Honey Brook Organic Farm CSA: Week 3 Premium Boxed Share

This week's Honey Brook Organic Farm CSA share included the lettuce mix, swiss chard, spinach, lettuce, kale, broccoli, beets, turnips, fennel, green beans, scallions and blueberries.  

I emailed them because I confused the beets for radishes.  I'm an idiot.  Next time, cut the thing open, try a piece and then, and only then, if you're still confused, email them.  Yeesh.  They were very nice about the whole thing.

As usual, everything was super fresh and crisp.  Those scallions...come on...they look amazing! Scallion pancakes, anyone?  My bestie likes to slice up fennel and just eat them plain, which is great; but what do you do with the tops other than pesto?  I'll have to do some research.  It's like Christmas every week when you open the box.  Sounds crazy, but I love it. No more strawberries.  That season is officially over, but blueberry season has started!  The birds eat all my blueberries and most of my raspberries, so it'll be nice to do the PYO and get them at the farm.

The Premium Box has been the perfect size for us.  I've been using up almost everything before our next week's pick up.  I really haven't been pickling anything.  No kimchi or radish greens....nothing.  I've been trying to just cook what we've been getting.  I've been adding a handful of spinach to our morning smoothies, baking up kale chips and trying a bunch of recipes from Food52 Mighty Salads, which for as simple as some of them seem...as well as some seeming to be quite the stretch to call it a salad...they've all been really good.

The Chesterfield farm is starting their PYO blueberry picking this week, fingers crossed I'll get a notice from Pennington this week too!

Honey Brook Organic Farm CSA: Week 2 Pennington Premium Boxed Share

My Honey Brook Organic Farm Premium Boxed Share for Week 2 included arugula, swiss chard, salad mix, spinach, napa cabbage, turnips, oregano, sugar snap peas and two types of lettuce.

I knew the beginning of the season would involve a lot of greens, so I was prepared.  For some, this would seem very daunting.  Here are some ideas:

1.  Freeze anything you don't think you can use before they go bad.
2.  Add greens to your smoothies or juice them!  We all know adding spinach or kale is a great way to boost protein, vitamins, and minerals in your smoothies, but lettuce is also a great addition.  Lettuce is chock full of vitamins and minerals like calcium, iron, magnesium, phosphorous, potassium, zinc, thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, folate, and vitamins B6, C, A, E, and K.
3.  You don't have to eat salads all week.  Add greens to your soups, pasta, spring rolls, stir fries or even make pesto.  Try non-traditional American recipes, there's a whole other world of food out there.
4.  Get into pickling!  There are a bunch of easy recipes for pickled radishes, or even kimchi.
5.  Dehydrate them, or season and bake at 200 degrees for a few hours and make them into chips.  Or don't season them, dehydrate them, and grind them up into a green powder to add to whatever.
6.  You could can them, but in my opinion, you're better off freezing them.
7.  Check out, not just vegetarian or vegan recipe sites/blogs, but tap into the raw vegan community.  They have some amazing, out of the box ideas for all veggies.

We've been using up a lot trying out Food52 Mighty Salads, which initially I thought was a dud of a cookbook, but has turned out to be really good!

Inequality in share distributions aside, I will say I am getting my money's worth.  A CSA might be hard for some, but if you're willing to expand your horizons and try out new plant-based recipes, I think you'll do just fine.  If I was counting the discrepancies in share distributions, I'd give this a C, but if I ignore that, I'd give Honey Brook's CSA a B.

Honey Brook Organic Farm CSA: Week 1 PYO

Turns out the Pick Your Own at Honey Brook Organic Farm runs Monday to Sunday.  Which means that day we picked our strawberries...Week .5....really was a week we should have received a box.  Yet, we didn't and the people picking up their boxes at the farm did.

Let me tell you a story.  I have to smoosh around my dog's wet food and then mix in his dry food.  I also have to smoosh around my cat's wet food for no real reason, other than she will absolutely not eat it if I don't.  Why?  Because she wants the same treatment as our dog, and I don't blame her.

