The Weblog
This weblog contains LocallyGrown.net news and the weblog entries from all the markets currently using the system.
To visit the authoring market’s website, click on the market name located in the entry’s title.
Princeton Farm Fresh: The Market is Open
Happy New Year! I can hardly believe we are at the New Year. My how time flies when you are having fun in the garden. We have great food for you this week and the weather is actually behaving like winter weather should.
I will see you on Friday,
Angela
Martin's Farmstand: Green tomatoes in January
Hello everybody. It is winter outside and our solar greenhouse is getting cool inside (30s-40s). We picked all the bigger green tomatoes and peppers from the old plants as they will ripen better in the warm house than the cool greenhouse. So, I have a few ripe tomatoes and peppers for sale and about 100 lbs of green tomatoes that need a good home. We also still have lots of beets, carrots, turnips, potatoes, apples and more left for sale. The online market is open for orders or you can call ahead and come out to the stand.
I have already started the pepper plants for next year and it is almost time to start the tomatoes so the old plants must go to make room for the new ones soon. We baby the new tomato plants in the house while they are tiny as it takes a lot less resources to keep the house warm than to keep a tiny space in a greenhouse warm enough for tomatoes to grow during the cold dark portion of the winter. DanielGreen Fork Farmers Market: Weekly product list
Dear Green Fork Farmers Market Customers,
Bee Well Gardens has potted paperwhites again this week, and Green Fork Farm has shiitakes.
Also available this week:
Vegetables—Arugula, lettuce, green onions, gourmet salad greens, kale, beet greens, swiss chard, spinach, greens for braising, pac choi, turnips, collard greens, red mustard greens, pumpkins, and sweet potatoes.
Herbs—Sage and mixed herb bunches.
Meat—Pastured beef, chicken, goat, and lamb.
Fermented foods—Sauerkraut and jalapenos.
Salsa—Made with locally grown and organic ingredients.
Olives and Olive Oil—organic and directly from the grower in California.
Plants and Flowers—Culinary, medicinal, pollinator-friendly, and decorative plants and flowers.
Bath and Beauty—Handmade, all natural soaps.
Place your order from now until Tuesday at noon for pickup on Wednesday from 4-7 pm at Nightbird Books in Fayetteville.
If you aren’t able to place an order, stop by to shop with us on Wednesday. We will have a variety of items for sale from the table.
See you on Wednesday,
Green Fork Farmers Market
Wednesdays 4-7 pm
Indoors, Year Round
At Nightbird Books
205 W. Dickson St.
Fayetteville, AR
To place your order, click on the link below to enter the website. Sign in as a customer, then click on the icon next to each product you wish to order. Proceed to checkout, review the list to make sure it’s correct, then scroll to the bottom and click on Place This Order. Make sure you receive a confirmation email—if you don’t, your order was not processed. Payment is at the market pickup with cash, check, debit/credit card, EBT, and Senior FMNP coupons. Ask about our doubling program for EBT and SFweeMNP!
Central Arkansas : Reminder of closing
Just wanted to remind everyone the market will close soon. So get your orders in before it’s too late!! We don’t want you to have to wait until next week!!
Remember the New Years Promotion: if you get a friend to sign up & order this week, you get a Central Arkansas Market gift certificate.
Happy Marketing- CAM management
Athens Locally Grown: ALG Market Open for January 7
Athens Locally Grown
How to contact us:
Our Website: athens.locallygrown.net
On Twitter: @athlocallygrown
On Facebook: www.facebook.com/athenslocallygrown
On Thursdays: Here’s a map.
Market News
Welcome to 2016, and another year of Athens Locally Grown! This will be our fifteenth year in operation, and we are looking forward to many more. Many of our growers are have slowed down for the winter, delivering every other week or otherwise reducing their availability. Many others, however, are still going strong thanks to greenhouses and other season-extending methods. Now that the holiday season is behind us, we’ll be going every single week from now until our next week off — Thanksgiving.
