Joyful Noise Acres Farm:  Important notice.

Many of our vendors require a minimum amount ordered to be able to justify delivering to our co-op. Orders have been low for Cedar Rock Dairy over the last month. Unfortunately, if our orders don’t increase we will lose this wonderful vendor. We have not been able to find milk to compare to Cedar Rock.
It takes a lot of work to provide the quality of the products found on our market. The growers and artisans offer us the best products to support the healthy choices we are making. Please consider showing your support for these vendors by ordering their products. Your food dollars matter greatly to these vendors.

When we established this on-line market, it was a way to centralize your food gathering. Bring the farmers to you versus you finding each farmer and running around to source food. Also, we operate on a trust level. We know the farmers practices and they are completely open about how they raise their produce, animals and make their products. You can trust you are getting what you pay for. The same cannot be said for what you buy at the grocery store or even some local produce stores.

Thank you,
Mary Beth

Princeton Farm Fresh:  Clarification

The Market will not be open the week of the 22nd. That is the Friday we have graduation starting. Sorry about the confusion. I ran in to write this post from the water line issues.
Angela

Princeton Farm Fresh:  The Market is Open

I am always amazed at how fast the weather changes here in Kentucky. I am grateful for the Spring, but always wish it would stay a bit longer. This year it seems we went from a short Spring right into Summer.
This Mother’s Day was spent putting in water lines to the garden and greenhouse. In typical Magney fashion we bought the wrong parts and we still do not have water running. Ugh! Hoping very soon to have water to the house and the gardens, or I will become very smelly quick.
Next week we have two of our kiddos graduating so we will not be open on Friday. I hope that you can understand our desire to be at both of their graduations. One on Friday evening and one on Saturday morning. It looks to be a very busy busy weekend.
I look forward to seeing everyone on Friday,
Angela

Martin's Farmstand:  Sprouts and seeds

I have lots of glad bulbs to make your place pretty. 1/2 bushel of our homegrown bulbs can be yours for only $25. We also have lots of asparagus and spinach. Through the rest of May is the best time to get asparagus orders in for your freezer needs. That hot weather last week was kind of rough for the little transplants that were set out but the corn and bean seed loved it. As for this farmer- he would rather work in the cool. I do not envy the gardners that live in the south. In normal spring weather it can be a challenge to get heat loving seeds such as corn, squash and beans to sprout. This is especially a problem for those of us that do not use treated seed. A little trick that makes a big differance is to watch the weather forcast for 3 days of bright sunny, dry weather and then plant the seed fairly deep (down to moist dirt) When it is sunny the soil is warming but as soon as it cloudy the cold from deep down is pushing back up. As soon as the seed has sprouted it is somewhat safe from rot etc and it does not matter so much if it gets cool again. Frost does not matter as long as the sprouts have not come up. Daniel

GFM :  Missed Chance

Good Sunshine Monday,

If you didn’t make the mothers day celebration. You really missed a great day. We had over 19 vendors. We had a lot of nice things to purchase for mothers day.

Several new vendors have joined us this year, with a lot of really good stuff. They will all be getting on line shortly to offer everyone a chance to shop both here and at the physical market.

When orders are place here they can be picked up at the physical market.

THIS YEAR WE WILL BE OPENING ON WEDNESDAY FROM 3 TO 6 PM STARTING ON MAY 27TH. There will be quite a few vendors setting up on wed. so please come by and support your local farmers and talented artist.

Have a great day,
j. shelton

Athens Locally Grown:  ALG Market Open for May 14

Northeast Georgia Locally Grown:  Locally Grown - Availability for May 13th , 2015

Hey Local Food Lovers,

Hope everyone had a Happy Mother’s Day! For our family we had lots and lots of fun things to eat for this….our first mother’s day. It all started on Friday with the thawing of two pork chops from Wauka Meadows while we went for a quick jog before the thunderstorm came through. Once thawed I did my favorite pork chop preparation which is simply chopped fresh thyme and rosemary (it’ll be mainly the rosemary that carries through) rubbed on the chops with a little olive oil and then some fresh ground pepper. I let them sit that way for a half hour to let the flavors soak in. Then onto the grill for just a minute or so on high to sear the meat on both sides, then down to low for a nice long slow cook.

