NEXT WEEK is the LAST WEEK of the Farm Share for 2024! Final shares for this season are on Wednesday, Nov 20/Saturday, Nov 23 -- the week BEFORE Thanksgiving.
That means for some every-other-week members, this is your last share of the year! PRO TIP: our vegetables have great storage life. Even our cut greens in bags last more than two weeks in the fridge. We FINALLY have abundant harvests of fall crops! You can order extras this week and/or next week and keep our vegetables on hand into December (if you are lucky enough to have the fridge space). OR ----
...If you're wondering "But how can we get your products before next May?" here's the answer...
All vegetables that we have to harvest in December through April will be available through our self-serve FarmStand at our farm, the Farmers' Market @ St. Stephens, or at Good Foods Grocery and Ellwood Thompson's. Keep an eye on our Facebook or Instagram feeds for updates.
Today we will send emails to renew your share into 2025! Our current Farm Share software is going out of business and we're switching to a new software. Check your email for a comprehensive message about how to secure your share for 2025.
A year in the life of our farm has such distinct seasons - not just the weather and the crops but the activities are seasonal. Some of our staff will stay and farm through the winter, while others will move on to other adventures in their lives. Thus, we're now hiring for Farm Crew members that will start farming with us next March. Please spread the word!
State of the Farm:
We're likely to have the latest frost ever in our farm's 15 year history. (This is not a good thing.) Summer crops are all but done, anyway. (But we have a large number of peppers still available this week, plus a decent number of ripe tomatoes!) We still have tomatoes in one of our greenhouses and they will survive a frost due to the protection of the greenhouse. Fall crops will want cooler temps, the flavor of the fall vegetables improves with a frost, and frost tempers damage from pest and disease. We also hope for a nice, deep freeze each winter to help kill off the pest population. We'll see what this year brings! Meanwhile, our kids have enjoyed some days doing their school work outside in the mild weather, and we have a few beautiful flowers on the farm. These details alarm us!
After last week's election, we're reflecting hard on the state of our nation. Media stories often focus on division, and that is certainly fervent and hugely problematic. Yet, though we chose a difficult and volatile profession, our role as direct market farmers puts us in a position in which we are passionately thanked every week for what we do. That is a place of huge privilege, we are grateful, and we're noting how diverse is our farm community. The people eating the food we grow (and the bread we bake) is a group more diverse than most would think. Some our customers are rich in money and some have to practice enormous care with bank balances. Some are in large households and some are households of one. Ancestral backgrounds are many. Some voted one way, some voted another way. But we are all connected by so many things. We all put our pants on one leg at a time, and in this little micro-community of Broadfork Farm consumers, we all eat food that comes from this soil. Thank you all for choosing to connect to others in this way -- even if unintentionally and unknowingly. We'll keep pouring love into this soil (primarily by creating habitat for microorganisms and mycorrhizae!!) and we appreciate you all continuing to eat the resulting food.
We have significantly fewer carrots to harvest right now than usual fall seasons, due to ill timed and overabundant summer rain events. We have later crops growing in a couple of our greenhouses. We'll see what the winter allows!
Need to check on or make changes to your pick up dates? Log in here.
Recipe suggestions:
- Sugar Snap Pea Shoots are hot this week! Cut them into smaller lengths and stir them into stir fry, add them to your green salad for a sweet spring-like taste, and put them on top of any protein in a sandwich or wrap.
- 50 Homemade Salad Dressing Recipes in one place! Bookmark this site, keep staple ingredients on hand, and whip up an easy recipe each week of the year!
- Turnip Au Gratin recipe
- Portugese Kale Soup with Turnips (our family favorite!)
- Stuffed Peppers - with cream cheese and Everything But the Bagel Seasoning
- Cilantro Lime Crema Dressing - drizzle it on alllll of our vegetables
- Ginger Miso Scallion Dressing - put it on any combination of vegetables and protein
Bread Share members: You get a SEPARATE email to customize your bread share.
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 usually ends at 6am on the day before your pick up day, and sometimes at 5am when our harvest days need to start extra early.
For Pick Up:
- 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.)
- 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 they are available.
With blessings on your meals ~
Janet, Dan, and the whole Broadfork crew (Julie, Alisa, Jen, Clara, Tabea, Christina, Jackson, and the farm kids)
