Market News

I love reading the weblog from sister markets. This one comes from our sister market, northeastgeorgia.locallygrown.net. I encourage you to check them out if you’re in the Hall or Habersham area.

Those who have been a part of local food scenes for some time may have experience with a random box of goodies… and are probably better off for it. Some do really well with opening a big box of produce, getting ideas for meals from the item of most abundance, and highlighting the seasonal ingredient. Some find that idea terrifying and need a recipe along with a cooking mentor. Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) was, and still is, a great business model for small farmers not relying on subsides and loans. The goal is to support the farmer with a financial commitment before the produce is harvested! This typically takes the form of a subscription to a single farm but happens in all forms and fashions. It’s a way to say “I support what you do, and I will pay you upfront for your commitment to growing food.” Some CSA’s encourage you to volunteer on the farm, some allow to you to pick items from their market stand, while others have a weekly box ready for pickup on their farm. The key component is that the community is consistently supporting the farmer throughout the year. This is also one of the goals behind Northeast Georgia Locally Grown. This is a year ‘round market so you continue to get fresh food and farmers continue to have a source of income. We have many farmers that grow produce for only the summer months, some that use the winter to regenerate healthy soil, and some able to extend their production into the winter months. Some growers even prefer the colder months due to less pests and extended life cycles!

Regardless, I am excited to see what will make its way to the market throughout the year! Every season, subtle changes happen as individual growers take different approaches based on their resources, past experiences, and customer feedback.

This market combines elements of CSAs, Farmers Markets, and Food Hubs. We are not having an identity crisis, but rather one of the puzzle pieces in rebuilding food systems based off of the demand for fresh, local, and sustainable foods. It is pretty amazing to be able to support farmers throughout the year, and it wouldn’t be possible without YOU!

Thanks Andrew! Market Manager for Northeast Georgia Locally Grown in Gainesville.

Your Account

FREE MEMBERSHIP You can now waive your membership fee of $25 just by signing up to volunteer one full Saturday morning, 8:30am-12:30pm. It’s fun and rewarding to experience “behind the scenes” of our locally grown market. Volunteers greet farmers and customers, organize food delivery and pick up, and check-out customer orders using a ipad. Check out this online sign up sheet to find an opening. http://www.signupgenius.com/go/4090d4baca92fa13-thecumming

UPDATE CONTACT With all the hustle and bustle of back-to-school and new routines, it’s easy to forget things like picking up your TCH order. Remember that we can’t keep your items past 12pm, and we’ll try contacting you any way we know how to make sure you get what you ordered. Now’s a great time to check the phone number on your account to make sure it’s a number I can reach you at 11:45am on a Saturday. I start calling everyone who hasn’t picked up yet then, and will keep trying to reach you until 12pm, when we have to pack it all up. I hate seeing people’s food go somewhere else, and having a good phone number on your account is the best way to keep that from happening.

DELIVERY We are postponing Vickery pick up and delivery in September.

We thank you for your interest and support of our efforts to bring you the healthiest, the freshest and the most delicious locally-produced foods possible!

Market News

It’s really starting to feel like Fall. I know we’ll be getting some more hot days, but the average first frost for much of our area is only five or six weeks away, which will be here before we know it.

The growers are also welcoming the cooler air, as it helps the fall veggies they’ve been planting know that it really is ok to start growing and leafing out. In the meanwhile, they’re nurturing in the summer plants so they can keep harvesting right up until that frost comes.

Many of our growers extend the season with high tunnels, hoop houses, and greenhouses. This lets them keep the summer crops going for a few weeks or even all year ’round. Even a small greenhouse hybrid tomato grown locally and picked when ripe tastes better than a tropically-grown tomato shipped here while still rock hard. Eating seasonally is important, but using a little bit of know-how to extend the seasons enough to get us a few luxuries is pretty nice too.

