Brenton, 20 years ago today...

We’ve really shifted gears this week at the farm. For the past two months, we’ve toiled tirelessly getting all the crops in the ground… and just in the nick of time, as we finished fall planting right before the influx of chilly temps and rain. With a major and welcomed change of pace, we are desk-bound inside, working on crop planning for the upcoming planting season, and also, for the first time, on a long-term crop rotation plan. This task becomes easier to fixate on when we aren’t directing all of our energy to farm expansion efforts as we have done in the past. We are embracing this deviation from our usual outside-all-day lifestyle with newfound fervor, and enjoying the excuse to huddle up inside in this awesome wintry weather. We have all of our favorite books scattered all over our desks and are gettin’ after it! And this year, we’re opening up our planning to your input! We’ll be sending out a survey soon so we can make sure we’re growing all your favorite crops.

Books on books on books.

Currently, we are in the peak of our harvest season, so the barn is a madhouse. JBG folks are working until 4 AM and another shift has been arriving at 5 AM. It’s almost a 24-hour operation. Can you believe it? The volume of produce arriving by the truckload is immensely overwhelming. Every Wednesday, our sales folks come out and take inventory with me and our harvest manager, Vicente. We feel like we are at a standstill sometimes... Where do we start? What should we sell? There’s so much of everything. To help answer these questions, Charlotte, our Assistant Farm Manager, started working on a decision-making matrix. She went home last Friday night and stayed up until 11 pm sucked into the intricacies of the spreadsheet, figuring out how to work it most effectively. At the beginning of this week, she came in with her final product and shared it with me. I was SO thrilled about it. It was even better than I had imagined.

Charlotte, crop planning.

This new tool helps our wholesale team decide what is most profitable to sell with the least amount of effort, with many important factors integrated like labor and packing costs and how urgently the crop needs to be sold (whether it’s hanging out in the field for a long time, or if it’s ripe and ready now). Depending on how these components interact, the crop will either go up or down on Travis and Mike Mo’s list. It will also increase the overall quality of the product since we have a closer eye on what’s pressing and needs to be sold right away.

Sales staff out at the farm - meeting of the minds.

We are also making a ton of changes on how we manage the harvest, too. Previously, Vicente, our Harvest Manager, kept track of everything in his head along with a little notebook. With this system we would run into a couple of snafus since we weren’t basing our decisions on concrete information in front of us. We would harvest more than we could sell and vice versa. This year, Krishna, our Operations Manager, came up with an Excel-based harvest management tool, and we are rockin’ it to say the least. It’s a spreadsheet on steroids with tons of muscle beneath the hood, and we can’t imagine doing our work without it now.

Speaking of harvests, we have a whole deluge of fresh, new crops that are headin’ market-way and CSA customers will start to see trickling into their shares. New radishes: green meat, green neck, purple daikon, and black spanish. We've been harvesting Napa cabbage all week, too, and it's never looked better. We loved this post by a farm in NY that listed not 1, but 6 ways to use Napa. Several employees here have found this kimchi recipe to be their go-to... no better way to preserve this delectable (and short-lived) crop! A look ahead: In the impending planting season, we are going to offer an even more varied assortment of tomatoes, plus, carrots bunched by color in the new year! Stay posted… more to come!

Photo by Scott David Gordon.

 

Fall carrots coming in and looking pretty good! White and orange available this week and purple, red and yellow coming soon ?? • • • • #mxmorningstarfarm #rainbow #carrots #fallcolors #farmlife #farming #organic

A photo posted by MX Morningstar Farm (@mxmorningstarfarm) on Sep 27, 2016 at 4:37pm PDT

Don’t forget: Holiday at the Farm is this weekend! We’re excited to announce that we’ve decided to move the Grinch screening to inside our greenhouses. t will be the coziest movie you ever did see. You won’t want to miss this awesome and festive event: Cindy Lou-Who look-alike contest, okra ornament decorations, dance party, food truck treats, face-paintings... goodness me, what else could you want? Once the kids have exhausted themselves from all the activity, we will all cozy up with blankets and hot chocolate to revel in the delight of the big screen.

It's December, and of course that means holidays galore. If you're doing any holiday shopping, we encourage you to consider a gift from the farm, like market bucks or even a CSA subscription (remind me, what is CSA?). Even though our harvests our at their peak, sometimes the CSA can slow a bit in the holiday season, because members are traveling, or are just extraordinarily busy with the holiday shuffle. So, when you buy holiday gifts from us, you're not only purchasing a truly unique and thoughtful gift, but you’re also helping us at a time when things are a bit slower. On top of that, when you give someone the promise of fresh and local vegetables, you're setting your loved ones up for a healthier and happier new year. CSA Members: Don't forget you can donate your CSA share instead of postponing it this season... it's easy! Just shoot us an e-mail.