I am talking about. Sometimes the multiple factors over which one has no control are simply too great–too much rain, not enough rain (fortunately we have drip irrigation), cloudy days, extreme heat waves, late frost, early frost, fungus and bacteria (which are ever present in the air and the soil), wildlife (thank goodness for the seven-foot deer fencing)–the list goes on and on. Fortunately, by growing a wide variety of crops planted in “waves” of time, total disasters are usually avoided. However, when we do lose a crop, we just have to say, “It is what it is!” as rely on our Outcome Independence to see us through any harvest disappointments.

For Robert and I, filling our CSA Boxes with the seasonal, organically-grown (but not certified) vegetables we are able to provide any given week is a delightful and empowering feeling. We love sharing the flavors, textures, and nutrition of the seasonal vegetables which are created on our small part of the Earth! CSA Shares are available for the 2024 Harvest Season. We would love to have you join us on our seasonal gourmet vegetable journey! I have attempted to answer all possible questions on the website; but if not, please send your query to me in an email.

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