Hello dear CSA members and farm followers! It’s mid-January which means winter is far enough along that I am caught up with winter tasks and have time to sit down to share my outlook for 2020 with you. You all know how I felt about the wonders and challenges of 2019 HERE. But 2020, it’s a new decade and it’s my seventh season running my own CSA and my first year with a full-blown toddler running around the farm. That’s a recipe for an interesting year, I think.

Changes to the CSA

Let’s talk babies for a moment. How many of you (who have kids) felt a huge shift in priorities and family goals once that first child came around? We sure did and we have been juggling, adjusting and shifting ever since we first realized that last year.

Some of our priorities we identified last year: We want the weekends for family time, not for working. We want to enjoy and savor our Land and the abundance we grow here, not feel overly burdened by it. Travis and I have both identified that neither of us wants to be the 100% stay at home parent. But we also don’t want to put her in childcare full time. We also both want enough time for personal and professional development time in our own scopes of interest.

It’s a tall order, I know. How do we best balance all of this?

#1 Scaling back the CSA so all of our income wouldn’t be dependent on the farm. I will be a “work-from-home” Mom with Tillee staying at our friends Heidi’s home 1-2 days per week and my mom watching her 1-2 days per week here at the farm. While Travis will continue his work off-farm for the time being. This balance gives both us time to do work that challenges us, helps us to not worry about our budget and the time we do have all together is high quality and intention-filled. This means I am only offering 60 CSA shares this year and as of this writing, I am 65% full. Sign up or email me soon to save your spot!

#2 Prioritizing the weekends for family time and personal time. I am going to plan monthly camping and bike trips and we will try to do something fun as a family every weekend. Brewers game, the Zoo, going to the park, whatever! Just no working on the weekends or weeknights.

#3 Re-evaluating price points on the CSA shares. When I introduced the Nibble share in 2015, I knew it would be a good seller. I knew there were a lot of people out there who wanted to try CSA and support a farm but felt daunted by how much vegetables they would receive. Enter the Nibbler share; perfect for 1-2 people with less items than the larger shares. The problem is I’ve loved the under-$300 price-point so much, that I never stopped to look at how much I actually should be charging for this share size. Each share costs about $60-80 to administer between paying my delivery driver, processing your payments and writing the newsletter. And every year, I have always put in exactly the value of vegetables for what you paid for. That means I am not paying myself enough for the work. So you may have noticed a fairly steep increase in the share cost for the Nibbler share ($295 to now $345) but I promise you it’s not without reason and as your farmer, I will be more adequately compensated for my work.

We are building a real pack shed!

Okay now to the really exciting stuff. After years and years of dreaming, we are finally pulling the trigger in building our dream outbuilding. We are taking down the hoop building we have used for 4 years and putting up a glorious, climate controlled facility to replace it. I haven’t picked out the right name for it yet but it will be a combination of veggie packing shed, garage, farm and personal storage, larger cooler, tomato room, underground root cellar, workout space, office, Travis’s workshop and my art and healing space. Oh and we are maxing the roof out with solar panels (48 to be exact) to get our farmstead entirely powered by the sun. It’s going to be amazing and I cannot wait.

This adds an interesting element to this spring as we must find storage space for all our farm gear AND hope and pray we have a roof up in time to pack those first CSA boxes. I am optimistic and so is our general contractor. But of course I am already thinking of back up plans if needed.

Overall, all these changes should bring you better vegetables and better customer service from your farmer!

Remember, the CSA is 65% full already! So sign up HERE soon or email me to save you a spot if you aren’t ready to pay.

Cheers to 2020,

Farmer Beth

PS don’t forget to check out farm events for 2020 HERE!