So far this is my biggest complaint about Honey Brook, the inconsistencies in shares.  The people picking up at the farm pay less and get more.  How would you feel if Costco said, all local customers get 25% off of everything, but if you live out of town, you have to pay full price?  You'd be annoyed and take your business elsewhere.

Additionally, on Monday, they said Premium Box Share members get 3 quarts of strawberries, Friday they changed it to 2 and then Sunday, they changed it back to 3 quarts.  Since I went Saturday, I only got 2 quarts.  I also watched on farm pick up members get strawberries as part of their Week 3 (my Week 2) box, yet we didn't get any.

Do you see how this is annoying?  I would love this CSA if not for all this nonsense.  I don't know if Honey Brook will ever read any of this, but I hope that they understand running a service like this requires someone running the program that understands the basic idea that all your customers want to feel equal.  I'll keep their grade at a reluctant B-.

Honey Brook Organic Farm CSA: Week 1 Pennington Premium Boxed Share

We picked up our official first premium boxed share on Tuesday: strawberries, bok choi, collards, spinach, kale, lettuce, salad mix and swiss chard.  Everything was super fresh, with bright, green, crispy leaves.  And unlike the strawberries you buy at the grocery store, each container was filled with perfect, firm and sweet strawberries with no random fuzzy moldy ones hiding in the box.

In reading The Local Harvest, Honey Brook's newsletter, I learned that the issues with the box shares had more to do with driver issues than actual farming problems:

The Boxed Share program has had an unusual number of setbacks for us this season.  Our former driver, Chino, got married during the “off” season and decided to remain in Texas with his bride.  After several rounds of interviews, we narrowed the field of replacement drivers to two, who accepted our offers but then decided not to report to work. Farmer Jim is now our delivery truck driver for the time being, but we are seeking to hire two professional drivers on a part-time, seasonal basis. 

I wish they had just said this earlier!  It appeared (I don't know if this is true) but people with on-farm shares were picking up boxes before the boxed shares.  If this was the reason, then be transparent.  Tell everyone what is happening, we are supposed to be in this together.  That's the whole point of a CSA.  Maybe they could have offered people the opportunity to pick up on site until the situation was resolved.  There were definitely better ways to handle this, but hopefully moving forward, they will continue to keep everyone better informed.

They mentioned that this unusually wet weather has delayed the transplanting of some summer crops.  I already knew about the tomatoes from their Facebook post, so I was prepared for this news.  Again, I was totally cool with it, because they told everyone ahead of time. 

They also said the strawberry quantities were slowing down (we got 6 quarts with our Premium share last week, this week we'll get 3 quarts) and that blueberries won't be ready until June to early July.  I wonder what that means in terms of PYO (pick your own) for the weeks in between.  Again, a head's up to what the plan is would be nice.

So far I'm happy with what I've gotten.  I'm not happy that it seems on-farm pickup people got more benefits from joining the CSA than boxed share people.  I'm not happy that Chesterfield seems to have started earlier and are giving out a greater variety of produce than Pennington.  I am happy they are starting to be a little more clear with what's going on with the program, and I hope they start to understand the importance of that.  I'll bump their grade from a C to a B-.

Honey Brook Organic Farm CSA: Week .5 Pennington Boxed Share

We finally started our CSA at Honey Brook Organic Farm.  Well, kind of.  Let's start with the bad.  They have two farms, one in Chesterfield and one at Pennington.  You have two options with your CSA pick up: either get your produce and do your PYO at one farm, or pick your boxes up at a non-farm location and they assign you a specific farm to do your PYO at.

It seems that Chesterfield people started their PYO earlier than Pennington.  And then there was a message that people that pick at Pennington could start their PYO, but non-farm pick up people couldn't.  WTF?  Then they said, everyone can go, but that was on Memorial Day, we already missed the weekend and we had to work.  The whole thing was bonkers and honestly, unfair.

We went this Saturday to do the PYO.  It seemed liked on-farm members were picking up their vegetable shares, which I think means they were getting an extra week than non-farm members in both boxes and PYO. Also, Chesterfield had strawberries, roses and herbs.  Pennington had strawberries and herbs, but when we got there, no one said anything about the herbs, so we didn't get any.

