Locally Grown Availability for April 23rd, 2014

Hey Local Food Lovers,

I hope all of you had as glorious a week as I had. Today was just beautiful, a great day to enjoy the spring and for me work in the soil around the house transplanting some just emerging plants. That reminds me, one of the many growers I want to highlight this week is Hollman Hollow Farm. How fortunate we are to have a farm that specializes in native plants and herbs. They have 39 listed this week including jewelweed, hostas, sedums, poppy and trliium. It’s been fun to watch them come through as customers order and I’m impressed with their vigor and the diversity. All natives makes it a great choice for our type of market that is trying to be sustainable.

Here’s the other things that made me happy this week. Chocolate marshmellow eggs from Sylvan Falls Mill. I hate I forgot to remind folks to buy these as they come only a few weeks of the year. They are an incredibly tasty treat with organic chocolate that is superb.

I also cut my first asparagus spear this week. It was just one and I brought it home and cut it into 1/2 inch pieces and sauteed in butter until they were brown. Then I ate every single piece with my fingers right out of the pan. So good!

Then Wednesday I got my fresh huge beautiful beets from Burton Mountains Farms and just had to eat them right away. I roasted them (the special way) sauteed the greens just right, and garnished with sour cream mixed with lime juice and chopped cilantro. Trust me it was excellent. To wash that down I baked some cheddar corn muffins two ways, with blue corn and yellow corn from Sylvan Falls Mills. Here’s what both of these treats looked like.

If this looks good and you want to try it the recipes are posted on our FACEBOOK page. I highly encourage all of you to post your own cooking success stories to our FACEBOOK page and I’ll make sure it’s shared so everyone can see it. You should also use our RECIPES section of the website. I did add the cornbread recipe there for those who don’t use facebook.

Ok, what else. Chuck wrote a very good snippet about our Egg Laying practices on Friday that I wanted to follow up on. We may or may not have mentioned to everyone that last fall Locally Grown changed (and by changed I mean improved) it’s guidelines for eggs. We decided that all eggs not only had to come from hens that are raised on fresh grass and moved regularly (ie. pastured), but that they also be fed only organic grains. For the first 3 years of the market we did allow eggs that were fed non-organic corn, which these days means it’s genetically modified corn (or GMO for short – the “o” is for organism). We’d always had some confusion about why some eggs were one price, and others another price. This confusion is now removed since all eggs from now on will be from hens that live outside on fresh grass and eat organic corn (and sometimes soy free too). That means that eggs in our market will be more expensive as the price of organic feed is exactly twice that of GMO feed, not to mention that hens on fresh pasture have to be moved frequently and generally managed more carefully than hens kept in a permanent pen. These are very lucky chickens to live so well and eat such a good diet (all the bugs and grass they can eat). And I’m very lucky to get to eat these delicious eggs, because God knows I could never go back to eating grocery store eggs after all this time. They are so inferior I don’t know where to begin. So I’ll tell this story.

Shortly after moving back to Habersham County in ‘09 I was driving down 441 when I saw two chickens sitting right on the dashed line in the middle of the road with trucks whizzing by at 65 miles an hour. I just couldn’t ignore their miserable plight and stopped to rescue them.

They were the most pitiful things I had ever seen, and not because they were scared for their lives (even though they were). It was because they were covered in excrement and their eyes were all red and crazy looking like they were under incredible stress. I’ve spent lots of time in chicken houses before and the best way to describe how it affects the psychology of the chicken is to call them concentration camp victims. With 10,000 other birds competing for space it’s nothing but stress from birth to death. The houses are enclosed so there’s no natural sunlight. The first and only time they see the sun is when they are back on the truck on the way to the slaughterhouse, only there’s cage after cage of chickens above or below them all pooping on one another.

What was interesting about my rescued bird (the other one had broken his leg and didn’t survive the night) was his transformation over the coming weeks. I built him a pen and watched with great interest as he saw his very first insect, and blade of grass and he got to experience freedom and stretch his wings and legs and run. He became a happy animal.

I named him Highway and we became fast friends (even though I fully intended to eat him once he was plump and happy). I ended up giving him away as like many I find it difficult to eat my friends but he taught me a great lesson. We should eat responsibly as often as we can. An animals happiness and/or suffering is the result of our decisions.

I don’t want to give the wrong impression. I still eat fried chicken from Zaxby’s, Chic Fil A and a whole lot of other places I shouldn’t. It’s hard to be a purist in this world. But I appreciate that there are farmers here locally that bother to raise a chicken the right way. It’s worth a lot, and is absolutely worth every penny that they charge for their products and probably a lot more. I can assure you no one is getting rich, It just requires a lot more time, money, and management to raise food the right way. And .50 an egg is more than fair to me.

So this week I also made those deviled eggs with avocado and bacon that I mentioned last week and they were yum!

Like I said it’s been a good week full of good meals, good moments and happy thoughts for the future.

We’re still looking for a volunteer to help us at the Clarkesville Market once in a while. If you know of a good kind soul that would really enjoy being around good food and folks every once in a while (and getting a very small food stipend as our thanks) let us know. Staring June 6th, I (meaning Justin) will be helping the Gainesville market get started and Teri willl be the new Clarkesville Market Manager. She’s been with us since the very beginning and we’re very excited that she’s willing to get even more involved during this very exciting growth year.

Pickup is extended to 7pm starting this week. Make sure your account has your cell number so we can remind you if you forget (late pickups not allowed).

We greatly appreciate all of you wonderful Local Food Eaters and we hope you have a great week!

EAT WELL,
Justin in Habersham
and
Chuck in Rabun