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How can you get good food and still be safe?

3/23/2020

 
As the past few weeks have unfolded, we’ve been asking ourselves as a farm, “how can we help”?  We believe two of the most basic things people need now and always are good food and community.  


Good food: 

We have set up an online store with meats, and a few veggies. (We’ll add more veggies in later weeks as they become available). A possible silver lining in this is we all have more time to be at home with family. Cooking together can be quality time. You can order what you want online, and either:
  1. Pick up your order at the Douglass Boulevard Christian Church main parking lot, 10 am-1 pm. It will be prepackaged and prepaid, so all you have to do is get your order and leave. Or you can
  2. Choose home delivery. We’ll drop it off on your doorstep for free for orders over $50. 

Order by midnight Thursday for that Saturday's delivery.
We'll update the store with new inventory every Sunday or Monday

ORDER HERE
We are only opening the store to CSA members this first week, for a few reasons. First, as our core farm supporters, we take care of you first. It’s part of our CSA philosophy.  So if there are glitches, or anything looks funny in the ordering process or emails, please tell us so we can fix it. So, please order what you need, but don’t share the link with others, at least this first week.  


Community: how can we help, how can you help? 
This is a new online store for us… we got it set up quickly to meet the needs of people who are homebound but need food! Or, who wan a safe pickup option for quality food. We also know that connection to others and community is important! We’ll try to give fun updates on what’s happening on the farm, photos and videos of the kids and otherwise hopeful news to keep you feeling connected and uplifted. We’ll also continue to share recipes as you may be cooking more, and please share your recipes and strategies by email or on our FB page! 

Can you help feed another family? On a more serious note, some families are really struggling right now with food insecurity. We can make some food donations, but we need help.  We have some local networks that can get food to families in need. In the online store there is an option to “feed another family,” and price points for that. We’ll create meat bundles for those families based on what is entered. ​
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What precautions are we taking?
The Douglass Loop Farmers Market is now an open-air grocery.  It has a slightly different location, in the main parking lot of the church, 2005 Douglass Blvd, and reduced hours 10-1. Please note the no socializing policy for the market. This is important to be sure the market can continue as an essential service, and is not a social event. We will be practicing extra stringent sanitation measures in preparation for and during the pickup, including the obvious hand washing and hand sanitizer, disinfecting any touched tables or items after each person, and implementing a no touch policy during pickup. Your order will be pre-paid, so we'll set your order on the table, step back, and then you can pick it up. For walk-up orders, we'll be wearing gloves and masks, and switching gloves for anyone paying on site. Preorders are the way to go, so preorder if you can! We will be sanitizing all items before and after pickup, and are thoroughly cleaning our packing and storage spaces at the farm. Also, we won’t be using any reusable packaging for the time being. 
​

Thanks as always for your support! We look forward to continuing to provide essential food for you and your family.
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Lions in the garlic!?

3/11/2020

 
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Don't worry, that garlic won't get eaten by the lions. (At least not all of it. The grass was another story though). We've had some really awesome farm/family days the last couple of weeks. It's so fun to see the kids outside playing, creating castles in the mud and in their imagination! 

The garlic and strawberry plants look good. That's garlic in the foreground. We plant it in late fall so it begins to sprout and grow.  Then it goes dormant over the winter so that this time of year, it's already planted and ready to take off. That way, we can have garlic scapes, green garlic and garlic bulbs for you quickly in your CSA bags. So, the garlic is looking good this year. The strawberries are looking good too. In the above photo, the strawberries are covered with what looks like a giant piece of cloth.  It is. It's called remay, and it helps the plants survive the winter. We hold down the cloth with sandbags all along the edge. Here is a photo of a strawberry plant:
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The edges of the plant are a little brown from the cold, but the new growth in the center looks amazing.  We're hopeful for great strawberries to start us out in the CSA bags in May.

This was a day that Adam was working with the bees, so the boys were playing "lion" while Adam had the hives open just a few feet away. It was a sunny day, so the bees were happy, and so were the boys!  This was just the start of their adventure. They also climbed a giant dirt mound from when we cleared out the pond last fall, rode on the tractor and helped mama pick up tree limbs from when Adam grafted.

​Spring goodness!


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Rethinking Breakfast

3/11/2020

 
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Remember when breakfast was a bowl of cereal or a piece of toast? (And maybe it still is?) Try re-thinking what breakfast looks like. Through much trial and error, I've discovered I need two things for breakfast to really feel good: protein and veggies.

I still will sometimes have some oatmeal with nuts or granola and yogurt, but the sweet taste in the morning just doesn't do it for me anymore.... and it definitely doesn't hold me over till lunch. Even the oatmeal with nuts feels heavy in my belly at first, but then I feel like I need more nourishment.

So I've created alternatives for myself.  This one is my favorite: kale with mushrooms and fried eggs.  I dice the mushrooms and throw them in a cast iron with a little butter, or just some water so they don't burn.  While those are cooking, de-stem and cut the kale small, then toss it in the pan. Let it wilt and then add a splash of vinegar, either rice vinegar or apple cider vinegar or balsamic vinegar), and then a little splash of coconut amino acids for a hint of sweetness. You could also use balsamic reduction or just skip it.  Then put those in a bowl or plate and use the same plan to fry and egg or two.

I won't lie, it does take a little more time than putting a piece of bread in the toaster. But honestly not that much more time. Maybe 5 minutes. And it's soooo worth it.  I don't do this every morning yet, but I'm working towards it because when I do, my whole day goes so much better. I'm energetic, my brain functions better, and I just feel better (as long as I've gotten enough sleep! But especially on those days, it's important for me to eat well to get through the day).

Making this one change has meant way more veggie intake for me, too, and is a great way to get through that CSA share! I'd love to hear your ideas for veggies for breakfast. Send them my way!

The Bees Are Alive!!

3/11/2020

 
Last year, we bought bees. Three hives. Not for honey, mind you! For pollination. (We have maple syrup and sorghum for sweeteners). They have a job on the farm. It's to go around to all the flowers and "spread the love" so to speak so that fruits will develop from the flowers. Also, as I'm sure you know, bees are so important not just for vegetable and fruit pollination, but to make the whole system work. We need them. They did their job by being bees, and visiting all the flowers on the farm, and then around October we weren't seeing them anymore. The hives had died. We were very disappointed, but it was our first year, so we thought, "well, we'll try again next year."  Well, over the winter we've made friends with a new beekeeper, Monica. She wants to learn to keep bees to do her part to help out the bees.  She came over to see where we kept our hives, and she volunteered to manage the new batch for us for the year.  We took a family trip out to the hives to check them out, and low and behold: 
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one hive survived! They were crawling all around the top when we opened the lid.  So she came back the following day with her suit, Adam donned his suit and we checked it out.  They truly had survived. Plenty of honey to help them through the winter, and the Queen was alive and well.

Those are the kinds of bees we want to nurture: the kind that can survive the winter without us checking on them or feeding them once!  We'll order two more hives for this year for the set of three. So when you get your tomatoes and squash and cucumbers and watermelon and butternut this year: say "thank you" to the bees!

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    Author

    Rae lives and farms on Barr Farms with her family. She loves cooking healthy food, trying new things, deep conversations with friends, reading, learning and playing, especially with her three children.

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