Mulberry Creek Farm CSA

Mulberry Creek Farm NewsBlog

Volume 2: Issue 1 – published occasionally at the whim of the editor - 1/25/10

In this issue:

Introduction

Garden News

How the CSA Works

Poultry Products

Hog Hearsay

Jams, Jellies and Honey

Miscellany

It’s mid-January, we’ve had a couple weeks of real winter, and then got a bit of a thaw. Glenn has been scouring the seed order catalogs and dreaming of this summer’s crops. The critters are plugging away up there on the hill and we have some recent arrivals. 2010 will be an exciting and busy year at Mulberry Creek Farm!

Garden News

We’ve only heard from one or two people with input about what you might like to see in your share baskets this summer – don’t forget to let us know. We will certainly consider any requests, especially if several of our customers request the same thing. While we use many heirloom varieties and harvest our own seeds, we also rely on seed order houses for many things. We will be placing seed orders within the next few weeks so if you have suggestions, speak now!

We had 16 members in our Garden Share CSA last summer. For 2010, we are going to expand. How much will depend on how many memberships we get early enough. March 1st is the deadline for early bird ordering this year because we have to pay the rent on the fields by March 1st. It’s beneficial to all of us if the farm can avoid borrowing money! Early bird orders must be paid in full by March 1st. $450 for a full-share, $225 for a half-share. I’ll get the order form updated and posted as soon as I can. Last year’s members have first dibs – we won’t accept any new members until after February 15th. After that, it’s first-come, first-served!

2009 Members only: For every new member you help get signed up, we will give you a week free at your membership type and level!

Regular membership due date is April 1st. Share prices are the same as last year: $500 for a full-share, $250 for a half-share. Half-shares may be either half as much every week or a full-share amount every other week. Again, I will be getting the updated order form posted as soon as I can.

We will again offer installment payment plans for non-Early Bird membership orders. You may order your membership at any time, but installment plans are not eligible for the early bird discount. Please contact us for more information or clarification.

Please remember that we practice sustainable farming and use as many organic practices as possible. We use pesticide and herbicide only as a last resort/rescue and our fertilizer is organic. Glenn has recently found an organic way to grow pest-limited sweet corn, which should come as great news to some of you.

This year, we are planning to rent an additional six acres, which will give us more flexibility in planting as well as provide more of a buffer between us and the conventionally farmed fields upwind. Your early share memberships will help us accomplish this goal.

Glenn is working on planning a larger and sturdier greenhouse and hopes to have one up within the next couple of months. This will allow us to start summer crops earlier as well as have early spring crops more readily available.

2010 Share Drop-Off Locations - We are planning to offer the same drop-off locations as last year: here at the farm, Hoffman UMC in West Milton, Five Rivers Vineyard Church in Englewood, and United Theological Seminary in Trotwood. We have had a number of requests to add drop-off locations. If you desire a drop-off location in Vandalia, Dayton, or any other place, we will consider adding a drop-off location if there are at least 3 members picking up there, and we would prefer at least five members per location.

How the CSA Works

CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture and embraces the philosophy of communities supporting farms and farms their communities. In exchange for committing your dollars to us early in the season, we guarantee you a share of the harvest all season long. Become a Mulberry Creek Farm CSA Garden Share member and receive a weekly share of naturally grown fresh vegetables and fruit (when available) from early June to October, and/or a monthly share of crisp, sweet storage vegetables in November, December and beyond as available. An egg share will get you a dozen eggs each week; a half-share is a dozen every other week, following the same seasonal dates as the garden share. For poultry and other products, it’s a more open arrangement. Some people prefer to purchase several chickens at once and put them in the freezer (which is great for us); others pick up a chicken every week or two with their other shares. Turkeys and ducklings are on demand or in season. There is more about what we think Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is all about on our “About Us” page.

Member Terms and Conditions haven’t changed. By becoming a member, you (the member) agree to be a shareholder in the Mulberry Creek Farm CSA Program and we (the farmers) agree to do our best to provide a bounty of seasonal, local, healthy produce to you as a shareholder. You are also agreeing to share the risks of natural farming with us and that those risks may occasionally affect the items that are included in your share basket. You are also agreeing that the CSA works within the honor system, that it is your responsibility to pick up your share within the appropriate time on your designated delivery day, and that you will contact Mulberry Creek Farm when occasional scheduling conflicts prevent picking up your share on time and that if your box is not picked up on the designated day, it will be donated at our discretion. We (the farmers) agree to be at the designated drop-off location, day and time with your share.

We all understand that there are occasional hiccups in the system, unforeseen circumstances come up, or we just plain forget! Those of you who have been members know that we’re flexible. If you can’t make it or forgot, just give us a call. At the same time, we appreciate your understanding when we have things come up or just plain forget!

So, each week you pick up your share on your designated day and place. We do appreciate that you return the previous week’s basket or transfer your produce to your own bags (we do often use bags and baggies for shares, especially later in the season when there’s more than the basket can hold). Spread the news about our CSA—show off your shares, share your produce and point people to the website! Enjoy the delight of eating seasonally, healthfully, and naturally! And of course don’t forget to share your favorite recipes and cooking tips that we can post on the website for everyone to enjoy.

Work Shares and Volunteering: We often get inquiries from people about working on the farm. While we are always interested in extra help, we are not in a position to hire workers. We pay in eggs, chicken, or produce, sometimes jelly or honey. We understand that some folks are unable to “get down and dig in the dirt” so, unlike many CSAs, we do not require our members to work.

