Looking Ahead

Dear Farm Community -

Can you believe these teeny tiny seeds we carefully placed into seed trays this week will eventually be the juicy delicious tomatoes we’ll be eating all summer? The magic of seeds is mind boggling! Beyond that, the game of chess that is farming is pretty wild too - the journey of the summer harvest has its first steps in January! Plus we’re shuffling fields, flipping beds, silage tarping, cover cropping, and finding the perfect pairings of crop successions to maximize the usage of our space, minimize the labor necessary for the turnover, and make sure the soil’s nutrients are right where they need to be. It can make you dizzy! Fortunately planning is the name of the game and our crew is great at getting together and figuring things out. This past week we held our annual meeting of the minds where our whole staff gets together to discuss the past year and set our sights on how to make the coming year even better. It’s a celebration and of our successes and a reflection on our shortcomings. It leaves us with new years resolutions of sorts, but instead of “hit the gym twice a week” or “start a skincare routine” our list is more like “sort through the random piles of irrigation tape,” “wash the scuffle hoes after every use,” and “improve tomato string weave." But we are fortunate to have had a huge list of successes from 2023, one of our proudest being a successful first CSA year! Which brings me to my final tidbit……..

Diamond Hill Farm’s 2024 CSA sign-ups will be going live next week! The newsletter next Monday will have more details, but here’s the basics: we will be having small February CSA (4 weeks), which will be immediately followed by our Spring 2024 CSA (13 weeks), Summer 2024 CSA (13 weeks), and Fall 2024 CSA (12 weeks). The February session will be veggie-only, and the three full seasons will also include a flower option just like last year! We will be offering discounts for whole-year and whole-season sign-ups. If you’re interested in perusing what our CSA’s looked like last year, head over to our blog where each post revisits a CSA newsletter complete with what was in that week’s basket (for instance, here’s what was on the menu early in Spring 2023.) If you’re new ‘round here and wondering what the heck a CSA (aka “farm box”) is, hop on over to our CSA FAQ page to discover the wonders of Community Sourced Agriculture and why you should be as excited as we are!

Much love <3
Diamond Hill Farmers

P.s. For the time being our CSA is local to the Athens area only, but rest assured we love serving our Atlanta folks at Freedom and Morningside Farmers Markets every Saturday!