Category: Stories

Week of Aug 28th, 2023

Harvie Green member farm visits so far:  86 /  2271 =  3.8%!  

It is our goal to get every Harvie Green member to visit a farm or a producer within a year.

Upcoming opportunities: Clarion River Organics Harvest Celebration on Sept. 16th and Harvie x Yarnick’s Farm Fall Festival on Sept. 30th – hayrides, pumpkins and farm tours! Please RSVP here: https://www.eventbrite.com/o/harvie-44999042673 

Eating with Purpose

I’ve been thinking a lot about the phrase, “eat with purpose” lately, and am curious what it means to you?

To me, it perfectly encapsulates the value Harvie brings to my life. 

For me, eating with purpose is:

• Feeding myself and my family the highest quality, healthy, fresh food I can buy
• Having my purchases be part of building a local food system
• Buying meat from farmers who raise animals with respect
• Supporting local farmers who take care of their land and their workers
• Exploring our community and making connections through the food I buy

I’m not trying to make my eating perfect but I do want it to be mostly good for me and my community. Maybe I’ll buy an Egg McMuffin before an early flight out of PIT or grab a bag of chips during a long day on the road: it just means I understand that trade-off. 

There are so many negative choices marketed to us by big food companies – it is so easy to mindlessly eat in a race to the bottom of cheap, processed, unhealthy food that ultimately hurts our bodies and our communities.

Eating with purpose fights this trend.

What does eating with purpose mean to you? I would love to hear your thoughts, please email me: simon@harvie.farm

– Simon Huntley. CEO, Harvie

 

A few ideas and kitchen hacks from your fellow members:

 

• Freeze your bread: this came up in a great thread on our member community – since the Mediterra bread has less preservatives than national brands, it may mold faster on your counter, especially in this hot weather. The consensus of the community is to freeze your bread and pull it out as needed! The quality is just as good and it will eliminate bread food waste in your kitchen.

 

• Member recommendations segment #2 – Classic Sun-popped corn from BjornQorn in Kerhonkson, NY: BjornQorn is a gluten and dairy free umami bomb! Plus, we love the company’s commitment to renewable energy. It’s really the perfect snack! – Caroline

Harvie Green member farm visits so far: 3 / 2239 = .13%! 

Our goal is to have every Harvie Green member to visit a farm or a producer within the next year. Visited someone on your own? Let us know! 

We are setting up visits with farms now and will send you a personal invite based on producers you’ve ordered from and the number of slots we have for each visit. So look for an email from me with an invite soon! – Simon Huntley. CEO, Harvie

Best in Show Producer Highlight! The Farm at Doe Run, Chester County, PA

Just last week, The Farm at Doe Run’s St. Malachi cheese won “1st place- Best in Show” at the American Cheese Society’s Judging and Competition Awards. This is one of the top awards in the cheese community and it shows that Pennsylvania is home to some of the best cheeses in the world. 

The Farm at Doe Run is well deserving of recognition- their philosophy is based on simple, sustainable farming. They believe that the flavor of the cheese starts at the farm and the cheese should reflect the bounty of the seasons. Olivia Haver, their director of deliciousness says “aging cheese is beyond creating something delicious, but a way of connecting to the land. We are below the earth, a part of it, while coaxing out the personality of a cheese that is a product of the weather, flora, and the animals’ microbiome.”  Their small batch farmstead cheeses are made from the rich whole milk given by their herd of Jersey and Normande grass-fed cows and from seasonal milking goats and sheep. 

The award winning cheese, St. Malachi, found on Harvie, is most similar to Gruyere or an aged Gouda, but there’s something else going on in this natural rind beauty. There are notes of roasted nuts, dried fruits, bourbon, toffee–even buttered toast. It is a cheese worth sitting with. 

 

Dear Members, 

First off, in regards to our setback around the new distribution center, we have fully transitioned our operations to our original facility while we work through the details to get our new space back open. Huge kudos to the fulfillment team here for making a very stressful transition look easy; by the end of last week we were more organized than ever. This work is setting us up for our move back into the new space and for continued growth in the future. And thank you for your support during this time: your kind words (and your orders!) have kept us going through the very difficult work of building a local food economy in our region.

Through this entire setback, one thing has become apparent –a Harvie box is more than a box of groceries – it is the connections built in our community.

It is our job to foster those connections between producers and you. It is our job to give you a sense of the impact you are having on producers’ lives and our local food economy each and every week. I realize that I’ve had a blind spot in this work: I’ve spent my whole life living on farms, working on farms, and experiencing first hand how food is grown. However, this is not an experience that all of you have had. Food tastes better once you meet the farmers, meet the producers, and talk to the chefs. Grocery shopping becomes more meaningful when you hear the story and work behind each cucumber. I want to bring that experience to you. It is so important to see how your Harvie box connects to the food community in our region.

So, starting now, it is our goal to get every Harvie Green member to visit a farm or a producer by the end of the year.

Our first two events are scheduled in August: a seasonal happy hour meal with Chef Curtis at Station (one of our pop-up partners) in Bloomfield as well as a pasta making class at Forma Pasta in Sewickley. Find all of our events here.  Later in September, we’ll have a harvest fest at Clarion River Organics. We also have events in the works with Goat Rodeo, Mighty Small Farm, and more. 

 There are hundreds of stories I want to tell you each week in the Harvie shop and I look forward to introducing you to these stories in person over the next few months!

– Simon Huntley 

CEO, Harvie