Kitchen Garden Journal

We are pleased to announce the marriage of our farm to another. Tim and Caroline, do you take Jarrett Man of Stone Soup Farm to be your lawfully wedded co-farmer? We do!

You heard right. We are teaming up with Jarrett, merging our farms into a single new farm that will be called The Kitchen Garden, LLC. Jarrett has been operating his CSA farm at the New England Small Farm Institute in Belchertown since 2008. A fellow Hampshire alum, Jarrett has also worked at Red Fire Farm and is an all around great guy and amazing farmer. 

We are combining our talents and our resources so that we can do more as one medium sized farm than we ever could as two small farms. Kitchen Garden 2.0 is going to be amazing! 

At the end of last season, we knew that whatever we would be doing in 2012 would be radically different than ever before. We didn’t know what the New Year would bring, but we knew we had to ditch the status quo. We have surprised even ourselves with the bigness of our new plans.

We have secured a lease for 14 additional acres of gorgeous Sunderland farmland just across the brook at the back of our field, bringing our total acreage to over 20. This new land will allow us to grow our vegetables more efficiently as well as more sustainably. We’ll be growing a lot more of the things we love and still have plenty of space to try new things. In addition, The Kitchen Garden will become a truly 4-season farm with year-round product and CSA share offerings.

This new chapter for the farm isn’t born solely out of a desire to make everything Bigger, Better, Faster, Stronger. As farm owners, we see this as an opportunity to refine our job descriptions to reflect our best strengths and interests. The breadth of what is normally expected of a “farmer” can be overwhelming. By working together, we’ll be able to do the jobs that we’re most skilled at, and do them in a more focused and effective way.

So, here’s a preview of what’s new and different for 2012 and beyond:

Changes to our CSA program including on-farm pickup in Hadley complete with pick-your-own, drop sites in Boston, and a new farmers market option called Market Share!

More veggies, more food: we are working to develop some prepared food items for sale at our farmers markets, and looking forward to hosting a series of Kitchen Table food events!

We're adding 250 hens to Jarrett's pastured laying flock, so we'll have eggs for sale!

Later in the season we’ll be offering Winter CSA Shares and a full line of winter greens and stored root crops for our market customers, chefs and stores!

So, from Tim, Caroline and Jarrett, we are excited to be growing for you in 2012!

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Big changes are happening at our farm this year, and that means we’re switching up what we’re doing in the way of CSA shares. We won’t be offering the boxed shares anymore. Instead, we’re teaming up with our new business partner Jarrett Man of Stone Soup Farm to create a CSA program that has some exciting new and improved options:

On-farm pickup at our beautiful new Hadley location featuring more choice and pick-your-own!

A new Market Share program that provides members discounts at our 4 farmers’ market stands across the Valley!

Kitchen Garden CSA shares are now available in the Boston area!

We are excited about the new CSA program and think that it will create a richer, more convenient and flexible experience for our members, and we hope that it works better for you! We are also pleased to announce that we’re adding egg shares, fruit shares, winter and spring shares. The vegetables on offer will be the same great Kitchen Garden produce you’re used to, but with lots of new things to try, too.  

Here’s some more information about the options for 2012:

On-Farm Pickup will take place at Jarrett’s barn at 81 Rocky Hill Rd in Hadley on Saturdays from 9am-1pm. Share contents will be mix-and-match so that you can take more of the vegetables you like best. There will also be a pick-your-own-patch with flowers, herbs, beans, peas, cherry tomatoes, and other goodies. The Hadley farm is centrally located, 5 minutes from Amherst or 10 minutes from Northampton. Choose a Full Share for $550 or a Small Share for $325. The main share season runs from June-October. The Fruit Share will only be available for on-farm pickup in Hadley and to our Boston area shareholders.

The Market Share is a new program that we are launching this year. Members can choose to join at the Small Share or Full Share levels. $325 gets you a gift card for $350 worth of veggies from our farmers market stand. $550 gets you a gift card for $600. Market Share is the most user-friendly, flexible way to join a CSA in the Pioneer Valley. Come to any of our 4 weekly farmers’ market locations (Springfield Tuesday, Amherst Wednesday, or Northampton and Greenfield Saturday) and pick out whatever you want. If you miss a week or go away on vacation, you miss nothing. You can spend $5 one week and $40 the next if you like, it’s up to you. 

