Welcome to the first week of our 2023 Farm Share!
The big week has finally arrived and we are EXCITED!!!
I like to take this time each year to thank you for signing up. Your membership fuels our farm! With your early financial support, we are able to purchase the many items we need to buy each spring. With your commitment to purchase from us weekly, we are able to plan in advance our vegetable production and reduce waste. And getting to know you gives what we do meaning; you are our community! Where and how we buy our food is a huge decision, and we don’t take it lightly that you have chosen us. We will be doing our very best to provide you with a wide variety of high quality produce this year!
Time to Customize
Now is the time to customize your share! We have items you can swap in or add into your share, like additional herbs, maple syrup and flower bouquets. You will have until midnight on Tuesday to customize your share. This is the time frame where you can also switch your pick up location or put your share on hold.
What’s Happening on the Farm
This week marks the end of our seedling sale, and a breath of relief that all our major plantings are in the ground! Of course, we are still planting; this week it’s beets and our second planting of kale.
We will be seeding our FALL CABBAGES in the greenhouse this week which is sort of hard to believe.
We did our first major field walk today in awhile and we were so pleased with the way things are looking. We’re off to a good start! It feels like we’ve done so much already but there is still a long way to go.
What’s in the share
We were very excited to go out today and see all the veggies that are ready to go in the shares. Beets, salad mix, spinach, spring onions, kale, bok choy, dill, cilantro, parsley. All things green and glorious. The only thing we wish we had more of was radishes. These didn’t germinate well for us. Fortunately, they only take 3 weeks to grow so we have many opportunities to try them again.
Upcoming… next week our kohlrabi should be ready!
Featured Veggie
This week’s featured vegetable is actually an herb. It’s dill! Dill is very popular in Moldovan food, where Alex grew up, especially in the spring. It pairs very well with anything you would serve with sour cream, but it also is excellent in a salad. Alex’s mother was helping us with the kids the last two weekends and she made us some delicious salads using dill and spring onions. I will share one here:
Lidia’s Dill and Spring Onion Salad
Ingredients:
1/2 bag of salad
spring onions, chopped
¼ bunch bunch dill, chopped
Olive oil (or your favourite oil)
Lemon juice
Salt to taste
Method:
Chop your spring onions and dill. Toss in a bowl with salad mix. Drizzle with olive oil, and add a squeeze or two of lemon to taste. Add salt to taste. And serve!
Variations
- Add sliced radishes
- Make the salad without salad mix; instead, toss all the ingredients together with ¼ cup of sour cream (add more to desired creaminess)
Pick Up Reminders and Notes
Farm Pick Up Procedure
Our address is 30073 Centre Rd, Strathroy. We're down a long driveway, with a sign at the top of the driveway.
Tips:
- Put your turn signal on early when slowing down– cars drive fast along this road and get impatient if they don’t know you’re turning. Our rule is we turn on the turn signal when we reach the bridge.
- Please don’t turn around in our neighbours driveways.
- Be mindful of other cars coming and going, as we have a narrow driveway
Thursday Farm Pick Up
Come between 3pm-8pm. Pick up happens inside our packhouse. It's just on the left about halfway down the driveway; a plastic-covered structure with orange and red doors. There's a small gravel parking area there.
Friday or Saturday Farm Pick Up
Your share will be left in our cold room, which is in our packhouse. Enter the packhouse, and then turn to your left; you will see a white door, which leads to our cold room. Please help yourself; go inside the cold room and you will find your bag labelled with your name on it. This is a self-serve pick up option. You can come between 9am-7pm.
Forget to pick up your share? Going to be late?
Don’t worry, it happens! In that case, we'll leave it in our cold room for you, and you can pick it up on Friday or Saturday.
Green Bee and Whole Grain Hearth Pick Up
Head to the Green Bee or Whole Grain Hearth between 10am-5pm on Fridays. Make sure you get there by 5pm since they will be closing at that time.
Home Delivery
Home delivery is on Fridays between 5am-9am. Don’t worry, we won’t ring your doorbell and wake you up! We’ll just leave your share for you on your porch. You can leave out a cooler for us to put your share in; this is important especially if you are going to be away for a long period of time.
Green Bags
We have approximately 2 bags per person. It’s super important that you return your bag when you come and pick up your share the following week. If you are home delivery, please leave your empty bag on your porch for pick up day. We do reuse these bags every year and they are quite an investment so please treat them nicely.
Keep in Touch
If you need to get in touch with me on pick up day, send me a text rather than an email if you can. 519-719-7253. Email is mulberrymoonfarm@gmail.com
Contact me at any time with your questions, comments, concerns :) And flag our emails as important or drag them into your primary inbox so that they don’t get filtered out.
We love to see what you are doing with your veggies, so make sure to tag us @mulberrymoonfarm in your social media posts and stories.
Enjoy your first share of veggies, and thanks for keeping us growing! We can't wait to see you!
Your farmers,
Kim, Alex, Rosemary and Lark
Sarah and Jonathon