Your Account

FREE MEMBERSHIP You can now waive your membership fee of $25 just by signing up to volunteer one full Saturday morning, 8:30am-12:30pm. It’s fun and rewarding to experience “behind the scenes” of our locally grown market. Volunteers greet farmers and customers, organize food delivery and pick up, and check-out customer orders using a ipad. Check out this online sign up sheet to find an opening. http://www.signupgenius.com/go/4090d4baca92fa13-thecumming

UPDATE CONTACT With all the hustle and bustle of back-to-school and new routines, it’s easy to forget things like picking up your TCH order. Remember that we can’t keep your items past 12pm, and we’ll try contacting you any way we know how to make sure you get what you ordered. Now’s a great time to check the phone number on your account to make sure it’s a number I can reach you at 11:45am on a Saturday. I start calling everyone who hasn’t picked up yet then, and will keep trying to reach you until 12pm, when we have to pack it all up. I hate seeing people’s food go somewhere else, and having a good phone number on your account is the best way to keep that from happening.

DELIVERY We are postponing Vickery pick up and delivery in September.

We thank you for your interest and support of our efforts to bring you the healthiest, the freshest and the most delicious locally-produced foods possible!

Market News

We’ve gotten some new customers this summer so I thought I’d give you a summary of how The Cumming Harvest works. Those of you who have been with us during these last 5 years probably already know all this, but I’ll try to keep it interesting for you too.

TCH (The Cumming Harvest) is best thought of like a traditional farmers market, because except for the lack of tents and tables, that’s very much how we operate. The growers are putting their own items up for sale directly to you, at prices and quantities they have set. The market volunteers and I are here to make sure it all happens smoothly, but the growers are selling their products directly to you. Growers do have to apply to sell through the market, and I personally approve each of them before they list their products. Here’s a summary of the standards we have set:

• All growers must use sustainable practices and never use synthetic fertilizers or pesticides.
• All growers can only sell what they themselves have grown
• All growers must be from about 100 miles of Cumming, GA
• All animals raised for meat or eggs must be pastured
• Handicrafts must be made primarily from items produced or gathered on the farm
• Prepared foods must use organic ingredients and locally grown ingredients if at all possible and be prepared in a certified kitchen
• All proper licenses, when required by law, must be obtained

When I’ve turned down requests to sell through TCH, the items clearly broke one or more of those standards. There are a few edge cases that I take on a case by case basis, such as coffee. In cases like that, we set the standards as strict as we can. With coffee, for example, the beans must be sustainably grown, they must be roasted locally, and the roaster must have a direct business relationship with the farm that grew the beans.

So, the growers list their available products and set their prices. For most all of the products, they do this before they’ve harvested the items, so they have to estimate how much they will actually have. They’ve gotten pretty good at this guess, but it is a guess, and the unpredictable nature of farming means they may have far less than they thought (thanks to deer, a hail storm, etc.) or they may have far more than they thought (a nice rain can double the growth of lettuce overnight, for example). Most of them are conservative with their estimates, and so they let you continue to order even if they’ve already sold more than they guessed they’d have. That’s why popular items may have a quantity in the negatives when you look at the listings. The system will still let you order on the chance that they’ll actually have enough, but you’ll get warnings along the way that you’re taking a gamble.

I do not collect items from the farms, and do not know myself until Saturday morning what the growers were able to harvest and bring in. The growers do have each other’s contact information, so if one grower is short and another has a surplus, they may arrange with each other to get all the orders filled, but in general, if a grower cannot fill an order for something, they’ll remove that ordered item and you’ll see a comment on your invoice indicating that. Since I’m not a middle-man, I can’t arrange for substitutions myself.

