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Come see us again soon!

Greetings Good CSA members! 

Absolutely HOORAY!  The day approacheth for the start of the Spring CSA and Spring, respectively!  This year, we begin on the very day when we expect all the flowers to pop right out of the ground and dance for us… but holy weather!  Snow is currently blowing horizontally across the farm, and yet Garrett still managed to prune the evening away…

Without too much further ado, welcome to the Good Life Farm Spring CSA.  We are so extremely happy to have you, and thank you again for joining with us as we push around the edges of season extension and perennial cropping, finding our special niche in this regional food system.  Following are some details for the CSA, generally, and specifically, your share outlook(s) for this week.  Please take special note that all of our wonderful Good Food add-on’s still have room in their March-May shares.  We will have samples at pick-up, and hope you will try them out!  Garrett and I are members!

In the Good Life Share this week: 

• Escarole (head) Yes!  These heads have been growing slowly all winter, storing up their tangy goodness for your use.  We recommend raw.  A real head of greens, in March!!!
• Greens Mix Flowerettes- The heady, Spring stylings of our winter mix.  Think mini-broccoli flowers atop delicious greens with delicate, cold-generated flavor.  Again, we recommend using these raw, in salad, for maximal effect.

• Leeks-Also, Yes!  We're working on overwintering more and more alliums (members of the onion family) to spice up our early weeks.  These leeks are sweet, winter kissed and fresh out of the ground!

• Red Russian Kale- Our standby, and gosh I am glad we have this crop!  Sweet and crunchy at this time of year, and utterly reliable.  This week’s is small- recommended for raw eating or a massaged salad, but not at cooking size quite yet.
• Sprouts! From our dear friend Ellen Brown at Dancing Turtle.  This week we’ll have Crunchy Beans, which in my house means Pad Thai!

Words from our Good Food friends…

Crooked Carrot CSK

Hello from the Crooked Carrot Kitchen-

Welcome, everyone!  We're so glad to have you with us for our first share of the season.  We're looking forward to cooking for you as we make the gradual transition from hearty colder-weather foods and precious preserved ingredients to the first fresh notes of spring!  To start things off, this week we have a collection of Mediterranean-themed items - mostly from the European side, but skipping across to the North African coast as well.
In the Crooked Carrot share this week:

1) Pastured Chicken Broth OR Vegetable Broth - Enjoy this rich, aromatic broth simmered with a generous handful of cooking greens, some diced carrots and onions - or matzah balls for Passover!

2) Cassoulet Beans - These hearty, savory beans are great on their own, or simmer with some greens or your meat of choice.

3) Carrot-Ginger Salad - Sweet and pungent, this salad is delicious straight from the jar, or serve over a bed of fresh spring greens!

4) Roasted Garlic Aioli OR Roasted Garlic Vinaigrette - A Mediterranean classic, excellent on roasted roots, or as a dip for carrot and kohlrabi sticks.  VEGAN OPTION: In place of the aioli, our vegan members receive this sprightly dressing!  Enjoy on a green salad, or add a splash to a skillet full of braising greens.

For more information, please visit our website at www.crookedcarrotcsk.com. There you will find meal ideas for this week’s CSA/CSK share items, detailed descriptions of each item, and our "menu possibilities chart" - a quick visual reference featuring suggestions on how to use your share items to make whole meals.

Jar Return Notes:
Make sure to keep your jars and lids!  Please wash them and return them to us.  You can return them at The Good Life Farm or The Piggery during regular pick-up hours, and we also have jar return boxes available any time at our Stick and Stone Farm and Three Swallows Farm pick-up locations.

To receive a full refund for your deposit at the end of the season, you must return all of the jars in your share by the end of the season. Please remember that we keep track of your jar returns based on your member number, which appears on the lids of your jars. To ensure that you get credit for returning your jars, return them with the lids on (if the label washes off, just write your number on the lid).  If we get a jar back without a lid, or without a label, we don’t know who to credit the return to!

Enjoy, and thanks for joining us for the spring!  If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, feel free to email us any time at info@crookedcarrotcsk.com, or visit us on

Facebook: www.facebook.com/crookedcarrotcsk.  
 
Silas, Johanna, and Jesse — the Crooked Carrot Team

Finger Lakes Dairy Share

Welcome to the first week of the Finger Lakes Dairy Share’s spring season. It’s gonna be a fun couple of months with lots of special cheeses alongside your yogurt and butter basics. In this week’s share: 

Pint unsalted butter - made from grass-fed organic milk 

Ithaca Milk Cheese - ½ lb Raw Milk Sharp Cheddar  

Lively Run Goat Dairy - 4oz Herbed Chevre

Redbyrd Orchard Cider

Woohooooo, we’re so happy to get to work with all these great folks and be an add-on to your GLF share!  We’re a small sustainably managed orchard and cidery located in Burdett and Trumansburg (long story)…if you haven’t had a chance to try our cider yet, you are in for a treat.  And by cider, we mean traditional fermented hard cider, yes you know, the kind you need to be 21 to sign up for J

For our Spring Cider Share we have our 2012 Workman Dry Cider and 2012 Workman Semi-Dry Cider available in any of our share formats, please specify. 

