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May Farm Tour Photos / Farm Work Day Info

February 8 , 2006

Spring & SuperBowl Sunday - Thaddeus

This past weekend I visited a friend from college in the Salinas
Valley. It is amazing to realize what an intensive agricultural
industry exits in that area. Farmers harvest three crops per year off
of the same piece of ground. There are piles of irrigation pipe the
size of semis sitting around surrounded by dozens of tractors,
harvesting machines and tractor-trailers. One new packing shed being
built took up a twenty-acre lot and had the capacity to load 30
trucks at once. Agriculture is a huge business in the Salinas Valley
and the produce from this area is shipped all over the world at
prices so low it is amazing the farms continue to exist.

As impressive as the production capacity is of the area the
agriculture contrasts greatly with our model of farming. Their goal
is to produce as much produce as they possibly can and hope that
their broker can fight to get them a good enough price to make it
profitable while remaining completely detached from the people who
consume their food. The goal on our farm is to please the customers
that are actually consuming the produce that we grow. The plots of
land in the Salinas Valley are plain and used exclusively for
intensive production - there are very few homesteads and never any
grass or hedges growing on the fields' borders. Keep in mind that
some of these pieces of land are "organic". Our farm thrives with the
same family, family of workers and wildlife on the land year in and
year out. I could not help but to notice what a better feel
small-scale agriculture has. I am hopeful that our trend of small
family farms continues and ultimately makes up a much larger
percentage of production agriculture in the future.

The news back on our farm is the small addition to the one-truck
packing shed that Ricardo and I are working on. Ricardo has been busy
excavating the ground getting it prepared to pour a small slab of
concrete that will be the new washing station for all of our
vegetables and greens. It will be nice to have a more defined area to
do this, right now it is being done on the end of the barn - which
has been working fine but is only big enough for a couple of people
to comfortably work.

We hope you enjoy your box this week and we thank you for supporting
a unique and superior way of farming. Thaddeus

Customer Work Day Update
Please check back for updated information about the next Work Day on the farm. You can also email and let us know you'd like to be put on the list for the next one.
Plant some trees! Pull some weeds!
Get dirty & sweaty, & feel GOOD!

Please email: noah@farmfreshtoyou.com to
reserve space for you, family and friends.

Plan on arriving at the farm early in the morning, as close to 8am as possible, and bringing a lunch to enjoy out in the orchard.
We'll plan on wrapping things up around noon due to the heat,
and you'll be free to relax in the shade of the trees and
have lunch afterward.