When the growers bring in the items you ordered on Saturday morning, packaged and labelled with your name, I pay them on your behalf out of our shared cash box during the hour before we open the market for their sales. Then, you arrive and pay into the cashbox for your order. We deposit the money you pay (via cash, check, or credit) into our bank account so it will be there when we write checks. As explained elsewhere on the website, you are really ordering directly from and paying the growers yourself, but our shared cashbox system makes things convenient for you and them. (Imagine if you ordered from ten growers having to write ten checks when you picked up your items!) This shared cashbox system does mean that if you place an order and then never arrive to pick it up, we’re left holding the bag. For that reason, you are responsible for paying for orders not picked up, and that amount is automatically added on to your next order for your convenience. We do accept credit card payments on the website, and many customers take advantage of that and skip the pay table. The cards don’t actually get charged until after pickups on Saturday, so your charge will reflect any adjustments that had to get made along the way.

For a number of legal reasons, TCH never takes possession of your ordered items. We don’t buy them from the growers and resell them to you, nor do we repackage them in any way. The growers drop off your items for you, and you arrive and pick them up. The market volunteers facilitate that happening. We start calling those who haven’t arrived by 11:30, and quite often we just get answering machines and voice mail.

There are some things you can do to insure you won’t get charged for things you didn’t come get:

1. If you know prior to Thursday at 8pm that you won’t be able to come get your order or send someone in your place, send me an email and I will cancel your order.
2. If you find out later that you can’t come, send me an email. So long as I know before market begins, I can put the things you ordered on the “extras” table, and your fellow customers will almost certainly buy them for you.
3. If you discover Saturday while we’re at market that you can’t arrive, give me a call at 404-702-2601. I’ll put your items on the “extras” table, and if they sell, you’ll be off the hook.
4. If you have a cell phone, make sure that number is the number on your account. You can go to the “Your Account” page on the website to be sure. If you’re out and about and I get your home phone or your work phone, no one gets helped.

Finally, ours is a paperless system, so we do not have paper receipts for you when you pick up your order. An electronic receipt is generated, though, and can be found on the website. Go to the “Your Account” page, view your order history, and you’ll see an invoice for each order. By 8am on Saturday, it will show what we expect to have for you that day. After we fill your order, it will show exactly what we packed for you, and what, if anything, was missing. You can view that at any time, even years from now. If we didn’t get you something we should have, or if anything you got was of unacceptable quality, please contact me ASAP. I’ll share the problem with the grower so we can insure it won’t happen again. If you’re logged into the site, most of the growers have their contact info on their profile page (off the “Our Growers” page), so you can contact them directly if you choose.

If you have any questions, concerns, complaints, or even complements, please send them my way!
Thanks so much for your support! Suzanne

Grower Updates

I’m sorry to say we’ve lost our butter source, Emanuel and Rachel King have sold their cows and decided to take a break from the dairy business. Emanuel has given me another contact to try and I’ll let you know as soon as I get something worked out.

COMING SOON Doug and Melissa Resetarits of Doug’s Wild Alaska Salmon are back from fishing. Look for a new shipment of sockeye salmon coming in very soon.

Upcoming Events Around Town

Thursday, September 24, 2015 – 7:00pm
Roswell Chapter Meeting – WAPF Kitchen Tour
http://www.atlantarealfood.com/p/events.html

My kitchen is not very pretty (needs some serious updating) but many of you have asked for a peak inside my refrigerator and pantry to see what a Weston A. Price kitchen looks like. I will share with you my personal list of pantry staples, talk about where I buy them, and show you which tools/appliances I use most.

Your Account

FREE MEMBERSHIP You can now waive your membership fee of $25 just by signing up to volunteer one full Saturday morning, 8:30am-12:30pm. It’s fun and rewarding to experience “behind the scenes” of our locally grown market. Volunteers greet farmers and customers, organize food delivery and pick up, and check-out customer orders using a ipad. Check out this online sign up sheet to find an opening. http://www.signupgenius.com/go/4090d4baca92fa13-thecumming

UPDATE CONTACT With all the hustle and bustle of back-to-school and new routines, it’s easy to forget things like picking up your TCH order. Remember that we can’t keep your items past 12pm, and we’ll try contacting you any way we know how to make sure you get what you ordered. Now’s a great time to check the phone number on your account to make sure it’s a number I can reach you at 11:45am on a Saturday. I start calling everyone who hasn’t picked up yet then, and will keep trying to reach you until 12pm, when we have to pack it all up. I hate seeing people’s food go somewhere else, and having a good phone number on your account is the best way to keep that from happening.