For more details:  www.redbyrdorchardcider.com  or www.facebook.com/RedbyrdOrchardCider

Wide Awake Bakery

It’s spring, or so we’re told. It’s true that the sun is shining with a new vigor, and the days are a bit longer, but the cold still bites through thin gloves. At the bakery, it’s Parker, our goose, who keeps an eye on the changes; He says he’s in the mood for love, and a good fight. And that means spring really is here.

For us, the spring means we get to work with Melissa and Garrett, and it’s an honor and a pleasure. We’ll be bringing pasta, granola, and cookies to the Good Life Farm distributions, and we hope you get a chance to try some—if you haven’t already signed up for one of our shares. We’ve been experimenting, studying, and practicing in the bakery, and we’re looking forward to sharing our adventure. See you soon! Stef

 Wolftree Farm

HIP, HIP HOORAY! IT'S THE SPRING CSA!

Chicken Share Customers: You'll all be getting your first chicken and your package of organs or stock parts this week.

Lamb Share Customers: Many of you will be getting your shares this week, as requested. Check-in if you are unsure.

I will be posting some recipes for both chicken and lamb on our website- www.wolftreefarm.com. There are some lovely ways to combine your spring vegetables with both types of meat. Feel free to email me (wolftreefarm@gmail.com) with any preparation questions and send me your good ideas, too!

It is a time of great expectancy here at Wolftree Farm. Our ewes are walking with labored gaits and show significant sideways dimension as the lambs within negotiate for more space. By the end of the month we expect the first births out of our group of 20. We've saved our best, most nourishing hay for their late gestation, lambing and lactation. Every pound is precious after last year's difficult haying conditions, so here's to hoping it lasts! While our ewes are independent and hearty enough to deliver their lambs on their own, we do keep a close eye at lambing and choose carefully when to intervene. It is the close tending aspect of sheep raising that Jeromy and I find satisfying; offering small, timely assists to a largely self-regulating natural process. The birthing of new lambs always brings me out of the most recalcitrant of winter slumps. Be it just their undeniable cuteness, or some more visceral connection to the meaning of life, lambs embody the potential of the coming season...spring...yeah.

Wolftree Farmers.

Hello cider enthusiasts!!!!

Yes, it's that's time of the year again...the apples pressed this past fall into juice have gone through their fermentations and alas, behold, Redbyrd Orchard Cider finally has cider to offer again, especially for YOU! ...we're partnering up this early spring with our dear friends, Melissa and Garrett, at Good Life Farm (along with a bevy of other awesome producers, including Wide Awake Bakery, The Piggery, and more) and will be offering our bottle and keg shares as an add-on to their spring CSA, which runs March-May, filling in that gap between your winter and summer farm shares you might have with one of our many amazing local farmers. 

Take a peek below at a brief note from GLF and their easy sign up form and share descriptions.  The magnificent Melissa will be handling all the sign ups and payments.  The CSA fills up quick, woo hoo, so go on, check it out as soon as you can.

*2012 Workman Dry:  clean, crisp, honey and green apple on the nose, slate on the tongue, with soft tannins on the finish. bone dry, focused, well balanced and unexpectedly fruity.  a blend of 22% Chisel Jersey, 12%Thornberry (a red-fleshed apple), 12% Spitzenberg, 10% Northern Spy, and 44% mixed heirlooms and russets.

We love growing apples and we love making cider and we'd love to share that with you!  So, sign up, get to drink some amazing locally produced cider and support your local foodshed...woohoooo, what could be better?!!!!! Not much. 


Cheers,
Deva and Eric

Deva Maas
Redbyrd Orchard Cider,
 where growing apples and making cider go hand in hand
*traditional cider from central new york*
607.351.3787
www.redbyrdorchardcider.com
www.facebook.com/RedbyrdOrchardCider

Thank you for once again filling up our March-May portion of the Spring CSA!  We are still taking May-only sign-ups, and our collaborators can still take members for the entire season!  Please see our Spring CSA page for more info

More details on our Spring CSA page.  Please join us!

Some updates for the Thanksgiving Market:

Additional Produce Available- Tumeric (GLF) and Brussels Sprouts (GLF and YFP)

Presenting a bodacious cooking demo: The Youth Farm Project (based out of 3 Swallows Farm in Danby ((http://www.facebook.com/pages/Youth-Farm-Project/104068649644211)

Good Life grew a fair number of special fall and Thanksgiving-themed veggies to pair up with our turkey sales, and then decided to go whole hog and invite other favorite farms to collaborate and try to fill most (if not all) of your Thanksgiving needs.  Here’s a sketch of what to expect, and more details will follow the week before.

• Fresh vegetables from Good Life, Stick and Stone, Remembrance
• Special hors devours box with local dairy and spreads
• Various accoutrements produced by our dear CSK friends Crooked Carrot
• Honey, eggs and beeswax gifts (for the season which immediately follows) from Wolftree Farm

We are still confirming other items included dried mushrooms, local grains and flours and additional meats.

After last week's Ginger Bonanza, I received some lovely ginger recipes, plus requests for posting general information regarding freezing, etc.  Now here!  Check out our Recipe Page, currently dedicated to Zingiberaceae (Ginger family)!

*Green Grape in Fort Greene, Brooklyn- http://www.greenegrape.com/blog/.

*New friend and fellow ginger-lover Mary Woodsen reviewed our ginger in its pickled form (processed byCrooked Carrot CSK).  Check it out what Mary has to say, here!