Harvie Farms New Orleans Week 10

Pictured is Jon and Kelsye Cassell and their adorable daughters - the family behind Greener Pastures Farms who provide us with our pasture raised eggs! 

We can’t believe we are already heading into our 10th week of deliveries! Thank you to everyone who has supported us through this launch, we are beyond grateful for each and every one of you!  We are excited to welcome all our new members as well - we hope you enjoy receiving your first delivery as much as we did! 

Last week we were excited to add eggs from Greener Pastures Farms to our product list. What you may not know is the story behind the eggs you may have received, so we wanted to take a minute to share with you a bit more about the family farm behind the eggs and their amazing resilience.

Greener Pastures Farms is owned and operated by Jon and Kelsye Cassell and their four adorable daughters (pictured above). The farm was born out of a desire to work together as a family in the field and share the life they both experienced growing up with their own kids.

“We wanted them to spend their summer days running barefoot through the rye fields. Experience the thrill of having an angry mama hen chase you for all it was worth because you dared to touch one of her eggs.  Snuggle with a baby piglet that needed a little extra help to get going after it was born or even manage to convince their daddy to keep one of the Cornish cross chickens on the front porch as a makeshift guard dog because they couldn’t imaging having “Princess Elsa” be cooked for Sunday lunch.  We wanted them to know where their food came from, even though it made for some very awkward conversations at dinner time over a roasted chicken because your child decided to walk the company through a detailed process of how the chicken made it there. “- Jon and Kelsye

Jon and Kelsye were able to make this dream a reality when they started Greener Pastures where they focused on poultry, pork and eggs. Like most farms they faced many challenges, however back in August they faced a storm they did not see coming. On August 27, the eye of Hurricane Laura swept through their farm destroying much of what they had worked so hard to build. They did their best to save as many animals as they could but the damage left behind was extensive.

Since the hurricane they have been hard at work rebuilding their business. The eggs we now offer are the first product they have available since rebuilding their operations. We are so honored to celebrate their return by offering these eggs to you all. If that is not a story of resilience, I don’t know what is!

We cannot thank you enough for choosing to buy from your local farms and producers through Harvie Farms New Orleans - it is because of you that we can support farmers like Jon and Kelsye at Greener Pastures Farms!

Now, here are some updates on the products we have available for you next week!

Featured Item

Strawberries, 1 lb quart - Fletcher Farm (the season has begun!)

Cheese share

The cheese share this week is Pecorino from St James Cheese.

Some new items this week

Hydroponic cherry tomatoes, 1 pint - Cajun Growers
Strawberries, 1 lb quart - Fletcher Farm
Red grapefruit, 3 lb bag - L'hoste Citrus
Pature Raised Eggs, 1 dozen - Greener Pastures
White Sweet potatoes - Two Dog Farm
French Breakfast radish - Two Dog Farm
Cilantro - Pelican Produce
Baby kale, 5 oz clamshells - Pelican Produce 
Baby arugula, 5 oz clamshells - Pelican Produce 

How Harvie Works 

As you may have noticed, we’ve recently updated our share names to better reflect the variety of products we have available - produce, dairy, meat, seafood, and dry goods. Since we’ve moved away from separate produce or meat & seafood boxes, your membership with Harvie Farms New Orleans can include as much variety as you’d like in one box to fit your diet and lifestyle! Setting preferences and customizing your share are two more ways to ensure you receive delicious, local food that works for your household. 

Rating products in your preferences is the first way to ensure that what you love is included in your share. Anything rated with a 1 (Not for Me) will never be included in your share. Interested in only fresh meat and seafood offerings? No problem! You can rate all produce products as a 1, and you won’t receive them. Here’s a brief tutorial on How do preferences work?. To set your preferences ahead of time and make sure your box will be customized to fit them visit this link: https://www.harvie.farm/member/preferences.

After you’ve set your preferences, you can customize your share during the customization period. When the customization window is open, you can swap items for other products and purchase extras. Here’s a great resource that goes over How Swaps and Extras Work.

Please customize your farm share or purchase extras if you like using the link in your email. You will have until 5 pm on Friday to make changes to your farm share. At that point, we'll send your orders to our farmers and they will be harvesting to get ready for Wednesday delivery! We'll deliver to your home between noon and 8pm on Wednesday. Please check your address and if there are any special directions for how we should deliver let us know here: https://www.harvie.farm/member/profile/edit

How to Reschedule or Hold Your Share

Have a trip coming up, need to hold a particular box, or know that you’ll want to double up on deliveries on a future date? We’ve got you covered! You can reschedule and hold your shares to ensure your deliveries arrive when they work best for your household. Please make these changes  well ahead of time, as finalized shares cannot be rescheduled or changed once they’re included in a delivery. 

Rescheduling a Share Date

When you reschedule your share, you'll be prompted to pick the next available date at your chosen delivery location, and payment will be moved accordingly.  Rescheduling is available to members within the same season.

Rescheduling a Share’s Location

If you need to change your delivery option you can make this change within the same week as the original delivery or can move it to another available week. Your payment will be moved accordingly. Holding a SharePlacing a hold on your delivery will result in forfeiting (cancelling) that share for the week and no additional payment will be charged. You can hold three deliveries per year, and holding your share does not  automatically reschedule those shares.

For more information on these tools, as well as a step-by-step tutorial on how to reschedule or hold a share, check out our resources here. 

Packaging Return Instructions

We know there is a lot of packaging that goes into delivering your farm fresh goodies which is why we encourage you to return your packaging to us for reuse! Follow the steps below to help us reduce waste!  

- Remove and retain clear plastic bag of local farm products 
- Break down cardboard box 
- Stack shiny liner and ice packs on box 
- Place flattened box, liner, and ice packs in the box delivery location on delivery day 
- Please try to keep the box, liner and ice packs dry when possible.  

You can also drop off your packaging for reuse at this address:

205 23rd St
Kenner, LA
70062

Thanks for helping reduce our environmental footprint!  

Let’s Build a Community!

In 2021, we want to build a community of local food eaters here at Harvie Farms New Orleans! There are so many creative and interesting people that are members and we want to unlock this community to support all of us in eating fresh and local.We've found private Facebook communities to be a very effective way to communicate, learn, and collaborate in the past so we are launching a Facebook group called Geaux Local which you can join here:https://www.facebook.com/groups/geauxlocal 

This is available for current members of Harvie Farms New Orleans as well as anyone interested in what we are doing. We encourage you to invite your friends and family!

We thrive and grow on referrals.

If you love your Harvie box, please tell your friends. We are increasing the credit for referrals from $25 to $50 until the end of the year. You can use these credits for extras purchases to add on to your box. Find your personal referral link here: https://www.harvie.farm/member/refer-a-friend Also, if you post an unboxing, recipe, or testimonial video to twitter, facebook, instagram or youtube.. tag us @harviefarms, add your referral link to the post, and send us a screenshot (neworleans@harvie.farm) and we'll give you a $5 credit on your account.

Got any questions? Drop us a line at support@harvie.farm or (412) 567-3864.