Hello Everyone!
This is week 17 out of an 18 week season. I cannot believe how fast this year has gone by! You are getting sweet potatoes, garlic, red onions, carrots, red & yellow bell peppers, banana & jalapeno peppers, Globe eggplant, Cherokee Purple & our regular red tomatoes. The Full and Half Share will be getting muskmelon and new this week will be Zebra tomatoes. This tomato is green or greenish-yellow & striped, small and delicious! Continue reading
Posted in Newsletter
Just a quick reminder to everyone from Jacquie that if you are planning to pick any vegetables while you’re at the harvest festival on Sunday, you’ll need to bring your own bags or boxes. When you check in for the festival you’ll see a sign listing which fields and which vegetables are available for picking.
We’re adding a fun demo station at the farm for this year. Do you or your kids struggle with how to quickly separate egg yolks from the whites without cracking the yolk? Stop by the egg separation demo table and try out a quick, easy, and fun technique. See you all on Sunday!
Posted in Harvest Festival
Dear Friends,
This week you are getting red potatoes, white onions, slicing cucumbers, lemon cucumbers, Globe eggplant, a combination of green/ivory/purple/red bell peppers, sweet banana peppers, mildly hot anaheim peppers, a combination of your regular red, yellow, Brandywine and Black Velvet tomatoes, sweet corn and muskmelon. All produce fees should be paid in full at this time…Late fees will be assessed by Sept. 15th.
Harvest Festival: This is your last week to RSVP for the Festival on September 16th. Please Call or email Peg at 303-329-8506/wrdwrrior@comcast.net no later than September 9th ! Guests (children and adults) will pay $10 per person to join the fun. Continue reading
Posted in Newsletter
Dear Friends of the Farm,
This week you are getting red potatoes, Walla Walla onions, white carrots, white turnips, red cabbage, slicing and lemon cucumbers, summer squash, purple and green bell peppers, jalapeno peppers, green beans, corn Brandywine, Black velvet and slicing tomatoes, orange flesh honeydew and Charleston Gray watermelon.
This will be the last week to get Walla Walla onions. They are not holding up to the heat and we need to give what we have to you now before they all go bad! They are a very fragile, sweet, fresh market onion and are a little temperamental! Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Dear Members,
Veggies: We are half way through the 2012 Summer Season ~ man o man did it ever go by fast! Hard to believe we only have 9 weeks left to our season! This week you are getting: red potatoes, white onions, orange carrots, white turnips, slicing & lemon cucumbers, one of three types of eggplant; Japanese, Globe or Striped Nubia, green & purple bell peppers, yellow beans, tomatoes; regular red & black velvet, possibly some Gold & Brandywine too, a different variety of watermelon called Crimson Sweet, a new honeydew called Honey Yellow (yellow skin and orange flesh) plus our standard ol’ muskmelon (that really bad one no-one likes! There is no reason to try any other kinds…agreed?) Continue reading
Posted in Newsletter
Dear Friends of the Farm,
Unprecedented Start: Members who have been with us for many years can tell you this is the earliest start date we have ever had! It is mind boggling what is happening here. I have been asked about our water situation. And yes, we will be fine this year because last year was so wet. But here we are again, in a severe drought. If we do not get rain or snow this winter, our situation could be quite different for 2013. But we will have to worry about that later! For now, we have an exciting year ahead of us!!!
Produce: We deliver produce every week on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Your Distribution Center (DC) location will determine the day of delivery. Your produce will come dirty. We do not have refrigerated trucks, nor is there refrigeration at the DC. So don’t be surprised if some of your crops will be wilted. These are very hardy vigorous plants. A cold water bath is all they need to refresh them and make them look amazing. Especially your lettuce. Give them and your carrots time to hydrate. It may take several hours, so don’t get discouraged! It is a good plan on pre-washing outside to get the majority of the dirt off in the yard and not down your drain pipes. Children especially love this task. (They are very good at picking off the worms in your corn too! Make it a game and see how many they can find.) By getting your kids involved in the pre-prep work, talking about the produce & asking them what they want to eat will help get them motivated to try the different varieties.
This Week: You are getting a variety of veggies this week. Because of the heat and lack of rain, our spring veggies didn’t germinate well. Our fields are a little lopsided! So there is a chance that no two days will be getting the same combination of produce for a few weeks. You could see garlic, peas, Butterhead lettuce, a romaine type lettuce called Freckles (don’t throw away, it’s supposed to have spots), Chinese cabbage, turnips, kohlrabi and popcorn. We planted the different varieties of greens so that we could give them out throughout the spring. But since three varieties are on right now, we will not have several weeks of greens. Now I know this isn’t an earth-shattering amount of produce or a large variety. Our springs always start off this way and it does get better. I know you will be pleased with your produce! Nothing tastes better than spring crops!!
