Hello CSA and Friends of Shalom Orchard and Winery,

I hope everyone is enjoying this wonderful weather. If it continues this trend, we may be able to get some things in earlier this spring. We have started early greens in our hoophouse and have mixed lettuce, radishes, red and green head lettuce, spinach and arugula up! I hope that these greens will be ready to harvest at the end of April. These won’t be part of your CSA shares, but will be available to you.

I have received most of your payments for your shares. Thank you so very much for your support of our farm! We have bought seeds and seedlings, ordered the first meatbird chicks, ordered amendments for the orchard and generally been able to get started for the season. The CSA has, as of this date, ten new members! We welcome all of you to our farm family and look forward to getting to know you all this season.

We are thinking of having an “Apple Blossom/Beltaine Celebration” during apple bloom in late May. It would be a way for all of you to meet and enjoy the beauty of 1000 apple trees in bloom. We can plan games for the kids, have a maypole, everyone bring your instruments and something for potluck. What do you all think of that idea? We’ll have to set the date later based on the weather. Bloom often falls close to Memorial Day.

I will, with everyone’s permission, send out the phone numbers and e-mail addresses for the groups on MDI, Ellsworth, and Bangor so that you can get in touch with each other and coordinate your pickups.

We have hired one apprentice, Sarah Wilcox, from Augusta, who will start next weekend and we are hoping for one more person to round out our staff for this season.

Happy Spring!

Thank you,

Charlotte and Jim