Growing Healthy Families

The Healthy Food, Healthy Families program, now in its eighth year, is a vital partnership that provides the clients of CSA of Mountain View with a variety of fresh, seasonal, local organic produce. Twice weekly, Hidden Villa’s Agricultural Crew harvests fresh vegetables and fruits from our organic farm and donates them to the Food and Nutrition Center at the CSA of Mountain View. This year, we provided less than we typically would as a result of the drought, but we're excited for the learning that this allowed for our future.

One important lesson that we learned through this experience is that our stone fruit trees do not need as much water as we typically give them. They actually produced stronger, more intense flavors this year because of our dry farming. This coming year we’re excited to offer more stone fruits to the CSA of Mountain View as a result of this learning.

Our farm crew utilized this chance to learn about our land, procedures, and opportunities for growth. We currently use a drip irrigation process, a highly water-wise way of watering the crops in long, slow doses of water. This year, with the risk of running out of water especially high, our farm manager bought newer technology for our drip irrigation system. These timers allow the farm crew to be even more exact about the timing and duration of the water release. This new system of watering will be implemented in future years, allowing us to better steward the water, while maintaining the quality and quantity of production.

Although this year was challenging, we are proud of the farm crew here at Hidden Villa who have found a way to see the bright side of things.

Thank you for supporting us in continuing to grow as an educational organization even through the dry spell. To hoping for more rain in 2015!

Happy New Year.

Links:

• Explorers on the Farm (ages 6-11)
• Animal Husbandry Apprenticeship (ages 14-19)
• Raj Patel, Food Activist, to Speak at Hidden Villa on 1.24.15