Huge thanks to all our Summer CSA members! We've had such a good year - we sure hope you've had a good one as well. Folks who are staying on or joining us for the Winter CSA, please note that it starts the first week of November - there is no CSA pick-up next week.

Several items of interest this week:
1. New chickens! We got five new pullets to add to our laying flock. They're Ameracaunas, which are blue-egg birds. Gabe at Four Family Farm raised them until now, about ten weeks old, and we picked them up on Thursday. We fenced off a corner of the coop for them, and this morning I opened a little pop-hole in it that they can get in and out of but the big hens can't fit through. That way they have a safe place to go if the hens pick on them, and that's where their food is and roosts that are lower down. I raised up the hens' food so that the pullets shouldn't be able to reach it - their nutritional needs are different when they're growing from when they're laying, so we don't want them eating each others' food. I'm not sure how we'll manage when the pullets get to be full-size (probably July) but before they start to lay (sometime in August), but we'll figure something out. This set-up should hold us for a while.

2. We've started harvesting! We harvested more than ten pounds of spinach out of the greenhouse last week, most of which we sold to local restaurants. We've also started pulling radishes, but they're still pretty small and just snacks while we're working in the greenhouse. The scallions should be ready in time for market (which starts May 9!), and it looks like we should have carrots in time for CSA.

3. The field has been harrowed! We plowed a new piece of ground last fall and have been anxiously waiting for it to dry out enough to harrow, which finally happened this week. Of course, it's raining again now. Hopefully, we'll get a stretch of dry weather soon so we can till and plant.

4. We made the front page! Neighborly CSA was featured on the front page of last Thursday's Addison Independent! If you have an online subscription, you can read it on their website, or click here to download a PDF that we scanned. It's a pretty great article!