Each year, I devote the first few mailings of the year to the behind the scenes operation of ALG. This week, I’m going to talk about the many legal issues surrounding our market. Even though many people call us “the co-op”, ALG is legally a market owned and operated by me, so I can have a place to sell items I occasionally offer from my own gardens. There’s no board of directors, no shield corporation, no pot of grant money. It’s just me, and while that keeps things very simple, it also exposes me and my family to a ton of potential liability. It’s never really been an issue (except when the whole raw milk thing erupted a few years ago) and there are several things I do specifically to minimize that risk:
- The growers list their own items and set their own prices. When you buy from them, it is from them, not from me, and not from Athens Locally Grown.
- Athens Locally Grown never takes ownership or possession of the food. The growers drop it off, and you pick it up.
- Everything at the market has a customer’s name attached to it when it arrives. ALG does not repackage any items, or buy in bulk for redistribution.
- When you pay, you’re paying into a shared cash box for all of the growers. This lets you write a single check or swipe your card once for convenience, but you are really paying all of the growers directly and individually. Your money goes in, and the software I wrote to keep everything going spits out checks for each of the growers you buy from.
- The growers give a small percentage of their sales, generally 10%, back to the market to cover the many expenses of keeping the market going. I’ll cover the details of finances another week.
- ALG never buys from a grower and resells the items to you. Never.
- When a grower sells items that need licenses from either the state or the federal government, ALG verifies that the proper licenses have been obtained.
The ownership issue is key. It’s one of the reasons why we don’t offer delivery, and why we usually can’t hold items for you if you aren’t able to pick up your orders. Delivery might be a good business for someone (if they could figure out all the legal requirements), but it’s not at all what I personally want to be into. I think it would be a valuable service for you, and I’m hoping someday someone will be able to partner with me for this. Many food co-ops and even some farmers markets aren’t as careful with keeping ownership as straight as I try to be, and that has gotten other groups similar to us into serious legal trouble (deserved or not) over the years. There are so many grey areas in all this, and the written regulations still don’t even consider that something like Athens Locally Grown might exist. We’re so firmly in the grey areas with most everything we do that it’s just too risky for me to bring us into the areas that are clearly black.
So, these are the sorts of things that guide my thinking as Athens Locally Grown has grown over the years. Everything we do has legal ramifications, and the state of Georgia has a reputation for being no nonsense when it comes to enforcement — with the little guy, anyway. That has became extra obvious in recent years, and the FDA is also putting pressure on groups like us too. I’m not a lawyer, but every time we enter those grey areas, I make sure we follow the intent of the laws, don’t flaunt anything, and have a good defense and a paper trail should we need it. And when that doesn’t work, the good folks at the Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund are behind us. They have consumer memberships, too, and I do encourage everyone who is able to become a member of the FtCLDF.
The FtCLDF was my legal counsel in the federal lawsuit against the FDA I (and one of our members) was a plaintiff on. The lawsuit was in response to the seizure and destruction of 110 gallons of South Carolina milk purchased by ALG members in October 2009. During the pre-trial phase, the FDA moved to dismiss the suit, and went so far as to claim that the milk dumping, filmed and placed on YouTube, with an FDA agent clearly identified, never happened. The judge refused to dismiss, and gave the FDA six months to give a yes or no answer to whether what we did is really considered illegal. Exactly six months later, they responded that it was illegal, but also claimed that even though an FDA agent was at my house giving direction, they had no hand in the dumping. They also went on record stating that individuals were legally free to cross state lines and buy raw milk to take home with them (something that the FDA agent at my house said, on camera, was completely illegal under all circumstances). After that, the judge dismissed the suit without fully ruling whether ALG was also free to facilitate our members collectively ordering and picking up milk across state lines. In any case, the state of Georgia still says what we were doing was illegal and even tightened the rules right afterward, so raw milk is still rather hard to come by.
And there in a nutshell is the legalities behind ALG. In the following weeks, I’ll get more into the nuts and bolts of finances and other aspects of how we work.
