Update on CSA Delivery

Late last night I got another email from the guy who does the deliveries. He informed me he got to the store too late, it had already closed. Duh! Like we hadn’t figured THAT out!

Supposedly he’s going to drop the baskets off this morning. The store opens at 10am, so The Farmer can go pick it up before his dentist appointment today. (Lucky Farmer!)

And, also supposedly, he’s going to start delivering by noon so the baskets can be picked up any time after that, because in his words, the afternoon drop-off “just doesn't leave enough time for anything out of the ordinary to happen and get taken care of.”

It took him three weeks to figure that out??? Apologies aside, why did he ever think that would work in the first place? If everyone didn’t get there at the same time, like minutes before the store closed, you missed the delivery and wasted your time, gas and money. (I might also mention that we were never told at what time the delivery would be made anyway, just what day.)

I hope this goes smoother for the rest of the season.

Waiting on CSA Deliveries

I had hoped to have a picture to put on here this evening of our latest batch of goodies from our CSA (Community Suported Agriculture) membership. This is our third week, and frankly, it’s not going as well as I’d hoped. It’s not the goodies we’re getting that’s the problem, but trying to connect to get them!

First off, they deliver to various areas. When we signed up, we understood there was going to be a drop-off in the town where The Farmer works. Before I ever signed us up, he agreed to pick the food up on his lunch hour, or after work, so no problem there.

The first glitch was the drop-off point. The store which is the pick-up point isn’t in the same town at all, but in the next one over. Okay, we made that adjustment, though it makes it harder and less cost effective since he has to drive further to pick it up.

The next problem is the timing. The first week the guy delivering the food baskets had to work through the delivery day, and stuff didn’t get delivered until the next day. Okay, beginning of the season, glitches happen, move on.

The next week the Farmer called to check if the food had been delivered before going to pick it up. He called right before he left work, and it still wasn’t there. Evidently the guy came soon after, and the storeowner called The Farmer on his cell phone to let him know the food was there, but he was already on his way home. Considering he was more than half way home and considering the price of gas, he didn’t turn around but figured he’d pick it up the next day.

Here we are on the third week, and due to Memorial Day our delivery date was changed again, and we could live with that, but it’s not knowing what time of day the stuff will be there that’s a major problem. The store closes at 5pm, and The Farmer was there at 4:30 this evening, and the guy still hadn’t delivered the stuff. I suppose he made it there before closing time, but then how is anyone supposed to get their stuff until the next day?

That means the greens and vegetables are going to sit in their basket yet another day. I understand they have to be picked one day and delivered the next, but the way it’s going, it’s the following evening of the third day before I finally get them. The produce has lost quite a bit of freshness by that time, especially since it’s not being refrigerated.

Maybe this is how all CSA’s are run, and maybe it works for people who can drop everything to go pick stuff up whenever they get around to delivering it, but it’s not working that well for us. The timing needs to be consistent. I’m beginning to regret I ever signed up for this. It’s not cheap, but for FRESH veggies I figured it was worth it.

If this doesn’t get better, I’m afraid I’m going to feel like it’s not worth the extra expense and trouble for tired vegetables. And if I feel that way, and really wanted to do this, seems like it would be awfully tough to get people just learning to appreciate eating fresh vegetables to bother with it.

How about it, how does this work for other people? Am I expecting too much, or are there better ways of doing this?

Picking up Pastured Poultry & Delivering a Single Sheep

It’s been a busy weekend, and it’s not even over yet since we’ve still got Memorial Day!

Friday afternoon I went out the back roads through places I’ve never been, and ended up at Mountain Fork Farm to pick up my order of pastured broilers.

Yes, I know we have chickens here on our farm. And yes, I thought about raising some for the freezer. There’s just one catch, but it’s a BIG catch. If I raise them, I have to process them, which is a nice way of saying I have to chop their heads off, scald, pluck and gut each chicken. I’ve done it in my time, but at this stage I don’t have the stamina for such a big project, so I decided to support some other farmer who does.

It was a nice drive, and what I saw of the farm was gorgeous. They had a canopy set up a little ways down their driveway, right before you go through the gate to their property, with chickens in coolers ready for pickup. I wish I’d thought to ask how many acres they have. It has to be pretty good sized, because I couldn’t even see their house from where I was.

The first thing you see is a big greenhouse in a field to the right of the driveway. They also sell a wide variety of vegetables that are grown using sustainable agriculture methods, so no doubt get a lot of use from the greenhouse.

They have a shed not far from the greenhouse with big coolers for the chickens and such.

There was a big field to the left, and the road winds on back through the trees. I could hear chickens way off, and I know from their website they raise turkeys, Berkshire hogs, Dexter cattle and horses. I was disappointed not to see any of that, but maybe I’ll be able to go back again another time.

Saturday I spent catching up on work in the house, with laundry and cleaning and baking a couple of Cherry-Orange coffee cakes, several pizza crusts, bread for us, and “Birdie bread” – made with whole grains and veggies, cut up in cubes, and fed to my picky parrot.

