Newsletter – June 24, 2019

Dear Farm Friends,

Our first week was as exciting as ever, but this week is even better! We are so happy to be giving you peas, garlic scapes, squash, (may now include Q-ball which is a round zucchini), new Yukon Gold potatoes, red beets and red butterhead lettuce. The scapes are the tops of the garlic. This has become the new favorite of our members! It is extremely versatile. It can be grilled and eaten as a vegetable, minced and added to salads & eggs (like green onion) and it’s wonderful chopped up for stir-fries. One member told me the best pesto she ever had was prepared with garlic scapes. Another told me she made green garlic hummus made with scapes. Don’t be afraid to experiment with these little buggers, they’re wonderful!!

Fruit/Pickles: No fruit from the Western Slope this week, but hope to have cherries next week. It has been just as cold and rainy over there as it has been here! I understand fruit will be later in the season this summer.

It is Pickle Picking Time!! If interested in u-pick pickling cucumbers, please call and get on the Wait List.

Bags and Boxes: I forgot to tell you how important it is to return your vegetable bags every week. We reuse them as many times as we can. This includes any small produce bags for beans or peas. Distribution Centers will be keeping track of this, so don’t be surprised if they remind you how often you have forgotten or how many bags you have not returned! Stick a box in your car for extra produce not already bagged.

Remember: Food safety is everyone’s responsibility. We do not wash anything so the produce you get will be dirty. Please clean it before eating! Do not let produce go bad in the bag and take the time to dump or shake out any extra organic material left in the bottom. Please do not leave bags where animals can get to them or where people can walk on them! And do not store anything else in these bags. Thank you!!!

Facebook/Blog/Website/etc: Please be aware that I do not work from these social media sites; I don’t even have an account. Several members took it upon themselves to start these up and continually update them. Everyone needs to contact me directly by phone when you have any questions or changes. I will not only need your name but also your Distribution Center. Always repeat your phone number. Email is the same; always identify your distribution center. I know email is very convenient for you, but I am home only on Monday and Friday each week because I am gone delivering produce on Tue/Wed/Thr. So it is not the best way to contact me. I am very good about answering phone messages, but I do not have time to look at email every day. You can use email for anything that does not need to be answered immediately! FYI: I never look at the Blog; I simply send the newsletter to a member for posting.

Introductions: It seems that members are getting my daughter, Alaina, mixed up with Kyles’ girlfriend, Sam. Alaina now lives and works in the medical field in Kansas City, MO. Sam works, lives and breathes the farm side by side with Kyle. Dani no longer works for me. The only person in the office is me, myself and I now!

Thank you for a great first week. I know a lot of DC’s were on vacation either the week before or the week of our first delivery and you may have gotten a late notice or had someone doing distribution that was not your Distributor. As the summer goes along, things should even out!

Jacquie, Kyle and Jerry

Veggie Wash (Especially for store bought produce!)

Juice from a whole lemon
2 Tbsp vinegar
1 cup water
1 spray bottle & scrub brush

Mix and spray onto surface of veggies. Let sit for a minute or two. (Longer if trying to remove wax.) Scrub lightly on soft skinned veggies and more aggressively on hard skinned produce like winter squash, cucumbers, root veggies and melons. Leafy greens simply should be sprayed, let sit and rinsed.

 

Newsletter – June 17, 2019

Dear Friends of the Farm,

Welcome to our first week of Distribution!! The entire farm is really looking good. This past May was the seventh coldest month on record. And Meteorologists are predicting June to be colder than normal also. So far, we seem to be near normal temperatures. Because of all the rain last month, the entire area is a beautiful green color! Crops are slowly growing and some are a bit behind. The snow mid-May and the three hailstorms had put a strain on crops. But most have recovered and we will have to wait and see what happens as the summer goes. For now, the farm looks wonderful and we have an exciting year ahead of us!!!

Produce: This week you are getting peas, garlic, garlic scapes, summer squash (either yellow straight neck, zucchini) and oregano. We are hoping all three distribution days will get these crops, but it is the first week and we may be short. We will make it up to you next week if a distribution center is shorted.

