Butterhead & Other Unpredictables: Veggie Share Week #4 – 6/28/23

Butterhead & Other Unpredictables

About 5 years ago we made the switch to offering a customizable veggie share. We wanted to try and stay competitive in a world of increasing choice and convenience.

Overall we are incredibly happy with the switch. We surveyed our members, researched the different software options out there,  and chose software we thought would work best for our members. Some members love the choice to swap out and shop with extras we have available, others love that they can do it old school and just receive whatever we create in the default box.

There were 2 HUGE changes in making that switch to using software – first we had to value items in ways we had never done before. Generally we just harvested what we had available in enough quantity for the membership and that was that. Software systems require lots of details and valuing to make a customizable system work.

The other HUGE change we had to make was that instead of harvesting what we have and writing you a newsletter and announcing the items on Tuesday, the software and customizable system mean that we have to make predictions of what we’ll have for Wednesday on Friday morning.

Let me repeat that – in a profession where things are growing and weather does unpredictable things, we have to decide what to offer on Friday morning for the next Wednesday.

This is a skill we’ve been practicing. There are lots of unknowns and guessing involved!

Let’s take strawberries for example. On Friday morning when I create the boxes, we are in the middle of picking the berries. We will then have a subsequent Monday harvest AND Wednesday harvest that will all go to the members.  I have to take the information I have (like how many berry quarts per row are being harvested, how many came out the last two harvests, what the weather is going to be), and make an educated guess as to how many berries members will receive. Then I have to put a value on that in the system. That’s right – I have to put a dollar value on a complete guess.

I spend a solid 3.5 hours every Friday walking the fields, taking copious counts and notes, and putting the box together.

Most times I get pretty darn close (it’s taken a lot of practice). But sometimes things like butt rot happen. In the lettuce. Butt rot in the lettuce. (Its other name is rust, but out in the fields we call in butt rot).

Rust/butt rot is a rusty, orangey-colored rot that happens at the base of a head of lettuce. The top of the lettuce looks beautiful, and then you cut in and…. ewww.
So when I’m out doing field walks and counting, I am generally walking the fields and estimating a certain amount of rot that will occur. This time I was off. On Friday morning we had 400 heads in the field, so I offered 350.  The rot was so so bad that we only have 250.

So to circle back around, it means I offered 350 heads of butterhead on Friday morning – but it’s not until this morning, Tuesday, when we are harvesting do we find out that the butt rot was way way worse than normal, and we only have 250. #farming

In other words, 100 of you will receive red leaf lettuce instead of red butterhead, because we don’t have all the butterhead we’d hoped for.

So if you are one of those 100 people that don’t receive butterhead: a) we are sorry  b) please know that farming can be unpredictable and sometimes our best educated guesses are incorrect c) customization forces us to make tough predictions in an unpredictable arena –  in other words, there’s no way for us to offer customization without a little guesswork and a few errors every once in a while.

Enjoy the bounty!

Farmer Cassie