We hope you are all well as we begin the New Year.

We have some initial information for the 2010 CSA season. We’ll be following up with a registration form and more information in the weeks to follow.

The 2010 Season: We are looking at another six month season, with the season running from the beginning of May through October. As in 2009, it will be pick-your-own for most items.

Cost: The cost for the entire season will be $500 per couple/family/household or $250 for individuals. We can usually work something out if finances are an issue.

Expanded Offerings: In addition to the crops that we planted in 2009, we plan to offer an expanded list of crops in 2010. These include: sweet corn, cabbage, parsnips and several other vegetable varieties that we weren’t able to grow this past season. We are also expanding our plantings of raspberries, strawberries, blackberries and blueberries as well as the varieties of flowers available for bouquets.

A Season Extending Hoop House: We are about to take the plunge and invest in a mobile hoop house system. We are very excited about this! A hoop house will allow us to plant and ripen some summer crops (such as tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers) much earlier in the season and will extend those crops much later into the fall. In November, the hoop house will be moved over the cool season crops allowing a continuous harvest of those crops through much of the winter. We should note that in 2010, the full season share will not include crops harvested in the hoop house beginning in November. We hope to be able to supply the community with greens through a Local Food Cooperative storefront at that time.

Improvements: We have some other ideas for improving the CSA in 2010:

• We would like to continue to make our place more child friendly. We plan to reinforce existing swings and possibly put up new ones for the upcoming season.

• We hope to set up a bulletin board where people can post favorite recipes and ideas for how to use different vegetables and herbs.

• We plan to begin planting our fruit tree orchards this coming spring.

• We would like to bring back the newsletter in some form – either monthly or biweekly.

• We hope to have a simple wash station set up this year so that you can rinse root vegetables, wash and spin salad greens and so on.

Please share any other ideas that you might have!

Our Expenses: Although we understand that it won’t be possible for many of you, it would help us a great deal if you could send all or part of your membership fee for 2010 in the next few weeks. There are a lot of up front costs this time of year. In January, we order seeds, plants, organic soil supplements and new tools and other equipment. These annual costs, plus the investment in the mobile hoop house system (approximately $7,500) are going to make things tricky for us financially. Any amount that you can send in the next few weeks would really help us out. In the meantime, an email letting us know that you’re interested will also help us plan.

We would like to grow some this year. Please send us the names and (if possible) contact information of people who you think would be good additions to our CSA community.

We wish you well during these Persephone months. Remember that there are green and abundant seasons to come!

John and Karen

309-550-5088

3201 West Adams

Macomb IL 61455