It is very important that you return all your bags every week! Food safety is important to everyone. Please take care of your bag and make sure animals do not lay on it, it’s not left lying on the floor of your car where people can step on it and please remove all food debris before returning to your distribution center.

It is a good plan to pre-wash produce outside to get the majority of the dirt off in the yard (or an extra-large bowl set in your kitchen sink) 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. Did you know children have to try something 9 times before they get a taste for it? It’s true!! So make them eat a bite or two every time it is served!

Your Distribution Center: Please do not forget that your DC is a member too. They have offered to be a DC 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. A majority of our DC’s have 30 to 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 fruit. We encourage Members to donate their produce when going on vacation. Last year the Membership donated a whopping 1400 pounds of produce to organizations around the metro area. 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 yourself and it gives them a contact number when they forget to pick up…which they almost always do! Ask your DC questions! They are a wealth of information and will help you use your share. Get a cookbook. There are ten recipes for every veggie we grow. And, it was put together by members of this farm! It is useful and the recipes are excellent!!! All DC’s should have an exchange box for produce you do not want. You are welcome to take something left behind by another member. Anything left at the end of the day will be donated.

4th of July: Since the 4th lands on a Thursday this year, we will be doing Thursday distribution on Monday the 1st. The rest of the days will remain the same.

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/July 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 and it will start to mold in your bag from the heat. We apologize ahead of time! We do not intend for this to happen! We love what we do and care deeply about the land we live on, the food it produces and the people it feeds. We are the caretakers and we intend to take care of you and your farm!

Statements: We will send statements each month. Your first produce payment (including fruit, oil and honey) is due July 1st. You may pay these fees in full or in half and the other half is due by September 1st. If you are paying monthly, then continue making your agreed upon scheduled payments.

First Year Members: This year will be your hardest summer. It takes time to adjust to getting your produce this way! Plan on going to the grocery store after you get your share. You need time to process your produce by sorting and washing. If you are willing to put up with the dirt, don’t wash until you are ready to use it, it will last longer. Produce breaks down as soon as it gets wet. But I also understand you might not want dirt in your crisper drawer! The tenderer a crop is, the sooner it will need to be eaten, i.e. greens, summer squash, peas, beans, broccoli, cantaloupe, cucumbers and tomatoes. I will give you hints on storage as we go through the summer.

Newsletters/Blog: A Member with a better Internet system (than I have) will post my newsletters to the blog. Please notify your DC if you prefer to get a hard copy at the distribution site. It is important to read your newsletters 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. Access the blog by going to monroeorganicfarms.wordpress.com. Do not forget to check out our Facebook page or Twitter or Instagram (also run by members) for pictures and videos. Jerry and I do not have accounts with any social media sites, so please contact us by email or phone if you have any concerns. We will not see any postings to these sites.

The next u-pick crop coming up is pickling cucumbers and that will be sometime in July. I can start taking names of members who would like to pick pickles for canning. Please let me know if you can come during the week or just weekends or both.

How to contact me: Please remember I am gone 4 days a week delivering CSA shares or at farmers markets. I am home on Monday & Friday mornings or Tue/Wed/Thr late afternoons. The best way to reach me is by phone. I am very good about answering phone calls, not so much with email! I am just not in the house that long! Email me if you do not need an answer right away. But if it is about a change in your share or DC, please call me. We pick veggies on Monday for Tuesday, Tuesday for Wednesday and Wednesday for Thursday. Keep this in mind when you want to make a change! Whenever you call about your share, especially if needing to make changes, always identify your Distribution Center!

Thank you: Welcome to the 2019 farming season with Monroe Organic Farms. We hope you enjoy every morsel! I can’t tell you how excited we are to get started! This is just a sample of what is to come. My family is looking forward to a fantastic summer. Thank you for giving us this opportunity; we are very excited about being your farmers!

Jacquie, Jerry, Sam, Kyle and Crew