Winter Spinach Specialty!
Many of you will remember that, in early fall last year, we completed construction of a first-of-its-kind structure that I know of anywhere in the upper Midwest: adding a second 30’ x 260’ high tunnel bay connected to an existing one, creating a single 60” wide structure. Over time I am very confident that these tunnels will provide an immense yield of diverse greens and salad crops for winter and spring CSA boxes.
News from the (covered/ high tunnel) “field”
HT update #1: Just this morning I received a call that we have been pre-approved for matching grant funding from NRCS to build a 3rd bay in 2024! Yahoo!!!
HT update #2: this week we are facing the first true test of the ability of the HT engineering and construction to support a heavy snow load accumulated in the gutter between bays. This is the one potential Achilles’ Heel of the entire project: unlike floral greenhouses in winter (think poinsettias), our tunnels have no heat source that could be used to melt off snow. THIS is why Featherstone’s HTs are so unique: they are built to support literally tons of snow and ice 10’ in the air all winter. I spent many hours and days last summer with the design and engineering for this load. This week we will give us the first glimpse of how the structure performs.
HT update #3: Spinach yield for winter CSA boxes is proceeding just as planned: we committed to having fresh spinach available for every single CSA box all winter, and it seems we are on track to make that happen! Spinach is the hardiest of all greens that we can grow in HTs (it stands up best to subzero temps without heat). But as the width of the “gutter connected complex” grows, we will almost certainly be able to grow salad mix, fresh herbs and bunching greens also, all for CSA boxes. Succeeding 100% on this year’s spinach gives us a big head start on all this.
And an update on winter spinach picking and packing:
“Baby salad spinach” that we buy in plastic bathtubs at the store is produced in an uber- mechanized fashion, this time of year in the Imperial Valley that straddles the US-Mexico border. Huge machines plant, harvest, wash and pack this crop (as well as mixed baby salads); no human hand ever touches the greens… for better (food safety) and for worse (quality control).
Featherstone Farm does not have such a mechanized system: we do everything by hand this time of year. At the start of the winter CSA season, I anticipated that we would be washing and packing spinach (as well as arugula, lettuce and other crops) by hand, to a level that I will call “recipe ready” straight out of the bag. And indeed we developed a pair of simple new washing and drying machines in our warehouse, to make this possible.
For a number of reasons, we have not been able to deliver on this “recipe ready” plan, at least so far this winter. I acknowledge and apologize for making this pledge last fall, without having a full plan in place to guarantee we could deliver on it. I DO think that the spinach we are picking and packing this winter is cleaner and fresher than we’ve put in CSA boxes ever before. And the eating quality IS in a different universe from that of the Imperial Valley, much less soil-less, artificially lit grow rooms in repurposed breweries(!!). But we have yet to reach “recipe ready” pack quality for CSA boxes (hopefully coming sometime 2024: more on this coming up!).
What I AM offering this week, is a quick primer on how I most efficiently transform “crown cut” spinach into “recipe ready” in my own kitchen. This primer will be in this week’s box as a hard copy “Jack’s Kitchen Journal” Thanks so much for your willingness to do this clean up in your kitchen, at least this winter! I am confident that the resulting local/ winter spinach will be worth the effort!!
Getting YOUR opinion on the Winter CSA of the future
Featherstone Farm and I will be hiring and orienting a new CSA Program Manager in the coming days and weeks. One of the new person’s first jobs will be to go about gathering information about what you really value in CSA boxes, particularly winter shares. With the dawn of the “gutter connect high tunnel era” at Featherstone Farm, we have many new options for improving the existing CSA programs. All of us are completely, 110% committed to making this happen. AND… we want to know precisely where to focus our energies at the start of this new era.
Do members (you!) highly value winter spinach in a “recipe ready” wash and pack as I suspect? Or is a richer variety of crops in a “field pack” format more important to you than washing? What about “add in crops”… everything from local eggs and garlic to citrus and nuts from family farms we know and love in California?? And what about the whole world of “value added” crops (cold pressed juice, frozen pesto, even simple Featherstone crop soups)?? Our new CSA Program person and I will be reaching out to you this winter you ask your opinion!
Meanwhile, please keep your fingers crossed that the new gutter connect houses support snow load in the next few days! And enjoy the snow while it’s here: Farmer’s Almanac and NOAA both predict a warmer than average February and March. Good news for the HTs, but bad news for those of us that love to walk in the snowy woods!
Gratefully- Jack