​Welcome to week 7 of your CSA; we hope you enjoy your selection of veggies this week as we continue on through our summer bounty! This week is our first cabbage harvest, and soon we'll be including some other delicious brassica crops.
 
Along with our plethora of tasty vegetables, these warm summer days bring out many insects and other critters on the farm, some friendly, and some not so much. One of the most important aspects of farming within a regenerative and sustainable framework is the monitoring and control of insects that will damage our crops, and managing them in an ecologically responsible way. While each season varies in terms of pest pressure, we try our best to stay ahead of the curve and take preventative measures to deter and keep out the critters that find our crops as tasty as we do! If you've been out to the farm before, you may have seen long white pieces of fabric laying on top of some of the beds; while theses “frost fabrics” serve several purposes, one of them is to exclude certain insects from eating our leafy brassica crops, which include the braising mix, baby arugula, and baby kale.
 
Our newest addition to our management strategy is beneficial insects! Last week, we released hundreds of lady bugs into our large greenhouse—where all of your summer fruits are being grown—in order to eat the aphids (small green insects that damage the leaf and stem tissues of the plants) that inevitably show up every year. In addition, we released lacewing eggs, which will eventually hatch and also act as predatory that will eat the pest insects, without damaging our crops. While beneficial insects may never eat every single aphid, they reduce the pest pressure and may help our other management strategies become more effective.
 
As the season goes by, we will face other pest challenges, and will continue to keep you updated on our progress! If you have any other questions about pest management at the North Farm, or other topics you're curious about, feel free to drop us a line in the survey at the bottom of the page. Enjoy this week's share, and we'll have plenty of more delicious produce for you next week!
 
Allison Stawara
The North Farm Assistant Production Manager 

Tomatoes

Tomatoes are perhaps one of the most coveted summer crops, and there are almost too many varieties to count! This summer, we have a few larger slicing tomatoes that you'll come across in your CSA box, but where we really shine is with our cherries and grapes With 12 different varieties, we've got a little of every color and flavor. Some of them you may be familiar with, like the super sweet Sun Gold (the orange-yellow cherry), while others may be entirely new, like the Indigo Kumquat (the ovular purple and orange grape).
 
One of my new favorites for the 2017 growing season is the Sungreen Garden, the perhaps misplaced-looking green cherry tomato in your pint. While most tomatoes turn from green to red, yellow, or purple, this cherry turns ripe with only a slight yellowish blush forming on the bottom of the fruit. Bite into one of these, and I hope their sweet flavor puts them at the top of your list as well! Enjoy these summer beauties in a salad, with your favorite dip, or in your palm! .

Try them out and see if you have any favorites. If you think there are some great (or not so great) ones, feel free to let us know - there is the button at the bottom of this post where you can provide feedback.

Peppers
You got a couple of peppers in your box this week - one sweet and one hot. The picture above shows the different types we included, as well as their rating on the Scoville scale, which represents how hot they are. The higher the number, the hotter the pepper.

We haven't grown a lot of hot peppers in the past, but we are sampling several varieties this year to see what people like. There are more options that will likely be included in your upcoming shares, but if you have any thoughts on the peppers you received, feel free to take a minute to give us feedback by using the button at the bottom of this newsletter. We'd love to hear what you have to say!

Welcome to week 5 - it's hard to believe we are already on the downhill slide into August, but we can tell as we look around the farm and start too see the colors of vegetables changing, fruits fattening, and leaves swelling. It is a nice time to be on the farm!

We wanted to introduce to you the other two farms that are providing produce for your weekly shares. These two farms are participating in what we call the Apprentice Farmer Program, which is a business incubator hosted at The North Farm. Through this incubator, we welcome growers who are looking for access to land and resources to start or expand their farm business. They settle on The North Farm for up to five years, using this time to establish their business, create a marketing plan, fine tune their growing skills, and build revenue. They are their own, independent businesses, using the resources at The North Farm to get a solid footing. This week we would like to introduce Landen Tetil, of Bean Pole Farm:

Landen, owner of Bean Pole Farm, chose her path based on the desire to fully immerse herself in a sustainable agriculture career. Landen originates from a rural area of lower Michigan, and has been surrounded by agriculture her whole life. Growing up, she spent countless summer days on her grandparent’s farm; as a teenager, she worked on a hybrid corn and soybean farm, and spent her college summers on an organic vegetable farm. These experiences, along with a never-ending thirst for dirt under her fingernails, all contributed to the advent of Bean Pole Farm.

