I was down on the farm this weekend preparing rows, getting the irrigation set up again, and I started seeding! Esther, our intern, has been doing much of the work and has many, many seedlings started, and we’ll even have seedlings for sale.  We’ll post more details on the starter plants we’ll be selling at a later date.

Another new thing we will be adding is a self-service farm stand to make it easier for our farm stand customers to buy our produce.  Again, we’ll have more details on that later.

We are looking forward to another great year, and thank you to all of our new and renewing CSA members, and to our great intern, Esther!

- Jim

HeartEye Village CSA will be offering a range of workshops this Spring and Summer.  Topics will include:

• Plan your CSA or Garden with the Fantastic Farm and Garden Calculator
• Home Greenhouse Basics and Soil Preparation
• Transplanting and Seeding for Maximum Yield
• Biological Pest and Pathogen Control
• Food Preservation

Visit our Workshop page to learn more.

Please note that our internship position has been filled for our 2010 season. Keep us in mind for 2011!

It is hard to believe that the Winter Solstice has already happened and Christmas is right around the corner! It is even harder to believe that is has been almost three months since our CSA ended, and close to two months since I cleaned up the garden and seeded a cover crop. Cover crop? Yeah, I think I got that in to late and the early snows and cold weather didn’t help.

So how was our first year as beginning farmers you ask? It was incredible! Our little farm produced a lot of food, 4000 lbs or more, on about 4000 s.f. of growing space. We fed 25 CSA members, provided a variety of produce to the Mountain People’s Co-op, and the Savory Cafe in Nederland, and a little bit to Zamparelli’s Restaurant down the road from the farm. We also sold a modest amount at our farm stand.   Continue reading

8-Month, Full-time Farm Internship
Room/board/stipend

We are a bio-intensive, ¼ acre micro-farm serving a small CSA program in our second year of operation, and an 80-acre horse boarding facility. We have one position for a FULL-TIME farm intern from March 2010 through October 2010. You will learn by performing all aspects of farming for the CSA, including limited work with the horse boarding operation.

Private accommodation provided, along with $100 weekly stipend and a 1-person share in the CSA. Our internship is modeled upon the Western SARE farm internship program. Unless successful candidate makes arrangements, there will be no academic credit obtained at the end of this program. This position is physically demanding and will require working outside of “normal business hours”. Successful candidate must be able to follow directions and protocols, be well organized, attentive and be able to work independently.

Please send resume, 3 references and cover letter explaining why you are interested in this position to tracy@localsustainability.net

Sorry for the lack of blog posts, things have been busy since our last CSA harvest.  Busy removing the crops that were killed off by the early cold, preparing beds and cover cropping them, planting garlic and shallots for next year… a lot of work to finish up the garden before winter.  Or in between winter, I should say.  As I write this, I’m waiting for the rest of the snow to melt so I can finish cleaning up the south side of the garden and seed a cover crop there.

Thanks again to all of our CSA members, and working share members!  Thanks to all those who purchased from our farmstand, and to the Mountain People’s Co-op, Savory Cafe, and Zamparelli’s for supporting our farm.  And a huge thank you to Jillian and Tracy who put in a huge amount of their time making things happen, both on days I was not on the farm, and days I was.  Of course the biggest thanks go to Sue Weems for allowing this farm & CSA to happen, and for funding a large part of the start-up!

We are looking forward to doing this again, and are happy to see that so many of our CSA members intend on renewing (or already have)!

We can’t believe the CSA will be coming to close for this year… next week!  Yes, we are sad to say that the last CSA pick-up for 2009 will be next Wednesday, September 30th.  The members I talked with at yesterday’s pick-up also seem sad to know it is coming to an end.

While the CSA may be coming to close, we still plan to have our farm stand going every Thursday from 4:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. and we invite you all to stop buy and continue to show your support for our little farm.  Apart from our farm fresh produce, you just might catch Jenny selling her fine home-made medicinal herbs, tinctures, and body care products. Marianne plans to be there with her delicious raspberries (while they last), and the other cool arty & crafty stuff she has.  And if I can pull it together, I may be selling some of my fine art photo too!

We are even talking about having a Harvest Market one Saturday in October, so stay tuned for more info on that.

A huge thank you to all of our CSA members who helped make this farm possible, and all of the folks who helped in the garden!  We hope to see you all again next year!

-”Farmer” Jim

It was snowing at my cabin in Eldora, and the weather down on the farm in Lafayette was looking pretty chilly.  The weather called for a low of 34 Tuesday, so I headed back down the hill to help Tracy, Carlos, and Jillian harvest tomatoes, basil, and some other items just in case the weather decided to take a bite out of our warm weather crops.  Carlos & I tried to cover the sensitive crops with row cover, but some of the remaining row cover was pretty worn out after being used all season.  We did get the peppers, eggplant, and some tomato rows covered.  Tracy & Jillian harvested a lot of basil since the cold weather was already trashing some plants.  It looks like they saved a lot, and we’ll definitely have fresh basil for Wednesday’s CSA pick-up.  We also plan to dry a bunch and if we have enough we can offer bags of dried basil also.

Hard to believe we are quickly approaching October!  Hard to believe that, soon, we will no longer have all the fresh, extremely local, produce that we’ve been spoiled with for the past four to five months.  Maybe we need to offer a Fresh Produce Rehab course!

We are considering changing our farm stand to be self-service and open at least 5 days a week.  Our current hours, 4:30 to 6:30 pm on Thursdays is a limited time for most, and we appreciate those of you who do stop by during those hours.  Since our farm is so small, and we can’t afford to pay someone to sit at the farm stand every day, we feel the self-serve stand will be a great way to reach more of you who would like to support our small farm and buy produce from us.

Stayed tuned for more on this topic!

This summer Tristen (seen in this photo), and his brothers Gabriel, and Nicholas were out visiting their grandmother, Ginger, and helped us out in the garden and farm stand, in between enjoying their stay on the farm.

For 2010 we will be looking for one farm intern to help us throughout the season.  We’ll post more info about that position a little later this year.