Early Winter Update and CSA News!
2020 will be a year of changes for our farm. We’ve been hard at work planning for these changes and are hopeful that they will lay the foundation for what we dream our farm to be someday. Read on to see what changes are in store and what we’ve been working on.
Our New Land
If you’ve been following along with our blog posts the past few months you’ll know that we recently purchased 7 acres of land adjacent to our produce field. We intend on building a new pack shed that will house our wash lines, packing tables, and walk-in cooler. We’ve been hard at work on planning this shed, securing bids from local contractors and filling out grant applications to help cover the cost of this project. Of particular note is the Minnesota Department of Agriculture’s Value Added Grant which, if awarded, would cover up to 25% of our project cost. We’ve spent several months filling out the application and supplying the correct supporting documents. We’re hopeful we will be funded but won’t know until March of this year.
New CSA Software
A spring full share.
We’re excited to announce that we’re partnering with Harvie (https://www.harvie.farm/) to help our CSA members get more out of their CSA membership. We’ll have more details and sign-up live by the end of January though there are several features we wanted to let you know about now.
More Customization Ability - Harvie will allow you to have even more control over your CSA share on a week to week basis. You’ll have the option to customize each share each week to suit your preferences.
Reschedule CSA Pickups - Harvie also lets you easily reschedule a pickup if you’re going to be out of town.
Add more items to your CSA - Harvie also lets you add more beyond what you’d normally get in your CSA. Need extra sweet corn to freeze? Harvie will let you add more based on our availability and it will automatically get added to your share!
Sign up for next year - Harvie also has the ability to auto-renew your CSA membership so you don’t have to wait for our email next season.
We hope that you’ll find that Harvie improves your CSA experience and we will be eagerly awaiting your feedback as we move to this new system.
Beef Shares
Mmmm….steak :)
Last month we introduced our Beef Shares and we’re excited and encouraged by the response we’ve had so far. Partnering with my parents to offer beef shares helps build the bridge on where I came from to where we’re going with the farm. We love that we’re able to offer beef that is raised on the farm I grew up on and that we’re able to offer people food that’s fresh from the farm!
Our House Is For Sale!
In addition to the new pack shed we’re also building a new house on our new land and, as such, our house near Kasota is for sale. We’ve really enjoyed living here and we absolutely love the location but in order for our business to grow we need to be closer to our field and have space to expand into more livestock as well as the ability to invest in infrastructure like greenhouses and irrigation. If you know of someone looking for a solid starter home or empty-nesters looking to downsize our listing can be found here: https://search.truerealestatemankato.com/idx/details/listing/a359/7022977/58105-243-Street-Kasota-MN-56050-7022977?widgetReferer=true