2012 Season Member Sign-up Starts Now

11:26 AM derek 0 Comments

We have now opened up a new 2012 Season Member Sign-Up on our "CSA Sign-Up" page.  A few of you have emailed us early in regards to getting a veggie box for this season-- Thank You!  We've referred you over to our new CSA Signup, which was closed before, but is now open.  Simply click on the "CSA Signup" tab above, which will take you to our Small Farm Central link where you can signup.  Then, simply follow the directions, and it should take only a few minutes!  There is an option for returning members, don't forget!  At the top of the page that's opened after you click on the Echollective Small Farm Central page, a green banner asks you: "Returning Member?  Click Here."  This will make things easier for the both of us keeping track of current and past memberships.

If you have any questions or encounter any troubles, please contact us: echocsa@gmail.com!

As for on-the-farm news, Echollective is starting seeds for the new season already.  Soon the house is going to be crowded with veggie-babies and cabbage-patch kids.  Our vegetables in the ground and greenhouses are asleep for now, blanketed in plastic, Reemay and snow, growing and rejuvenating slowly until we uncover them in Spring.  Hopefully they'll be OK 'til then!  Crops like spinach, which are the majority of what we have left, are super-hardy and can hang out until the weather looks up.  On the other hand, our lettuce heads and kale that we still have may or may not be having the good time.

As for the human being inhabitants on the farm, we are also in hibernation mode.  In between doing winter farm work, seed-starting and cleanup, we stuff our cheek-pouches full of acorns, dig out our food stashes, keep warm and sleep.....and maybe watch the X-Files or several Harry Potter movies in a row.

Grantwood Farmer's Market still continues...come visit us there!  We still have some local food fare.  Next market day is Feb. 4th.  See ya then!

Blizzard....

7:35 PM Adrian 3 Comments

2012 CSA signup is now underway! Email us for a share of the harvest this season!

Look it up online, watch the news, ask a meteorologist or talk to your local shaman....winter's first real blizzard is on it's way, and it's coming tonight! We expect 4-6 inches of snow.

Quite ironic that we spent most of yesterday, all the way up until the dusk's typically beautiful sunset, scrambling to get our cold-frame cats back up and working.

Today we had to take them down again. Our rough-and-tumble little portable greenhouses would collapse under the weight of that much snow. We had to resort to double-covering what was left of our crop with Reemay and plastic. We've chopped a lot of the growth off of some vegetables, such as kale and spinach, to make them go dormant for the winter, scrapping what we can use for more distribution and for our own consumption this winter. We'll see how much we can save and still use after this blizzard comes through...if it actually comes through at all, though the wind is whipping pretty hard outside right now.

Perhaps we're about to say "bye-bye" to this farmin'-in-T-shirts weather? It's been lovely still being able to walk around barefoot in our straw-bale home and extend the season as far as we have, but to be honest, a blizzard is more than welcome, ecologically speaking. There hasn't been much snow not only because it's been unusually mild, but also very unusually dry. The fact that the usual blanket of snow is absent right now is kinda worrisome. A healthy water-table level, important to nourishing both our farm and wild flora, depends on that persisting layer of snow to stick around, and slowly seep water back into the groundwater supply. If there's no snow this winter-- and if it is continuously dry-- that could mean some serious drought conditions this summer.

Our barn cat Macy could be pregnant again, she's a bit chubby-nubby, and kinda irritable. Her daughter Survivor can easily derail a workday, she is so precious and distracting. It is hard not to pick her up and tickle her!

Well, winter may mean the end of vegetable growing and harvesting, but it also means seed-starting is coming soon for our 2012 season. And living at a farm-- there is no end to the list of things that are needed to be done!

Grantwood Farmer's Market is still going. Come visit us next Saturday, Jan. 21st!

Save The Red Avocado!

11:02 AM Adrian 0 Comments

A week or so ago, some big bully of a developer decided to buy up the plot and buildings that currently are the Red Avocado, a local restaurant with vegan options that buys a good deal of our veggies, as well as the Defunct Books bookstore. These developers are announcing that the restaurant has about a month to totally vacate, before they demolish the beautiful early 1900s era buildings that house these businesses. This is hardly enough time for a restaurant to relocate and reestablish its livelihood, and quite an unfair and impossible ultimatum to put anyone in! If this demolition and eviction take place, we're afraid that Red Avocado, an important part of the local food scene here in Iowa City, will have to shut down and go out of business completely.