You can also check out our new greenhouse and our new delivery truck! It is turning out to be a big year at the bunny. Our has bee crew is hard at work this month, planting potatoes, onions, direct seeding greens and carrots... even the tomatoes are growing already in the greenhouse! 

We'll be in touch through out this month as we get closer to our first harvest.... We'll notify you as soon as we know. It has been a funny spring - dry, hot, cold, windy a little mixed up. But things are off to a great start. We still have memberships at the farm, in Fairfield County and In White Plains, so it is not too late if there are folks who still haven't sign up yet. 

We hope to see you on the 6th!

Tracy and Dan

The big excitement this week was that on Tuesday a crew from Growell down in Chesire showed up and built our new greenhouse in a day! They came back Thursday and finished it off by putting the plastic on. They did a beautiful job. Thank you to the many members who helped us fund this project. So far we have made it almost halfway to our goal of $6000 to match the NRCS grant we received. We are hoping that our members can come out and see it next month during our Open Farm Day on May 6th!

Please come by and visit us and other CSA members on Sunday May 6th from 11 to 2. You are welcome to bring a picnic lunch, tour the farm, meet the animals and basically check things out. Kids especially love to check out the tractors and collect the eggs. We really feel our farm is in a special little valley and hope those in Fairfield and White Plains can come up and see how beautiful it is and walk through the fields where your veggies grow. 

Hoping you have a great holiday weekend!

Tracy & Dan

What is Community Supported Agriculture?

CSA is a way to reconnect families and individuals with the farms in their local communities. CSA is a refreshing commitment to local agriculture considering that most produce in our country travels about 1,300 miles while our own neighborhood farms are often unable to survive. CSA members support the farm by buying a share of the year's harvest. Members pay for their share in advance, providing capital for operating expenses such as seeds, compost, utilities, greenhouse supplies, etc. When the harvest begins in early June members come to the farm once a week to pick up their share. Members become more connected to the land by eating seasonally and by seeing how weather effects the crops. An early frost may kill off the last of the tomatoes but might sweeten up the fall spinach!

Our Growing Practices

We are strongly committed to sustainable agriculture practices.  We never apply chemical herbicides, pesticides or toxic fertilizers to the land. “Sustainability” encompasses a wider range of issues than those addressed by organic certification. These important issues include efficient use of water, energy, and farm resources, as well as biodiversity and the economic viability of our small family farm.  

Membership at Chubby Bunny

Our CSA members.... 

•enjoy eating freshly picked, delicious, chemical-free veggies 

•trying new varieties and recipes  

•showing their kids where food really comes from

•being directly connected to the farm where their food is produced

•ensuring the viability of small family farms

What's in a share? 

Our shares are a bountiful week's supply of veggies.  A share usually includes 8-12 different items.  As a member you can experience the benefits of eating what is freshest when it's in season - from spring greens like arugula to summer tomatoes and eggplant, and into the fall with lots of roots and winter greens like kale & collards.  We do our best to provide the basics like onions, carrots, potatoes, lettuce, and broccoli; we also love to introduce you to new varieties like celeriac, komatsuna and heirloom tomatoes. 

Local Membership

Local members have weekly access to our u-pick garden which includes herbs, green beans, cherry tomatoes, strawberries and more! 

Local members may choose  either a full or small size farm shares. Our full share is a good choice for couples or families that eat at home often and love cooking and trying new recipes. Our small share may be a good option for individuals or couples, for those who eat out a lot, aren't used to eating many veggies, or simply if you'd like to supplement your own garden. The small share is essentially half of the full share. 

Fairfield County Membership

New for the 2012 season! Members in Fairfield County enjoy the convenience of box delivery at four different locations - Darien, New Canaan, Fairfield Center and Fairfield East. Members are also welcome to visit the farm through out the growing season. Our New Canaan pick up site has been fully subscribed. Please contact us if you would like to be put on the waitlist.

