Old99Farm Market:  Old 99 Farm, week of July 13 2014

The season of bounty has arrived, new crops to harvest each week. Raspberries, vegetable marrow, zucchini, squash blossoms, kohlrabi, beet, cucumber, are the latest.

Now’s the seasonal test of supporting your local farmer, whoever that may be.

Case in point, eggs. I have moved my price up and down as the hens are more or less productive, to keep supply and demand in some balance. But as you well know I don’t offer the produce of my farm at lowest prices, and it needs to be reminded that shopping for bargains is at odds with buying food local, direct and in season. If you buy eggs and you come here for other things, why not buy eggs too? Too expensive? Sure if you compare to the $3.50/doz eggs offered the Hamilton Market and elsewhere. If you can’t convince yourself of the nutritional value of eggs from organically fed, free range (on pasture 24/7) chickens, then you surely won’t see value in the better lifestyle of my hens, or that I keep them two years instead of one (egg production per bird drops by half but they eat the same). Nor will it matter to you that I don’t have automatic feeder and waters, so I have to walk twice a day to the eggmobile to feed and gather eggs, which amounts to about 20 minutes a day for caregiving. And the benefit to my farm fertility and ecological impact of pastured chickens won’t count for much, I wouldn’t expect.

So if you can’t see fit to pay a price for eggs that accounts for all these benefits, albeit hard to quantify, maybe you could ‘dollar cost average’ like they advise in the stock market: buy a few dozen here at my price and a few at the supermarket price such that your average cost of eggs is within your budget and conscience. How about that?

I have three beeves at the butcher, one steer and two yearlings, so-called baby beef. Quarters (50 lb)will be available starting July 31st. So far I have not changed my price from last year, at $5.00/lb hanging weight. Ground beef is is priced higher now at $6.50. Some steaks are up too.

We took our first honey crop off last week and now have liquid and comb honey for sale. Very fragrant, light in colour, delectable. Bring a jar, swap a jar. Same price as last year at $15/L ($12/kg) for liquid honey in 1 L mason jars.

Healthy eating,
Ian and Camelia

PS you should make a trip to the farm just to see the garden; it’s luscious. And the Maremma Pups are now 6 weeks old and full of life and curiosity.

Martin's Farmstand:  July 14

The website is open for orders. We have baby carrots, beet greens and lots of romaine lettuce right now. We picked the first summer squash and zucchini from the big outside patch. The early sweet corn has tassels and silk.

We have planted gardens and now God is giving us sunshine, rain, and warmth. We are coming into a natural period of abundance from now through fall. If you are watching prices you will find that in many cases your dollar will buy a lot more food in this time period. Eat lots of what is in season, by the time you are tired of it, it will already be fall. There is a different set of wonderful foods waiting for you then. Daniel

Heirloom Living Market Hamilton Mill:  Have you ordered? Market Closes at 6:00pm!

Reminder

Market Closes at 6:00pm Today!

Order Deadline for this month is Tuesday, July 15th at 6:00pm

Please share this information with friends and family to ensure that we will all have this great resource available to us!

Here’s the scoop:

Heirloom Living Market Lilburn:  Have you placed your order? Market Closes at 6:00pm

Reminder

Market Closes at 6:00pm Today!

Order Deadline for this month is Tuesday, July 15th at 6:00pm

Please share this information with friends and family to ensure that we will all have this great resource available to us!

Here’s the scoop:

Princeton Farm Fresh:  The Market is Open

What a refreshing rain this morning! I am originally from Nevada, so just about any rain is a welcome rain in my book.
I would love to invite you to our first anniversary tasting this Friday. We will have a sample table set up with some of our great local foods and a few of our growers will be able to hang out in a meet and greet session.
I can’t thank you enough for all of your support this first year. Please come and celebrate with us on Friday 4-6pm at Tractor Supply.
Angela

South Cumberland Food Hub:  Open for Orders

Good Morning from the South Cumberland Food Hub. We’re open till noon today for orders.
Click here to go directly to the Rootedhere Locally Grown Market Page

Have a wonderful day!
Risa

Joyful Noise Acres Farm:  JNA Farm market closes at 8:00pm.

Just a reminder that the market closes tonight at 8:00. Please take a moment to get your orders in.
Joyful Noise Acres Farm will be processing a few chickens this week so there will be fresh chicken available for pick-up this Wednesday. Let me know how many you would like to reserve.
Thank you for supporting local foods and local farmers.
Blessings,
Mary Beth

DeForest, WI:  Availability for week of July 13

This week, the market listing for Bauman’s Natural Meats and Pheasants still shows “0”. Check out their website www.meatsandpheasants.com/ to find out more about their farm and meats. They are selling select items through this market and will be delivering items to the host site at Forest Run Farm Stand for pick up on the 4th Friday of each month ( July 25, Aug 22, Sept. 26, Oct. 24). Their items will appear at Zero (sold out) on weeks with no delivery.

Forest Run Farm this week has Cucumbers, zuchini and a few tomatoes on the way.

Farmer Rich says his sweet corn is looking good and may be ready soon too.

