First of all, we hope you all had a wonderful champagne-filled celebration of the New Year 2012. Happy New Year!

Please help save the Red Avocado by signing the petition in this link: http://www.change.org/petitions/save-the-red-avocado. 5,000 signatures are needed. Red Avocado has been our steady customer for many of the years that Echollective Farm has been in business. We ourselves are also affected by this blow, as well as several other local, organic farms that are vital to the organic and local foods scene burgeoning here in Iowa City, and who are also supported by Red Avocado's buying of their produce. If you would like to directly support the local food movement-- now's the time! Please sign, it will take up less than two minutes of your time! Many organic farms and the Red Avocado will thank you!

In other farm-related news, it is quite apparent that Mother Nature has unleashed her strongest fury yet this winter. Our cold-frame cats were collapsed by the 65 mph gusts this past week, leaving many of our winter greens to freeze. We've lost a great deal of our winter crop...although we didn't expect to go this far into the winter as we have anyway, what with all this ridiculous warm weather! Looks like we're going to try to fix them in the next few days and see what we can do. Our spinach is tough and probably mostly ok, and our permanent greenhouses are still well-enough intact for us to keep growing some stuff.

This unfortunately means the end of our Winter CSA. However, a reminder to you all that our 2012 season CSA signup for the spring will be coming up soon....look out! It usually happens in January, but we will let you know for sure.

In better news, don't worry...we've still got some produce available. The Grant Wood Farmer's Market still continues for another month or so, and Farmer Derek will be at our stall with some of the last harvest we had before the storm, and some of the stuff that made it! Come see us at market! We've still got spinach, lettuce, garlic, onions, potatoes, and more.

See ya next week, and take care.