ALFN Local Food Club:  Market Reminder

Remember to make your order in the ALFN market before it closes tomorrow at noon!

Also, please send me an email if you know of any individuals who may be interested in filling our Treasurer position this fall.

Order challenge: see if you can assemble a mixture of products from the market as an edible firework. From veggie sparklers to peach starbursts, I bet we could order up some fantastic colors on the plate that would mirror the night sky this 4th. Order those melons and get everything iced up…it’s time to party.

Cheers

Kyle Holton
Program & Market Manager

Fisher's Produce Tulsa:  Opening the Online Market

Hello Friends,

We are sorry for not having had the online market open for the last several weeks. And now that we are opening it, we are a bit late. We will need orders in by 4:00pm if possible. The sooner the better.

Thanks to those of you who joined us for the farm tour and dinner on Sunday evening! We really enjoyed the fellowship and pleasure of meeting some of you for the first time.

We will be checking our sweet corn this afternoon to see if any is ripe yet. If there is, we will include some in the CSA and take the rest to Brookside Market. We are not going to have as much or as nice of corn as usual on account of too much rain in May and June.

This week’s CSA will likely include:

3 pounds of tomatoes
summer squash
Potatoes
Beets and Carrots
Yellow Candy Sweet Onions
1 bulb garlic
and some combination of eggplant, sweet corn, peppers, and/or cucumbers depending on availability

This week we will be delivering to JCT and not Spirit Event Center. Other locations as usual.

Luke

Champaign, OH:  A Day In The Life

It’s that time of the week, again!!

Time for another vendor Day In The Life story!! This week, we get to read all about life on the farm with Lee and Jennifer Ruff of End Of The Road Farms!

They come to us from their amazing farm in Fletcher. If you were able to go on their farm tour, last year, you fell in love with their story, their family, and their farm.

If you were not able to attend that tour, you get to learn all about them in this story of their lives.

Thanks for all the hard work, Lee and Jennifer!! We totally appreciate your commitment!

For the past five years that we’ve been married and working on our farm at the end of the road, the only constant through the seasonal changes is daily chores, at least twice and sometimes four times a day. Our three children under the age of four adore being out and “helping”, which makes for a slower, albeit more enjoyable experience. We currently have three draft horses, a feeder steer, 2 cats, 29 laying hens, 85 replacement layers from 10-14 weeks old, and six pigs – one of whom, Maple Syrup, we’ll breed come fall, another, Ham, we’ll butcher, and the other four, Toady, Bob, Fred, and Kitty, are already sold. All our animals are heritage breeds who live on pasture 24/7. The chickens are divided up into 10 moveable pens, and they get moved onto fresh alfalfa and clover every morning when we take them their ration of feed and fill everyone’s water.

Our 8 month old daughter religiously takes her morning nap in the stroller each day, allowing me two-three hours to help weed, pick berries, hang laundry, or do whatever needs done most outside (with her in cloth diapers and no dryer, laundry is a daily priority).

Lee spends half of every day in the garden. There is always cultivation with the horses and hand weeding/hoeing to be done with over an acre of market garden to care for, in addition to the weekly and biweekly plantings of our more important and popular crops. When he is picking for our Thursday Virtual Market drop-off, our Friday CSA pickup, or our Saturday Troy market, he can spend the entire day in the garden. As he harvests something, he’ll bring it to me at the house where we have set up a washing and packaging area, and I can save him some time while the kids play or “help” doing things like trimming beet tops, washing green onions, or labeling bags.

Everyone gets checked again at lunchtime. Eggs are gathered, pigs and chickens get scraps for a snack, and everyone’s water is topped off. Before the youngest chicks gained a bit of weight, they kept scratching the hay down enough to escape practically every day, and the kids and I spent a good portion of our morning rounding them up, as Lee was always conveniently working horses when this happened. The day of the Great Escape, 37 out of 48 chicks that busted out… and they were so little you’d practically step on them before you noticed them in the thigh high alfalfa! The kids have plenty of lessons on the importance of following directions well, as sometimes if they stand exactly in the right position where Mommy tells them, they successfully catch all the little Houdini’s. I’m almost sorry they’re too big to sneak out anymore, we were getting so coordinated in our efforts!

Our draft horses are central to our 21 acre, organic homestead that we are trying so hard to make sustainable. At 30 years old, our Percheron mare, Jane, is irritated about the retirement we’ve forced upon her, but we can’t let her work herself into the ground as she’d like. That leaves the work up to Tony, a 16 year old Percheron gelding who prior to living with us was a Renaissance Festival jousting horse, and Wilson, a 6 year old Shire we’re borrowing from a friend for the summer. Lee and the horses do almost all our field work. When he’s not working in the garden or harvesting one of our field crops (sorghum, spelt, popcorn, soup beans, field corn for the pigs, naked oats for the chickens, and hay) that are divided into two acre parcels in a six year crop rotation, Lee’s daily projects right now are building new fence, clearing out our fencerows, rebuilding old horse-drawn machinery, or repurposing the equipment we have to make it fit our scale. He is also moving an old barn home piece by piece to repair our own dilapidated barn with the timbers and lumber.

