2014 Season CSA Starting June 17th!

Members, supporters and friends of the farm:

Dancing Hen Farm is proud to announce the start of the 2014 CSA Season.  After much hard work this spring and many crop walks to determine rate of growth, we have decided to make our first delivery be on June 17th.  I wish to apologize for the earlier information stating we would start June 10th.  While our plantings continue to catch up, the simple fact is, that due to the late spring our availability of crops has been delayed.

The first CSA choice window will open Thursday, June 12th and close Sunday, June 15, with the first delivery again being Tuesday, June 17th.  The first on farm pick up will be Thursday, June 19.  The last delivery will be the week of November 10th. 

I want personally thank all of our members and supporters for your patience and understanding.  Vegetable growing and farming is a challenging business which we wouldn't be able to do without your support.  I look forward to meeting each of you this season either here at the farm, at our drop sites, or at market to express my thanks personally.  We are planning a few open houses at the farm this season to allow everyone the opportunity to see where and how your crops are grown.

Look for more detailed emails concerning the start of the CSA coming soon and thanks again for your support.

Farmer Don

Buying Club for May 30 and 31

Greetings from Dancing Hen Farm!

Yes, there will be a buying club delivery this week. 

Ordering is now open and will remain open until 11 pm on Thursday.  Deliveries will be Friday (5/30) at Bloom Naturally from 5:30 to 6 pm and on Saturday we will be in Dallas (100 Lake Street) from 10 to 10:30 am and in Forty Fort (900 Rutter Ave) from 11 to 11:30.  Please look for either our white van or silver Subaru.   If you are having trouble with pick up, please call Joan's cell phone (570-204-3649).

This week we are adding napa cabbage and vitamin green to the buying club.  Vitamin green is an asian cooking green with a mild flavor, similar to bok choy or komatsuna.  Try vitamin green in a stir fry or raw in salads.

 

Right now is probably our busiest time on farm as we race to get everything planted.  This week we are planting cabbage, lettuce, summer squash, tomatoes, beans, cucumbers, herbs and greens out in the field.  In the seed house, we have completed seeding of eggplant, peppers and winter squash for transplant in a few weeks and are continually seeding crops such as lettuce, kale and swiss chard which are planted in rotation throughout the growing season. 

Crops are looking good, although we feel everything is still at least two weeks behind due to the cool extended spring.  Most everything we have planted recently is really taking off and looking beautiful.  However, some of the crops we planted early, when soil temperatures were still cool, are struggling to really take hold. 

We still have a few spots remaining in the our CSA for 2014.  Please remember CSA members will receive first choice on all harvested crops.  Farmer Don is walking our fields nightly to determine when our first CSA delivery will be, based on maturity of crops.  Emails will be going out shortly to CSA members concerning the start of the season.

If you have questions or need additional information, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Thank you for your continued support of our farm and local agriculture.

Farmer Don and Joan
Dancing Hen Farm
570-925-0263

Our buying club is open every week!

This week we added maple syrup from Forks Mountain Family Farm in Sullivan County.

This 100% pure and natural Maple Syrup is produced by the Forks Mountain Family Farm located in the mountains of Sullivan County. The syrup is produced on the family farm from the sap that is gathered across the 100 acres of farm land. Maple Syrup is a great substitute for sugar, with only 50 calories per tablespoon, containing minerals such as calcium, potassium and iron. Enjoy it with your breakfast favorites, or over ice cream and granola, even add it to your tea and coffee for sweetness. We hope you enjoy this healthy native food as much as we enjoy making it!

Open House

If you are planning a garden of your own, we will have transplants for sale during the open house.  Everyone attending will also receive one dozen of our free range eggs.  See you next Sunday!!!

May Update

Greetings From Dancing Hen Farm!

We are approximately one month away from  Week one of our CSA.  We do still have some memberships available.  Our CSA is now a full choice CSA, meaning all members choose exactly what is in their boxes each week.  With the implementation of our new computer system, members can now register online.  In order to insure you receive a box for week 1, we need to receive payment prior to the start of the CSA.  Please mail payment to the farm.  Sorry for any inconvenience, but we do not take credit or debit card payments at this time.