Valley people, tell your Boston area friends that we are coming to their town! The Kitchen Garden is continuing Stone Soup Farm’s Boston area Wednesday CSA distribution sites at the Democracy Center in Cambridge and the Non-Profit Center in Boston. We are also looking to secure a third location so stay tuned for news on that front. Like on-farm pickup, these sites will have a farmers’ market-like display where members can choose what they like best. We are very excited to be in Boston! 

Options and add-ons for shareholders include the Fruit Share, Egg Share (1/2 dozen eggs per week from our own hens!), Spring Treat Share (March-May), and Winter Share (November-February). For the full rundown and all the details including the enrollment form, please visit the CSA page of our website.

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Rumors have been circulating about a secret taco party in January. Consider yourself officially in the know. We are teaming up with Neftali Duran from El Jardin Bakery and Open Square in Holyoke to put on a night of tacos in homage to everyone’s favorite street food. 

Grab a beer, order a plate of tacos, sit and eat. Get up and mingle. Repeat. If this sounds like your kind of party, you need to check this out. It’s only going to happen once.

Join us at Open Square in Holyoke Sunday the 22nd of January at 7pm. Tickets are available in advance only, $50 per person, all you can eat and drink, plus live music, dancing and art. (Checks should be written to Caroline Pam and mailed to 131 S. Silver Lane, Sunderland, MA 01375.) Email or call us as soon as possible to reserve your space!

There will be 6 different tacos to sample made from locally raised pork, chicken, goat and vegetables. The bar will be serving 3 excellent beers from High & Mighty Beer Co. of Holyoke.

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Something is missing in our food landscape. And I'll tell you one thing, it's not a lack of amazing local ingredients. For those who seek out and invest in the many dedicated farmers that have put down roots in the Valley, the dividends of flavor are extremely generous. And we're lucky to count as friends and clients several restaurant chefs who really get this. 

Yet what about all the Local “Heroes” who buy locally grown food “whenever possible,” (i.e. when convenient) when you know very well that salad was grown and picked by a machine 3,000 miles away and that pork chop is from outer space? For all the hype, why are there still so few places you can buy a square meal made with real ingredients? 

How many of you are tired of restaurants anyway? That silly ritual of tasting the wine and the well-meaning servers who incessantly molest you with “are you still working on that” and other such meddling? Don't you wish there was something else to do with your precious evenings out? We sure do.

We've come to the conclusion that if we want to eat good food, we're better off cooking it ourselves.

And that’s just what we intend to do. 

Look, we may not be the most polished cooks in the world, but we love it and it always seems to inspire us. It’s the reason we haven’t been able to kick the expensive and self-destructive habit of farming for a living. The rewards at the dining table are simply too great. We have come so close so many times to just saying, screw it, it’s not worth the stress, the heat, the cold, the long hours, the low pay, the risk of doom, the bending and the lifting. We would be better off if we worked part-time jobs. But where's the pleasure in that?

Our problem is that we care too much about this vision we have. This whole thing that we do, from seed to plate, is ultimately about enjoying life. It’s about creating something real to put in our mouths, to feed our friends, to nurture our souls. (Cue the dramatic music.) But it really doesn’t have to be this holier-than-thou pretentious thing that local food is often made out to be. It’s really just about having fun, tossing back a cold beer, and being like “man, taste this Brussels sprout pizza, oh my God!” 

That’s the kind of party that I like to go to. And I am guessing that there are a few of you out there who know exactly what I’m saying. So, the good news is, once a month-ish, we will steal some time away from our normal duties to throw just that kind of party.

We're calling it The Kitchen Table. Stay tuned for a series of events in the coming months that celebrate the food we like to eat and the incredible spectrum of flavors that grow here in the Valley. 

Kitchen Table events will be a cross between a dinner party and a church supper, but with awesome food and an experience that you simply cannot get at a restaurant. It's about bringing people together around good food. It’s fun, it’s informal, it’s relaxed.

