To Contact Us

Our Website: manchester.locallygrown.net
On Facebook: Manchester Locally Grown Online Farmers’ Market
By e-mail: tnhomeschooler@yahoo.com
By phone: (931) 273-9708

Important Ordering and Pickup Information

Ordering will be open until TUESDAY at 10 p.m., and your order will be available for pickup on THURSDAY between 4:00 and 5:30 at our tents located outside Manchester Farm Store, 251 Interstate Dr., Manchester. We can also deliver your order to your home (or other location) on Friday afternoons, for a small fee, if it’s more convenient for you. If you prefer to utilize this service, please place an order for it, same as other products, selecting your delivery area. Don’t forget to give us your location address in the comments section of the order. Also please text Linda at (931) 273-9708 for specific arrangements.

We thank you for your interest and support of our efforts to bring you the healthiest, the freshest and the most delicious locally-produced foods possible. Please encourage our local farmers by helping to spread the word about our wonderful market to everyone you know. We offer a great variety of local farm products, and our items will be in your hands in time to plan for the weekend. Wonderful local products are available for ordering from the comfort of your own computer.

More new farmers are considering joining our market, if they can expect enough sales to help pay their transportation costs. Please help us grow the market by sharing this e-mail with your friends and inviting them to give us a try. And if you haven’t ordered from Manchester Locally Grown for a while, please check out our wide variety of offerings this week. Also please let us know if we can improve our selection or scheduling in any way to better suit your needs.

Blessings,
Linda & Michael

Here is the complete list for this week.

Welcome Restoration Gardens!

What a joy to welcome Restoration Gardens to Market at Dothan! We hope many of you tried their microgreens last week as together we were scrambling to get their current products listed after Market opened. The Tavares family are new Wiregrass residents having recently moved to Slocomb from Tennessee where they were involved with several area Farmer’s Markets around the Cumberland Plateau.

Rather than re-invent the wheel I’m going to let them tell you their story in their own words.

“Restoration Gardens is a very small, Christian, deep-organic family farm. We function with a mission to bring glory to God by restoring the land to health and productivity, and subsequently, the people who depend upon it for life and health. We are so happy to fill our place in this virtuous employment alongside so many other wonderful folks. This is a necessary work that we are thrilled to see a revival of. It’s our belief that human life started with the soil, and that there is an immutable connection between the soil and our society’s health and well being – thus the name Restoration Gardens – connection with God through/and nature is restorative.

The term “deep-organic” signifies that we use mostly organic growing practices, but go still further, or deeper, by trying to grow healthy soil, plants and people – a whole, healthy ecosystem. Unlike “certified organic,”  which only substitute the worst chemical poisons with less objectionable ones, we are striving for a real transformation in our agriculture that will truly leave the land better than we found it, and do the same for people, too.

We are also well defined by other popular terms, such as:
Ecological and Bionomic – signifying that we are attempting to grow (and live) according to the laws of life ruling the universe and, as mentioned previously, nurture a healthy, thriving ecosystem.

Non-GMO – We strictly appose the development, and use of all GMOs (genetically modified organisms). We do all in our power to avoid supporting that killer technology in anyway, and certainly to avoid having ourselves or other people eating it from our own hands.

Remineralized, and balanced soil – Through the course of centuries of erosion and deplorable agricultural practices, our land has been steadily depleted of vital nutrients necessary not only for optimal plant health and vigor, but also human health. Many statistics are showing frightful decreases in the amounts of certain nutrients found in food now compared to levels recorded only decades earlier, food back then had hundreds of times more of certain elements, this is something no doubt contributing significantly to our current medical crisis.
As the old adage says, you are indeed what you eat. And the plants you eat are of no higher quality than what they eat. Thus we strive to balance our soils according to the monumental work done by the late, world-renowned scientist William Albrecht and those walking in the light he shed upon this essential field.
All the loss of nutrients from our land is going somewhere, and the bulk of it lands in our seas and oceans. By utilizing kelp meals, fish and seaweed fertilizers, and concentrated sea minerals, we are recycling lots of this “gold” back on to our gardens and essentially into us, the consumer.
Another area we find a rich mine of essential elements for plant and human growth and health is in the mineral reserves of the earth. Just think, the rocks and minerals have captured, virtually unchanged in many instances, the elements of by-gone eras and made them available to us now. When we use these minerals on our gardens, the results are outstanding.

The path to a balanced soil and healthy garden ecosystem is a progressive path through many, many seasons of constant tweaking and re-tweaking as we learn more and more, although we may not have attained total success yet, we are on that path.”

Still Serving Farmers

Those among you who have been with the Market a long time may remember Susan Owens who was associated with the Market in its beginnings. Like all of us, Susan experienced major life changes and her situation meant she couldn’t continue being involved, but being Susan, she has never stopped serving others.

Recently, as part of her many years with Vivian B Adams school, she is working with USDA and the Farm Service Agency organizing workshops for “home gardeners, small produce farmers and the general public.” Topics covered are 1) Growing and Marketing Produce 2) Local Networking Opportunities and 3) FSA programs for fruits, vegetables and specialty products. The first of several such workshops will be held May 23 at Backyard Orchards just north of Eufaula and you are invited!

Backyard Orchards all decked out for a Party
Market at Dothan will be presenting information about web based Farmer’s Markets at this event. For more information you may view both the flyer and the agenda on our website. It would be great to see you there!

This Week’s Grower Notes

We have the best Growers in the Wiregrass! Please learn more about them on our Grower Page.

AVALON FARMS: Thanks to everyone for coming out to the Dothan Nursery Open House Thursday night! It was great to connect with old market friends and put faces with new online market friends!! You are all a great blessing to me. All this work is only worthwhile if someone enjoys the fruits of the labor. Love seeing those smiling faces.

For the latest in farm news, check us out on Facebook AvalonFarmsProduce

SANDSPUR FARMS: Special thanks to everyone who braved the gnats to come out and see me Thursday. I love putting names with faces at all of our events, and seeing old customers again. We are restocked on our bacon and pan sausage. We’ve also added our cubed steak as well.

(Carnivores Like Sandspur veggies! Friday evening I caught one of our German Shepherds being quite naughty with her front paws up on the stove. Frankie had scarfed down all but a bite or two of the leftover Sandspur zucchini I had planned to have for lunch the next day! Ros)

Footnotes

We would love to hear from you! If you have a favorite recipe, want to write a product review, have an idea or request for an article or information, let us know! You can reply to this newsletter or write marketatdothan@gmail.com.

Market Schedule
Order Saturday 5pm to Tuesday 5pm weekly for Pickup the following Friday
Dothan Pickup: Dothan Nurseries, 1300 Montgomery Highway, Dothan, AL 36303
Daleville Pickup: Daleville Chamber of Commerce Office

Our Website: marketatdothan.locallygrown.net

Our Email: marketatdothan@gmail.com

On Facebook: www.facebook.com/MarketatDothan

We thank you for your interest and support of our efforts to bring you the healthiest, the freshest and the most delicious locally-produced foods possible!