Today we delivered a ewe to a friend’s farm way out back of beyond. You even have to drive through a creek to get to the farm. I reckon they don’t go anywhere during hard rains! They were supposed to be home by mid-morning, having gone to a Fiber Festival earlier this weekend. We got there mid-afternoon, but nobody greeted us but the dogs.

Of course, that’s a pretty big greeting, considering they are HUGE Great Pyrenees, and there were about ten of them prancing around us. They will not, however, win any awards for vicious watchdogs, as they were far more interested in seeing if we would pet them. Of course, we’ve been there before, but even the young pups we’d not seen before were eager for their share of attention.

We wandered around the yard for a while. The dogs were all barking and the one inside was going nuts. I knocked at the door. No answer. What to do???

Fortunately, they have several pens, and there was one unoccupied behind the house, complete with shade tree, so we put the ewe in there, got her a bucket of water, left a note in the screen door, and went back home.

The funny thing is, a couple hours after we got home Kim called me. I figured she was going to comment on the new sheep and tell me where she’d been. Wrong! I said, “Did you find the present we left for you?”

Turns out she hadn’t, and she’d been home the whole time. I’m not sure where she was working, but her mother was in the house and never realized we were out there, or unloading sheep in the pen right by the house. I figured there was no way they could NOT know we were there considering how the dogs were carrying on, including the one in the house. We’d left a note in the screen door and left a sheep, so there’s no denying we were there!

At any rate, the sheep got delivered, and I got to check out a bunch of the ewes and lambs she had running around.

We’ll do the check and registration thing to each other through the mail, so … all’s well that ends well?

We tried a different route home, and I couldn't resist snapping a picture of this lovely red barn we passed. Oh… and Robin… you won’t believe how many wild turkeys we saw on the way to and from their farm! They never stood still long enough for a picture, but I promise, we really did see LOTS of them!

Mainstream moves to Organic, while Organic moves to Mainstream…

Back in my younger years, and NO, contrary to what my kids may think, that was NOT in the Stone Age… I was a bit of hippie. Fast food, chemical farming and an urban lifestyle were much more popular than the counterculture of organic farming and alternative energy that interested me. I read magazines like “Mother Earth News” and “Organic Gardening & Farming” and anything else I could find about leading a healthier, sustainable lifestyle back before it became somewhat of a fad.

And I bought all kinds of books put out by Rodale Press, such as:
* The Rodale Herb Book
* Organic Plant Protection
* Stocking Up
* The Rodale Cookbook
* The Good Goodies
* Naturally Delicious Desserts and Snacks
… and many others.

At that time, Rodale was the leader in organic farming. I knew what to expect when I bought a book from them. No chemicals. Whole foods.

Then came the years where we moved from place to place, and I had nowhere to garden, and eventually slipped into a more mainstream type of eating, with convenience foods and other highly processed psuedo-food.

After being back on a farm for 10 years, and gradually getting back into that healthier lifestyle, I renewed my interest in books on a sustainable, healthier way of life.

Since I collect cookbooks, I naturally wanted some with recipes for the kind of meals I’m trying to fix these days. Health problems dictated an even more stringent approach, and I’ve discovered that good diabetic cookbooks and those for the G.I. diet have a lot of what I’m looking for. Imagine how excited I was when I got a flyer in the mail from my long lost supplier of great books – Rodale Press – advertising a new book on G.I. Cooking! “Aha!” says I, “Here’s where I’ll get a really great cookbook with recipes using fresh-from-the-farm ingredients like grass-fed beef, fresh cheeses, local produce and other goodies!”

When it finally came in the mail, I eagerly tore open the package and started reading through the introductory stuff and checking out the recipes. To say it wasn’t what I expected is a gross understatement. I thought maybe I was missing something, so I went through it a couple more times, paying closer attention to recipe ingredients.

Here’s a sample of what I found:
* a suggested snack of 1 oz. potato chips and 4 ounces juice,
* suggested use of reduced-fat margarine spread,
* commercial frozen dinners included in the suggested diet plans, and
* frequent use of brown sugar and white sugar.

The point is, it didn’t look any different from a cookbook I could pick up anywhere. That was most definitely NOT what I wanted or expected.

What happened?

These days I can go to Publix, a major chain grocery store, and buy a huge variety of fresh, canned, boxed and frozen organic foods. I won’t debate the misuse of the word “organic” here, but the point is that the mainstream is moving towards healthier foods.

And what used to be the counterculture, back-to-the-earth, good foods and farming people – well some of them seem to be moving towards the mainstream. I don’t know if they’re trying to reach a broader audience and increase sales or what the idea is, but I miss being able to order a book from someplace like Rodale Press, and know it won’t look like every other book out there, but stick to that sustainable type of lifestyle J.I. Rodale promoted.

Maybe this was a fluke, but I’ll be a little leery of buying from that source again.

So what did I do with this not-what-I-was-looking-for cookbook? I did something I very rarely do, considering how much I love books of all kinds, and being a collector of cookbooks in particular, because I can usually find some merit in a book and figure it’s worth keeping, especially considering you have to pay postage to return a book. Well, this one was NOT worth it.

I sent it back.