Here we are folks! This is the last week of our Spring farm share season. I think that this has been the best season since we started our first direct-to-consumer subscription in 2019. Every Spring we seem to find ourselves growing more and more vegetables. This season was our longest farm share season, and also our busiest.
This Week
We experienced an incredible member drive halfway through the season. It was a big challenge to meet, but I think that we are finishing our season on a really strong share, packed with all kinds of delicious local fruit, plus you know there’s always leafy greens! Shares will have more apples than last week.
Farmer Dennis let us know that the apples are ready for harvest this Saturday, so Tuna will make a trip over to harvest a few cases for y’all. We will also have more peaches, plums, and watermelons! Continue reading the farm update to learn more about our orchard adventure! We always have greens, so we will wrap up the shares with collards, kale, frilly mustard, arugula, and pea shoots. For seasonal vegetables, we have jalapenos, yellow squash, zucchini, carrots, kohlrabi, and cabbage. I’m going to include some mayhaw jelly, pear elderflower jam, plum jelly, and fig honey pepper jam too.
Next Week
Current Farms has a brand-new online farm stand open with Local Line! They are a software company like Harvie. We will continue running our farm shares through Harvie, but we really haven’t had much success with the Harvie online stand. Tuna and I both thought it was important to give customers who don’t want a subscription a way to see what we have on hand at any time. I hope that you will follow the link and check it out. Local Line will also serve as a way for our farm share members to order between farm share seasons. We offer a more limited delivery range outside of the season, but I’m working hard to network and add more pick up location options of you. Local Line Farm Stand
Farm Update
I was under the weather for several days this week with a stomach bug, and Tuna really stepped up and got a lot of shares harvested, packed, and delivered by himself. We love what we do, but Thursday next week feels like we are crossing a marathon finish line-exuberant, and proud of our accomplishment, but exhausted. We never expected to add so many members mid-season. I guarantee you that we worked as hard as we could, and I hope that effort showed in every bundle and bag of veggies you received this season.
Last Saturday will always be remembered as one of the more influential farm visits I’ve ever had. I’ve been to some amazing farms like Inglewood Farm and Grow Dat Youth Farm, and this experience in Dennis’ backyard ranks just as high as a visit to one of them. Dennis has two acres of land, right in the heart of Oak Grove, that is just packed to the property lines with fruit trees.
Dennis beat cancer 10 years ago. On his way home from a chemo treatment, he came across a peach tree while checking out at Walmart. He told me he said to himself, “I may live, I may die, but I’m gonna plant this peach tree.” Since then, he has planted more than 100 fruit trees behind his house. He’s got some of everything: apples, plums, pears, peaches, nectarines, blackberries, kiwi, apricot, persimmons, plus some really incredible trees like I’ve never seen. Have you ever seen those tree catalogs that sell 4-in-1 grafted fruit trees? Well Dennis has, and he has some really mature examples of how well they can perform. For instance, we harvested the Santa Rosa plums, and the Shiro plums off of the same tree! The point to try and extend the harvest season through variety selections. I loved trying all the different varieties he had growing. Especially the Saturn peaches, Anna apples, and the SWEET TREATS! The sweet treat is a sweet cherry/plum hybrid that is super special and tasty. It has a texture like a cherry, with cherry flavor on the backend, plus a little sour and sweet of plum. They are small, red and yellow globes of goodness. I spent Sunday taking out the cores and froze them all for making jam. I’m excited to see how that turns out.
Dennis is recovering from knee replacement, so he travels around on a stand-up lawnmower, equipped with a double trailer: the first trailer being a 2ftx2ft platform for him to stand on, and the second being a small dump trailer, attached directly behind his feet. As he rides, he mows over the fruit falling on the ground, because the city council complains about all the insects his orchard attracts. I stepped up to the Anna apple trees and told him that I had never had an apple right off the tree before. He just yelled back “Well pick you one!” It’s really a treat to have a fresh apple without the wax coating. I think that these apples are so good for both eating fresh and cooking. It’s just so special!! In total, we harvested more than 500 lbs of fruit on Saturday. It was a lot of fun, and I think it’s the start of a great working relationship. Dennis told us that no one has ever picked that much at one time, and he was really eager to work with us on supplying more locally grown fruit for our farm shares and our small-batch jam. It’s not hard to grow vegetables, the challenge is what to do with it once you’ve harvested. That’s why we really value your farm share membership.
Members
There will be a few changes made to the shares concerning pick up locations next season. When you auto-renew, make sure that you have the correct pick up location selected. We will be adding The Good Daze on Walnut St, and Medina Market on 165 S as pick up options. A huge thank you to them for supporting our farm! Tuna and I look forward to taking a few weeks off between the Spring and Summer season. Tuna has a week-long vacation planned, and I’ve got a big list of chores that need to be done, now that we have fewer harvest days. It’s time to start seeds for the Fall, which we have been doing by the thousands every week. In August we will begin to plant a lot of the Fall greens, and hope everyday that it will rain soon.
I hope that you are proud of yourself! You made the decision to make a small change in where, and how you source your vegetables. Cooking with whole foods is not easy, and there are definitely cheaper vegetables all over town, so we really appreciate your choice to support our farm, and the farm share subscriptions. During our break over the next few weeks, try to see it as an opportunity to clean out those refrigerators and pantries. Then, you’ll really be missing that local produce! We are so grateful to call you part of our farm family! Thank you again for taking part in a community of people built around local food. I truly believe that together, we are changing the food culture in North Louisiana.
