What is a CSA, and who is Adalyn Farm?

First, we are Adalyn Farm.  Adam and Joscelyn Stevens (along with our daughters and extended family).  We are a small farm (5 acres) in Stanwood Washington.  The calling on our hearts is to care for our planet, locally and through community.  There is more about that, and our story here.  And here are a couple videos from last year on the farm….

So there you go, that’s us.

So what is a CSA?  Well, here’s another video!  It’s way better than me trying to explain it.

And that’s what we are doing this year!  Here’s a link to the Flickr gallery of all 25 weeks last year.  Last year was a pilot year with Adam still working full time off farm, and we expect the shares to be even more bountiful this year as we plan on transitioning to full time farming!  We are offering on farm pick up and delivery.  You can get Hayton Farms fruit with your share this year, and Deanna is doing flowers if you want local beauty on your table all summer long!

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Fresh Local Berries (organic too!)

We are excited to be partnering with Hayton Farms this year to offer an add on of fresh local organic berries!  Hayton Farms is a 5th generation, organic berry farm less than 20 miles from our farm in the fertile Skagit valley.  They specialize in berries, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries and blueberries.  They offer multiple varieties of each, meaning lots of variety!  If you’ve been to any of the local farmers markets, you’ve seen them.  They are at over 80 different markets each week!!!

We are going to be offering 1/3 flats, that’s four pints (or two quarts) of berries.  They will be seasonal, so there may be a lot of strawberries at some times, more blueberries at others.  If you really love fresh fruits and berries, you can add on more than one fruit share.  If you select delivery, your berries will come with the rest of your CSA share at no extra charge.  We hope to be able to offer some bulk buys during the season for folks who want to do some canning as well.  The cost for the first share is $204 for 17 weeks.  You can add a second share for an additional $195.  In addition, we will be coordinating bulk buys for canning and preserving for our CSA members.

If you have any questions, feel free to get in touch!

Here’s the CSA Sign Up link!!!

Flower CSA! From Twig and Vine in Stanwood Washington.

We can’t do it all.  But we also think that shouldn’t mean you shouldn’t have choices, options and some beauty in your life, and we have an opportunity for our CSA customers, to have a fresh local flower arrangement weekly with their CSA vegetables.

While we are growing your veggies, Deanna from Twig and Vine will be putting together some of the best of the seasons flowers to grace your table!  Deanna has been arranging flowers for local brides, offices and other customers for years.  We are excited to have the chance to partner with her to offer a 10 week season of fresh local flowers, grown with the same care as we are growing your food (That means no bee harming sprays or chemicals, and with a mind to the stewardship of the soil).

 

Your arrangement will be different, every week, and will include some familiar and some unique components.  She describes them as “a flower garden bouquet, with a loose comfortable feel, filled with unique foliages and herbs.  The will have heirloom flowers, types that growers sometimes can’t get, and flowers like sweet peas, dahlias, zinnias and much more!”

 

The cost for the 10 week season is $250, which is a good deal, and unlike the $30 arrangements in grocery stores, all of your investment will stay in the community.  These flowers aren’t brought in from out of state, these are local.  Like 25 miles local.  Additionally, if you add on delivery for your CSA, your bouquet will show up with your weekly box of local produce at no extra charge!  Deanna expects the season to start in July.

 

If you have any questions, you can e-mail her at twigandvine(at)gmail.com, or get in touch with us!!

CSA Sign up link here!!!

 

CSA Status…

We are past week 8 for our CSA.  We had some issues at the beginning (really before the beginning) that made us delay the start by two weeks.  We still got it all rolling in May (which was the goal, since most other truly local CSA’s don’t start till June) so that was a success.  Although the garden plan didn’t take into account the off farm job, and the impact that had on the seeding schedule, things are rolling along.  We still have 17 more weeks go to, and we are just now seeding some things for near the end of the CSA for this summer.  Until this week, we have been considering the shares “half shares”.  Week 6 is the first share that we would consider full sized.  Now for a little show and tell.

