Frequently Asked Questions


DO YOU DO ALL THE WORK YOURSELF?
No, no, no! Henry works off farm and Alissa joins me full time in the summer. Our sons rescue us when it comes to mechanical difficulties, carpentry work, or when the winds are howling and threatening to carry the hoop houses away. Plus we hire young people interested in gardening/farming and/or needing a summer income.

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF BEING CERTIFIED ORGANIC?
With a third party (OCIA) inspecting our crops, fields, and records, the customer is assured that she is buying flowers and vegetables that are free of harmful herbicides, pesticides, mitecides, fungicides, chemically based fertilizers, etc.

CAN I RELY ON A FARMER THAT SAYS, “basically I am organic, just not certified.”?
My experience when visiting with a farmer who is not certified but claims he is growing organically?  Many times he hasn’t read the NOP rules and guidelines.

IS CERTIFIED ORGANIC THE BEST TYPE FOOD I CAN BUY?
Certified Organic assures you that your food is clean, free of chemicals. Certified Organic does not consider the nutrient content of the vegetable itself. Seedtime is on a constant quest to grow ‘beyond organic’. That is, to repair our soils and provide a well-rounded diet to our plants. If we nourish our plants, our plants will nourish us. The route we have chosen to reach our goal of Nutrient Density is via the organic program.

WHAT IS CSA?
CSA ... Consumer Supported Agriculture ... is a relatively new concept in the United States.  In the twenty years since the concept arrived on our shores, hundreds of CSAs have sprung up. Each CSA can be designed a bit differently.  www.nat.usda.gov/afsic/pubs/csa/csa.shtml 

Seedtime & Harvest likens a CSA to a magazine subscription. For each subscription, a box of produce and/or a bouquet of flowers is dedicated to you. Subscriptions are filled first, before we load for farmers market.

DO YOU DELIVER?
Your CSA can be picked up at Falls Park Farmers Market on Saturday; at the farm Friday or Saturday; and at selected Sioux Falls businesses on Friday. We do not deliver to individual homes.

WHAT IS YOUR GROWING SEASON?
Our climatic zone is considered to be Zone 4. We plan on the average last frost in the spring as May 15 and the first possible damaging frost in the fall to be September 15. These are average dates. We have had tomato plants damaged by cold winds the third week of May and in 2007, we didn’t have a killing frost until the last part of October.

Our farmers market season runs from the first Saturday in May to the last Saturday in October. The CSA season is twenty weeks.