Yes, We Have No Bananas, But We’re Working on Pawpaws, Apples, Elderberries, Persimmons, and Nuts!

When we get surveys back from CSA members in the fall, a lot of them ask, “how can we get more fruit?” Apparently the famed Schenk pear tree is not quite enough to satisfy share members’ craving for locally grown fruit.

Well, thanks to Enright Eco-Village and CSA member Suellyn Shupe, in collaboration with Imago and the Civic Garden Center, there are plans underway to add orchard gardens in areas around the greenhouse and the Terry Street Community Garden that are not being used to raise vegetables.

Plans call for planting native fruit-bearing shrubs, fruit trees, and nut trees, and in a few years CSA members may be enjoying pawpaws, American persimmons, elderberries, hazelnuts, peaches, plums, and black currents. The CSA is an integral part of the Orchard Project; Charles will be the orchardist and CSA members will have the opportunity, along with the staff, to learn from Charles about the planting, care, and maintenance of the fruit and nut trees. And members are invited to participate in the preparations being made to plant the native species this April.

There is a three-year plan to guide the Orchard Project, with the following objectives:
1. To increase the availability of locally grown food and make locally grown fruit and nuts available starting with the 2014 growing season.
2. To experiment with a diversity of native and naturalized perennial food sources, to increase awareness of these sustainable food sources, and to begin to restore the health of the woodland habitat in the Imago preserve.
3. To prepare the areas, establish the trees, and carry out ongoing maintenance such as trellising, mulching, fertilizing, pest control, and pruning.
4. To collaborate with Imago to educate CSA members and community volunteers about planting, care, and maintenance of the tree crops in both the garden and the woodland setting.

Work has already begun on the project; two Saturdays ago, volunteers thinned the woods surrounding the rain garden at Imago to accommodate a pawpaw grove, with space for the persimmon trees.

Saturday, April 7, is the next planned workday, when preparations for the fruit trees will be completed and elderberry trees will be planted. Enright Ridge CSA members: you can record work hours for the 2012 season if you come out to help from 9:00 am to noon on Saturday, April 7 at Imago.

First Potluck Scheduled for March 29

The Enright Ridge CSA has potluck dinners throughout the season to meet and discuss work and the organization, to socialize, and best of all, to enjoy and share the bounty of what we’ve grown. The first potluck of the 2012 season is scheduled for Thursday, March 29, 6:00 pm at Imago (back in the woods at 700 Enright Avenue, just about a block from the greenhouse).

The word put-luck first turned up in sixteenth century England. It was used there to refer to food that a host provided for an unexpected or uninvited guest—literally, the luck of the pot. It developed the connotation of a communal meal, where all the guests bring their own food to share with everyone else, in the American West during the late nineteenth century, possibly influenced by Native Americans who often had ceremonial feasts called potlatches, at which the host gave away gifts to all the guests.

Potlucks are a staple of community groups everywhere nowadays, and you never know what you might find on the table. You might find your new favorite food at an Enright CSA potluck this season. Please join us for the first potluck on March 29, meet some of the folks involved in the CSA, and try some of the delicious potluck offerings.

You’ll find the Enright CSA Potluck on the calendar of events we’ve recently added to our website, too.

Have a Hankering for Fresh Greens?

It’s March, it was 70 degrees yesterday, and growing season is just around the corner. But, if you are already yearning for fresh produce, we have news for you! Charles and staff experimented with growing some greens in the unheated greenhouse this winter, and they did well. So there is chard and lettuce ready to harvest in the greenhouse right now, and Enright CSA members are welcome to come and do a little harvesting on their own—please feel free to take what you can use.

We had some of the chard on Saturday, cooked up with sauce and some eggplant I blanched and froze last summer when we were inundated with it, and accompanied by a salad of fresh-picked lettuce. It was one of the best meals I’ve had lately, and of course it had me hungry for more locally grown produce from the Enright CSA. First pickup is just about two months away, but for now, there’s a little CSA lagniappe available with these winter-grown greens.

High-tech meets local & sustainable food

If you don't know what that odd symbol at left is, you probably don't have a phone or tablet or index finger implant that will scan it. But for those of you who do scan these codes wherever they appear nowadays, this one takes you straight to the Enright Ridge CSA website, where you can find out more about our community-supported urban agriculture project, get an application for membership this year, and see why the Enright Urban Farm Project is a pretty cool idea, right here in Price Hill.

The symbol is a QR code (I now know that QR stands for "Quick Response"), a two-dimensional matrix code that is readable by QR scanners, mobile phones with a camera, and smartphones. It doesn't do a lot of good here on our blog, but we'll use it in other places in coming months, such as flyers and displays that will help us get the word out about what we are doing at the Enright Ridge CSA as we encourage new people to sign up for the 2012 season.

For now, it's just a cool graphic to go with this blog entry, but I suppose if you wanted to try it, you could scan it from the screen and go to our website. Where there is a new direct link to the blog at the top left of every page--so you could get sucked into a never-ending circle, going back and forth from website to blog to website to . . . well, that's enough technology for today.