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Whole-life Nutrition for Life-long Wellness

December 1, 2020 by Kate Zurschmeide

As the Holiday eating season gets underway, Zach Bush, a great explorer of the microbiome, reaches out to remind us that well-being involves every aspect of our person. In the video linked below, he reminds us that nourishment is not merely a matter of consuming the necessary vitamins and minerals; it requires full engagement of our senses — sight, smell, touch, and taste. Each of those sensory systems processes information in ways that make our bodies more ready and able to use the food we eat, and those systems are most engaged when food is close to its own life source: the soil it grows in. Dr. Bush explains that as soon as a food item is detached from the mother plant, its nourishing properties begin to degenerate. The best way to eat a tomato, he suggests, is to take it off the vine with your teeth. And the best way to eat a meal is to sit at a table suffused with the spirit of gratitude toward the source of all nourishment, in the company of people you love, for the disposition of your body cannot be separated from the disposition of your soul.

Enjoy this holiday invitation to wellness.

Knowledge: Nutrition

Our Pledge, Your Pledge

May 28, 2020 by Kate Zurschmeide

Our Pledge to You~Updated 5/28/2021

Our Farmhands are trained in CDC guidelines for hand washing and sanitizing and and everyone who handles food — in the field, in the packing barn, or in the market.
Our team is educated on CDC Mask guidelines and understand the privacy of our team and guests is of utmost importance.
All Farmhands certify that they are temperature and symptom free before each shift.
Frequently touched surfaces are sanitized regularly during operation.
We will provide hand sanitizing options before entering the field for our farmhands and PYO guests.
We will provide new containers for pick-your-own for guests.
Our CSA Farm Shares will be packed in single-use liner bags, which will be sealed with tamper-evident tape. That way, members can be sure their food has been touched by only the picker and the packer.

Your Pledge to Us

CDC guidelines protect you, as well as our other patrons and employees, and you agree to take responsibility for understanding and following the new guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) while visiting the farm.
If you are sick, have been exposed to COVID-19 in the past 14 days, or have symptoms of COVID-19 (including a fever, cough, or shortness of breath), you will stay at home and will not enter the Farm Market or PYO Fields.
For PYO Reservations and Advance Tickets, you agree to arrive on time and complete your visit within your ticket window.
You agree to wash/sanitize your hands and assist your children in doing so prior to and after picking produce and frequently while visiting the play area.
You agree to not sample any fruit in the field to comply with the guidelines from the Virginia Department of Agriculture.

9 Tips For Strawberry Picking in Light of COVID-19

May 16, 2020 by Kate Zurschmeide

May is strawberry time, and a lot of farmers have been getting ready for pickers since last August, when the plants went into the ground. Back then, none of us imagined we’d be facing lock-downs and quarantines during strawberry season. A late frost is one thing; COVID-19 is something else.

But the berries haven’t been paying attention to COVID-19. They’re going about their business, which is ripening up and getting ready to be picked. So farmers are getting ready to go about our business, too.

Most strawberry farms will be offering pick-your-own strawberries, but the experience will be different this year, as mandated by the CDC and state Departments of Health and Agriculture. Specific guidelines have been set to keep pickers and farmers as safe as possible. The berries won’t wait, but neither will the virus, so farmers will be asking for your support to help bring one in while keeping the other at bay.

Here are nine tips for making the most of your day in the field based on the guidelines in the state of Virginia.

Do your Research~ Some berry farms may not be offering pick your own strawberries this year, so the first step is to Find a local berry farm with pick-your-own available and ask about their picking plan. How many people will be picking at one time in a given space? Will gloves be required? Face-coverings? Will sanitation sites be available? Will staff be present in the field? Then compare their answers to your comfort level.
Pick you Own Strawberries.

2. Make an Appointment

This year it won’t be possible to wait for a beautiful day and set out to pick your own strawberries on the spur of the moment. Most Virginia farms that offer picking will be doing so by reservation, to control the number of people in the field at any given time and thus ensure safe social distance. Look for farms to offer an online booking system, with the understanding that appointments will depend on weather and crop conditions. Spots are likely to be released a day in advance so you may have to check back frequently for the opportunity to pick in 2020. Please be sure to only book appointments if you are well and healthy and cancel immediately if you develop signs of illness.

3. Pre-Pay

To ensure that your hands are the only ones that touch your berries, most farms won’t be weighing your berries and may not be taking cash payment for additional berries or items on site. Look for a set amount of strawberries to be included with your appointment time. Not sure how many strawberries you will actually be getting with your appointment? A quart of strawberries is about 1.5 pounds. Some farms may allow you to pre-pay for additional containers when you make your reservation. To maximize cleanliness, customers will likely be asked to use only new containers in the fields this season so leave your trusty PYO basket at home this season.

4. Respect Your Section — and Your Time Slot

Wandering the field to find the perfect strawberries is not an option this season. To support social distancing and minimal hands touching strawberries, rows may be numbered, and each reservation will be assigned a specific section of a row. Farmhands will be in the field to ensure that customers respect those assignments. At the end of the reserved time slot, customers will be asked to exit the field so focus on filling your containers first and then taking some time for photos with your harvest.

5. Picking Etiquette: No Eating in the Field

Tempting as it may be to pop a berry into your mouth now and then, farmer ask you not to do that, for two reasons:

a) those strawberries constitute a farmer’s livelihood. The field is the farmer’s market place and if you eat berries instead of filling your basket, you are making an already challenging season even harder by taking more than you have paid for and perhaps depriving the next guest of their full container of strawberries.

b) You will likely be asked to sanitize your hands prior to picking strawberries this season. Your mouth is ground zero for COVID-19, so if you eat in the field, your hand becomes a virus delivery vehicle, leaving potentially infectious residue on the plants you touch.

