Summer CSA Newsletter: June 25th, 2024 (Week 5)
The pigs enjoying some sweet Strawberries!
Hi Folks,
Week V.
Major Relief from the “heat dome” with a cool breeze Monday morning was a major delight to the crew! “Fresco” was Andres’ word for the morning greeting!
Someone at the farmers market asked me “Do you test the river water that you use to irrigate with?” Well we test with our eyes, nose and mouth! There are no test tubes or water samples going to laboratories. For the irrigation water we prefer that the water is alive! We see a lot of life in the Mahoning Creek. To mention a few of the life forms we personally see quite often, Crawdaddies, Dragonflies, Caddisflies, freshwater oysters, Bass, Mayflies, Snapping Turtles, Eagles, Osprey. These beings are all a good sign that the water is good.
About 40 years ago, growing up on Pine Run, a smaller stream that feeds into the Mahoning Creek just at the tip of the horseshoe curve at the bottom of the farm, this river had a permanent orange hew to it. This orange color was iron fall out, a product called acid mine drainage. This was due to all the coal mining in the area. When we would swim here we had suits dedicated to river swimming only, as the butts and bellies of our suits were permanently stained a brownish orange.
Over the years neighbors in the river valley created the Pine Run watershed group. They made a transformative effect on this run, voting out an installation of a dump, planting riparian edges along the riverbed, also along with the shutting down of many old mines in the area, time and rest have healed this iron laden run to now be a beautiful blue. When I was a young girl, nothing lived in this run. Now we see Bass, Crawdadies and more! Life is a good sign.
We do however test our water that we wash our produce with and this is also not river water. We have a wonderful spring on the farm that sits on the bank of the hill to the side of where we wash and pack the produce we grow. This water filters through the earth and surfaces about 3 feet underground where we have a filtering pipe that takes some of this flow and this flow follows a 1.5” line to a check valve, (a valve that only allows water to go in one direction. After passing through this valve the water enters into a 4,000 gallon water cistern. This is our holding tank in which we have an electric submersible pump that sits at the bottom. At the top of the tank, at peak water level we have a float, very similar to the kind you have in the back of your toilet. This keeps water from overflowing. So when the water level reaches the level of the float this triggers a valve, and the water stops coming in, which is sometimes every night, after no one is using water for close to 8 hours. The water level reaches the top of our holding tank and then no more spring water is coming into the tank. We are never getting all the spring water. The flow from the spring follows the hillside, under the road to our pond and also to the river.
When the water comes into our packhouse it is first greeted with a sediment filter and then a UV light. The UV light kills all bacteria that could be harmful. This is necessary to pass any inspections for washing produce. Chris and I are the guinea pigs, we drink the flow of this spring unfiltered and without UV. We will know before anyone if anything is wrong with the water. We are the testers. Our senses will tell us if something is up.
Your Farmers,
Chris, Aeros & The Who Crew