Category: Weekly Newsletters

Week of Sep 4th, 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.

We have a bunch of opportunities for Harvie Green members upcoming! I hope you can make it to one of these events this Fall. Register on EventBrite here. 

• Sol Patch Gardens on Thursday, Sep 14th: tour Collette’s cut flower farm in Braddock, PA, learn how she grows flowers in an urban environment, including the opportunity for a u-pick flower bouquet! Very limited slots available, email simon@harvie.farm to register.
• Clarion River Organics Harvest Celebration on Sep 16th – farm tours and harvest festival – FULL
• Gosia’s Pierogies Open House on Saturday, Sep 23rd: see this classic western PA food being made and enjoy eating them too!
• Twin Brook Dairy on Sat, Sep 23rd: tour Randi’s classic Appalachian farm and dairy in Eighty-four, PA. Very limited slots available, email simon@harvie.farm to register.
• Laurel Hill Trout Farm on Sun, Sep 24th: tour the hatchery in the Laurel Highlands and have the opportunity to catch your own fish in their trout pond with a picnic afterwards. Even if you can’t make it, you have to try their trout in your next Harvie order, it’s special!
• Harvie x Yarnick’s Farm Fall Festival on Sat, Sep 30th: get a free pumpkin, take a hayride, see the greenhouses, and shop the farm store in Indiana, PA.

We’ve had very positive feedback from members who have visited so far, here’s one quote from a member after visiting Birch Creek Farm: “We had a wonderful experience touring Birch Creek Farmery. Meeting the humans and the other residents of the farm was such an interesting day. Purchasing Birch Creek items previously was based on quality and flavor alone, however future purchases (some in my cart right now) will be more important to me in supporting the folks who own and work the farm.” – Harvie Green member 

-Simon Huntley, CEO, Harvie

Sourcing notes from Neil, September 2023

This is the month where summer meets fall. Along with it comes the best of both worlds. Whether you want to stock up on hot season favorites before they fade out or get a jump start on cool season crops–you can have it both ways in September. We suggest you indulge in the cornucopia.

Incoming: More and various apples and pears of many types–including more certified organic options. We will also start to see lots of habanero and colored sweet peppers coming in soon. Gradually you’ll see more winter squash varieties like spaghetti, delicata, acorn, butternut and more. And similarly, we will begin to carry sweet potatoes and fingerling potatoes too.

Outgoing: Peaches, nectarines, watermelon, cantaloupes, and other summer fruits are just about finished. Summer squash and maybe even zucchini will start to slow down as the month progresses too. Eggplant will hang around as long as we keep getting some warm days, but that of course will not last forever. Until then, enjoy September as it is truly one of the great produce months of the year.

 

Some member recommendations! Got one? Send it to simon@harvie.farm, for each one we publish we’ll send you a mystery box on us!

 

• 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

Member recommendations segment #3 – Lemon Pepper Chicken Salad from the Harvie Kitchen: “Just wanted to drop the Harvie Kitchen a quick (and maybe silly) note of gratitude. I’ve been searching for a good chicken salad since I moved to Pittsburgh years ago. I just love it on some crackers or crunchy toast, especially in the summer. The best I found was from Square One in Regent Square, which sadly closed. But your lemon pepper chicken salad is IT — the best I’ve found anywhere. So, I just wanted to say kudos, thank you, and (pretty please) don’t remove it as an offering!” – Chandler, Harvie member

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