The days are getting longer and we are seeding for the summer!

February has come and gone in a blur. While it is the shortest month and we had a serious cold snap and a delightful amount of snow, the days are starting to get longer and the hoop houses are exploding with greens.

We hosted a jam packed Valentine’s Day weekend on the deck serving 2 dinners and a brunch, sold out of our summer CSA in record time, and started growing for our 2021 summer CSA. February really felt like a turning point. Winter is still with us (it is snowing while I write this), but excitement for summer is growing (today, as a finalize the email it is sunny and nearly 50F).

The Crew at the top of the Diving Board in Grand Canyon.
The Crew at the top of the Diving Board in Grand Canyon.
Here is the cost per day of each of our 18 week CSA shares (June 2-September 29, 120 days):

Small Veggie – $4.17/day
Large Veggie – $5.50/day

Small Meat – $3.25/day
Large Meat – $6.20/day

Small Veggie & Meat – $7.29/day
Large Veggie & Meat- $11.58/day

February brought a bit of a break to the farm crew. Our farmers took off at the start of February for a 15 day Grand Canyon river trip. Just like the land, farmers need opportunities for rest and rejuvenation. Chef, Chris, Ashanti, and I stayed here to keep the place running and all the animals fed and gardens tended, and the farmers switched up their perspective, bonded, and refreshed their minds and hearts in one of the most raw and beautiful places on earth.

Most of my job is spent behind this computer screen or in the store and restaurant meeting you all and helping you figure out how to cook celeriac or decide what type of pickles to purchase or wine to drink with dinner. It was a great change of view to, for two and a half weeks, go outside and engage with our animals and plants.

Feeding chickens and pigs daily, taking care of minor emergencies–escaped chickens, a pig under the weather, knocked over water troughs, digging out from the snow–and caring for living, breathing animals. What a change of pace! No matter what I wanted to do in a day, the pigs have to be fed, their poop scooped, and waters refilled. It was such a pleasure to go into the hoops and bask in their warmth and work with Chris to harvest the greens that needed harvesting. Actually getting my hands dirty and engaging with the food we serve and sell at Rainshadow makes that connection to this place and what I eat so much stronger.

The stretch of 50F days set off a lot of our yukina savoy (the star Asian green of our CSA, imagine a cross between bok choi and spinach), so we spent two weeks harvesting bolting yukina before they lost their sweet and tender qualities. Central Oregon is a finicky mistress and we at Rainshadow are so grateful for her (and the infrastructure that allows us to grow greens at all in the winter!).

The stages of pea starts in February: just poking up and growing strong in the 4-season green house and planted in
the ground on February 25. Summer CSA, here we come!

All our farmers are back now and more excited then ever to start our summer growing season! Before they left, in early February, all of our onion seeds and a first round carrots and peas were seeded. This past week they put the peas in the ground and started all of our tomatoes, sweet peppers, tomatillos, and eggplants. Thousands of seeds started in one day.

Summer is coming and so commences growing for the 2021 Summer CSA! Chef is already looking forward to the increase in variety of vegetables for dinners and brunches and we are giddy as we envision all the options our Summer CSA and Full Diet CSA will have to choose from!

Summer CSA is full!

We did it! Our 18-week summer Vegetable CSA is full!  Thank you for reading all those emails and signing up. It takes a community to make Community Supported Agriculture work and we are so grateful that you are our community!

If you missed sign ups for a meat & veggie or a veggie share, let us know and we will add you to the waitlist. If you would like to purchase Market Bucks or sign up for a meat CSA, we still have room in those CSAs.

Want to be the first to hear about ticket releases? Sign up for our Events Email list! After an initial release to our Events Email List, we will publish the calendar and ticket sales links to our monthly & CSA newsletters. People on the Events Email List will also get behind the scenes stories from the kitchen, coupon specials, and other surprises.