It seems like they've been doing the whole CSA thing for a while now, so I'm surprised it's not more streamlined.  Why all the inconsistencies?  They should be transparent from the beginning that one farm might offer items the other isn't, or that people at one farm might be able to pick up items before the other.  Certainly, on-farm pickup members shouldn't be getting benefits non-farm pickup members aren't getting since they're already paying less than the latter.  Everyone there seems nice and I don't believe these to be malicious acts, but merely the issues of a badly managed and run CSA program.  One way to destroy a program like this is to make your customers feel they are being shortchanged and that all members are not equal.  Hopefully, things will improve.

The equally annoying part was the weather was lovely over the weekend...ya know when on-farm pickup members got to get their strawberries.  Saturday was raining, but we still had fun.

The man at the tent was very nice.  I will say, I think doing the PYO at the farm makes this worth the price.  Organic strawberries in Jersey are hella expensive.  They're about $6.99 a quart, so we picked about $42 worth of strawberries.  All were perfectly ripe and delicious.  The farm is about 45 minutes from us, but it's near the Trader Joe's, Whole Foods and "the good" Target we go to.  I think we'll keep going down during berry season.  After that...we'll see....

We Joined the Honey Brook Organic Farm CSA...finally....

I've decided that this will be the year of doing things.  I've been saying I am going to do all sorts of stuff, and then nothing actually happens.  Well, those days are over, folks.  To start this new proactive and productive version of me, I joined a CSA.  Which I said I was going to do for the past seven years but never followed through on because I grow so much myself.  Now that we're fully vegan, I'm buying three times the amount of vegetables, and I felt like now is the perfect time to try it out.  Whatever we don't eat, we can freeze, or I can always juice in my fancy new juicer.

New Jersey is pretty hit or miss in terms of organic farming.  What they do have are a lot of farms that practice animal agriculture, and as a vegan, I do not want to support that.  Sorry, but if you're the kind of person that can raise a baby, then look into his loving eyes and slit his throat....yeah, I'm not doing business with you.  There is no such thing as humane meat people, that's some serious bs.

It was between Melick's Town Farm and Honey Brook Organic Farm.  Melick's had the positives of being run by vegans (or so I'm told) and they have fruit orchards, so unlike most CSA's, you'd also get fruit in your weekly box.  The negative was that their closest pickup, wasn't that close to me, and I couldn't confirm if they were organic.  Honey Brook has a pickup ten minutes from my house, weekly pick your own items if we are so inclined to take the drive down, and they are organic.  Interestingly, the organic CSA prices were comparable to the non-organic CSAs near me.

What is a CSA?  Community Supported Agriculture provides an influx of money for the farmers at the beginning of the season, to purchase seeds and supplies, and in return, the member receives a season of produce. It's a way for farmers and consumer to share in the risk and rewards of farming, as you can't control the weather or sudden spurts of disease or insects.  It's the truest definition of farm to table, in my opinion.  Honey Brook members can opt for pre-packed boxes, or they can go to the farm every week and pick all their own produce.  I hear you get more bang for your buck doing it that way, but it's a 45-minute drive, so not realistic for my family.

If you're interested in joining a CSA, check out Local Harvest.  And if you're interested in joining Honey Brook's CSA, check out the links below.  (For the record, I am receiving no compensation for promoting their CSA.  I'm just sharing info)

Hello & Happy New Year from Honey Brook Organic Farm!:

The Early Bird Applications for on-farm pick-up at our Pennington and Chesterfield farms are online now, as well as our two Early Bird Boxed Share applications. 

If you wish to become a member of our CSA program in 2017 & want to pick up at our Pennington or Chesterfield farm, there is still time to mail in your Early Bird application! After 12/31st (the deadline for submission of the Early Bird applications for on-farm pick-up), membership feeswill increase to reflect the increase in production costs.

Farmer Jim and I, as well as our farm staff, wish you and yours a Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year! ~ Farmer Sherry Dudas