Several subscribers have recently asked us “Where’s the asparagus?” in their boxes. The short answer is that there is some in your boxes today, but it’s also true that you haven’t seen as much of it as you may have seen in other years during the spring. There are several reasons for that.
First of all, we don’t actually grow asparagus at TFF any longer. 2025 marks the first year since 1995 that we haven’t had an asparagus patch somewhere on our own farm. Truth be told, we never had much luck growing it. We tried it in several spots, but it never really thrived. In particular, our comparatively high rainfall provided ideal conditions for a soil-borne disease that killed the roots over time.
As the years passed, California’s rising minimum wage and overtime laws made it harder and harder for us make a profit on asparagus. Meanwhile, more and more organic asparagus is produced in Mexico, which has kept the retail price from rising enough to cover the higher costs incurred by domestic growers. But the final nail in the coffin really was the five-day workweek. When it is producing in the Spring, the crop has to be harvested every day or the spears get over-mature. We never harvested it on Sundays, so we always lost 15% of the crop every week. But once Saturday work was no longer an option for us, we were losing over 20% — and all those overmature spears had to be cut anyway every Monday and discarded. 2024 was the last year we harvested our own asparagus, and once the season was over, we plowed the field under. It is currently home to the beautiful lettuce that we’ve been sending you.
Asparagus is a perennial crop that produces over a relatively long season — 6 to 8 weeks. But each plant produces just a few spears per day, each of which has to be individually cut while avoiding cutting the still-immature spears all around it. To harvest 100 lbs of asparagus spears, a person has to walk several thousands feet. (Compare that to strawberries, which produce roughly 100 lbs. per day per 500 feet). The largest patch we ever had was 5 acres, and each day we picked it the crew had to colllectively walk 5 miles. This is not just “labor intensive” but land-intensive. Even when we did grow our own asparagus, it almost never yielded enough for all the CSA boxes we pack in one day. We have been lucky to have a neighbor in nearby Esparto who produces organic asparagus on 50 acres — a scale which enables them, among other things, to have crews working multiple shifts so they can harvest every day. We have always sourced a certain amount of the ‘gras for your boxes from Durst Organic Growers, but this year marks the first time that none of the bunches come from our farm.
Asparagus plants have a mind of their own. The plants, which resemble ferns, are killed by frost every winter and go dormant. During that time, the field is cultivated and soil hilled up over the roots. Once the air and soil begin to warm, the spears begin to emerge and harvest starts. Most years in this area, that happens in early March or even late February. That tends to be a great fit for us because many of our winter crops are finishing up. But this year, the spears took their time. Freezing weather will actually damage emerging spears, delaying the start of harvest. But this year it was the heavy rain that kept the soil wet and cold. From the growers’ perspective, that is just fine since you really can’t pick asparagus in the rain or if the fields are too muddy. But from our point of view, the crop was not ready when we really needed it.
As I’ve mentioned a few times lately, we had a window of dry weather in January that allowed us to plant crops that we don’t get every year. By the time the asparagus started producing, we were already harvesting several of them. While we are trying to keep asparagus as part of the “line up” in your boxes, it’s pretty rare that we purchase an item from another farm instead of harvesting something of our own.
With the month of May rapidly approaching, we’re going to see harvest start on even more crops at Terra Firma. We picked our first Peaches today, which you’ll see in your boxes next week. And we’ve got small fruit on both our earliest Tomatoes and Zucchini that will be ripe very soon. If I had to guess, I would say this week could be the last time you’ll see Asparagus in your boxes.
Thanks,