I’ve talked about this over and over on here, but one of my favorite ways to incorporate fresh produce into…
What is a CSA? Is a CSA worth it? Here are the "ins and outs" about CSAs, based on my personal experience, plus how you can find a local CSA to join for your own family. A must read before committing!
Do you ever wonder 'What is a CSA'? If you are looking to get quality, local, oftentimes organic produce at good prices, this is for you!
So you're looking to start a small farm. That's great! Here's how we do it, in terms of finances and cost.
Yes, I skipped posting about our previous two baskets. Life gets busy. But to make it up to you, this post contains not one but THREE pic...
Community supported agriculture is where consumers subscribe to the seasonal harvest of farmers, and receive weekly installments of food.
Take a look at growing mushrooms in a laundry basket - outdoors or indoors
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It’s been just over a year since we moved from Boston down to Chattanooga and I signed up to be part of the CSA (community supported agriculture) program at Big Sycamore Farm. It’s one of the best choices I’ve ever made! I’ve been able to cook with and eat so much amazing local produce over the […]
If you are preparing this for a luncheon or some event, tossing at the last minute helps preserve the color of the edamame as well as the integrity of the radishes — after too much time in the dressing, the radishes wilt and the edamame gets a little pale. It still tastes great, but it might not look as appetizing.
Experience the impact of CSA Farming: sustainable practices, direct connections, and fresh produce. Support local agriculture today.
Considering how negative the effects have been on society when we lost site of eating farm to table, it is more important than ever that we reconnect with our local farms and eat local along with the Farm to Table Movement.
Ready for some weekend link-love? From stress-reducing tips for fall to advice on staying tough, we've found our favorite links from around the web.
Community supported agriculture is where consumers subscribe to the seasonal harvest of farmers, and receive weekly installments of food.
Shorten your Food Chain 1. Grow Food Growing your own food saves a huge amount of resources!And heck, it just tastes better when it's fresh.We sell hundreds of pepper seeds from around the world, plus over 44 of our favorite tomatoes! 2. Join a CSAIt's hard (nearly impossible) to grow ALL your own food, so join a CSA
This comprehensive guide will show you how to raise redworms at little to no cost. As we'll see, growing and raising earthworms can be a profitable hobby or business.
Have you ever thought about joining a CSA? If so, check out all of the reasons why I think you should join a CSA and why I've loved it!
When living in Chicago, Illinois (my home town), I looked forward to my weekly vegetable shares from my favorite local farmer “Angelic Organics Farm”. Living in the city with a hectic b…
Crop rotation strategies that can be applied under various field conditions for conventional or organic crops to improve soil quality and health, and manage pests, diseases, and weeds.
If you have a CSA or want to start a CSA, decide whether you need a software program to help you manage it.
Practical advice for folks eating from a farm share including the three questions of Vegetable Triage and what to do when you bring your farm share into your kitchen.
I have a rare treat today! I recently interviewed a wonderful, inspirational woman farmer named Kelly Saxer. Kelly is the famer and owner for one of the local CSA programs in my area called Desert Roots Farm I have known Kelly for awhile so I thought it was about time I interview her and share […]
Every week you get a new box of CSA produce - what do you do with it all? These 5 easy strategies to plan, preserve, and eat (plus recipes) make it simple.
{update: February 2013 - I am doing this again this year and super excited about it. Follow my blog for updated and new recipes.} Farm to Table Series is a collection of my recipes, inspired by my CSA basket produce. Each recipe showcases ingredients that are seasonal
Planning a Switch to Raw Milk? These 6 Raw Milk Handling Tips will ensure safe, great tasting milk every time you leave the barn.
