MEMBER SOCIAL: Sept 30th @ our farm... plus Farm Shares for September 30, 2023

YOU'RE INVITED! Our annual Farm Share Member Social is Saturday, September 30th from 2:00-4:00 here at our farm. Please join us to see where your food is grown, ask us any questions you have, and enjoy a guided tour of our fields. We'll have some humble farm snacks and beverages. Meet other members and enjoy the farm atmosphere for a couple of hours!

* We don't have a public restroom, so please prepare to be here for a couple of hours without facilities. :)
Granted, if there's an emergency, we'll help you out.

The photo above is, amazingly, from 3 years ago when we rescued a couple of kittens, but we don't think we've aged so we're using this pic as a reminder to you of what your farmers look like. We'd love to spend time with you on September 30th!

--> Hard to read this email? Tough to customize on your phone? BOTH of these issues are solved by opening this email on a laptop/desktop. (And switching to "Dark Theme" on your phone makes it more able to be read.)

Fall Crops are rolling! There's lots of Arugula, Turnips, and Radishes available for you today. PLUS our Tomatoes and Peppers are still rolling beautifully, so you have an incredible selection this time of year. The cucurbit crops (summer squash and cucumbers) are completely finished for 2023. The Eggplants are begging to be finished for the season. This is how our annual cycle carries on!

We got a lot of rain and had a few surprises over the weekend as our Saturday farmers' market was canceled due to the potential for dangerous conditions. (High winds with lots of market tents?? That's a recipe for injuries and property damage. No, thank you!) We shifted most Farm Share pick ups to Sunday and we did a "make-up market" /pop-up market set up at St. Stephens on Sunday morning to help us minimize loss. We are so grateful for a supportive community that allowed that pop up marker opportunity to connect with Farm Share members and customers. We're also enormously grateful for the people that bent their usual schedule to pick up food from us on a Sunday morning! Meanwhile, our FarmStand is still super-abundantly stocked due to the extra produce that resulted from not having our usual market booth traffic. Swing by for extras and/or tell your friends and neighbors how good our food is!

The storm also meant a LOT of rain fell on our farm. We'll definitely see some loss over the next couple of weeks (likely mostly with the brassicas/cabbage and broccoli crops) but we're grateful that our soil-health oriented practices also minimize damage at the soil level during events like this. Our habits of keeping soil covered and maximizing living roots in the soil help prevent run off when we get so much rain in a short amount of time. These soil-health practices also make it more likely for us to have successful harvests when using organic growing methods AND increase the nutrient content of the vegetables we grow for you. Triple win! That's why we farm this way.

Want to learn more about Soil Health in Virginia? Visit the fantastic 4 The Soil website made to help consumers like you learn more! AND attend our Farm Share Member Social this Saturday where we're always certain to geek out about soil health!

Bread Share members: You just got a SEPARATE email to customize your bread share a few moments ago.

To Customize Your Share:
Each time you are scheduled to have a share, you'll receive an email from us 2 days prior. It should have subject line "Time to Customize Your Share." The software will create a default share for you (based on your indicated preferences and what we have available to harvest) and list those default contents in the email. The email also contains a link saying "Want to make changes to your share or add extras?" Click on that link to customize your share! Customization ends between 6 and 7 am on the day before your pick up day (depending on the time of year and thus how early we start harvesting). The cut off time is always specified in the email.

For Pick Up:

- Please remember to bring your own bags each week.

- At Self Serve locations: Our vegetables are in plastic boxes at the pick up location, labelled with members' names. Find the box with your name on it. - Empty the vegetables into your bag and leave the empty box for us to collect.

- Loaves of bread and bags of Tomatoes during Tomato season, for those who have ordered them, will be near the green boxes, labeled with your name. Pick up your bag(s) if you are due one or more. (Some people have purchased a Bread Share for a loaf each week of the season. Some people order a loaf when they please.)
- Same for cooler(s) at pick up locations with any cold items that aren't vegetables (eggs, fermented vegetables, etc...See below for more info.)

- At Staffed locations: One of us will be there to quickly gather your items for you to bag up and bring home.
- Preparation ideas and recipe suggestions are in your email. Also check out our Pinterest Page for lots of recipe ideas, organized by vegetable.

EGGS: Ring-a-Bell Farm in Pamplin offers their eggs for sale through us. Their chickens live on pasture and are fed supplemental non-gmo feed from Sunrise Farms. Their eggs are fabulous and we trust their farming practices completely. You can purchase their eggs in our self-serve FarmStand at our farm and you can order them through the Harvie system "Extras" when you customize your share.

Our FarmStand is at our farm and open every day of the week, 9am-dusk (or 7pm, whichever is earlier). Visit us to see where your vegetables grow and pick up some extras for yourself or a friend. We have vegetable and herb plants for your garden available in the Spring, in addition to a host of our vegetables, and we have flower bouquets most weeks of the summer. Driving directions here.

You are also invited to shop for our goods at the farmers' market where we vend on Saturdays: Farmers' Market @ St. Stephens.

Finally, we have a Facebook group for our members to share recipes ideas, etc.

Visit and join here.

Any questions? Just reach out! And remember to log in and check your delivery days and location details.

We so deeply appreciate the opportunity to farm for you. Thank you for being the most important part of our farm! We love you!

With blessings on your meals ~
Janet, Dan, and the whole Broadfork crew (Julie, Siera, Leah, Erica, Alisa, Jen, Austin, Clara, Nathan, and the farm kids)

Owned and operated by Janet Aardema and Dan Gagnon, Broadfork is a small family farm in Chesterfield, VA providing the metro-Richmond area with Certified Naturally Grown vegetables, herbs, and flowers.
We use traditional European methods of biointensive, raised bed production while maximizing soil and plant health for nutrition and sustainability. No synthetic/chemical fertilizer, pesticide, herbicide, or fungicide is ever used in any part of the process of growing your food. Everything we sell is grown by us, and we farm full-time, supporting ourselves and our four children through our farm business.

Growing practices at Broadfork utilize only ecological methods: compost, cover crops, organic fertilizer, and minerals are used to feed the soil that feeds our plants. Raised beds are used to prevent soil-compaction, allowing for happier plant roots. We use organic potting soil and fertilizer, as well as amendments like fish emulsion and sea minerals. No chemical fertilizers, herbicides, fungicides, or pesticides are ever used on your food and we are Certified Naturally Grown (which follows the same national standards used for Organic Certification). We are also proud members of the Virginia Association for Biological Farming and Slow Food RVA. Janet and Dan both hold Bachelor’s Degrees in Biology from Davidson and Lafayette Colleges, respectively. Janet holds a Master’s Degree in Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. We both thrive on putting our biology backgrounds to use in a farm setting and share a passion for farm education.

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