6. Children & Pets

Boy with a bucket of pick-your-own strawberries.

Kids are proud to pick bright red strawberries.

Strawberry picking is great fun for young and old alike, and after weeks in quarantine, it’s important for everyone to soak up some sun and reconnect with the soil’s microbiome. Please be sure your kids understand the different rules for picking this year. Remind them that their help is important because your time in the field is limited. And teach them that strawberries won’t get any riper once you pick them, so they should pick only berries that are already bright red. Kids are also low to the ground so encourage them to move the leaves around and pick all the ripe berries in your assigned area — not just on top, but also on the bottom.

Best leave your dog at home this year. Because you won’t have time to take your pup for a break outside the field, they certainly can’t “go” in the field and your focus will need to be on Strawberry picking, most farms will not allow pets. Even experienced farm pets won’t be welcome in the fields this year.

7. Put ‘em Up!

Strawberries don’t last very long, but you can savor their sunshine for months to come if you work them properly. Bring a cooler to transport your berries home after picking. Refrigerate them, unwashed in a plastic bag or container. Within 48 hours, you should either eat them, freeze them, or turn them into jam.

To freeze strawberries, wash them, pat them dry with paper towels, lay them on a cookie sheet covered with parchment paper (they shouldn’t be touching each other) and then put the cookie sheet in the freezer. Once the individual berries are frozen, store them in a Ziplock bag.

Here’s a simple recipe for strawberry jam from Southern Living, along with a list of all the supplies you’ll need.

Looking for a new spark for your cocktail or Popsicle? Check out this idea for strawberry nectar!

8. Not ready to get out and Pick your Own Strawberries?

If you’re not able to secure an appointment or just not ready to get out and pick this season, be sure to pre-order your strawberries online. Many farms have fewer workers this year, and getting berries picked for retail sale may be a challenge. Ordering online helps farmers know how much to pick and thus avoid waste. Farms and Farmer’s Markets are offering curbside pick-up and drive-through services to support guests in these extraordinary circumstances.

9. Be Patient ~ Buying Local Sustains Farms and Our Community

These are unprecedented times, and these procedures are new to both farmers and customers alike. There will likely be some confusion along the way. Farmers are doing their best to create a safe, positive picking experience, and we thank you for your support and patience as we navigate this strawberry season together.

For more details on strawberry picking in northern Virginia, please review these guidelines published by the Virginia department of Agriculture.

Happy picking!

No-Till Saves Time

April 27, 2020 by Kate Zurschmeide

In the last post, we talked about switching to no-till in order to preserve the soil’s micro-biome, which is crucial for bringing crops to their full nutritional capacity. This post focuses on another reason not to till: weeds.

If you’ve ever grown a garden yourself, you’ve probably found that when you come out with your seeds in the spring, your garden plot is covered with debris, including plants you didn’t put there. The easiest way to get rid of that mess is to rent a Roto-tiller, which turns the surface of the soil under and brings a lower layer to the top. It looks great: loose and clean and ready for your spinach seeds. But three weeks later, your row of spinach is engulfed by thousands of invaders. Where did they come from? You planted spinach, not chickweed!

They came from that lower layer, which is full of dormant seeds that pop to life when you turn the soil and expose them to the warmth of the sun.

That same process takes place on a much larger scale when you till a 40-acre field with a tractor. Industrial farming solves the problem by spraying the field with Round-up, which kills everything but plants genetically engineered to tolerate it. Well, we don’t use Round-up, so we had to pull those weeds by hand, which takes a long time.

But when we stopped tilling the soil, we stopped bringing those seeds to the surface, so they stopped germinating.

There’s a trade-off: it’s hard to sow seeds directly onto un-tilled soil because of all that debris, including left-over weeds. So instead of turning under that debris, we cover it with compost. After a couple of years, most of the weed seeds are pretty well buried. And as long as we don’t turn over the soil, they stay that way.

Preserving the Soil’s Ecosystem

April 13, 2020 by Kate Zurschmeide

In previous years, when we used to till our fields, all the rain we’ve had in the last 48 hours would have meant there was no way I’d be heading out to pick spinach this afternoon. Too much mud. But now that we’re into our second year on no-till planting, all that rain does what it’s supposed to do: it disappears into the structure of the soil. That means I can work in the fields immediately after a thunderstorm, which is a great advantage,

It also means the soil’s inner ecosystem has a chance to fully develop.

Most of us are accustomed to thinking of soil as part of our ecosystem, and it certainly is that, but soil has its own ecosystem as well. Bacteria, fungi, and viruses form a complex micro-ecology which largely determines the health of plants and the nutritional density of crops. A teaspoon of good soil contains at least a million such tiny creatures, possibly many more. Those micro-organisms interact with the roots of plants in ways we’re just beginning to understand, but it’s clear that certain bacteria perform specific functions for specific plants, without which the plants cannot thrive. Those functions include removing toxins from soil and converting nutrients into forms the plants can utilize.

It’s also clear that different bacteria have evolved to live at different depths, and when we displace them by tilling the soil, they die by the billions. Without their bacterial partners, our food crops are vulnerable to disease and pest pressure. And if they can’t get the nutrition they need from the soil, we can’t get the nutrition we need from them.

So that’s the second reason we’re now planting into undisturbed soil: to protect the vital ecosystem we can’t see.

Next week we’ll look at how no-till planting saves labor.

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