DELIVERY We are postponing Vickery pick up and delivery in September.

We thank you for your interest and support of our efforts to bring you the healthiest, the freshest and the most delicious locally-produced foods possible!

Let’s Show Our Appreciation

Please consider writing a quick thank you email to a farmer this week! If you don’t know the email and don’t feel like looking it up on our growers page, simply respond to this email with the name of the farm and I will send you their email.

This market website can be seen as quick and easy way to buy fresh food, but I want to encourage you this week to actually see the name of the GROWER that is behind a product that you have enjoyed in the past. Because you don’t see the farmers each Saturday, it’s easy to forget that the food we are ordering is being harvested personally for us by a local farmer in our community. Use this opportunity to to spread kindness to your growers, not only negativity and expectations. I guarantee they’ll be surprised and elated.

Market News

Pre-Order Chicken Greg Hutchins of Heritage Farm has listed Chicken for Pre-Order this week! Whole Chicken, Boneless Skinless Breasts, Bone-in Breasts, Cut-up Whole Chickens, Chicken Livers are all available. Items will be available for pickup at the Market on September 11th. Get your orders in soon so you don’t miss out on this opportunity.

SALE on Pork Five Hens Price Drop!!! (while supplies last)
Pork Breakfast Sausage, Yeona Mild Blend: $6.75/lb
Ham Steaks: $8/lb
Ribs: $8/lb

FREE MEMBERSHIP You can now waive your membership fee of $25 just by signing up to volunteer one full Saturday morning, 8:30am-12:30pm. It’s fun and rewarding to experience “behind the scenes” of our locally grown market.
Volunteers greet farmers and customers, organize food delivery and pick up, and check-out customer orders using a ipad. Check out this online sign up sheet to find an opening. http://www.signupgenius.com/go/4090d4baca92fa13-thecumming

UPDATE CONTACT With all the hustle and bustle of back-to-school and new routines, it’s easy to forget things like picking up your TCH order. Remember that we can’t keep your items past 12pm, and we’ll try contacting you any way we know how to make sure you get what you ordered. Now’s a great time to check the phone number on your account to make sure it’s a number I can reach you at 11:45am on a Saturday. I start calling everyone who hasn’t picked up yet then, and will keep trying to reach you until 12pm, when we have to pack it all up. I hate seeing people’s food go somewhere else, and having a good phone number on your account is the best way to keep that from happening.

DELIVERY – We are postponing Vickery pick up and delivery in September so that Pascale can take some much needed time off to celebrate her and her husbands birthday’s and anniversary. If you see her this week, you can pass on good wishes and we’ll resume October 3rd.

Recipe

EGGPLANT SUPPER SOUP
Just made this and for a family that doesn’t care for eggplant, it’s worth saving! ?#?inseason? ?#?locallygrown?

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
1 pound ground Carrell Farms buffalo or Heritage Farm beef or lamb
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 pound eggplant, diced Metz Country Garden or Leilani’s
3/4 cup sliced carrots
3/4 cup sliced celery
2 (14.5 ounce) cans Italian diced tomatoes, drained or a jar of Tomato Basil Marinara
2 (14 ounce) cans beef or chicken broth or homemade bone broth

1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/2 cup dry macaroni
2 teaspoons chopped fresh parsley
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Directions:
1. Heat the oil in a skillet over medium heat, and cook the onion, beef, and garlic until beef is evenly brown. Drain grease, and mix in eggplant, carrots, celery, and tomatoes. Pour in broth. Mix in sugar, and season with nutmeg, salt, and pepper. Cook and stir until heated through.
2. Mix macaroni into the soup, and continue cooking 12 minutes, or until macaroni is al dente. Mix in parsley. Top with Parmesan cheese to serve.

