Tuesday, May 6, 2014

2014 Update


This blog has been quiet for over a year now. The final CSA share under the Slow Hand Farm name went out last March at which point I fully transitioned my production over to the Our Table site in Sherwood. For the past year I've been producing the same style shares that I developed on the Slow Hand Farm site out at Our Table.

There are some really exciting opportunities I've been taking advantage of by folding my production into the Our Table project. This is a project with more infrastructure, in terms of buildings and storage spaces, than I've ever worked with. I've also had the opportunity to go back to a bit of training of newer growers. Last season I worked with three fantastic folks (Karen, Louis and Forrest) which allowed me to quadruple the number of CSA shares I was offering.

This year Forrest has stepped back into his life as a bike mechanic and gardener, but continues to support the farm by hosting a pick up spot in Kenton. Louis is working with the construction crew for the summer, learning some new skills to bring back to the farm. Karen has become a super solid grower, helping us make the transition into even more production this season and also branching out into growing cut flowers. With Forrest and Louis out for the season we've hired two new great crew members, Jen and Dawn (also known collectively as Jawn).

The Our Table site has lots more information about the new project. In the meantime I continue to work under the Slow Hand Farm name for the consulting work I do (and a little seed and culinary herb production to support my other projects). Our Table moves us away from the hand scale nature of the original project, but keeps a lot of the same intentions and increases the scale of what we're able to accomplish. I'll keep the hand scale for my seed and culinary herb production for now and maybe Slow Hand Farm will return at some point for larger hand scale projects.

In the meantime, I'll keep this blog around for occasional updates but for current CSA information head over to the blog and store at Our Table.