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Greetings Everyone,
THANKS EVERYONE for your orders last week – your support of MHO is unbelievable!!! We never anticipated all the orders with such little diversity, yet you came through with your support of us, so we’re incredibly thankful that the food coming out of these fields is nourishing you.
Once again, we’re harvesting crops that were slated to be sold at our tailgate market before it was canceled, so we still don’t have as much diversity as we hope to going forward, yet once again we hope you will be able to still find some things tasty for your meals this week! We especially have an abundance of cucumbers so those of you who are financially secure may want to consider purchasing extra zucchini and cucumbers to share with a neighbor who is food insecure.
Once our markets were canceled, we switched gears to offering CSA Shares, so we seeded early maturing crops like arugula, radishes and turnips. However, the germination rate of those crops isn’t great. Since we are lacking diversity this week (and potentially the next few weeks), YOU ARE NOT REQUIRED TO PLACE AN ORDER, in addition, we are continuing to waive the $50 order amount per delivery site until we have enough diversity in offering you a good selection of food.
Here is a link to peruse the online store to get an idea of the diversity we offer!
Your Farmers (and cleaning staff),
Carl and Julie
NOTE: Your’re receiving this eNewsletter because you’ve either been a subscriber to MHO in the past OR if you’ve registered for our newsletters from our website. Feel free to unsubscribe if you no longer wish to receive this eNewsletter!
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What is new or abundant this week!
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CUCUMBERS…. CUCUMBERS…. CUCUMBERS…..They are delicious so we’ve been eating them for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Our hope is that you will as well! They are the very best we’ll be eating the entire season, because summer cucumbers are not as sweet nor as thinned skin.
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Large Bok Choi (or Choy)! We must be honest with you, while the Baby Bok Choi is known as a “gourmet” green, but we simply love the large bok choi because it’s stems have an incredibly crunchy texture and the flavor may not be as sweet as the baby, but the intense flavor shines through in almost any recipe. One of our favorite salads, that works with either the baby or large bok choi, is this vegan rice noodle salad. Another favorite is Bok Choi Risotto which is delicious as a meal! As always we are including CSA member Lorraine Connard’s refreshing salad. During the fall, one of our favorite stir-fries is bok choi with butternut squash and turnips. A slaw is always great, and we tend to include peppers, turnips and carrots in ours, but the ginger dressing makes the salad delicious! This recipe ginger tahini salad dressing; is vegan and one favorite of ours and works for salads made with either greens or lettuce.
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Our lettuce was planted late March, and from a farmers perspective, it hasn’t grown any since being transplanted! This cool spring weather, which is reminiscent of 10 years ago, and we must say we’ve been spoiled in recent years with warm weather that seems to speed up the microbial life in the soil thus helping crops mature a bit faster. This week we’ll have a limited amount of salad mix and oak leaf lettuce. We hope you’re like us and enjoying the Asian greens since they grow and thrive in cooler weather!
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The strawberries are ripening! We’re limiting only 1 pint per order just to share the bounty with everyone! High in Vitamin C, flavanoids, potassium, and antioxidants, these strawberries are normally very sweet. Our season is short in the mountains, but the berries are ever so sweet so get them while you can! You might notice a few of the green tops missing, so eat those first because their shelf life will be shorter. Each year in celebration of strawberry season we are sure to have strawberry shortcake at least once during the season. While we can sit down and eat a pint of plain ol’ strawberries, if some make it into the house we love them on this arugula salad. Another great recipe is a this salad with goat cheese. These decadent strawberry tarts are sure to please your family or guests. These strawberry ginger floats are incredibly refreshing for breakfast or an afternoon snack.
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This Weeks Farmer’s Choice!
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Above are veggies: onions, carrots, zucchini, bok choi, and ground pork. We’ve turned these veggies into Egg Foo Young
This week’s Farmer’s Choice Share includes: (share contents are subject to change based on our actual harvest.)
We’re offering both a Farmer’s Choice Veggie and Farmers’ Choice Veggie & Meat Share. Items common in both shares are listed first, followed by items specific to the veggie share the finally the veggie/meat share. The Farmer’s Choice Veggie & Meat share normally has smaller portions of vegetables. )
The following are included only in the veggie share:
The following are included only in the meat share
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What’s happening on the farm!
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PHEW… We were awarded some grant money!
We are super appreciative of ASAP for awarding us a $500 grant from their Farmer Relief Fund! If you are financially able, please consider making a contribution to them!
It turns out, farmers are failing to qualify for many of the relief benefits. While farms should qualify SBA PPP loans, most banks have been unwilling to work with small farms in filing for the loans. We had the opportunity to be on a conference call with an organization assisting farmers, and they believe that banks aren’t going out of their way to help farms because it takes additional work on their part, mostly because farmers typically don’t receive weekly paychecks, but take draws from their business throughout the year when they’re able. Not to mention, the seasonal nature of a farming business is difficult for banks to understand. Just last week, we were also able to qualify for a $5,000 SBA loan, apparently it can be forgiven, but it definitely doesn’t cover our loss of income from our market sales or our accommodations.
The nature of our business is that we’re not profitable enough to save for a “rainy day†fund, so when we are able to reopen our accommodations, there is no way for us to pay back the loans. As we understand it, our same business model has been adopted by the restaurant industry, so we’re extremely worried about tourism in our area. Given these current economic times, there are so many who are destitute, that it is overwhelming as to what organizations we should be supporting in an effort to help others.
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We totally understand why banks don’t want to work with farms!
Honestly, we can understand banks not wanting to deal with small farms such as ourselves, as our business model doesn’t align with the profit driven capitalistic nature of almost any other business we can think of. Thinking back to our business plan when we launched MHO, almost any corporate executive would never have recommended that we quit our computer software jobs and start a small farm business.
Every farmer we know prioritizes taking care of the soil, nurturing biodiversity and growing healthy food above and beyond turning a profit. Maybe that is why the small farmer is only about one percent of jobs – nobody in their â€right†mind would go against the grain of capitalism and choose to farm. All our farmer friends are selfless in working ungodly hours feeding their community while trying to nurture the land. We haven’t quite figured out what in our DNA drives us in pursuing our passion over a paycheck.
For example, if a crop of ours had a disease/pest issue, we at MHO would sacrifice harvesting that crop over spraying it with the potential of killing bees or other beneficial insects. In effect, losing money for the benefit of Mother Earth. In addition, we closed our accommodations before our county’s stay-at-home order forfeiting our income just because the health and well being of our community is of our utmost concern. These decisions go against the capitalistic nature of almost all businesses.
When you think about it, we can certainly understand banks not wanting to offer a business such as ours a loan, most certainly they’d want us to prioritize paying it back at all costs, which doesn’t align with our personality of ensuring the well being of Mother Earth and our community. While it might not happen in our life time, we believe that other economic models, those placing a higher emphasis over the health and well being of the earth and humans over capitalism, will one day become socially accepted.
This spring we decided to increase our production to pay our utilities, but just know because of our age we’re are no longer physically able to keep the level of production we did before diversifying into offering farm-stays. We’re no longer young spring chicks.
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The first monarch of the year on our crimson clover cover crop!
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