Thank you so much for your support of Athens Locally Grown, all of our growers, local food, and our rights to eat it. You all are part of what makes Athens such a great area in which to live. We’ll see you on Thursday at Ben’s Bikes at the corner of Pope and Broad Streets from 4:30 to 8pm!
Other Area Farmers Markets
The Athens Farmers Market has closed for the winter. You can watch for news during the offseason on their website. The other area markets are also all closed for the season, I believe. If you know of any winter markets operating, please let me know. And they might all be closed, but we’ll be here all year round!
All of these other markets are separate from ALG (including the Athens Farmers Market) but many growers sell at multiple markets. Please support your local farmers and food producers, where ever you’re able to do so!
We thank you for your interest and support of our efforts to bring you the healthiest, the freshest and the most delicious locally-produced foods possible!
Searcy, AR: Tuesday's market
The Searcy Farmers Market online ordering system is open for orders. Please place orders by 10 pm on Monday night. Orders will be available for pick up on Tuesday between 4:30 and 5:30 pm on the corner of the courthouse square beside the farmers market sign. Thank you for supporting your local farmers.
Dawson Local Harvest: The Harvest is Back!
Dawson Local Harvest for January 8th, 2016
HI EVERYBODY!
Hope you all had a great Holiday season. I guess it’s time to get back into the swing of things. The Dawson Local Harvest is open for its first Market of the New Year. I hope you’ll take a few moments to see everything listed on The Market for this week.
Best Wishes for a Happy New Year and a wonderfully delicious and nutritious year, at that.
THE MARKET IS NOW OPEN!
REMEMBER! You can order until Tuesday night at 8pm. Pick up your order at Leilani’s Gardens Friday afternoons from 4 to 7pm.
You’ll find the DAWSON LOCAL HARVEST at http://dawsonville.locallygrown.net
We thank you for your interest and support of our efforts to bring you the healthiest, the freshest and the most delicious locally-produced foods possible! We guarantee your satisfaction with all products in the DAWSON LOCAL HARVEST.
Have a happy and healthy week!
Alan Vining
Market Manager
CLG: Opening Bell: Eggs, Pork, Cabbage, Kale!
Good afternoon!
Happy New Year!!! We are looking forward to another great year of bringing the best local food to your homes week after week. Our Growers have been working hard to extend the growing season so look for all the delicious goodies they have listed. See you on Friday!
Come early on Friday for the best selection from the EXTRAS table. And save your eggshells throughout the week for the laying hens! :-)
The market is now OPEN for orders. Please check your email about 5 minutes after you place your order to make sure you get an order confirmation. Thank you for being a valuable part of CLG!
Have a great week!
Steve
ONLINE PAYMENT OPTION. When you are done shopping, just hit the “proceed to checkout” button in your cart. You will then see the option to “Pay Now” with credit card near the bottom. Just follow the prompts to add your card. Be sure to read the screen until you see “Thank you for your order” on the top. If you need help, please call 339-7958. A 3% online payment convenience fee will be added when your card is charged.
How to contact us:
DO NOT REPLY TO THIS EMAIL. Instead…
Phone or text: Steve – 501-339-1039
Email: Steve – kirp1968@sbcglobal.net
Our Website: www.conway.locallygrown.net
On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Conway-Locally-Grown/146991555352846
Citrus County Locally Grown: HAPPY NEW YEAR
WISHING YOU A HAPPY NEW YEAR
FROM ALL THE GROWERS, VOLUNTEERS AND MARKET MANAGERS
AT CITRUS COUNTY LOCALLY GROWN
Next Market Thursday January 7th, 2016.
== THE MARKET PLACE ==
Veggies are coming in well.
NEWS FROM GROWERS
3ROCK FARM
All Naturally Grown: Salad Cucumbers (OGV), Spinach (OGV), Onions-Jumbo Sweet (OGV), Arugula (OGG), Micro Greens (OGG), Low Sugar Jams, Nuts and Eggs
ARBOR TRAILS
Strawberries
Variety of Lettuce, Egg Plant Kales, Kolrabi, Peppers, and herbs.
