To market, to market

"To market, to market, to buy a fat pig,

Home again, home again, jiggety-jig.

To market, to market, to buy a fat hog,

Home again, home again, jiggety-jog.

To market, to market, to buy a plum bun,

Home again, home again, market is done."

This nursery rhyme gets at my newest task on the farm, especially if you change "buy" to "sell": delivery girl!  I never thought I would get paid to drive a cargo van, but life is full of surprises.  Our farm has several markets for our produce, including a CSA, the Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op, the food bank, our own farmstand, and the Natomas farmers' market. 

Chris, one of my fellow apprentices, beautifies our Saturday farmstand with his chalk art.

Every other week, I cover deliveries to the Co-op and our CSA.  Lately, the Co-op has been purchasing our summer squash, cucumbers, and new potatoes.  Once our tomatoes hit, they will be a super important outlet for this cash crop.  Our CSA delivery is on Tuesday, with drop-off sites across the street from the Co-op and at our farm on Hurley Way in the Arden-Arcade area.  I load up the van with boxes of produce, check the inventory to make sure I'm not forgetting a box (having to come back to the farm because you grabbed the wrong box is no fun, trust me!), and head out. 

Squeezing the van into a tight parking spot.  Just don't make me back up.

The Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op is a great partner of our farm, and also makes a great 16 ounce iced decaf single shot americano with room for cream for just $1.50.

Driving the van takes some getting used to, for several reasons: you sit up really high, you have huge blind spots because the van has no side windows and because you sit up really high, and the van is wider than my little Honda Fit.  (The van also has a much bigger gas tank than my Honda Fit.  The first time I filled up the van with gas, I had time to wash all the windows while the pump ran, and ran, and ran.  When I returned to the pump to hang up the nozzle when the tank finally filled, I couldn't believe that the display read only 29 dollars.  I must have used the world's slowest pump.  Then I looked at my printed receipt and realized that the 29 was gallons, not dollars!)  My least favorite part of making deliveries is having to back up the delivery van.  Visibility is very limited, and if I am parked in a rightward slanting spot, I literally cannot see cars coming when I back up.  I often park on the street and walk just to avoid having to back up the van in the Co-op lot.

That's 29 gallons, not the 29 dollars I'm used to!

I enjoy the deliveries a lot.  I get a break from manual labor, get to sit in an air-conditioned environment, and get delicious iced coffee at the Co-op for $1.50.  Oh, and I get to drop off our awesome produce to our customers.  After I do my Co-op delivery through the back door, I usually re-park the van and enter through the front door as a customer--I can't live without Michaela's tortillas or iced coffee!  I enjoy strolling through the produce section and seeing our products on display, proud of what I have helped to grow and harvest. 

Our CSA provides a box of organic vegetables once a week, on Tuesday or Friday.  We pack around 9 different vegetables, fruits, and herbs into each box, along with a newsletter describing what's happening on the farm, what's in the box, and a recipe using some of the ingredients in the box.  The farm staff take turns writing the newsletter, but I wish I could write it every week.  I had my first chance a couple weeks ago, but I don't get another turn until the end of August.  Guess I'll just have to keep blogging until then.  While I enjoyed writing the digest, typing the digest was a nightmare.  I went through 3 computers in our office to find one that wasn't virus infected or super slow, and that had the right software.  At the state, we used to complain about budget constraints keeping us technologically behind the times, but life at a non-profit is much worse.  If any of you out there have an extra CPU that you aren't using, feel free to donate it to Soil Born so that I don't have to pull my hair out next time it's my turn to type the newsletter.

A recent CSA box with kale, collards, kohlrabi, lemon cucumbers, carrots, and garlic visible. 

By the way, it's not to late to join our CSA for the summer.  If you'd like a box of farm-fresh organic produce grown in Sacramento, look no further than here.