Upcoming Events Around Town

Kennesaw State University Farmers Market – Sep 2, 2015 – Nov 4, 2015

The Kennesaw State University Farmers Market is a completely student-run initiative that brings only the highest quality produce, baked goods and other goodies directly to the KSU community. We work in direct collaboration with KSU Culinary & our parent organization, Students for Environmental Sustainability (SES), in order to provide a family-friendly and economically-charged business atmosphere for students, faculty members and the small business owners we serve.

_~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

http://asapconnections.org/events/asaps-farm-tour/

_~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thursday, September 24, 2015 – 7:00pm
Roswell Chapter Meeting – WAPF Kitchen Tour
http://www.atlantarealfood.com/p/events.html

My kitchen is not very pretty (needs some serious updating) but many of you have asked for a peak inside my refrigerator and pantry to see what a Weston A. Price kitchen looks like. I will share with you my personal list of pantry staples, talk about where I buy them, and show you which tools/appliances I use most.

Pick Up Options

COLONY PARK PICK-UP This is our main location and all orders will be prepared for you for pick up at this location, 10am-12pm, if you don’t choose another option below. You can order and pick up meat and seafood at this location.

POSTPONED until October VICKERY PICK-UP – POSTPONED until October Vickery Village Cherry Street Taproom pick up is between 1:00-1:30pm. If you would like to pick up at Vickery choose VICKERY PICK-UP item in the categories on the The Market page/tab. Customers choosing to pick up at Vickery should not order meat or seafood as we cannot transport meat and seafood due to Dept. of Ag regulations. Prefer payment online, will accept check or cc in person.

POSTPONED until October DELIVERY to Vickery/Polo Area – POSTPONED until October Please add this item to your order if you would like delivery to your home on Saturday between 1:30-3pm. Only prepaid orders will be accepted. Deliveries will be dropped off at your front door. If you are not going to be home, please leave a insulated bag or cooler for your order. The delivery person is not responsible for making sure your food is in the appropriate container once dropped off. Please plan for possible rain and make sure your order will be protected. The delivery person will travel with your orders in insulated bags with ice packs to protect it during travel. No Meat or Seafood will be able to be delivered.

We thank you for your interest and support of our efforts to bring you the healthiest, the freshest and the most delicious locally-produced foods possible!

Market News

THANK YOU! We would like to thank Nick Tanner of Cherry Street Brewery for their generous donation to the market. Back in March they hosted us at their Last Tuesday Beer Bash event and raised money from that nights sales. We really appreciate the support from Rick Tanner’s and Cherry Street Brewery!

UPDATE CONTACT With all the hustle and bustle of back-to-school and new routines, it’s easy to forget things like picking up your TCH order. Remember that we can’t keep your items past 12pm, and we’ll try contacting you any way we know how to make sure you get what you ordered. Now’s a great time to check the phone number on your account to make sure it’s a number I can reach you at 11:45am on a Saturday. I start calling everyone who hasn’t picked up yet then, and will keep trying to reach you until 12pm, when we have to pack it all up. I hate seeing people’s food go somewhere else, and having a good phone number on your account is the best way to keep that from happening.

DELIVERY – We are postponing Vickery pick up and delivery in September so that Pascale can take some much needed time off to celebrate her and her husbands birthday’s and anniversary. If you see her this week, you can pass on good wishes and we’ll resume October 3rd.

BUFFALO JOES RECIPE Shalley Carrell
We made this at our most recent annual Labor Day farm open house/party, to do something a little different than burgers, and it was a huge hit!

Serves: 4

Ingredients
1 pound water buffalo ground
1/4 cup onion, chopped
1/4 cup bell pepper, chopped
1/2 tsp. garlic powder
1 tsp. yellow mustard
3/4 cup ketchup
1 Tbl brown sugar (optional)
to taste sea salt & freshly ground black pepper
2 or 3 Tbl coconut, safflower, butter, or olive oil

Step by Step Instructions

Saute onions and bell peppers in oil over medium heat until slightly soft
Add ground buffalo and cook until just brown.
Add remaining ingredients and simmer on low for 30 minutes.
Serve with a roll or bun of your choice.

