2025 Season Reflection
As usual at this time of year I start to really think about how our farming and CSA season went this year and consequently, what changes I want to make in 2026. This post is really meant for our CSA members but if you’ve been following along this season I think you’ll find some interesting tidbits of information in this post. This will be a long one, enjoy!
What Went Well?
It’s probably best to start off on a positive note and go over the things we’re really proud of or that we felt like went really well this season.
Our Farm Staff and Especially Our Farm Manager Katey. Overall, we had great staff this season. Our staff were great workers and worked well as a team. They were very reliable and they helped us make some efficiency improvements around the farm to boot. In particular, our Farm Manager position and Katey who is our Farm Manager this season worked well. The Farm Manager position is new to us this season but our goal was to offload some of the managerial duties from my (Dan’s) plate so I could focus more on the farm and the business. It also allowed us more flexibility with the farmers market and allowed us to leave the farm without much stress at all!
GrownBy. The jump from Harvie to GrownBy was one of the biggest changes we’ve made to our CSA in years but we are so glad we chose GrownBy as our CSA management platform. GrownBy has allowed our CSA members more flexibility and made our management simpler as well. Plus GrownBy is a co-op and we are part owners so we get a say in the direction GrownBy takes in the years to come. We especially love the way vacation weeks work in GrownBy which offers our CSA members much more flexibility on the weeks they’re unable to pick up their shares.
Lettuce. I think this season is our best season yet for lettuce. We’ve had a very consistent supply throughout the entire season which has always been our goal. Even during the hardest time of year from about July 20 through September 1 we had a steady supply.
Shallots. I don’t know about you but I love having a stash of shallots at the ready for eggs, fried rice, sauces & whatever else. We’re definitely growing shallots again!
Fall Broccoli. We’ve had so much broccoli this fall and it’s been great. I think we’ve finally settled in on some varieties and a production cadence that works for us.
Carrots. This season has been a good carrot season for us. Our early tunnel plantings were just phenomenal and our field plantings were great too. Our biggest trouble with carrots this season was finding a time in between all the rain to dig them! Our storage carrot plantings are looking amazing too so we’re anticipating having literal tons of carrots available. After a dismal carrot year last season this is a welcome change!
Scallions. Both the purple and white scallions will be back next season. We just love these - they’re so flavorful and versatile and we have them available for so much of the season.
Tunnel Tomatoes. I hesitated for a moment because there’s a lot of room for improvement here but overall I’m happy with how our tunnel tomatoes went this season. They yielded a bit better than last season and we have been selling through them as fast as we can pick them. We’ll be looking to double or maybe even triple our tunnel tomato production for next season!
Peppers. They took their sweet time this year but our peppers have been yielding really well this season and they taste incredible. In particular, we really liked the addition of the yellow carmen pepper and Serrano peppers. The yellow carmens are just as good as red carmen and are beautiful. The Serrano peppers have been one of my favorites with their steady heat and fruity flavor.
Green Beans. I’m really proud of the fairly steady supply of green beans we’ve had available this season and they’ve been really tasty.
Home Delivery. Lastly, home delivery was a success this year. We were nervous going in about the costs and the time but after we settled in on our route and added new customers it became a really great way to sell our produce.
There are other wins we had this season but those are some of my favorites. We would love to hear from you about anything you thought really stood out this season!
What Didn’t Go So Well?
Ok. Now for the less fun part: talking about the things that didn’t go as well as we hoped. A combination of human error and unpredictable weather inevitably leads to crop failures or mistakes of some kind. Here are some that are front of mind for me.
Storage Onions. We’ve heard from a few CSA members about poor quality storage onions. This is sort of a problem on multiple fronts. First, is the weather. Not a lot we can do about the weather but it was too wet for obtaining top quality storage onions. Second, we had about twice as many onions planted as we needed. This ended up meaning that they needed one more weeding pass that we didn’t have time to get to. Removing the weeds would have helped them dry out faster and reduced disease pressure. Third, sorting onions. We did our best to sort out the bad ones in the field and when we pack your shares but things still fell through the cracks.
We’re going to be doing a big revision on our onion planting plan and we hope to incorporate some new varieties of onions and streamline this a bit more. Stay tuned!2nd Sweet Corn Planting. This one was a doozy. First, it was ripening while I was on vacation off grid in the boundary waters. Second, we saw intense raccoon pressure more than we’ve ever seen in 10 years of farming here by an order of magnitude. Couple those two things with staff that weren’t quite trained in/experienced enough (still my fault) and we ended up with way under ripe corn being picked and distributed.
Luckily, our subsequent plantings were some of the best corn we’ve ever grown!Strawberries. We planted twice as many strawberry plants as last season but they yielded half as much. I hate to admit it but it was mismanagement on my part. We needed to pluck the first flowers which we didn’t do. We needed to keep them weeded better which happened too late in the season. Finally, we needed to pull the runners on them which didn’t get done frequently enough. We’ll be re-prioritizing these tasks for next season because we know you all love fresh strawberries!
Red Potatoes. We had an extremely poor yield on our red potatoes this season. Red potatoes are typically ready about mid-July so my theory here is that it was just too wet when the potatoes were sizing up. Our white potatoes were planted and managed the same way and they yielded much better.
Peas. We just didn’t have as many peas as we wanted this year. We planted these a bit too early and ended up with a poor stand of peas. Couple that with our main pickings of peas falling on our July 4 break week and the wet weather and we just didn’t have peas available for CSA members anywhere near as much as we’d like.
Acorn Squash. We had poor germination on our acorn squash this year. It was so poor that we ended up terminating the planting.
Beets. We had something like 4 consecutive plantings get washed out by heavy rain which has caused a huge 2 month gap in our beet availability this season.
Cilantro. Similar to beets, we had 3-4 plantings of cilantro get washed away by heavy rain. Further, this was during peak salsa and tomato season meaning we missed a critical window for cilantro availability!
Field Tomatoes. We had a terrible field tomato crop this season. The harvest was very small and the tomatoes that were there were very small. We think this was a combination of a somewhat late planting, wild fire smoke, excessive rain and potential carry over disease pressure from last season. We’ll be making some changes to our field tomato planting plan for next season so we have a better harvest.
Ultimately, every year is different from the year before. Every year we learn a lot. Every year we try some new things. Every year we make mistakes. Every year we learn and grow. I think that’s part of the joy of farming produce. The elusive perfect season always seems within grasp but never fully materializes. I now look forward to dreaming about how next season will be the best season yet!