Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Happy Memorial Day!

Happy Memorial Day, one day late, from Dancing Hen Farm!

The buying club opened this morning.  As always, deliveries will be Friday and Saturday.  This week we are running a special on end, end of season potatoes.  These are no-spray potatoes from a neighbor and friend of ours.  They have been stored in his root cellar and have remained firm and delicious.  We continue to have a good supply proteins available.  Including eggs, pork, chicken and grassfed beef. 

Speaking of buying clubs, I want to take a moment to explain our buying clubs.  We have two buying clubs.  One is our "winter" buying club".  This buying club is free to join and deliveries are made to a designated spot on Friday night or Saturday morning.  We accept cash or check when you pick up your order.  The second buying club is for our CSA members only.  With the CSA buying club, your order is delivered with your CSA box.  The CSA buying club requires a $50 deposit and your purchases are deducted from this $50.  If you are a CSA member and wish to participate in both buying clubs, you will need to sign up for both clubs.  Please also note, with both of these options, we need to activate you in our database before you can order.  For this reason, you will not immediately be able to order upon signing up.  If you have questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.

As long as we are talking about the CSA.  We do still have some remaining memberships available for 2015.  Our new drop site in Bear Creek, Luzerne County, has now been added, so, if you can now sign up to pick up your share at the Bear Creek Association Clubhouse.  As we announced in last week's newsletter, Farmer Don has determined Week 1 for this season's CSA will be the week of June 15.  The CSA runs for 22 weeks regardless of the start date and all members choose exactly what they receive in their box each week.  Watch your email for details concerning Week 1. 

Mark your calendars!  Sunday, May 31, is our annual Open House from 1 to 3.  Farmer Don will be giving a farm tour starting at 1:30.  Everyone is welcome!!  Please stop by, visit the farm, meet the farmers, meet the animals and see how we grow your food.  Everyone who attends will get one dozen of our free range eggs!  Please remember you are visiting a farm, so wear shoes/clothes you don't mind getting wet or muddy!  We also have two friendly farm dogs.  Shady and Rosie.  Shady is  an older mixed breed and does bark.   Rose is a younger Border Collie, she is a bit shy, but does jump. 

This weekend was a busy one for us.  We hosted a family reunion, of sorts, for Farmer Don's family.  It is always good to spend holidays surround by family!  The weather warmed up enough on Sunday to make it a perfect day to be outside.  This was the first time some of Don's cousin had been to the farm, so of course, a farm tour was in order.  We worked hard to serve Dancing Hen Farm food at the picnic.  Our menu consisted of curried chicken salad, pulled pork, deviled eggs, kale salad and an orzo/asparagus salad.  As always we made lots and lots of food, so we have lots and lots of leftovers!  Not a problem when you feed the farm crew lunch every day!!

On farm we are hoping to finally be out of the frost danger.  We again had frost several nights last week.  We have most likely lost our first planting of green beans.  Farmer Don knew he was really pushing the weather window by planting these beans so early and we have another, slightly later, planting in another field which seems fine so no real worries.  We also got a bit of damage on some summer squash  where the leaves were touching the row cover.  Everything else fared well, thanks to Farmers Don and Matt working hard to get covers on things.  The cucumbers in our greenhouse look beautiful and some plants are flowering and already have baby cucumbers on them.  We are thinking we may very well have cucumbers for week 1 of our CSA!  We will be spending this week planting, planting and planting some more.  This is our super busy time of year, as we scramble to get all of our main summer crops in the ground.  Now we just need some rain to help things grow!  We are so thankful for our irrigation system, but irrigation just does not compare to a nice soaking rain.


Ok, time to get this newsletter emailed and posted and time for me to get busy with my next project.  Until next week....   

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