Landen is a 2013 Northern Michigan University graduate, earning her B.S. in Environmental Studies and Sustainability. After graduation, she moved to northcentral Wisconsin, where she studied the art of permaculture and received her Permaculture Design Certificate. These teachings of sustainable life systems and closed-loop functions spurred a shift in her, and a determined search to begin a career in sustainable agriculture commenced. When word got out of a new farm incubator opening in the Upper Peninsula, she knew it was time to bid Wisconsin farewell and begin her journey as a small-scale organic vegetable farmer. Now, she grows vegetables, flowers, and herbs through a lease from the MSU North Farm incubator program in Chatham, Michigan. To learn more about the incubator program, visit the webpage: www.msunorthfarm.org/apprentice-farmer-program.html

​Bean Pole Farm, now in year 3 of production, has big plans for its future. The farm’s main goals include becoming a fully self-sustaining closed-loop system, thriving off the natural inputs a working farm provides, while absorbing the outputs in a cyclic pattern. Beyond that, Landen is working toward the dream to provide a whole-diet food share, based on a CSA model including every part of the human diet. Components will include grains, protein, vegetables, fruit, nuts, herbs and a form of sweetness. Landen hopes that one day Bean Pole Farm will be an educational farm, where the community can gather and learn about food, sustainable life systems and farming.

Welcome to week 4 of your CSA from The North Farm. We hope you have enjoyed the fruits of our labor so far, and we are excited to bring to you some of the actual fruits this week, including cucumbers and peppers. These, along with the first turning tomatoes and eggplants mean summer fruit season is nearly upon us. For now, enjoy the first of this year's broccoli, and old favorites like garlic scapes and some wonderful radishes from Bean Pole Farm.

I figured I had better take a moment to introduce myself - my name is Collin Thompson and I am the farm manager at The North Farm. I've been running the farm since it's inception in 2014, and have felt fortunate to have the opportunity to design and build this farm into what it is today. I am originally from northeast Iowa and have a background in four season, organic vegetable production, as well as in season extension (think hoophouses and greenhouses). I hold a Bachelors degree in biology and a Masters in sustainable food systems.

While farming is one of my greatest passions (meaning I spend the majority of my time in the fields), I try to get off the farm to enjoy all the UP has to offer. I hit the trails as often as I can, mountain biking with my dog, Finn. I am an avid skier and snowboarder in the winter months, and also enjoy getting out and paddling the rivers and lakes in the area.

Now that you have met the whole crew through these first few newsletters, we encourage you to introduce yourselves to us! We have a Facebook group that I would like to invite you all to join. There you can share recipes, tips, or thoughts on the week's shares, the farm, or on food in general. In the coming weeks, we will be introducing the two resident farmers as part of our Apprentice Farmer Program so we can round out the image of who is producing your food.

As always, thanks for your support, and if you have any thoughts, questions, or concerns, please feel free to be in touch!

Collin Thompson
Farm Manager

Welcome to week 3 of the North Farm CSA! My name is Morrison and I'm the summer intern here at the North Farm. I arrived mid May and I’ll be working through August. In the fall, I’ll be heading back down to Michigan State University for my final year of school in Sustainable and Organic Horticulture. I hope to open my own little organic farm someday, so I'm happy as a clam to be involved with the many exciting things happening at The North Farm. Time has been flying by as I learn to drive tractors, prune tomatoes, and move hoop houses.
 
When I'm not working I like to hike, rollerblade, swim, sleep, visit local farmers markets, read, and do yoga. Taking in the beauty of the Upper Peninsula could be a full time job in itself, so I try to get out and experience as much as I can when I have free time!
 
With June coming to a close, our warm season crops are really taking off, and I look forward to harvesting and packing your beautiful and diverse shares in the weeks ahead. This week, your share consists of some of the great transition crops as we move from spring to summer. Garlic scapes are included, which are a sign that the year’s garlic harvest is not too far off! We also are coming close to the tail end of the strawberry season, which breaks my heart. But we have plenty more great food coming your way! Recipe ideas can be found below, along with an anonymous survey so that you can tell us your thoughts about the shares thus far - we love getting your feedback.
 
I'm glad that you have signed up for a share. In doing so you have done a service to the earth, your local farmers, and yourself. Congrats! I hope to meet you all as the season goes on. I hope you had a happy 4th of July and enjoy the veggies!
 

Morrison
​MSU Extension Intern