Good morning from your vegetable farmers! We get so busy in our work with soil and plants and the business end of planning and selling what we grow that we often forget to tell you important things about how we grow food (and flowers) for you! We are a small scale, diversified, regenerative, soil-building, human-powered (as opposed to tractor) family farm using only organic methods and inputs. This puts us in a category with less than 1% of farms in the U.S. Thank you for choosing us!
Pictured above is a sticker from a new educational campaign here in Virginia, 4theSoil.org, aiming to increase awareness of and discussion about soil health, especially amongst consumers. We're so excited to help this process!
Specifically, here are some of our practices:
- We cover up the soil! This allows for the microbiology in the soil to have a protective layer over it and also suppresses weeds and conserves moisture. We do this through mulching and cover cropping.
- We use only organic inputs. Most simply, this means inputs (to fertilize and to fight bugs and disease) that come only from plant, animal, or mineral sources. To fertilize we use food-waste compost, mushroom compost, alfalfa, sea vegetables, basalt dust, a blend of more than 100 macro and micro nutrients, and more! These feed the biology in the soil that plants need in order to be able to uptake nutrients and capture carbon. (We don't use any synthetic/petroleum based fertilizers because they do the opposite to soil biology. We don't use any chemical pesticides because they destroy soil biology and most are toxic to humans - many are neuro toxins and carcinogens. We don't want those compounds in humans or soil or waterways.)
- We don't till! Farmers till because it kills surface weeds and makes the soil a workable texture for planting. We kill surface weeds with hand tools (or our actual hands!) and make our soil a workable texture through tending soil biology as described above.
- We mulch with straw, leaf mulch, re-usable landscape fabric, and bio-telo (a film that seems like plastic but is made from corn).
- We use a tractor only to move compost and other heavy things. We shovel the compost by hand out of the tractor bucket onto our growing areas, we plant by hand, we weed by hand, we harvest by hand. We use a walk-behind tractor to mow down plant debris before re-feeding the soil biology in any given area and planting the next crop.
Questions about how we farm for you are always welcome! Feel free to email, call, or collect questions to ask us in person at the Farm Share Social this fall. Date TBA soon!
Remember to collect Tomatoes in paper bags with your name on them! - (We don't put them in cold storage with the other vegetables that we keep in our walk in cooler for the night before your pick up day.) They are in a crate right beside the green boxes/cold vegetables. (Same for breads, flowers, and a cooler for fermented vegetables, and eggs...)
Vegetable prep tip: The vegetables we grow often need very little added or done to them in order to make a fantastic meal. Remember the guidance of "Salt - Fat - Acid - Heat." In other words, add some salt, fat (oil), acid (vinegar or lemon juice), and maybe add some heat.
Summertime meals for our family very often are a combination of three of our favorite things:
- GRILLED vegetables (whatever we have...scallions, summer squash, eggplant, non-spicy jalapenos stuffed with cream cheese...)
- SAUCE: Pesto/chimichurri with whatever herbs we have an abundance of (food-process with olive oil, garlic, and salt)
- SALAD with our succulent lettuce plus whatever toppings (tomatoes, sunflower seeds, nutritional yeast...)
Then we add to it some protein and carbs (grilled burgers and flatbread, for example). THIS IS SUMMER to us! It's so delicious and makes all our hard work feel worth it. Enjoy this seasonal eating! There are loads of options for you this week!
This month's HERB BOXES from Gathered Threads have arrived! The options look delicious and sumptuous! Choose from...
- Herbs for Body & Soul: Sleep Balm | Clary Sage Body Powder | Keep Calm Herbal Extract Kit | Lemon Lavender Truffles Kit | Orange Basil Sugar Scrub
- Herbs for the Kitchen: Herbs for Cream Cheese Spread | Butterfly Vinegar Kit | Mexican Pinto Beans Seasoning Kit | Thai Basil Lemongrass Simple Syrup Kit | Mexican Tarragon
- Herbs for Tea & Wellness: The Shade Sipper Tea | Majestic Mountain Tea Blend | Cal-c-ommm… (Calcium) Tea | Head to Toe Massage Oil Kit | Yucca Flower Essence
The delicious fermented vegetables listed here are also from Katherine at Gathered Threads. We've been making our own fermented/cultured vegetables for years, and hers are the most delicious we've ever tasted! Give them a try. Your taste buds and your gut flora will thank you. This month's options include: Caraway, Simply Sauer, Russian, Chinese Fisherman, Spicy Napa kimchi, Kimchi, White Kimchi, The Green & Black, Beet Kraut, Beet n Fennel, Beet & Onion Pickle, Gingered Carrots, Sauerrubenkraut, By the Bay, Red head, Apple Juniper, Rosemary'd Turnips
A note about Eggs - There are eggs available today!
Blessings on your meals ~
