03/14/2016
Fresh Facts Week 27: Organic Family Farmers
Posted by Cristina
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Hey subscribers, this is Cristina, your communications person at AHO. Uncle Vern and his wife Carol are celebrating 35 years of marriage away from the farm this week (congrats!).
Uncle Vern made a great decision to prep the trees with pheromones all last week. It began to rain late Friday night and the weatherman says we can expect some more rain next week. I’m always so amazed at how knowledgeable Uncle Vern is about his crops. He’s always one step ahead of the weather and two steps ahead of the bugs. I felt really proud that I was able to tell Uncle Vern what pheromones were when he asked if I had seen them before. I learned about the tricky little tool last fall when I took a trip to meet Vince and Bonnie Matulich and Robert Silva over in Santa Cruz, who were all providing some yummy apples for us at the time.
Growing organic food is extra time consuming when it comes to dealing with pests. Moths are the two main pests stone fruit growers (Uncle Vern) has to deal with, and the best tool to use, organically, is pheromones. You wouldn’t know it, but there is a strong connection between science and farming. Organic farming would be difficult without alternative tools that science has provided us with to use on food crops that don’t harm us in the long run. PS: You can catch a video that explains pheramones on Uncle Vern’s latest post on our blog at AbundantHarvestKitchen.com or check out last week’s newsletter!
I’m always so amazed at how knowledgeable Uncle Vern is about his crops. He’s always one step ahead of the weather and two steps ahead of the bugs. But fear not, Uncle Vern and his alliance of small family farmers who all provide yummy produce for us, know just exactly what they’re doing all the time. And if they don’t, they just pick up the phone, call each other and figure out a solution. It’s that simple. It’s not the kind of work you would get at every single place, but it is because of us all that they work as hard as they do to give us the best quality produce that they possibly can. You’ll see that every time you taste a delicious apple or get a really crisp bunch of kale.
In order to spread this love to all our family farmers, we’re having a little campaign of our own that we’re hoping all of you may want to participate in. We’re giving away a bag of seasonal fruit to any subscriber who makes a 30 second to 1 minute video telling us what their favorite part of being in a CSA is. You can find more information on this campaign behind this newsletter.
I hope you all enjoyed this newsletter and make sure you’re following all our fantastic social media outlets to receive box previews, colorful recipes and great tips for cooking in your kitchen. ’Til next time,
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