The kids help me cook every day… we’re on a big noodle and pizza kick lately, as they love turning the handle of the pasta maker, and like to knead the dough before pressing their handprint into the middle of the pizza.

Evening chores we do as a family, and we appreciate how Blessed we are to eat every meal together, produce about 90% of our own food, and spend so much time working with each other. For two years now, Lee and I have been saying that the best thing to ever happen to us was me losing my teaching job, since we hadn’t thought we were ready to make farming our full-time profession, and yet God knew exactly what He was doing, as we couldn’t be healthier or happier!

Hope you enjoyed a bit of our story!

Lee and Jennifer Ruff, and our three little Ruffians

New Field Farm's Online Market:  Lettuce begin !

Greetings,

We’re ready to start the harvest this week.

I include shell peas on the list, but that may be optimistic. They’re close to being ready, but I can’t be sure we’ll be able to pick by Friday. We’ll hope for the best!

With the cooler weather we’ve had the lettuce is also slightly behind schedule. I’ll lower the price a bit if the heads are smaller than usual.

It looks like it’ll be a lovely day today so we’ll be focusing on getting a good jump on the weeds which have been enjoying all the recent rains.

Overall, the crops look good and when warmer weather arrives we should be off and running.

Blueberries may begin next week. Certainly by the week after.

Enjoy,
Tim

CLG:  Tuesday Reminder - Market Closes Tonight at 10pm.

Hello Friends,
There’s still time to place your order for pickup this Friday, July 3rd. The market closes TONIGHT around 10pm.

How to contact us:

DO NOT REPLY TO THIS EMAIL. Instead…

Phone or text: Steve – 501-339-1039

Email: Steve – [email protected]

Our Website:

www.conway.locallygrown.net

On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Conway-Locally-Grown/146991555352846

Yalaha, FL:  New Market Trial Opening

New Online Market for those wanting to order local produce in Central Lake County Florida. We are just getting the market set up. Leading the charge is Aleece Landis of Aquaponic Lynx LLC.
Aquaponic Lynx LLC grows vegetables and fish Aquaponically.

We are currently seeking additional growers and customers, please feel free to sign up for an account. Fees for growers is 10% of total sales to cover costs of operating the market. Fees for customers is only $25 for the year per household and you can make your first two purchases as a trial before paying the fee.

Right now the drop off and pick up location will be
8748 Guava St
Yalaha, FL 34797
But this may change if other farms in the area want to host the drop off/pick up day/s.

At the moment I’m planning to set up the Ordering window from Tuesday through Thursday and pick up will be on Saturday afternoon and Sunday Morning. Farms would bring their orders to the drop off on Friday afternoon and/or Saturday Morning. I am open to changing this schedule to meet the needs of the majority of people who participate. Please feel free to share your suggestions with me.
[email protected]

I will update this description with changes as I see how the market grows.
Last update 06/27/2015

Martin's Farmstand:  Sugar Snap Peas

The online market is open for orders. the sugar snap peas are in season now. The hull peas are still not ready but will be soon.
When you come to our farm you are getting some of the finest “No spray” food around. You will also find that some of the headlands, pond banks and edges have not been mowed recently. I do this limited mowing on purpose as part of insect managment. You will also find assorted cover crops. Some of the effect is to provide food and cover for benificials and some of it is working as trap crops for bad bugs. I hope you enjoy some of our fine food this summer. Daniel

Tullahoma Locally Grown:  Summer Ordering

Hello.

This week’s ordering at the Tullahoma’s Locally Grown Marketplace is in full swing. If you have not ordered yet, please do so by Wednesday at noon.

Your freshly grown items will be available for pickup on Thursday from 4:30 to 5:30 at the Fuel So Good Coffee Roasters location (1407 N. Jackson St., Tullahoma).

Thank you for supporting our local farmers and growers.

Thanks,
Fuel So Good Coffee Roasters.

ALFN Local Food Club:  Market Update

Bluebird Hill Berry Farm just updated their listing for the week with a new supply of grass fed beef. Check it out!

Sincerely

Kyle Holton
Program & Market Manager

GFM :  Market is Open

Good Morning,

I am opening the market a few hours early today, as I will not be near a computer later this afternoon.

Please check out all that our vendors have to offer, and place your orders anytime between now and Thursday afternoon.

We do have several new vendors that have not got their items up yet. So check back often, as they may be able to get them online sometime this week for pickup on Saturday Morning.

Thank You and Have a Great Day,

J. Shelton