Quiet Water Farm near Hurley will begin year two of operation in March.
John and Gretchen Kooyenga moved to her grandmother’s house last March and began their CSA, or community supported agriculture, last May. The flood in June shut them down for two weeks last summer, but a late fall allowed them to go later into October.
“We had the flooding affect us last year so we kind of felt like we didn’t get a normal season to start off with because we had most of it wiped out and to restart with less space. We kind of feel like we’re doing another start year in some ways,” Gretchen said.
For this season, they plan to grow beans, beets, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, carrots, cucumbers, eggplant, garlic, various greens (arugula, bok choy, kale, lettuce, spinach, Swiss chard), onions, peppers, peas, potatoes, radishes, summer squash/zucchini, tomatoes, winter squash and various herbs (basil, chives, cilantro, dill, parsley, oregano, sage, thyme).
They plan to turn the heat on in their greenhouse the first week of March and will start seeds then. They will have work to do once the ground thaws to rebuild their high tunnel.
“Our high tunnel pretty much got ruined last year so we’re still in the process of taking the old one down and a new one to put up once the ground thaws,” John said.
The Kooyengas attended college at Dordt University in Sioux Center, Iowa, where they met. John has a degree in psychology and Gretchen’s degree is in agriculture. Gretchen worked at the CSA The Cornucopia in Sioux Center for four seasons. John worked on a produce farm while in college.
“That’s when I decided I loved growing vegetables and something I wanted to keep doing,” Gretchen said. “We both had some experience and we kind of knew what we were getting into. It’s different being the one in charge.”
Doing all of the planning and marketing side of things has been a learning curve for the Kooyengas. But, they wanted to start their own CSA to provide more local produce.
“I think we both like to see local produce be more available and more utilized. It always feels like in the summertime you shouldn’t need to buy vegetables at the grocery store from California or a different country because we can produce it all here in South Dakota,” Gretchen said.
In the CSA model, customers pay for the whole season upfront, which helps the farmer because that’s when all the costs are being incurred by the farmer, but they are also signing up for some of the risk. Gretchen said a CSA is also nice for the customer because they build a relationship with the farmer.
They send out an email newsletter every week that tells customers what they’re doing at the farm, what’s in that week’s box and if there’s anything unusual how to cook it.
Besides receiving a box of produce every week for 18 weeks, customers can receive some extra items if there’s an excess or are sometimes able to buy extra items at a discount.
Interested customers can follow Quiet Water Farm on Facebook and also sign up to be a part of the CSA on their Facebook page before May 1. Besides the CSA, they also sell at the Brandon Farmers Market on Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. May through October.
Gretchen noted that the CSA differs from a typical gardening schedule.
“What we do differs from what you think of as a typical gardening schedule in that we start harvesting in May, and we’re constantly planting all the way to September, so that we have vegetables available for as wide a window as we can,” Gretchen said.