Dear Paisley CSA members,

Thanks to one and all for joining Paisley Farm CSA. I hope it was a positive experience for everyone. It was a pleasure for my staff and I to grow the vegetables that you ate for the last 22 weeks.

It’s an awesome feeling that our agricultural surplus allows you to be doctors, artist, moms, dads, inventors, hairdressers, actors, authors and even… bankers. Personally I enjoyed waking up every day knowing that I had the responsibility of growing good nutritious food for people who really cared and that good food was important to them. You have the right to good local food and thank you for making that choice.

We at the farm have learned a lot this year and have been humbled by Mother Nature. We know what works and what doesn’t work when you have 70 days of rain in a 90-day period! We also learned that in the end, the sun and the earth didn’t let us down. Maybe we didn’t get everything we wanted but it gave us what we needed.

Be well,

Mike Kokas, Paisley Farm

A Consumer Replies

Dear Paisley Farm,

Volunteering the week after your harvest party, I heard about the 90 friends who broke bread with you last Saturday. If I were able to be there I would have raised a glass to you and said, “thanks”…

“Thanks” for not poisoning the earth while growing and tending what the earth gives forth.

“Thanks” for working all hours, days and nights, for getting good food to those of us without a plot of land but with a burning need to feel connected to the land (and a healthy contempt for agribusiness).

“Thanks” for beautifully bundling all your bounty and presenting it in a way that shows you are as proud to grow it, as we are to eat it.

“Thanks” for lettuce so delicate that no supermarket could ever carry it.

“Thanks” for radishes as big as eggs and eggplants as polished as marble.

“Thanks” for infinite greens that build bodies 8 ways.

“Thanks” for tomatoes both heirloom and roma (especially the zebras)

“Thanks” for basil that actually got me followed one day by someone who just wanted to keep smelling my shopping bag.

“Thanks” for the one ear of corn (it was delicious).

“Thanks” for the unbeatable beets.

“Thanks” for the squash and the leeks and the kale, and more kale, and more kale, and the Swiss chard.

“Thanks” for the tatsoi that was so beautiful I hated to cook it, but any brassy cook can never resist a brassica.

Here’s to next year and a little sunshine in the spring. Oh, and happy “thanks” giving.

Jane Talcott, Paisley CSA member

Dave’s Note: If you live in Brooklyn or New York you can purchase Paisley Farm CSA shares summer and winter by visiting the farm site here.  If you live near Sheffield, Massachussets and would like to purchase a Narraganset Turkey pictured above, please visit Moon on the Pond Farm.