Upcoming Events Around Town

Organic Growing Course

August 29, 2015 – 9-4pm
Cane Creek Farm – Cumming, Georgia

Whether you’re interested in becoming an full-time organic farmer or you just want to produce delicious, healthy food in your backyard, Lynn Pugh’s legendary Organic Farming and Gardening course will teach you the basics so you can start growing sustainably.

Cane Creek Farm is the classroom, and you’ll engage in plenty of hands-on activities while you learn about everything from crop planning to soil biology. Its okay if you’re a total newbie!

And if you’re an experienced gardener, you’ll learn a lot too; Lynn teaches from the state’s first-ever organic curriculum, which she developed, and you’ll get a copy of this remarkable resource. You’ll also get to tour area farms and learn from other experienced farmers!

The course is offered in a series of 7 alternate Saturdays beginning August 29 and running every other week till November 21. To registration to to http://canecreekfarm.net/education/classes-and-workshops/. Cost is $475 or $450 for GO members.

Website: www.canecreekfarm.net
Address: 5110 Jekyll Road, Cumming, GA 30040
Phone: (770) 889-3793

_~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thursday, September 24, 2015 – 7:00pm
Roswell Chapter Meeting – WAPF Kitchen Tour
http://www.atlantarealfood.com/p/events.html

My kitchen is not very pretty (needs some serious updating) but many of you have asked for a peak inside my refrigerator and pantry to see what a Weston A. Price kitchen looks like. I will share with you my personal list of pantry staples, talk about where I buy them, and show you which tools/appliances I use most.

Pick Up Options

COLONY PARK PICK-UP This is our main location and all orders will be prepared for you for pick up at this location, 10am-12pm, if you don’t choose another option below. You can order and pick up meat and seafood at this location.

POSTPONED until October VICKERY PICK-UP – POSTPONED until October Vickery Village Cherry Street Taproom pick up is between 1:00-1:30pm. If you would like to pick up at Vickery choose VICKERY PICK-UP item in the categories on the The Market page/tab. Customers choosing to pick up at Vickery should not order meat or seafood as we cannot transport meat and seafood due to Dept. of Ag regulations. Prefer payment online, will accept check or cc in person.

POSTPONED until October DELIVERY to Vickery/Polo Area – POSTPONED until October Please add this item to your order if you would like delivery to your home on Saturday between 1:30-3pm. Only prepaid orders will be accepted. Deliveries will be dropped off at your front door. If you are not going to be home, please leave a insulated bag or cooler for your order. The delivery person is not responsible for making sure your food is in the appropriate container once dropped off. Please plan for possible rain and make sure your order will be protected. The delivery person will travel with your orders in insulated bags with ice packs to protect it during travel. No Meat or Seafood will be able to be delivered.

We thank you for your interest and support of our efforts to bring you the healthiest, the freshest and the most delicious locally-produced foods possible!

Main Market Location and Pick Up
Building 106, Colony Park Dr. in the Basement of Suite 100, Cumming, GA 30040. Pick up every Saturday between 10-12pm.
Google Map

To view the harvest today and tomorrow till 8pm, visit “The Market” page on our website, The Cumming Harvest

We thank you for your interest and support of our efforts to bring you the healthiest, the freshest and the most delicious locally-produced foods possible!

Main Market Location and Pick Up
Building 106, Colony Park Dr. in the Basement of Suite 100, Cumming, GA 30040. Pick up every Saturday between 10-12pm.
Google Map

To view the harvest today and tomorrow till 8pm, visit “The Market” page on our website, The Cumming Harvest

We thank you for your interest and support of our efforts to bring you the healthiest, the freshest and the most delicious locally-produced foods possible!