CSA Launch and Orientation tonight!

Dear CSA Members,

We hope you enjoyed the lovely weather this weekend. Just a quick reminder that tonight (Monday evening) is our 2012 Season Launch–we encourage all members to come, whether you’re new or existing!

2012 Brooklyn Bridge CSA Season Launch
Monday, May 21st, 7pm, Congregation Mt Sinai

We’re excited to meet you at the 2012 BBCSA Launch at our pick-up point–Congregation Mt. Sinai at 250 Cadman Plaza West at 7pm. We will have free food and have designed an interactive program so that you can meet your fellow CSA members, find out what to expect this season, and learn more about our CSA and the local food movement.

We look forward to seeing you there!

The Brooklyn Bridge CSA Core Group

Meet the Farmer Event!

Join us as we team up with Dumbo CSA to bring Farmer Fred and Karen from Sang Lee Farms to Brooklyn!  Past, new and prospective members are welcome.  Fred and Karen will share info about the farm and how your veggies are grown.  You will also be able to have your questions answered.

Date:  Tues, Apr 24

Time:  6:30pm

Location:  Phoenix House, 50 Jay St, Dumbo

Egg Shares Are Available

We’re doing a separate registration for egg shares, but you must be a vegetable share member to order eggs. Each egg share consists of 6 eggs per week for the entire CSA season (23 weeks), and costs $80. The eggs come from North Fork Egg Farm in Southland, NY, and/or Young Widows Farm in Orient, NY. For more informations about the eggs, click here.

To purchase eggs,  fill out this form, and send your check, made out to Brooklyn Bridge CSA, to:

Marina Berger

221 LInden Blvd, Apt C23

Brooklyn, NY 11226

We are limited to 20 egg shares for the 2012 season. We will send you a confirmation for your egg share upon receipt of payment. If we receive your check after all 20 shares have been sold out, we’ll let you know via email and return your check to you.

If you have any more questions, please feel free to email us.

Eggs from North Fork Egg Farm

Last winter CSA delivery # 6

Greetings,

Tomorrow Tuesday March 6th, 2012 is your last winter CSA delivery, # 6.   Attached is the list of veggies we have planned.

Your shares tomorrow reflect in part, what we have all experienced again weather wise in mild temperatures over the last (3) weeks.  Both storage veggies and greens from our greenhouses are planned for your share tomorrow.  While I would have liked to have harvested some of these greens later in the spring, their maturity and stage of growth necessitated their harvest now, all to your benefit.

We want to thank you for your participation in our 2011-2012 winter CSA.  Clearly this was an unusual winter with such mild weather, it has allowed us to harvest late winter veggies from the field much later than we expected and to our surprise as well, early spring vegetables from the greenhouses much earlier than expected.   As you can see from the bounty of your winter shares over the course of the winter, it was greater than what we have ever packed out in a winter CSA distribution over the last (3) years.  We hope that you have enjoyed the vegetables and look forward to seeing you all soon at the farm, perhaps with our summer 2012 Vegetable CSA.

Be well,

Fred & Karen

A note about prices

The following is a note from Fred and Karen Lee of Sang Lee Farms (our CSA’s farmer). Please note that the CSA prices listed on the FAQs page reflects the price increase noted here, plus an $18 administrative fee to cover costs of supplies, programming, etc. Also note, our CSA site does not offer Partial Shares. Instead we offer Full Shares and Half Shares. A Half Share is a full share, picked up every other week.

After much thought and debate, we’ve decided that we must raise the price of the vegetable CSAs slightly for 2012.  The price for the partial Share will be $375.00, and the Full Vegetable share will be $595.00, for the 2012 (23) week season.  The price increase comes to approximately $.87 per week for the partial and  $1.09  per week for the Full Share.

Our objective to provide a great value of vegetables for as many folks in our (3) existing Brooklyn CSAs as we can has not changed.   We have no plans of taking on any additional Brooklyn CSA groups for 2012, even though we have had inquires by (2) new forming groups to date.  Almost all of our production and operating costs have increased every year since the last price change (2) seasons ago.  The 5.6% and 4.4% increase in the partial and full share CSAs, just (bearly) covers the change in our costs from 2 years ago.  Additionally, we are very conscious of the difficulty some members may have meeting the cost of their CSA memberships, and hope these changes do not create any additional hardship for anyone.

We have many objectives as we start the new 2012 season that include paying our workers better wages, and up grading our field equipment and tractors by beginning the replacement of our tractor fleet that averages almost (40) years old.

I could go on about many things, but I believe I’ve touched the main points.  We hope that any of your programs that assist members with their CSA payments will continue to make our CSA a viable option for all.  We value our relationship with all the members of the Brooklyn Bridge CSA tremendously and hope that we continue to do well together.

Sincerely,

Fred & Karen

Winter CSA: Update from the Farm #5

Greetings,

Tomorrow, Tuesday, February 14th 2012, is your winter CSA # 5 distribution.

I know this is probably going to sound like old news, but we have continued to have unusually warm temperatures for this time of year.  Not only do we have another greater than expected share for your distribution, but we have a couple of surprise harvests.  Some greenhouse items, like the mixed baby beet bunches, baby Carrot bunches, green scallions, and greenhouse Spinach,  that we were hoping to harvest later in the spring, (later as in the end of March and April), are being harvested now simply because they have to be.  Plant maturity, quality, and size are among the primary reasons for harvesting them now.  At the rates that they have matured, for being overwintered crops in the greenhouse, we can not hold them for later, hence tomorrow’s treats for you.  I can’t begin to guess how some other veggies are going to grow later on with the dramatic temperature differences we’ve experienced over the winter so far.

You will find the greenhouse spinach to probably be the best…. ever…really, certainly for a local Fresh February harvest.  That’s not to say the Napa Cabbage, being almost four months in storage, isn’t the best thing either.   It is perhaps one of the most favorite winter storage vegetable for us, as we enjoy it fresh in salads, stir fried, or used like lettuce on sandwiches.  (Is there even such a thing as one of the ’most favorite’?  I wouldn’t think it’d be more than a ‘slight exaggeration’, if you found your self ‘silently screaming’ that it was ‘wickedly good’.  Even with the oxymora intended, we hope you’re tickled like us to be Napa cabbage fans.

And…..we hope that you really LOVE all your other veggies tomorrow too,  Happy Valentines Day,

Fred & Karen

Sang Lee Farms Greenhouse

EGGS for the upcoming CSA season!

We’re currently planning for the CSA’s third season, and we’ve been considering EGGS. We’re researching farms to provide egg shares, but we need an estimate of how many people would potentially be interested in purchasing an egg share for the season. A share usually consists of a dozen or half a dozen eggs a week. They are usually priced around $5/dozen. If you think you’d be interested in purchasing an egg share, please take less than a minute to indicate your level of interest by clicking here and answering our one-question survey. You are under no obligation to purchase a share if you say you want one now, but we need to find a farm whose supply can meet our demand. Please respond by Friday, February 17.