 

Week Eight

Week Seven

Week Six

Week Five

Week Four

Week Three

Week Two

Week One

We are finishing up the work on our pricing and options for the 2016 season.  Sign up forms will be on-line soon!  Options to include farm fresh meat are part of the mix…  Whole Diet CSA.  We are also talking about a fall CSA.  A little more laid back (bi-weekly pickup?), with a per week rate if a hard freeze ends the season before we expect it to.  It would be a bit of a test run, with one season of a CSA under our belt, and having enjoyed winter greens through the new year this last season, we are as ever, optimistic!  There is also the thought in the back of this farmer’s mind, that if it went well, as in, better than he optimistically hopes it might, the full time farming timetable might get move up a bit.  There are still some capitalization hurdles to get over, but hope is what drives us.

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Things not yet seen.

Oregano. We trimmed this several weeks ago for our CSA, and today I was thinking about how it’s grown back stronger and better since we trimmed it. Although at the time it looked rough.  We feel the same way right now, rough.

Hebrews 11:1 talks about faith in things not yet seen. While that perspective fits with farming on any given day, it is especially true for us right now. We are at the point on our transition to farming, that we need to step out in faith, towards our goal. Right now, that means opening the order forms to start accepting deposits and orders for 2016. It also means making the go/no go decision on a winter CSA/Farm Share. We think our community would like access to local fresh vegetables through the winter, but we can’t be sure. We are also not sure that enough folks would find out in time to put us at the threshold to go for it.  The winter CSA/Farm Share decision is also complected by my full time job. If we offered it, I would need almost all of the daylight hours to get the planting done in August and September, to be able to have the veggies grown for the winter. I have a very understanding boss, but I’m not going to ask him to pay me while I do a bunch of fall planting.

Having faith doesn’t mean making poor decisions though, and there are just a few more details to work out, before we open the store.

If you want to support us, please keep your eyes on our social media. We also will be doing some kind of capital campaign. We have some problems that we need to address before we go full scale.  We are a resourceful people, the Apollo 13 astronauts were able to fix their doomed craft with tape, socks, the cover to the flight plan, some parts from flight suits, a bungie cord and some lithium hydroxide canisters. We are no less resourceful, and although not a space ship, a covered wash station would be really nice.  We have also had folks who are not close enough to be customers ask how they could support us, and be part of the farm.  We want to serve our community, but in truth, the community we are part of stretches from Stanwood to Puyallup, to California, Mexico and New York.  So stay tuned!  If you have questions, please feel free to get in touch!  Farmers(at)adalynfarm.com

First CSA share is out!

Yep, we are underway!  Our first CSA share went out last Wednesday.  This year is a test year, so 10 shares, and only on-farm pickup.  We are keeping it simple, and trying to make all the mistakes we possibly can.  Every. Single. One.  The good news is we are making lots of mistakes, the better news is that we are still seeing some success despite the the mistakes!

Our little Farm-ily has been wonderfully supportive.  We got thank you notes, and words of encouragement back in early spring, before we even had anything in the ground.  It was heart warming.  And now that the first shares are down the driveway, we are getting more support, encouragement and some very kind words.

Here’s what one of our customers posted.  I think she actually had dinner before we did, and arguably might have been the first to get cooking with the greens!

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Our gorgeous dinner, with big thanks to @adalynfarmboy and @adalynfarmgirl for their first CSA week!

A post shared by Sally (@sallykanehen) on May 20, 2015 at 6:06pm PDT

 

Sally was kind enough to share her “quick dinner” with me (she didn’t want to call it a recipe, but did say she loves cooking chicken like this, because it stays so moist)

“Evoo in pan, salt & pepper chicken thighs, and brown in the pan. When they’re browned on one side, flip, then add a chopped onion and a couple hand fulls of quartered baby cremini mushrooms. More salt, lower heat, then arrange so the chicken is resting on top of veggies. Then I drizzled with about 2-3T of balsamic and let cook another 10 min or so. Lastly, add a couple handfuls of whatever greens you like (I used those beet greens) and just cook for another minute or two. Key is to not over cook the greens!
We had the chicken with a wild rice and quinoa blend, and a salad of your greens, radishes, feta cheese and sunflower seeds.”

It’s a long season ahead of us, with problems we don’t even know we will need to fix yet, we also know it’s full of sunshine, smiles and some of the best time’s we have ever had.  We are truly excited to share our farm with this wonderful group of people.  We are also just barely starting to think about next season, if your interested, drop us a note farmers at adalynfarm.com, we’ll keep you in the loop.

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