Here's a reminder to get your tickets today to our beautiful collaborative event between us and Blue Sky Bakery (a non-profit that helps train youth with barriers to employment) and our partner yoga studio Bloom Yoga Studio! Get tickets right......here for September 20th!
And now, just because I'm a farmer, I'd like to bring it down a notch again and talk about the weather.
Weather is gorgeous lately, yes, I will concede that (aside from near tornado miss yesterday). But we are still suffering from the devastating affect of rain early in the season.
Illinois lawmakers and Gov. Rauner have asked Obama to issue a disaster declaration from the USDA for counties that have seen heavy rainfall this season, such as our own Kankakee county. The declaration would allow farmers to get low-interest emergency loans. As most of you probably can deduce, Peasants' Plot has not been able to acquire much cash flow from market, an important part of our business plan this season. We are harvesting everything we possibly can to our CSA, our much appreciated loyal members. We wish we were able to give everyone more and have more to sell at market.
The "disaster" of this season feels just as financially acute as a tornado, although I recognize every single day our great luck to have dodged any human or property casualties. June was the wettest month on record in Illinois (since 1888). An average of 9.37 inches fell statewide. In Kankakee specifically we got 17.22" in June when the average is normally 4.14 inches. For farmers this is indeed disastrous and hard to bounce back. Many vegetable farmers haven't been able to finish planting crops or have had to replant flooded fields. Late plantings or reduced plantings mean lower yields. Commodity crop farmers of soy and corn are hurting in the same way but will receive some subsidies from the government and are generally well insured. Crop insurance for our type of small vegetable farm is not yet a viable investment.
We appreciate our members' decision to support the expansion of more organic vegetable growers in Illinois. It is a tough world for this new farmer generation and we couldn't do it without our CSA. We are hoping that all our CSA members are with us in the long run--in the commitment to support our efforts to grow organic vegetables just a few miles from home.
The truth is....who else is going to do it?
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