White Plains Membership

We have a vibrant CSA community in White Plains, NY sponsored by Hazon and the Synagogues of White Plains. In addition to the csa delivery, this location offers monthly market days with local artisanal food vendors and a variety of other events throughout the season. For more information, including membership please contact them directly at whiteplainscsa.com.

For local farm members, we will be attending this year's Tri-State Chamber of Commerce Buy Local Festival. Sunday, March 25th 10 - 3 at Housatonic Valley Regional High School, Warren Turnpike, Falls Village. This event features many local businesses, food, entertainment and free massages! Stop by and learn more about the farm and our Community Supported Agriculture program.

In Fairfield: We will be attending the Food For Thought Expo at the Fairfield Ward High School on March 31, 10-4PM. This event strives to raise awareness and support for healthy school lunches as well as connecting with local providers of healthy food. There will be food vendors, cooking demonstrations, information on nutrition and more. We will be there promoting our new Community Supported Agriculture program and drop sites in several locations in Fairfield and Fairfield County. Please stop in and see us. We would love to meet our new Fairfield County CSA members. 

Stop in on your favorite local businesses and learn about other local business you didn\'t know were right in your own backyards. We will be there with info about our farm and community supported agriculture.

 Spring is here and the growing season is off with a running start.  We are busy taking the first steps to bring you all those bountiful baskets of fresh produce.

 We’ve been receiving orders of seeds, soil mix for starts and soil amendments. Each one of these events are exciting first steps of the season with the whole family taking part. When the dump truck from McEnroe farm came by with 6 yards of soil mix the kids were enthralled. (Baxter’s (age 3) current favorite book is about a dump truck that gets stuck). Later that week naptime was put on hold during a delivery of soil amendments. The delivery truck was supposed to arrive with a lift gate for easily unloading the pallets. Instead Dan and Tracy unloaded the 6 tons of Sea-Cal, Dynamin and blended soil amendments by hand into the barn. The kids played on the sacks as we filled up the barn.  And of course the kids eagerly await the “package man’s” (aka UPS) delivery of seeds. 

 By the end of the week we’ll be seeding onions in the greenhouse.  We’ve got a bit of a swap going with our friends at Moon in the Pond Farm in Sheffield, MA. Dominic Palumbo is going to bring his crew down and seed onions – theirs and ours, in exchange for a little heat and space in our early season greenhouse.  When it is still in the 20s at night those early propane bills to keep that greenhouse at 65 degrees F can make you wince a little, but with a little creative synergy amongst farmers we can all benefit. Our crew won’t start this year until April 2, so we will really crank out a lot with help from the Moon in the Pond crew and Dom won’t have to start heating his greenhouse so early.

 March is prime farm membership drive time. This is the time of year when we are trying to make all our orders for the bulk of the season –seeds, soil mix and amendments (but biodegradable black plastic, irrigation supplies, landscape fabric, row cover…Costing a total of around  $3,000!)  We also have a crew arriving April 2^nd to the tune of $5,000/month through October. Farm memberships are about 90% of our business so we truly rely on early this early season income to keep the farm going. 

 It is so great to hear from our members who tell us the CSA has changed the way their family eats, how much they enjoy coming to the farm every week or opening their weekly box, they love the freshness of the produce and how well it stores.  We’ve also heard from members that they love having a connection to their farm and farm family.

Committing to the farm now with your farm membership will ensure that we have the funding we need to get the plants into the ground and the food into the harvest bins come June.   We couldn’t be here without the support of those members who have already joined and paid for their CSA shares.  Our crop plan is set up for 250- 300 shares this season. We have plenty of shares still available. If you are a returning member from last year or have been considering joining the CSA for the first time, please don’t hesitate to sign up and send in your full payment. Thanks.  We are looking forward to a great growing season and can't wait to get into the greenhouse!

 Tracy and Dan 

There is still plenty of farm work to do - our daily milking of Patches, the family cow, and feeding the chickens, also crop plans, seed orders, taxes and all that.