BENT PINE FARM
Eggs – Brown-Free Range All Non GMO feed (OGG) and Banana Peppers (OGG)
CAPTAIN TIM
Fresh Seafood- Shrimp, Grouper, Salmon
COFFEY BREAK FARM
Full range of Goat Cheese to grace your festive table.
FLORIDA FRESH MEAT
Naturally raised chemical and hormone free meat.
SNOW"S COUNTRY MARKET
Great range of (CGV) Produce available
Also Troyers Spiral Cut Hams and Butter
SANDHILL FARM
Fresh raw cows milk, Per FL Law intended for ANIMAL CONSUMPTION only.
THE GARDEN DOCTOR
New season produce, including Collard and Mustard Greens and also Siberian Kale and Kolrabi too. All grown here in Citrus County.
Click on the text below to go to the Market.
www.citruscounty.locallygrown.net/.
Fresh Harvest, LLC: Fresh Harvest for January 3, 2016
To Contact Us
Fresh Harvest, LLC
Link to Fresh Harvest
Email us!
Tallahassee May
tally@wildblue.net
JohnDrury
john.drury@att.net
Recipes
Kale & Walnut Pesto
_This is a great way to integrate more healthy greens into your diet! Try it not only on pasta, but as a sandwich spread or with eggs in the morning!
_
small bunch of kale (4-6 leaves, remove the thick part of the stems*)
¼ cup walnuts, toasted
½ to 1 clove of garlic
¼ cup olive oil (or more for a smoother pesto)
juice & zest of one lemon
salt & pepper to taste
optional: grated parmesan or pecorino cheese
(note: you can use all of the kale stems in your pesto, you will just have to boil them longer (separately) than the leaves. About 20 minutes, or until tender)
Instructions
Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Fill a large bowl with ice and water.
Blanch kale for about 30 seconds, remove and place in the ice bath to stop the cooking process.
Dry the kale a bit, squeeze out some of excess water and set on a towel for a few minutes more.
Blend everything together in a food processor. Pulse to create a chunky pesto, blend longer to create a smoother one. Taste and adjust, adding more salt, pepper, lemon, olive oil, as necessary.
Market News
Hello!
Welcome, 2016! We wish you all a very healthy and happy year ahead! It is hard to believe that this will be our 10th year as Fresh Harvest!
We started off just two farmers selling you our produce via email, and have now expanded our web-based ordering service to include produce from other small local farms, humanely raised meats and eggs, and other artisan products from small businesses. We are fortunate to work with some of the best farmers, producers, and food-crafters that Middle Tennessee has to offer. All of our vendors are also our friends, and we trust their practice and respect their product. That is why we guarantee everything we sell on the Market. We only want you to be eating and supporting food that is good for you and that you feel good about! If you are not satisfied in any way, please let us know .
Although we have expanded, John And Tally still remain involved in every aspect of Fresh Harvest. We are heavily invested and committed to providing not only the best in local food, but an amazing service as well. We continue to learn and grow in this process, and always appreciate any feedback you as a customer have to offer. It helps us to do our job better, and that is always our goal. Please know you can email us at any time with any question, comment, or concern!
We know that you have many choices in purchasing local food these days! We are so grateful that you make the time and effort to shop with Fresh Harvest. With Fresh Harvest, your money is going directly to supporting small local farms and businesses. You are truly using your money and time to help create a more sustainable local economy and community. Thank you!
Please remember this year to eat more vegetables! Seriously, the best way to support small farmers and local agriculture is to enjoy eating the bounty they produce! Try to work more kale into that weekly dinner rotation, or how about a new vegetable you have never tried before? We have some great, vibrant and oh so delicious winter crops available for you, and we truly hope you enjoy them!
Thanks so much for all your support, and we look forward to seeing you on Wednesday!
John and Tallahassee
Coming Events
We thank you for your interest and support of our efforts to bring you the healthiest, the freshest and the most delicious locally-produced foods possible!
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