I am one of those who think no-till has a lot going for it, in conjunction with mixing vegs in the bed (polyculture). This way, worm activity is not devastated by tillage. Roots of weeds, starved by the mulch of sunlight, rot in place, adding to the capillary action of worm (and assorted bug) tunnels. The variety of vegs means that their rooting action will vary in depth and in nutrients sought out. It's harder work for plant predators to find what they are looking for (and when they get there, it's healthier than they'd like), so there is little or no need for chemical applications. The mulch, at our place, typically consists of cardboard (tape removed), straw, leaves, grass clippings, compost, sawdust, barn bedding, chopped cornstalks -- almost anything we can get our hands on that's organic -- even twigs -- applied in the fall, and weathered down a bit -- through which we plant. In summer we continue adding these layers -- to the paths. The worms appreciate it, the garden needs much less irrigation in dry conditions, and the paths are in this way made productive. The resulting "sheet" compost, next spring, can be raked up into the beds. Ultimately you get raised beds without having had to build walls for them. This garden is nineteen years old. The soil, practically a brickmaking clay when we came to it, has improved every year, despite its having never been fallowed. It stands as a proof that farming need not deplete soil, adding a burden of silt and life-snuffing chemicals to a watershed. Monoculturists hooked into the Monsanto system of GMO seed, tillage, chemical soil prep, insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, and farmworkercides cannot agree with this, as they can see it's too labor-intensive -- or, as I would put it, provides too many jobs. But I know of no reason why joyful farming (which no-till polyculture can be) should not attract a new generation into the fields. Here I've run out of cardboard and resorted to burlap (which we buy for 50 cents a bag from a coffee shop) to finish out my last path. Burlap, commonly made from jute, will do the job but lasts too long -- it will have to be taken up at the end of the season and stored somewhere, by which time it will be messy. I'm aware, too, of the deficiencies of both straw and cardboard. The wheat grass that will sprout doesn't bother me -- I'll just flip over the straw. But what chemical residues might there be in it -- and in cardboard? Don't know. I'm taking my chances here, reflecting that the food I'm growing is in all likelihood better than I can get at the supermarket and way less expensive than if I tried to get straw or its equivalent only from organically certified sources, or got all my food from the "organic" stands at the farmer's markets. Everyone has to draw their own line on safety, although, from things I've read, governments all over are increasingly interested in enforcing safety standards designed to squeeze small and subsistence farmers out of business in favor of the Monsanto model. I remember reading that a mid-sized farm (not strictly organic but very progressive) uses a system somewhat like mine, but with rolls of unbleached kraft paper, which they unroll and spread over both beds and paths every year. Same chemical questions occur to me over this paper as over the cardboard. What I'd like to see is the return of industrial hemp. Yes, I know it would be a monoculture, but it would be a great improvement over mowing the forests and digging or pumping black poison from the earth in order to get the products that could be made (in many cases bettter made) with hemp. You may grow it any way you like, but I will patronize you if you 1) grow it organically, and 2) set up a mill (a very small one, served by happy cooperative owners, will do) to make a kraft paper in rolls, in, say, 36 and 48 inch widths, cross-marked and punched for grid planting, and certified by a cooperative tilth organization to be just right for mulching smallholder or cooperatively managed organic polycultural subsistence, CSA or market farms. ;;; Featured in the photographs: rhubarb, Golden Bantam corn, assorted green beans, red, Yukon Gold and German Butterball potatoes, rhubarb, sunchokes, raspberries, pumpkins, climbing cucumbers, runner beans (hopelessly hybridized Scarlet and Hungarian). Not shown but present: elephant garlic, hard-necked garlic, Egyptian onions, white onions, leeks, yellow and green zucchini, four varieties of indeterminate tomatoes, spinach, many kinds of lettuce, delicata and butternut squashes, kale, bok choi, collards, beets, eggplants, basil, chives, oregano, parsley, celery, rosemary, thyme, sage, lavender, poppies, four kinds of mint, blueberries, comfrey, dandelions (encouraged), goumi, blackberries, hops, quince, and assorted cherries, apples, pears, peaches, mulberries, grapes, hazelnuts, kiwis, chickens, ducks, geese, grass pasture, rose hips, and a coppice woodlot. Some years also sunflowers, broccoli and tomatillos. We are not regarded as a farm by the authorities.
As promised, here is the thrilling second part to my as-of-yet-undetermined-number-of-parts series on small farm equipment: The Jang Seeder. On our farm, we make vegetables in two ways; we either s…
We are stocking up on our pantry basics and working on cooking without recipes this weekend. This reminds us that we have a whole new landscape of pantry basics that have been livening up our cooking and giving fresh inspiration for improvised meals. Our new love? Grains. Yes, grains are already part of our recommended pantry list – rice and pasta are both staples of our cupboards. But we’ve been exploring other grains lately too.
We've all had that surreal experience of looking down out of the window from a plane and suddenly seeing familiar environments from completely new and strange perspectives. This gallery features the work of several photographers who find incredible abstract patterns in large-scale agriculture.
