Organic Gardening Info from Peaceful Valley

Everybody is raving about these new arrivals to our nursery. Made in Mexico from recycled oil drums, there are many for sale scattered throughout the nursery, they are a nice, fun touch!

We are starting to add thoughts from Peaceful Valley employees, be it helpful advice, strange questions, funny incidents. Sara works in the retail store at Peaceful Valley.

My favorite thing today was when a customer came in and didn’t have a penny for change, but said that she had a corn nut. I said, “That would be fine!”

- Sara in the Store 

Last night was dramatic. Our entire system failed, crashed, ruptured, split, dissolved… stopped working a little after lunch yesterday and it was not good. We had to shut down the store, the warehouse, everything but the website. Our call center stopped taking calls.

We spent last night and early this morning recombobulating the elaborate house of cards, and it is good to suddenly hear the phones ringing again, and to open the store doors.

On Tuesday I got the opportunity to go up to Andrew Meyer’s farm, Wild Grace Organics. Andrew is the very first participant in Peaceful Valley’s “Freshman Farmer” program.

Andrew Meyers at Wild Grace Farm

Freshman Farmer is an initiative that Peaceful Valley took based on our understanding that farmers not only aren’t getting any younger, but younger people aren’t looking to farming as a valid career move either. So we’re “sponsoring” Andrew’s farm this year, giving him the equivalent of an employee discount on supplies that he needs to get started, and to grow a CSA for the season.

I’m making short videos to go along with his website, which is freshmanfarmer.groworganic.com. (as of this moment, March 13, there is not yet content, but keep on the lookout, an intro video is coming real soon!)

We will be checking in with him throughout the season to see how things are coming along, and what challenges and successes he is facing.

He will also be keeping a blog, regularly letting everyone know what is happening up at Wild Grace.

It’s such a cool program, one I’m really proud to be a part of. Each year we will be giving a young farmer a boost and interacting in a very positive and long term way, not just with the organic community, but with the community as a whole.

Other great things are coming out of this too, some I can’t talk about yet as they are not written in stone, but some, such as our retail store’s cooler being a drop off point for his boxes of veggies, that could really assist in making local food available and affordable for this community. Perhaps we will learn enough to be able to pass lessons we learn along to others.

Let us know what you think, if you’ve heard of anything similar regarding CSA’s, and if you have any questions!