Farm Newsletter

This post is going to be jammed full of farm announcements, details, opportunities and other stuff.  We could write paragraphs about each thing, but we'll just give you the basics of each thing and move on.  If you want more details, send us an email or talk to us directly.

Reaching Us
Our farm email is gff AT genuinefauxfarm DOT com
Some spammers found a recent email link we put in the blog, so we are doing it this way this time.


Tom Sawyer Day/Farm Festival - GF7 (Genuine Faux Farm Fall Festival and Fetid Fruit Fling)
If you've been looking at the website, you might have noticed the GF7 festival is scheduled for this weekend (Saturday, Sept 21)!  The web details are here.  A few small amendments follow:
We will start the Tom Sawyer Day portion at 2pm and will run until 5pm.  Food will be served starting at 5pm.
Persons who might like to help, but are not willing to do some of the field or building work could come and help with the food setup.  Tammy is planning on making sloppy joes and we'll have some heirloom tomatoes for everyone to taste!  We expect we'll have some fresh cauliflower and broccoli as well.

If you will attend the Tom Sawyer Day portion, please RSVP so we can plan.  Possible tasks (depending on who says they might come) include prepping the granary for paint (scrape/sand), cleaning some field areas out so we can put in cover crops for the fall and perhaps going out and finding ugly tomatoes so they don't infect better tomatoes on the plants.


Chickens, Ducks and Turkeys - Oh My!
We still have some broilers from the Spring batch available for sale.  Our next batch will go the Park the first week of October.  The ducks have gone to the park and are now available.  We also have stewing hens ready to go.  The turkeys go in at the end of October.

Spring batch broilers (chickens):  $15 per bird.  Some are cut-up birds, these are $16.
Stewing hens:  $7 per bird.  20 available.
Fall batch broilers (chickens): $3.35 per pound, average 4.5 pounds.
Ducks:  Drakes average about 7 pounds - $6.25/pound.  Hens average about 4.5 pounds and cost $6.50/pound.
Turkeys: usually run from 13 pounds to 24 pounds.  Cost will be around our normal $3.75/pound.  If you want one of the 40+ birds this year, time to contact us and reserve one (or two or more).

Poultry Fall Package: 
1 turkey, 8 broilers  - $180.  The broilers could be delivered over a period of time.  Turkeys are much harder for us to store (for obvious reasons), so delivery is in a smaller window.  You may order more than one package if desired.

Our poultry are all day ranged birds.  No antibiotics or hormones.  Processed at Martzahn's Farm in Greene.  If you haven't tried one of these birds, you will be surprised by how good they taste compared to those you typically find in the grocery store.

Tomatoes for Canning/Freezing
We anticipate that we will have enough tomatoes to fill some bulk orders.  Price will be $2/lb with discounts at various volume levels.  We will take orders and put you on a list.  We will fill these in the order we receive them as soon as the plants produce the tomatoes to fill them.  We will contact you when your order is ready and see if a reasonable option can be made for delivery.  If you decide the time is not right for you to receive the tomatoes at that time, we will offer to the next person and put you at the bottom of the list.

We will give you a mix of heirloom tomatoes.  We will combine tomatoes for the base with those that will add a nice depth of flavor to your sauce or whatever it is you decide to do with them.

CSA Season End Game
We will continue through the fourth week of October.  So, Oct 22 is the last distribution for Waverly.  Oct 23 for Tripoli and Oct 24 for Cedar Falls.

Extended Fall Season Possibilities
We expect to be able to do a shorter extended fall season this year (moving our regular season back shorten our fall share).  Interested persons should let us know.  We will give information to all who tell us they are interested once we get closer to the end of the regular season CSA.  Typically, we have greens, fall roots and whatever other storage crops we might have (garlic, potatoes, etc).  Because of the season's early difficulties, we will not have winter squash in these shares.

2014 CSA
Next year will be our TENTH year of running the farm share CSA.  We'd like to make it a special year for everyone involved.  We have also targeted 2014 as a major capital project year in order to set us up to do well for another ten years.

Beginning in October, we will promote next year's CSA.  Typically, we do not get enough people for the CSA until April/May.  We want to be at least 80% full by the end of THIS year.  Look for some additional promotions to encourage your participation in the near future.

T-Shirts, Bags and More
Speaking of special promotions.  We have a stock of GFF canvas bags and GFF t-shirts.  We are looking to order some smaller sizes for the shirts as well.  You know these are out there.  We're working on some details for the promotion, so be forewarned!

Flour from Tyler Albers
Tyler is growing wheat and corn.  He has a mill.  He is grinding flour and will grind corn meal.  This is a learning process and he is rapidly climbing the learning curve.  If you want to support locally grown and produced flour, corn meal, etc.  Then, you should look into buying some flour from Tyler. 

The first batch of 20 bags should be available by the first week of October and we will use our CSA distributions to help Tyler deliver the flour.  Price is $6/bag (pound) and he will give us a special price of $5/bag if we get more than 12 ordered.  The additional 'cost' is that he requests feedback so he can refine the process and come up with the best product possible.  Contact us and we will share Tyler's contact information with you and let him know you are interested.

We have used some of Tyler's flour and were surprised by the robust taste fresh flour has!

Lamb from Jeff Sage

Jeff has about a dozen lamb available, to be processed over the next couple months.  Jeff does not use antibiotics and he raises these animals on pasture.  You should see them mowing his lawn!  Jeff sells lamb by the half, but no smaller (splitting further is hard to do).  So, if you want less than a half, find someone to share.

You have control over how your portion of lamb is processed - which is a benefit to you. You will need to call the processor (Jeff will tell you how this works), but this means you could do anything from all ground lamb + the leg of lamb or you could have chops, etc. 

We have ordered lamb from Jeff in the past and will do so again this year.  We have found that for families where some like the taste of lamb and others do not - a mixture of ground lamb with ground beef makes everyone happy.