Welcome to our new Fairfield County members! We are now offering boxed shares at 4 locations: Darien, New Canaan and 2 drop sites in Fairfield.   We've gotten lots of questions from new members regarding our farming practices.  In a nutshell, we use practices which are compliant with "Organic" and strive for nutrient density in our crops.  (This means choosing non-GMO seed, plenty of compost and appropriate soil ammendments, avoiding herbicides and synthetic pesticides.  If we choose to spray, we only use Organically Certified products and strive to avoid it in the first place by having balanced soils which produce healthy crops. ) Our one imported crop, Sweet Corn, is locally grown, non-gmo, but not organic.   For us, sustainability is not only about choosing sustainable inputs; it is a constant striving for a better and healthier "farm organism," including our employees, our neighbors,  our customers, our family, our animals, and the earthworms! 

We've got the super crew of apprentice ready to go for the season - Tonya, Kasey and Dakota from last season along with Mira, who has already spent a bunch of time with us. Once our planning is done we'll have lots of touch up projects at the farm and believe it or not the greenhouse will be starting by the end of February for onion seedlings! So here we go - off to fully enjoy the rest of the winter and "off" season!

Tracy and Dan

Farming Apprenticeships at Chubby Bunny Farm

An apprenticeship at Chubby Bunny covers all aspects of vegetable cultivation and marketing.  We grow over 60 varieties of vegetables at our farm.  Our season begins in March with growing starts in our greenhouse. We grow many crops in successions and will continue seeding throughout the summer. In April and May we start plowing, fertilizing and transplanting and cultivating outside in the fields. In June we start harvesting for the CSA and start attending our markets.  By the end of August we are finishing up with our vegetable planting, planting cover crops and starting to bring in our bulk crops. In the fall we continue to harvest and clean up the fields.  

We grow on about 10 acres and have a very labor intensive operation. Our unique growing system blends biointensive gardening methods with more traditional row crop growing.   We use tractors for tillage, bed shaping, mowing, and composting,  but are not heavily tractor oriented.  Our emphasis is on quality and yield, combining Eastern and Western methods of growing. Most planting, cultivation and harvesting is done by hand. Returning apprentices have the opportunity to take on individual projects in their own time, such as raising chickens, having a small experimental plot of their own, etc.

Additional Training

Chubby Bunny Farm also participates in the Connecticut CRAFT  (Collaborative Regional Alliance for Farmer Training) Program. Through CRAFT apprentices attend farm tours & workshops at 7 other farms in the area.  These workshops occur about every three weeks during the season and covers topics such as rotational grazing, small scale dairies, vegetable production and others. 

Living Arrangements & Work Schedule

Apprentices are expected to work 5 days a week, about 50 hours with the option to work at the Saturday market .  Attendance at CRAFT meetings is expected and is generally during regular working hours.   We offer a stipend of $800 per month.  Our crew consists of 4 apprentices and the farmers. 

Apprentices live in trailers with cooking facilities, composting toilet and solar shower. You will receive veggies, eggs, yogurt and some meat.  You will be responsible for buying your other food items and for preparing your own meals.     

Our Location and Community

We are in Northwestern Connecticut in the small town of Falls Village with a population of around 2000.  We are about 2 and a half hours from New York City (by train) and 3 hours from Boston (by bus).  We are surrounded by other small rural towns.  We are not far from the Southern Berkshires in Massachusetts which has many cultural activities such as art galleries, theater and musical events.  Locally there are several places for shopping, movies, restaurants, hiking, yoga and judo classes, ultimate frisbee, bicycling, crafts.   

To Apply

Applicants must be responsible, in good physical condition, have an appreciation for modest accommodations and a good nature.  We are most interested in applicants who will apply themselves fully to the tasks at hand as well as the educational opportunities that are offered. To apply send letter of intent and resume.