As a side we tried something new. We had beet greens from Trillium Farms (those came from the Clarkesville Farmers Market not Locally Grown, we like to get around to all the local food we can find if you know what I mean), beets from Mountain Earth, and oranges from …..o.k. from the grocery store….but what did you expect…..we can’t grow oranges around here. I had a vague idea of beet orange salad but had never had one. It’s so simple and beautiful it’s perfect. First, everyone should know how to properly roast a beet, and I don’t mean bake it to death where it’s all dried out. I learned this from Alice Waters. You simply take a baking dish or pan and put just a little bit of water in the bottom, enough to cover the bottom of the pan (.25 inch let’s say or a little more) then add the beet roots, then put foil over the top, bake on 400 for about 45 minutes. Beets will come out tender to the fork. You can peel if you like. I just ran cool water on them to cool them down fast chopped them up in a bowl, then parboiled the beet greens (that just means flash boil them for about a minute), chopped them up and added them. Then I zested an orange, peeled it, broke it into sections and actually I just pulled it apart into pieces (you could chop it just as easy). It all went in a bowl and got chilled for 20 minutes. Boom, beet/orange salad. You can add a fancy vinegar like a champagne vinegar, but we went without and it was great just simple.

Then for desert we had strawberries, wonderful strawberries. We ate them raw, then we also cut them into pieces and sprinkled with vanilla extract and sugar and let them sit. Then after 20 minutes some of those went into a blender with a few scoops of ice-cream and some milk to make a really good milk shake. The rest went into homemade popsicles. Half the popsicle was the strawberry/vanilla/sugar mixture with yogurt mixed in. The other half of the popsicle was mango mixed with mint and green juice (which is a vegetable and fruit juice blend).

As you can see it was a tasty start to the weekend. Also this weekend we had Leah Lake collard greens, some BG farms bacon, and lasagna made with BG farms beef, and a combination of beet greens and spinach. Sounds strange …..tastes amazing! And of course more strawberries.

Spring is my favorite time of year for eating local.

I hope it becomes your favorite time as well.

Two big announcements before I go.

We’re looking for some very important volunteers to help us with a few projects this year. And even if you don’t have the time I hope you’ll help us spread the word on these two great activities we have coming up.

The first is a brand new project for us. While we have FORUM communications helping us for two more months developing a wide range of marketing tools, we came up with the idea to begin compiling our own RECIPE BOOK with Locally Grown items, and dishes made by YOU GUYS our customers, also dishes by our FARMERS and even some CHEFS. If you would like to be involved in helping us compile recipes, collecting them from some of our friends, and possibly even taking photographs and other interesting tasks, we’d like to find one or two volunteers to help with this project. We will have a template for making the recipes look attractive so we can start to circulate them as we collect them. The long range goal though is to come up with enough (at least 40 or more) to compile into a Book, which should help to entice even more people to EAT LOCAL.

If you’re interested in such a task just send Andrew an e-mail Andrew.NGLG@gmail.com and let us know why you’re interested, and what skills, talents or interests you think you might be able to lend.

The second VOLUNTEER effort is helping out on some of our Locally Grown farms, and playing Farmer for a day. When polled farmers agree, the single biggest way that we could help them and make their lives easier (other than eating their food every week) would be to come out and put in a few hours of work during the crunch time of the season. We’ve never organized an event like this before and we’re pretty excited about being able to lend a hand. Details are still getting nailed down but the week of June 22-26 we’ll be helping at least one farm in a very significant way. In exchange you can get a pretty big discount (over 30% off) on your purchase of a FARM TOUR pass. More important than that, you’ll likely learn a lot about what organic farming looks like, skills that you can use in your own gardens. If you’re interested, please add “CropMob2015!” volunteer day to your cart this week. It doesn’t obligate you to anything….and it doesn’t cost anything. But it’ll give us an idea of how many folks are interested in lending a hand. And we can also coordinate the best dates and times based on who is most interested.

Thanks to you all for supporting Locally Grown foods in all the ways that you do. There are more opportunities every year!

Eat well,

Justin, Chuck, Teri and Andrew

Fisher's Produce Tulsa:  Harvest Update

It has been a rainy week. Our irrigation pond is full for the first time in four years! Things are growing. Too bad we can’t get out to hoe the weeds for a few more days yet…

This week we are delivering to Brookside Market, B’nai Emunah, Spirit Event Center, and Okmulgee.

Our CSA bags will likely include:

Strawberries
Broccoli
Carrots
Beets
Lettuce
and we will divide up the sugar snap peas
And maybe something else. I will have to do a garden survey tomorrow.

Blessings,

Luke

Atlanta Locally Grown:  Available for Saturday may 16

I hope this finds you all doing well. Happy Mother’s Day. The market is open and ready for orders.
We have lots of great hog shares ready for delivery this week. We have everything, bacon included. The meat looks fantastic. You will enjoy it.
Taylorganic has lots of great produces listed so order up.
We would like to be part of the 28 meals you will have this week. We cover you on all sides. We have eggs and bacon for breakfast, salad stuff with cheese for lunch and water buffalo, alpaca or pork an vegetables for dinner.
Give it a try, I bet you can find a way to put us on your plate emery day of the week.
We appreciate your support and will see you on Saturday between 9-10 at your selected delivery location.
Thank you,
Brady

Farm Where Life is Good:  Special Orders-- Spinach Continues to Shine!