Mulling Ideas and Some News

Participation is requested with this post!

This is just one way you can make your Farm Share work more for you.

The following probably has more to do with our CSA than anything else.  But, as with all things farm...there is overlap.  So, feel free to read and participate even if you are not in the CSA.

1. Tammy and I are taking the time to update our recipe pages on our web page today.  So, take a look and see what we've done.  We added a number of recipes suggested to us over the past year and a half by CSA members (and others).  Sorry it took so long to do that.
2. Speaking of recipes.  Surveys have indicated to us that there are certain veggies that are either loved or hated by our members.  But, more appropriately, people aren't sure what to do with some of them.  As a result, we are designing brochures for certain veg along the lines of the summer squash/zucchini trifolds we did some years back.  We will reprint that one and we will reprint (with modification) one for eggplant.  In development is one for kale, one for greens (other than kale), one for winter squash.  Other suggestions?
3. The idea of having some brochures is so we can have something to hand to people at our CSA distributions (and maybe farmers' market) to help people with figuring out what to do with everything.  We really would like to do better in this area.
4. We've noticed that many people seem to like option boxes in our distributions.  For example - a bunch of kale OR a bunch of chard OR another head of lettuce.  Another example - turnips or beets or a mix of the two.  And yet another - a box of whatever excess we have that you may select from.  See the next point for discussion.
5. The issue here, of course, is that we don't want a situation where someone who comes later has less choice than those who come earlier.  So, there are management issues here.  But, there are if we do this other ways as well.  So, from your perspective - how do YOU feel about these selection options?  
6. Tammy and I both felt we might be able to get a group of people together to discuss ways to make vegetables more accessible to their children.  We have a number of members (past and present) who have children - and everyone has a different approach to introducing foods to their kids.  We'd like to figure out a way to host a group meeting once or twice before the season starts - or during - that can discuss ways to be successful in doing this.  Tammy will be in charge of this - so if you don't want to post here, send it to her.  Either way, it will get to her.  We think this idea is worthy of pursuing and would like to see it happen.  What do you think?
7. Farm gatherings.  We have held three festivals and a myriad of Tom Sawyer work days on our farm each year.  Last year, we participated in the "Farm Crawl" sponsored by NIFFP and UNI-CEEE.  What sort of farm events do you want to see us offer in 2012?  We have not set the schedule yet.  How many of you are interested/willing to participate in a work day or two?  We want to focus our energy on things you want to participate in.

We realize this is a lot to read through and think on.  But, we do want to hear from you about what you think.  One of the advantages to consumers with buying local is that they can make their feelings known and expect that the local producers will either make a change to accommodate OR explain why the proposed change cannot be made.  Try doing that with a large farm 1000 miles away.