However, we do believe that you, the member, will appreciate your produce much more if you’ve actually helped in planting, weeding, and/or harvesting and we encourage our members to spend a couple hours on the farm helping – we always make it worth your while! Or simply bring a lawn chair and enjoy the fresh air and sunshine and keep us company while we do the work!

As always, we’re open to responding to questions, concerns, rebuttals, and so forth. Feel free to contact us at any time.

Poultry Products

Chicken Broilers: Our supply of frozen broiler chickens is dwindling quicker than we had anticipated! Once the frozen chickens on hand are gone, we will not have chicken broilers available again until the end of March or first part of April. We hope to be able to maintain a steady supply after that. Please let us know your interests – several of the broilers on hand are already spoken for. Broiler chickens are $8 apiece and may be ordered individually or in units. We will consider a discount for bulk purchases.

We do have a number of soup chickens available – they’d be good for soup, chicken salad, the crock-pot, etc, but we wouldn’t recommend them as baking chickens. Soup chickens are $6 each. Call ahead.

Turkey: We selected the very best of our turkeys just before Christmas to keep as breeding stock. We hope to be able to breed our own birds for the entire demand this year, but that means that we need holiday orders as early as possible. We cannot guarantee having birds available if you wait until fall to order.

You will not find a better tasting or healthier turkey than a heritage bird grown on pasture. They do take much longer to raise than conventional birds you find in the store, so they’re more expensive. Our customers who have tried them have assured us that the benefit is well worth the cost. We thought we would need to raise the price this year; however, we have decided to leave it at the 2009 price, well below the price for the typical heritage pasture-raised turkey. As always, if you have questions, please let us know. To reserve your bird, we require a deposit of $25 with the balance of $5 per pound due at time of pick-up. If you’d like to make payments toward your turkey, the smallest birds will be about 10 lbs. and size will go up from there to approximately 20 lbs for the largest.

Duck: After a taste test here on the farm, we have decided to limit our ducks to the heritage Cayuga. Their flavor was phenomenal! Our duckling is sold out until mid-late summer but if you’re interested in duck meat, please let us know. We will accept reservations at $10 per bird.

Egg Update: Egg production was down for a bit during the darkest and coldest days, but is now again on the upswing and we anticipate having an abundance of eggs again by the start of the next share season in mid-February. Eggs are $3 per dozen: a full share of a dozen per week is $50 and a half share of a dozen every other week is $25. We do offer a discount for “Re-Use My Cartons” that puts the full-share at $45 and the half-share at $23. As with other share types, Egg Shares may be purchased in multiples.

Hog Hearsay

If you’ve been following our “blog-lets”, you’ll know that Luna and Nova both had healthy farrowings in mid-December producing strong litters. All available piglets from the December farrowing are spoken for – one breeding trio will be going to a farm in West Virginia and another six of our piglets will move to a farm near Cleveland. We are keeping one breeding trio and a boar for meat and we look forward to being able to testify ourselves on the delectability of Mulefoot meat next fall.

The next farrowing should be in early summer with availability in late summer. We hope to be able to offer pork by the whole or half-hog in early 2011. If you are interested in purchasing a whole or half hog for meat, we can raise it and have it processed for you. Contact us to get your name on a list for reservation information - first come, first served – or for more information.

Jams, Jellies and Honey

Just as a reminder, our old-fashioned, all natural jams and jellies are plentiful. Most are made from fruit grown right here on Mulberry Creek Farm. We have flavors you won’t find in the store, too! Many of you enjoyed the jellies and/or jams you received from time to time in your share baskets last summer – don’t forget to restock! Again, everything is $4 per jar except the seedless varieties, which are $5 per jar. We do ship – contact us for shipping and handling pricing.

The bees are still hibernating, but we occasionally see a few brave and daring ones active on the warmest days. We are looking forward to a great honey season for 2010! We do still have a bit of 2009 honey available. It is raw-honey without water or any other additives. There is even a bit of beeswax floating on the top so you know it’s straight from the hive!

Miscellany

Those of you who have stopped by have seen the progress made on the barn – the laying hens are mostly under roof, now, which is helping with egg production. Once they get used to their new home, Glenn will let them roam again. For now, though, there’s not much in the way of grass or bugs for them outside! There is quite a way to go on the barn, but we hope to have it completed before snow flies next fall.

We are also working on a new and much larger greenhouse. We hope to be able to have many early spring greens available, as well as start many seeds for transplanting. It’s always Glenn’s goal to have excellent tomatoes before the 4th of July!

We have the ability to rent an additional 6 acres of cropland, to our immediate west and south. We intend to plant some of it in alfalfa hay for the critters, but the rest will give us a lot more flexibility in planting so we should be able to avoid some of the crop failures we had last year. We’re still new at this whole CSA thing and are learning as we go. Hopefully the lessons of 2009 were good ones.

Those of you who have been to the farm since Thanksgiving have noticed how muddy and pitted the lane has become. We do apologize about that and are going to try to get something done about it as soon as we have the finances. We were all set to have a load of gravel brought in when we had the property-line fence issue turn up. All our gravel money went to that fence, which is great to have, but has slowed down the gravel project. We thank you for your patience in this!

As soon as we have some good days in the spring, we’ll be starting on spring clean up. We’d love to have helpers come out to collect trash and deadfall, get stuff picked up that has blown around over the winter, do some painting projects, work on early garden preparation projects, or just keep us company. Pop me an e-mail if you’d be interested so we can let you know when our workdays will be.

That’s the news as it is from MCF! Don’t forget to get those Share Membership orders in as soon as you can – and, as a reminder, 2009 members will get a week free for each new member you get signed up!

Eat local!

Peace -

Gail