Hi guys,

Thank you so much for your survey responses last week. It is so good to hear about the things that you love and the things that you wish were better. I am definitely going to start diving back into customizable boxes again, the ability to swap things in and out, different ordering deadlines, and am going to put another round of crucial emphasis on quality control during packing. Thank you for these insights. It is super easy to get lost in the weeds and not see the big picture.

Also, the timing is right to start diving into the Regenerative Organic certification and start pushing ourselves and our growers in this direction, which now that it is tied to Organic certification, I can whole heartedly stand behind and become super excited about.

I also really want to say thank you to everyone who shared their health concerns, I know how hard that is, but I want you to know how helpful it is to see that we are all dealing with similar concerns. Knowing this will help guide us as we jump into the world of health and nutrition more deeply. I am looking for an awesome local nutritionist to start working with on these things if you all have any recommendations.

With that said, I don’t want to put the cart before the horse, but I am having some luck hiring driving staff again, and have my eye on re-launching our better bucket “home compost” membership as soon as possible. Fingers crossed. This program was something that we really enjoyed doing. As it was super eye opening to see how much food waste, we could handle in such a small space on the farm.

In the meantime, I’m going to take your guidance and start collecting much more behind the scenes farm nerd information, which I love. For all of you.

I’ll start with something that I’ve already shared a little about: Spider Mites in strawberry fields.

With less rain, more warmth, and strange temperature swings this year, we are seeing the strawberry fields come into full production earlier than normal and we saw the spider might infestations happen much more aggressively than normal and at earlier stages of the growth cycle than normal. Obviously, we all know that normal is a word that we use that doesn’t mean much when talking about nature. But I think we can all kind of agree that we are seeing environmental changes, I know I see them.

Anyways, the strawberries that you are getting in your boxes this week are coming from Alex Frecker, here in Carpinteria. And Alex has a keen eye on his strawberries and caught the spider mites early, and spent a lot of energy buying and releasing predator mites into his field. The predators went to work and got the mites under control, and Alex is now in the middle of having a bumper crop of Albion and Gaviota strawberries. The smaller berries are Albion and the bigger are Gaviota.

Thank you all, I appreciate you all deeply and only wish to create something of service to you, our agricultural future, and the planet.

Jason

P.S. If you didn’t answer the survey last week, I’d be honored if you would this week. You can find it here.