 

On Sunday, May 18, we are having an open house (from 2 -4) at the farm for all members and friends of our farm.  Come on by, tour the farm, learn about how we grow your food, meet the farmers, get an orientation to our csa and learn all about our member choice CSA.  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!

 

Around the farm we have been busy, busy, busy.  We are in full planting mode!  Onions and potatoes are being planted.  Our first rotations of greens (kale, chard, Asian greens and lettuce) are in the ground.  In addition we have carrots, radishes, beets and beans seeded and starting to germinate in our fields.  The peas  are up, but growing very slowly this year.  Warmer season summer crops, tomatoes, eggplant, summer squash and pepper, are germinating in our seed house and these transplants will be planted out in the next few weeks.

Speaking of transplants, we do have transplants for sale, if you garden and are interested in locally produced organic transplants.  Please check our buying club or email the farm for availability.  Or come by our on May 18th, as we will have transplants for sale during our open house.

Speaking of the buying club.  Our goal is to continue with the buying club at least until the Back Mountain Market starts in July.  We will do our best to have items available for the buying club, but please note, items will always be made available to our CSA members first.  Some items, in limited supply, may never become available to the buying club.  Our eggs and chicken will be for sale through the buying club.  We are currently sourcing other local and sustainably produced items.  We have sources for raw cow's milk and cheeses, maple syrup and dried herbs and we hope to add other products.

 

As always if you have questions or need additional information, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Thank you for your support of small family farms and local agriculture.

Farmer Don and Joan
Dancing Hen Farm
www.dancinghenfarm.com
570-925-0263

April News and Buying Club

Greetings from Dancing Hen Farm!

We want to take a moment to update everyone on farm happenings and also to announce our buying club will be opening this Tuesday (4/22), with deliveries Friday (4/25) and Saturday (4/26).  If you would like to order, go to our website and purchase a free winter buying club membership (http://www.dancinghenfarm.com/purchase.html) .  Please know, we at the farm, need time to activate your account before you can order, so register as soon as possible.  Also this buying club is separate from the buying club offered to our CSA members, so members who have signed up for a CSA buying club will need to also purchase the free winter buying club so they can order products outside of our CSA delivery dates.

We think spring has finally sprung!  We still are not out of danger of frost and freezing overnight temperatures, but the really cold temperatures and the snow should be done for the season. 

So what does this mean for us here at the farm?  It means our seed houses are filling up with trays and trays of seedlings, our fields are getting tilled in preparation of planting, farmers markets are starting up, and our chickens are laying lots and lots of eggs!

We finally have peas and potatoes in the ground.  Our early pea harvest will be a bit later than recent years, but we are planning on a good harvest of snow, sugar snap and shelling peas for our second or third week of CSA deliveries.  We have a small planting of potatoes in one of our unheated greenhouses.  These will be harvested young as tender new potatoes.  This will the first time we have tried potatoes in the greenhouse, so stay tuned for how these turn out.  We generally plant quite a few potatoes out in the field and we have about a quarter to a third of our potatoes in the ground with more to follow in the next few weeks.

We have also started our root crop rotation of field plantings, with beets, carrots, turnips and radishes all being planted last week.  The radishes should germinate quickly and we anticipate radishes in the first weeks CSA boxes.  Scallions are onions will be planted this week, with scallions the first of these crops to be harvested.

The seed houses are filled with trays of cooking and salad greens.  These seedlings will be planted in the field shortly.  Look for kale, swiss chard, Asian greens and salad greens as early items for the CSA.  We have started seeding our warmer season plants, including tomatoes.  Our challenge now is finding enough space for our seedlings before they get planted out.  The tender plants still need protection from chilly overnight temperatures and we never seem to have enough greenhouse space this time of year.

Our laying hens are really enjoying the warmer temperatures and greening up of the farm.  It is so nice to see happy chickens foraging for weeds and insects!  The longer day length means they are once again starting to lay lots and lots of eggs.  We will be getting more laying hens towards the end of May.  Our first batch of meat chickens arrive this week

.