The first of these events is this Sunday night. We’re making tacos with our friend Neftali from El Jardin Bakery. Why? Because we like tacos. We like the combination of slow cooked meat dripping in fat in a warm tortilla with a squirt of lime and a bracingly hot salsa. We cook this kind of thing when we get together to drink and have a good time. This time, we’re inviting all of you. We hope you can join us.

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We are now finished with the main 2011 farm season. Thank you so much to all of our shareholders, market customers and chefs for your support through a pretty tough season. There are very few things left growing in the field, which means we’ve harvested and sold most everything that managed to grow this fall. The last thing we’ve got to do out there is to plant and mulch next year’s garlic crop.  Out with the old, in with the new, as they say.

Things have rarely felt newer at the farm than they do right now. In a normal year, when September rolls in, it’s a big relief. Everything has been planted, the work load slacks off and all we have to do is reap the rewards. This year, the planting continued all the way through October. Our greenhouses are now full of winter crops. Maybe now we can slow down a bit.

We plan to take a few weeks off and start selling our winter crops just before Thanksgiving. We’ll have a lot of fresh spinach, carrots, radishes, turnips, herbs and salad mixes all through the winter. We’ll also have our special Late Treviso Radicchio that we dig up out of the field and force new growth inside, much like Belgian endive. 

We’ll be selling at the bi-monthly Springfield Winter Market in Forest Park starting November 19th, and at the monthly Greenfield Winter Market (formerly known as Winter Fare) starting December 3rd. We’ll also be doing weekly wholesale deliveries to restaurants like Chez Albert, Hope and Olive and Bistro Les Gras.

This winter marketing thing is a whole new world for us, and we’re getting inspired to do some new things at The Kitchen Garden. Since we’ll be selling a limited line of produce at these winter markets we are starting to think about adding some value-added prepared foods. So come check us out and see what we’ve come up with. There may be salad dressings, quiches, and other takeaway goodies. 

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We're excited to build some new greenhouses. We've just learned that we've been selected as one of 10 farms to receive a MEGA (Matching Enterprise Grants for Agriculture) grant from the Massachusetts Department of Agriculture. This is the pilot year for this new program designed to help new and beginning farm businesses with start up or expansion costs. We plan to use these funds to build a heated greenhouse for seedlings and some more unheated greenhouses for season extension.

Caroline has been invited to speak on a panel at the 2010 Women in Sustainable Agriculture Conference about how we use our website, blog and Facebook page for farm outreach and promotion. The conference is November 1-3 in Fairlee, VT.

The Young Farmers Conference at Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture is December 2-3 in Pocantico Hills, NY. Caroline worked at this educational farm when it opened in 2004 and we have presented at this inspiring gathering of new and aspiring farmers in previous years. 

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This was the first year of our C.S.A. and in many ways it has been a challenging one (all that rain, the birth of our son in the midst of the season, coordinating with our delivery service). But we are still standing and feeling very positive about the farm, the share, and the variety and quality of produce that we have been able to provide for our customers.

Next season our shares will be available for pickup at 5 different locations (Springfield, Northampton, Amherst, Sunderland (at the farm), and Greenfield), so as to both bring the share closer to our customers and reduce the costs associated with making so many home deliveries. We will not be working with Valley Green Feast in 2010. We will continue to provide the home-delivery service ourselves for an additional fee. Details about the 2010 share and information about how to enroll are now available on the C.S.A. Details page.

We would like to thank all of our members for their support during this first year of our C.S.A. As a thank you to our dedicated members and as an incentive to rejoin for 2010, the first 20 people to sign up by October 31, 2009 will receive a free Kitchen Garden T-Shirt featuring the logo from the box in full-color. Men's shirts are available in mustard yellow and women's in grass green. Sizes run a little on the snug side. Please specify S, M, L, XL.   

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The 11th Annual North Quabbin Garlic & Arts Festival is this weekend, October 3-4 in Orange, MA. We'll be there both days selling our garlic for planting and eating, along with a full spread of fall vegetables. We'll also be doing a cooking demonstration on Saturday at 2:30 pm. This festival is one of the biggest agricultural and cultural happenings of the year, featuring top notch live music, fine handmade artisan crafts, fantastic garlic cuisine, and even maple cotton candy! See you there!

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