CSA pick-up sites: confirmed and TBD
Dearest CSA member,
There are many more of you now than when we last reached out in February. Forty-eight total, all over Seattle and its outer edges. (We’re aiming for 50).
For those of you who are new this year (welcome!) please read the top parts of these emails. They contain important information — labeled “Important Information” — regarding pick-up, scheduling, vegetables, etc. We hope you’ll read the bottom parts, which will include stories from the farm, recipes, and whatever else we feel like telling you, but we won’t be hurt if you choose not to.
Important Information
We’re working on selecting pick-up sites for the season (20 weeks beginning roughly in late May or early June).
So far, we have confirmed pick-up sites in:
Beacon Hill, near the light rail stop
West Seattle, on 35th street, just south of the golf course
Vashon, on our farm
Central District, at 19th and E. Alder
We are still exploring options for pick-up sites in:
Capitol Hill / First Hill
Ballard / Queen Anne
Roosevelt / Ravenna / Northgate / U. District
If you have any leads, let us know! We prefer gated or enclosed areas with easy parking, but are open to all possibilities. If YOU would like to host, we’d be happy to chat. If you’re place is suitable, we’ll refund you $70 (roughly the cost of two shares).
About Our Seeds
Our seeds arrive around February. We try to buy from regional farmers, such as Uprising Seeds of Bellingham, Deep Harvest Farm of Whidbey Island, and Adaptive Seeds of Sweet Home, OR. We even buy some seeds from our neighbor on Vashon, Wild Dreams Farm and Seeds. All four grow certified organic, open-pollinated varieties adapted to the Pacific Northwest climate.
We rely on the California-based Kitazawa Seed Company for Asian varieties that are difficult to source. We also purchase many seeds from Johnny’s Selected Seeds of Maine, the biggest player for small farms. Our Johnny’s order includes hybrid varieties we’ve come to depend on for their predictability and yields. Hybrids of unknown origin come with sticky ethical questions owing to the labor necessary for hand-pollinating seeds at mass scale, a subject that we could and should devote a whole newsletter to. (Seed ethics, in general, is a rich topic raising issues as broad as colonialism, monopoly, genetics, labor, and more).
Our seed packets arrive in cardboard boxes in sizes ranging from Pack of Index Cards to Bicycle Helmet. Cover crop seeds (another topic for another newsletter) are a different beast, requiring boxes befitting a 20-Piece Kitchen Pot and Pans Set. Once we unpack everything, the seeds for all of Tian Tian Farm’s 1.5 acres typically fit in a couple dedicated Rubbermaids. I’ll never be ceased to be amazed by how much food you can produce from such tiny beginnings.
Seeding is one of our more tedious tasks (along with hand-weeding and harvesting peas). We start most of our crops in a greenhouse, where we can control the environment during the crucial early stages of growth. Hunched over trays containing anywhere from 50 to 128 cells, we carefully drop a seed in each plug, often planting thousands in one sitting.
We have become intimately familiar with the shapes, sizes, and relative tediousness of every seed we plant. The bigger, the rounder (a spectrum ranging from daikon to peas), the better. Smaller and flatter means clenching and straining and losing seeds.
Every kind of seedling, too, has its own quirks. Brassicas (the family that many Asian greens belong to) germinate reliably and uniformly, with heart-shaped seed leaves popping up in rows, ready for the ground with three weeks. Cucurbits (cucumbers, squash) grow like Audrey II, the carnivorous plant from Little Shop of Horrors, which is to say quickly. After a couple weeks, cucumber seedlings outgrow their little plugs and we must transfer them to larger pots, a process we also follow for eggplants, peppers, and tomatoes. Shiso, our favorite herb to grow, is also one of our most anxiety-inducing. Shiso seeds can take weeks to germinate, a period in which we wonder whether we will have any shiso for the season. But inevitably, tiny shiso seedlings start to pop out, with twin, semicircular leaves.
With the help of your membership, we cut our seeding time this year by purchasing a Kwik-Klik drop seeder. It doesn’t work for everything, but wow. Thank you for that.
Until next time,
Steven