The CSA is filling up nicely.  We are allowing for a few more memberships this season, so we do still have memberships available.  We are now a Choice CSA, so all members can choose from a list of seasonal items each week.  Part Share members choose 6 items each week and Full Share members choose 10 items each week.  Egg shares are also available to CSA members.  If you have questions about how our Choice CSA operates or our delivery locations, please contact us.

As mentioned above, we are starting our buying club up this week.  Ordering will open Tuesday at 5 am and close Thursday at 11 pm.  All ordering is done online, so to place an order, you will need to register with our website and purchase a FREE winter buying club share.  We will deliver Friday night to Bloomsburg and Saturday morning to Dallas and Forty Fort.  This may be one of our only buying club dates for the spring and all product will be limited.  Please sign up and place your orders early, product is available first come first serve!

We are featuring eggs this week!  Our chickens have free access to our organically managed fields and a their diet is supplemented with organic soy free local grains.  On farm, we eat lots and lots of eggs.  A favorite is what we call green eggs.  Sauted greens mixed in with scrambled eggs as they cook.  We often make extra greens for dinner, so we can add them to our breakfast or lunchtime eggs.  Here are some websites with some good ideas and recipes for pastured eggs:

http://eatlocalgrown.com/article/11161-10-fun-easy-ways-to-cook-eggs.html

http://www.incredibleegg.org/recipes

Our farm calendar for the next few weeks includes Farmers Markets at Bloomsburg University on Friday 4/25 and 5/2 from 8:30 to noon.  We are having a vegetable growers open house and potluck on farm on Saturday 5/3, from 10 am to 1 pm.  This is a PASA (Pennsylvania Association of Agriculture) sponsored event and all are welcome to stop by, see the farm and enjoy some conversation.  On Saturday May 10, we will be at Forks Farm for their first market of the 2014 season.  The Hopkins Family, at Forks Farm run a great market, well worth the trip!  (www.forksfarmmarket.com)

A quick comment on our website.  We are still working at cleaning up the financial aspect of the site.  We will be working on it tonight.  But some of your accounts may still show a previous balance owed, even though you know your account does not have a balance.  Please know we are keeping track of payments the old fashioned way (pen and paper!) and will hopefully get the website up to date shortly.  Thank you for your patience with this.  If you have questions or concerns about your account status or balance, please do not hesitate to contact us.

As always, thank you for your continued support of our farm and local agriculture! 

Farmer Don and Joan
Dancing Hen Farm
www.dancinghenfarm.com
570-925-0263

Today is the opening day of baseball season.  With this on his mind and a snow and ice storm raging on the farm, Farmer Don picked up his pen yesterday:

The setting, with upcoming baseball season upon us, is a baseball game between the Dancing Hen Farmers and the Mother Natures.  Farmer Don will be your announcer here at the stadium know as Dancing Hen Farm.  We are in the bottom of the third inning.  A recap of the game so far shows a close game with Mother Nature pitching an assortment of polar vortexes and snow storms at the Farmers in the first few innings.  The Farmers came through this onslaught and managed to still get a few men on base.  Kale, escarole, dandelion, lettuce, collards, kohlrabi, celery and spinach all battled bravely and got on base, ready to score.

The farmers were pitching plastic for the first few innings and doing okay.  So well, that the plastic came off here in the bottom of the third, with Mother Nature getting a little soft.

Well today's scorecard has Mother Nature throwing ice balls so the Farmers brought out the relief pitcher, fabric row cover, to protect the early hitters.

So, we will wrap up today's broadcast as Mother Nature accumulates ice balls, as the Farmers' biggest fans, Shady and Rosie, watch from the warm dugout, out of the onslaught.  They know the Farmers have many more innings to generate more runners.

But, keep in mind fans, as was so eloquently stated at a sustainability workshop this winter, "Mother Nature bats last...." 

Stay tuned....

Mother Nature finished the inning with 5 inches of snow and the game goes on.........