Eggs: After collecting the data and making the schedule for egg distribution, we will be cancelling all egg orders for new 2012 members. Our old chickens are not laying as many eggs as we were expecting and the new chickens will not begin to lay until July. We will retain your order and deliver eggs if our numbers increase. Everyone who ordered two dozen eggs each week will be reduced to one dozen a week. I am so sorry for this inconvenience, but this is the reality of farm production!
Fruit: I have spoken to Chris Kropp from First Fruits Organic Orchard and they tell me they are having the best growing season ever! Their cherries are on early and we may possibly get our first delivery next week. The apricots and plums are looking terrific and so does the peaches, pears and apples. For the first time (in so many years) we may actually get all the varieties of fruit they produce!
Honey: Your honey is coming from Clark’s Honey Farm. All of the honey is harvested from the eastern plains. If you are getting honey monthly, you will get 5 deliveries; one every month. If you are getting bi-monthly deliveries, you will see that in the months of June, August and Oct. If you get a one time delivery of honey, that will be in August. I am currently working with Clark to set dates, but I am looking at the weeks of June 11th, July 9th, August 6th, Sept. 3rd and Oct. 1st.
Expectations from your DC: Please do not forget that your DC is a Member too. They have offered to be a Distribution Center to make it as convenient as possible for you to get your produce. They too have busy lives and are trying hard to please everyone. Most of our DC’s have between 30 and 40 Members coming by. Respect their hours and if you need to pick up at a different time or have forgotten to pick up during normal hours; please call and make new arrangements. They will hold produce for 24 hours. If there is no contact from you within that time period, the produce will be donated to a place of need; including your eggs & fruit. We encourage Members to donate their produce when going on vacation. Last year the Membership donated a whopping 41,545 pounds of produce to organizations around the metro area. Let’s try to beat that record! If you plan on having someone pick up your produce for you while you are gone; your DC will need their name and phone number. This gives them permission to hand out your produce to someone other than you and it gives them a contact number when they forget to pick up…which they almost always do!
Your Expectations from the farm: You are sharing the risk of farming with your farmer. This is no different than gardening yourself. Mother Nature does not always cooperate with our plans. It is unrealistic to expect everything to be perfect all the time. We grow varieties for their taste, not necessarily for their beauty! If there is an abundance of produce, you will get it. If there is a shortage of produce, you will see that too. Along with June rain we sometimes get hail. Don’t be surprised to get produce with scabs from the damage this causes. We try very hard to catch produce that is badly bruised. But sometimes this slips by us & it will start to mold in your bag from the heat. We apologize ahead of time! We do not intend for this to happen!
Newsletters/Blog: A Member with a better Internet system (than I have) will post my newsletters to the blog. Please notify your Distribution Center if you prefer to get a hard copy at the Distribution site or if you prefer to access the blog. It is important to read my newsletters each week because they will inform you of additional “bonus” picking days, other events that may directly affect you or the produce you’re getting and fun things that are happening on the farm. monroeorganicfarms.wordpress.com
Statements: We will send statements at the beginning of each month. It is time to pay your second produce installment. You may pay these fees in full or in half by July 15th and the other half will be due September 1st. If you are purchasing summer lamb, those animals will be going to processing in July or August. They should be paid in full by July 15th.
Welcome to the 2012 farming season with Monroe Organic Farms. We hope you enjoy every morsel! I can’t tell you how excited we are to have produce this early! This is just a sample of what’s to come. My family is very excited about being your farmers. Thank you for giving us this opportunity. We are looking forward to a fantastic summer! When there are extra crops to pick you will hear about them through one of the newsletters. Feel free to give me a call if you have any questions. Your Distributors are a wealth of information; they too can answer most of your questions. Best way to reach me is by phone, especially when the busy spring becomes an extremely busy summer!
Jacquie, Jerry, Kyle and Alaina Monroe
Posted in Newsletter
Jacquie is trying to gauge if there is enough interest from CSA members to offer some cooking classes – won’t you take a minute to answer the survey if you have any interest?
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/C3MTLL6
Thanks!
Posted in Community
Thanks to Linda Hoornbeek who took this picture last week, now you know!
Posted in Farm Shares, Winter Shares
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