Mountain Harvest Organics

Community Supported Agriculture providing you with

naturally grown produce

Volume 11, Issue 1

www.MountainHarvestOrganic.com

February, 2011

Our seeds are here and we are making plans for another season of fresh, healthy food!

We're finalizing our production schedule for our 2011 season, and even after 12 years of farming when we look at the boxes of seeds shipped to us, we continue to be amazed that such a small amount of seeds feeds approximately 100 families each week throughout our growing season. Once our crops begin maturing, from just a couple boxes of seeds, weekly we are harvesting at least 2 and 1/2 pickup truckloads of produce. This estimate doesn't even factor in potatoes, winter squash, garlic or onions.

We will be starting seeds a couple weeks behind schedule because our propagation greenhouse is in need of new plastic. The plastic has been on for 5 years, and it is a double layer of plastic, so we figure we are loosing 40% light transmission.  Our greenhouse supplier was late in delivering the plastic to us, so once the weather clears and we get the greenhouse recovered, we will become seeding machines!

These boxes contain approximately 160 varieties of seeds needed for this years growing season!

Changes in the CSA Membership

Many members have expressed interest in smaller shares because a family share was just too much produce for one week, so we will be offering two share sizes: a small and family sized share. The small share will be delivered in a 1/2 bushel box and the family share will be in a 3/4 bushel box. The family share will continue being the same size that we have been delivering for the last 10 years. Like last year, we will offer an extended season for 3 weeks in November; however, we will not be accepting payments for this portion of the season until the first week in November. When renewing your membership please be sure to choose which share option you want — either 25 or 28 weeks — this will help with our planning.

Many CSA farms require payment for the entire season upfront, because much like a non-profit organization, it is “seed money” to help the farmer offset costs at the beginning of the season prior to crop sales. When we started the CSA we were new to farming and didn't feel comfortable taking that risk with members. However, this year, especially since we no longer have a winter job, we are in need of a cash infusion to help offset our early season costs those being; seed, fertilizer/farm inputs and labor. We do know that not all families can afford to pay upfront for the entire season so we will continue offering shares for those needing to pay weekly or monthly.  We will be offering a set number of shares requiring an annual payment to meet our production costs..

Your First Delivery

Mark your calendars for your first delivery which arrives either Wednesday May 11^th or Saturday May 14^th depending on your pickup location. Your first share of the season will contain veggies that love the cool spring days and we hope it includes lettuce, strawberries, arugula, baby boc choi, kohlrabi, and radishes. The Waynesville pickup location will be Wednesday from 8:00 to 10:00 AM at the Historic Haywood Farmers' Market located in the HART Theatre parking lot. The pick up location for the Asheville area will be Saturdays at the North Asheville Tailgate Market located at UNC Asheville parking Lot #C from 8 AM to 10 AM.

This was the last CSA Share delivered in 2010 and we hope to make it even better!

Greenhouse #5 is ready for production

Last year we were hopeful to have greenhouse #5 in production for our fall season but were unable to complete that project during our growing season. Carl, Lee and I have been finishing up installing the endwalls, attaching poly lock channels along the sides to hold the plastic to the greenhouse and finally pulling plastic!

www.MountainHarvestOrganic.com

February, 2011

Pork For Sale

We enjoyed raising pigs last year because they are such social creatures with great personalities. We have certainly been enjoying our share of pork this winter trying the various cuts of meat. We especially have enjoyed making Boston Butt roasts in our crock pot creating our style of “Carolina Barbeque” pulled pork.

The pigs enjoying grass in their pasture. We have plans for raising pigs again this season.

I am certain that many of you already know, but research has shown that livestock raised on grass have many health benefits over animals raised in confinement. Some benefits of pastured pork are: • lower in total fat • higher in beta-carotene • higher in vitamin E • higher in the B-vitamins thiamin and riboflavin • higher in the minerals calcium, magnesium, and potassium • higher in total omega-3s • a healthier ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids (1.65 vs 4.84) • Lower in the saturated fats linked with heart disease. We will be delivering pork to the Waynesville area on Wednesday March 9^th from 9 until 10. You will need to pre-order so we can be assured that we deliver the pork products you desire. Be sure when ordering to order enough for a couple months because we don't make trips to town often during the winter. Visit our website homepage for the pricing and offerings of our pork products. Our bratwursts, Italian sausage, breakfast sausage and Boston Butts are our #1 selling pork products! Please email us your order and tell your friends!

Further diversifying our operation with plans to offer farm vacations

As many of you know, Carl and I have been contemplating building a vacation cabin rental so that we can generate more revenue off the farm. We spent the first part of our winter running the numbers for various options to help generate additional income and have come to the conclusion that “Farm Vacations” would be a great way for folks visiting the mountains to see a production oriented farm, perhaps helping with harvest, weeding or just seeing what it is like. This is a big investment which is why we have been thinking about it for a few years, and while we had our computer jobs we had supplemental income without needing to make such a large capital investment into a projects such as a rental cabin. Have you ever heard the saying, “When one door closes another opens”? A new door is opening for us and we feel is the right time to begin this endeavor, but we do know that it may take a year and a half or longer to build, especially since we will be juggling this project with market farming.

Meet Lee Stover

Our goal is to build the vacation cabin as sustainably as possible so the first phase in this project is to harvest trees that we can saw into lumber for building our cabin. Lee spent 25 years as a forester for Georgia Pacific managing 120,000 acres of forest. Lee now manages his own 100 acre timber farm and has his own saw mill for selling lumber locally. He is teaching us how to manage our woodlot using our small farm equipment and harvesting wood using sustainable and low impact techniques so we disturb the forest as little as possible.

We have cut trees for firewood but we have never felled large trees for lumber. We will be harvesting a lot of hemlocks as most are nearly dead from the woolly adelgid. In addition, we will be harvesting oak for flooring, white pines for posts and beams and poplars for siding. It is a little sad to be harvesting trees but better from the farm than from clear cutting operations.

We are thankful to have Lee teaching us how to safely harvest trees as some of our trees range from 36 to 40 inches in diameter and they are a little intimidating towering so high in the forest.

The wood shed now as a shiny tin roof!

Our first winter project was to complete the Wood Shed project and now we are pleased to have a roof on it. We started parking our tractors underneath it and are now not sure we want to use such great space for curing wood. It seems there is never enough dry storage on the farm and we wonder if other farmers have this issue. We are considering stacking wood on pallets with tin covering just to have use of the wood shed for tractor storage.

The wood shed with 7 collar ties, 14 runs of purlins, lookouts, false rafters and finally a shiny tin roof!