Hope you and yours are well and enjoying Spring wherever you are. The kids and I are having a Spring Break "stay-cation". We were super excited at first, and then our two youngest caught colds. The movie, Cinderella, will have to wait... Crazy how our bodies seem to know when we're having a vacation, right? Cabbage, lots of greens, blueberry smoothies, elderberry juice extract and triple echinacea tea is speeding up recovery and keeps mom from catching it too. (If I could just stop eating chocolate chip cookies, I think my immune system would be impenetrable!)
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Click on this photo of
Maia & Jacob with
"Spotty" the lamb
for our
"Happy Spring" video!
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Each morning we look for newborn lambs. The moms are huge as they are all expecting twins! All of our animals are super cute and it's neat to see them all laying down or nibbling hay together like good friends. As far as planting goes, the kids, their two friends and I moved 92 seeded flats into our hoophouse this afternoon. We needed to make room in our garage for... my car. Just kidding... MORE seedlings! I finally figured out how to make and post a video, because I wanted to share a bit more about our farm, what we do and the joy we find here. :-)
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| Our Pastured Sheep, Beef & Pork |
We chose Katahdin sheep and Belted Galloway Beef for their exceptional taste and nutritional profile, as well as for their heartiness in northern Michigan winters.
Our sheep and cattle are grass fed only with our certified organic pasture and hay. We also give them appropriate salt with minerals including selenium and kelp.
We water our animals (and ourselves!) from our 230-foot well.
If you are interested in purchasing whole or side (or quarter for beef), please email that you'd like to be on the wait list. We'll send you the details.
We're also known for our highly-lauded pastured pork, which people purchase by the side. We sell out early each summer, so it's best to get your $100 deposit in ASAP!
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CSA Shares Still Available For the 2015 Season!
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Pictured Here Is An Example of a Large Family Share (5-8 people) from September 2014
Large family shares have 1/3 more food than small family shares. Amount of items and total weight increases throughout the season. To make an informed decision about purchasing a share, it's best to look at our newsletter archives.
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 Incredible Cherry Brats I love almost everything about this time of year, except for the excessive farm mud, which comes straight in the house and ends up on bedspreads some how! To cope, I make savory food from the food we put by. ;-) A favorite farm dish is pan-fried onions, cabbage, potatoes with our pork cherry brats. I start by sauteing onions in coconut oil, then stir in a sliced potatoes, chopped-up cabbage. I sliced the brats pretty thinly, so they'd cook quickly and flavor the vegetables. I like a bit of sweet and sour taste, so I added about 2 Tb Bragg's apple cider vinegar and 1 Tb maple syrup to the mix. I'm always cooking for six plus leftover's for school lunches. We used 1 large red onion, 8 medium potatoes, 3/4 a cabbage, 5 cherry brats and salt to taste. We had no leftovers!
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 Help Us Share The Harvest! |
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Partner With Us!
Every season, Ryan and I make it a priority to share what we grow, and we've seen the need in northwest Michigan grow each year with us. Each week during the growing season, we donate a wide variety of our delicious vegetables to four area food pantries, including Good Samaritan Family Services in Ellsworth, which serves over 700 families each month! We also give CSA shares to individual local families, all totaling several thousand pounds of produce each year.
If you'd like to help us expand our reach, you can partner with us by donating any amount to go towards our "Sharing The Harvest Fund". You may designate whether you want to add more to our food pantry donations or you can sponsor an individual family with a CSA share. Each new 18-22 week CSA family is given a free From Asparagus to Zucchini - A Guide To Cooking Farm-Fresh Seasonal Produce Cookbook, invited to our CSA potlucks, tours and events, as well as sent helpful email newsletters with recipes and storage tips, just like all of our new CSA members! Ready to commit, have questions or know a family who'd appreciate fresh, nutritious, local produce through our Sharing The Harvest program? Email us.
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A commitment to 18 or 22 weeks of garden shares enjoy heavy savings on locally grown, certified organic produce!
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Free A-Z Cookbook for all new 18-22 week sign-ups received by April 30th, 2015!
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Our thanks for reading what's going on here. We are a small family farm that relies 100% on local people like you. We really can't express our gratitude enough. THANK YOU. We especially thank all our Winter and Spring registrations from CSA members. Your early payment helps us tremendously this time of year. Please pass the idea along to any person you may think would be interested in our "Traditional CSA Garden Shares" or our new "Investor CSA Share" as committed community support is the back bone of our family farm.
Sincerely, 
Ryan & Andrea
5691 N M-88 (1 mile east of US 31 at Eastport)
Central Lake, MI 49622
(231) 350-6420
(231) 599-2020
We're passionate about living soil, thriving plants, healthy people!
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