on-the-

Hello All,

Have not been in the writing mode due to heavy

planting and shovelling, but thought I’d give a little

update on goings-on at the farm. Things are shaping up

for a lively subscription season this year, we’re

shooting for 25 subscribers and have nearly gotten

there. If you’d like to subscribe and haven’t yet,

email and let me know. We’ve planted a great salad

mix, radishes galore, snow peas and sugar peas, chard,

basil, oregano, bak choi, tomatoes, ten different

winter squashes, kale, collard greens, muskmelons,

peppers - bell and habanero and scotch bonnet,

watermelons, turnips, callaloo, string beans, corn and

popcorn, cucumbers, and ... close to 500 pounds of

potatoes! And a bunch of other stuff I can’t remember.

The weather has been a trip this spring, with wide

swings alternating between 80-degree days and

40-degree nights. The heat led to many of the early

crops - radishes and daikon - bolting, meaning rather

than forming good eats they formed seed pods, which

lead to bad eats. Then the downright cold nights meant

that many of the warm season crops that were planted

out - squashes and cucumbers and the like - got real

stunted. But not to worry, we are nothing if not

flexible farmers, which I think will be a benefit for

the period of dramatic climate change we have no doubt

already entered. The upside of all this is that with

all the radishes - and we planted A LOT of radishes -

flowering rather than ripening, the land is completely

covered with beneficial bugs attracted by the flowers

right now, especially ladybugs.

Other developments out our way include the first

inklings of the tentatively named “Just Farming”

group, a small farmers confederation of Southwest

Michigan or lower Lake Michigan. We had a first

meeting in March, and have begun to pool our resources

in order to create a farmer-generated distribution

network to benefit farmers and eaters, within a vision

of food justice. Our solidarity work continues with

God’s Gang, the fantastical group that got its start

in the Robert Taylor Homes in the ‘80s and is still

going strong and farming on the same land as us. We

continue also with some form of relationship with the

Puerto Rican Cultural Center’s Conuco Market, which

serves the primarily low-income Humboldt Park area. As

we work on the details of that relationship, one of

the options that has come up is for our farm or the

Just Farming confederation to have a stand at the

Saturday market, selling organic for less than the

price of conventional produce. As no final decision

has been made on this project, the delivery day for

your subscription is still a bit up in the air.

At any rate, deliveries will begin the last week of

June, run for 15 weeks, and hopefully deepen ties

between eaters and farmers! Likely deliveries will be

Friday evenings again, but I’ll let you know as soon

as we know, if there is a change to that.

Thanks for your great support!

David