Please remember that Note that CSA credit can not be used on meat,coffee, or sweet corn when available, so please pay for them with cash or check made out to Forest Run Farm LLC.

Friday pick up will be 3-6pm at Forest Run Farm in DeForest. Please make alternate arrangements for pick up if needed. CSA members that pick up at Hilldale should arrive between 8 and noon. All Farmstand CSA members can shop at Forest Run Farm’s vendor location at Hilldale Farmers Market both Wednesdays and Satrudays: Bring your punchcard. We still recommend pre-ordering (for Sat. pickup) so that you get the most variety.

Northeast Georgia Locally Grown:  Locally Grown - Availability for July 16, 2014

Hey Local Food Lovers,

We have lots of new curious customers checking out the market this week on the heels of the Gainesville Times excellent article in Friday’s paper about our recent expansion.

If you haven’t seen it you can read the article by clicking here

Before I give a quick intro of the market for all the newbies let me put in some plugs for some brand new products this week. We’re beginning to get some items in huge abundance and tremendous variety. Take beans for example. We have 5 different beans from 5 different farms, including some real rarities like the beautiful red noodle bean. Potatoes have recently been dug, and one of our farms specializes in potatoes providing their seasonally popular red, white and blue mix (perfect for around the 4th of July), which features a unique blue potato called Adirondack Blue that you can also buy by itself if you want to surprise your friends. I just added some to my cart to put some color on my plate this week.

It’s also cucumber time and even though the straight up pickling cucumber is my favorite I love to see the lemon cukes (they look like round lemons), marketmore and other unusual varieties are beautiful and delicious. We just had some mediterranean food this weekend and I’ve been saving some dill from my garden to make tzatziki which is just a peeled, seeded, chopped and squeezed cuke, with plain greek yogurt (I drain the whey), dill, lots of garlic, and a bit of olive oil and lemon. It’s delicious as a dip with pita chips or drizzled on a salad. It’s the sauce you add to gyros of course.

Before I get on a long tear on what I ate good this week (Mill Gap chanterelle mushrooms in a homemade alfredo sauce), let me welcome those who are finding us for the first time and try and explain who we are.

Locally Grown is a collaboration of farmers all over the North Georgia Mountains. Believe it or not just 4 years ago we didn’t all know each other that well, but thanks to this market (we started in 2010) and the Farmers Network we started in 2012 (which hosts the Farm Tour from two weeks ago) now we do and we’re collaborating to get more local food to more customers who want it.

Locally Grown accomplishes two things for farmers and customers. First, this brilliant website designed by our friend Eric Wagoner in Athens, GA allows us all to post what items we have available every week to a central ordering place. It also consolidates the orders, lets us know, and even generates these nifty little labels that we affix to every item so we know who gets which order. Second, we all live kind of far apart and even further from the customers we’d like to sell to. This market allows us to distribute food all over the place with two simple shuttles driven by our market managers.

Each week on Wednesday several hours before customers get to market, farmers drop off their orders at two locations (whichever is closest to them) one in Tiger, GA (outside Clayton) and the other in Clarkesville, GA. At each of these locations farmers gently place their orders in one of three sets of coolers, those headed to Tiger, those headed to Clarkesville and those headed now to Gainesville. After all their orders are sorted they get a check and get to head back home. Then the market managers drive the first shuttle between Tiger and Clarkesville and do a great big swap. Once that is done, the final shuttle from Clarkesville to Gainesville is driven. And that’s how food picked way up in the Georgia mountains (and barely into North Carolina) on Tuesday or Wednesday morning can make it Gainesville by Wednesday afternoon without each farmer driving it all the way down there.

The system has been working well for 4 years, and has been growing steadily each year. We’re also open 12 months of the year which is a little unique (lots of farms have greenhouses now), so you can eat fresh healthy food all year long. And our farms are required to follow chemical free standards, as well as other important practices like grass-fed livestock. We encourage you to check out our standards on the GROWERS page in a document at the top called GUIDELINES FOR GROWERS. As you’ll see if you shop here for a long time, we’re constantly trying to improve our standards as well requiring more and more local ingredients in all our various food products, because one of our goals is to build a local food economy that sustains beautiful and functional landscapes.

Before we go we wanted to ask EVERYONE to help us with a small task. We are looking for a couple of VOLUNTEERS at our GAINESVILLE location who might be willing to help us distribute food beginning just before our market hours between 4:45-7pm. Individuals could volunteer each week or an every other week schedule. Each volunteer would receive a delicious local food stipend (you can choose what you want right from the website) that would keep you eating well in exchange for a couple of hours of service. If you or someone you know is interested please send an e-mail to me at soque@windstream.net or send them this PDF . This might be perfect for college students, or really anyone that would like to learn more about local food and farms and get involved in a great new community effort.

We’re really enjoying expanding Local Food to Gainesville. It’s going great so far and new items keep popping up every week.

Thanks for supporting us and EAT WELL,
Justin in Habersham
Chuck in Rabun
and Andrew and Teri

Athens Locally Grown:  ALG Market Open for July 17