This Week’s Harvest
- Kale
- Spinach
- Salad Mix
- Carrots
- Butternut Squash
- Sweet Potatoes
- Brussels Sprouts
- Potatoes
- Onions
- Garlic
- Beauty Heart Radishes
Farm News
This year I am thankful for finally having a seamless way to donate our extra produce. In the past we have either used employees or family to bring leftovers to community food pantries or only dealt with extras when we had significant amounts to send to The Food Bank. The few years that we had chickens they would happily gobble it all up. Otherwise we had lots of produce just going to the compost pile.
Thanks to a new employees’ initiative, we now have a systematic and easy way to keep extra produce moving swiftly off of the farm and into hands of those that need it. Natalie had heard of Access to Excess, a local non profit that rescues food and offers it to people in need, and reached out to the founder, Jen Burns, as soon as our coolers started to fill up. Jen is very aware of vegetable farmers’ time constraints and part of her mission is to actively help the farmers make donating easy. She was able to talk to us about a convenient time for her to come by and pick extra produce up on a regular schedule, and assured us she would be self serve, in and out, and generally just “out of our hair”.
We have a cooler in the front room of the barn that is only in use for our Farm CSA member pick ups which makes for a perfect staging area for Jen to pick up our extra produce every week. On Monday afternoon I load the extra produce from market and the week before into the front room cooler and by Tuesday at 8:30am it is emptied out!
Reflecting during this time of Thanksgiving, I am grateful to Jen not just for the work that she does, but for approaching it with the understanding that farmers may have extra produce- but not a lot of extra time. We are also so incredibly grateful to Natalie for her initiative and desire to help us get the relationship started!
We hope you enjoy your produce this week and also knowing that any access we have always makes it into the hands of those in need. Have a Happy Thanksgiving!
Recipes