How to get local produce from local farmers

We try to buy local, because we like to buy directly from the farmer.  We can ask questions.  We can determine for ourselves what food is good and good for us.  We can avoid the labeling and mislabeling, the processing, the petroleum and the petrochemical industries.

 

When we can't stay on our own side of the gate...

Saturday mornings seem to be the best time for farmers and consumers to get together.  That routine necessitates a certain regularity and consternation of purpose. Here is my morning in a nutshell.

I get up at 6am to water my garden.  My front yard is the most local of all.  I try to stay on my urban homestead whenever possible.  That means I exercise my hobby by keeping autumn seeds moist for germination, looking for bugs to pull off the plants and generally being the farmer.  This is a busy morning, so I keep my ablutions short.  I nibble on a few leaves and pull some weeds which go back to the pregnant doe in the rabbit warren.  I am off to work at my construction sites.  I have clients to meet for Saturday morning coffee and review.  I meet a carpenter at 7am and another at 8am.  Back again for breakfast with the family.  I pack the bags and the ice chest.  Then the fun begins.

I load up Izzy in the car seat and we head out to find some farmers.  First, I go the ASN market pickup downtown in Little Rock.  They only have local produce from local farms that provide all their growing philosophies and are visited by market organizers and consumers alike.  We did our ordering online earlier in the week at their market website.  My wife had ordered cantaloupe and herbs.  We have the hardest time getting a variety of fresh fruit in Arkansas.  At the market, our order awaits.  The helpful volunteers help you find your orders that the farmers have prepared for us.  On another table I see the bags of produce from my garden that I had dropped off yesterday for other people who had sent me their requests.  This is the best system for a farmer's market that exists.  The people order online to get exactly what they want instead of a random box or basket.  The farmers only have to harvest and deliver exactly what was ordered.  Money is exchanged at the drop location and everyone is happy.  If not, then the volunteers are there to help, and there are plenty of the farmers there volunteering to answer your questions directly.  Everyone has a smile on their face.

Next, I head over the river to North Little Rock to the Argenta Farmers' Market.  I am there to meet my main CSA farmer at her booth, Falling Sky Farm.  In addition to providing us with chicken, pork and beef for the year, she provides us all our eggs, pastured and organic, every two weeks.  It seems we are her largest consumer of eggs besides a bakery who gets slightly more eggs the other Saturday every two weeks.  That's a frightening amount of eggs, but the lovely does a lot of cooking and grain-free baking which require a lot of eggs.

I was so happy to pick up the eggs at the market today instead of her husband delivering them to the house, because I saw my favorite bee keeper, K Bee Honey.  He has been running low on inventory recently.  On his booth table he had, amongst other smaller bottles, a GALLON of honey!   A lot of people were joking about the size, but I snatched it up.  Finally I said.  Honey is the only sugar that we use, so we go through it fast.  It is best to get local honey to help with your allergies of local flowers.

Loaded up at the public market, I went to a drop off location for a local farmer to get produce directly.  I've been to this farmer's place and looked at his land.  I found this farmer from a remote area of Arkansas, through socializing in a food buying club.  We do various clubs and loose groups such as the customers of Azure Standard, who send a truck to our state every month and has a traditional catalog approach to ordering bulk food.  The food in that group is not local, but sometimes certain food is just not available local, but local people can get together to share the shipping costs. We buy feed bag size portions of organic grains this way for our rabbits.  Other products include truly raw nuts, coconuts and pure olive oil. On the way back home, I pass through Hillcrest's newest farmers market, doing well and staying busy.  I see some of the same vendors at both markets, like Kelly's North Pulaski Farm, an organic greenhoused farm.  So many good farmers, so little time.  I will see Kelly later, or read about his farm on his blog or FB group.  The Internet does make staying in touch with your food a lot easier.

Have a great weekend!

I sold my first produce at the market!

Ok, it was a HUGE sale of $2.70.  I listed my extra Borage herb seedlings and sold three, which I lovingly wrapped together in peat pots, tape and my computer printed label. I love the Locally Grown Foods coop here in Little Rock, run by the Arkansas Sustainable Network.  They are a real great bunch of growers and pasture feeding ranchers who allow my little urban farm to contribute in its tiny way.

This week I put up my extra tomato starts, the sage, and my broccoli flowers.  I've had huge sales on each.  WooHoo!.  I'm in Agbusiness!

After a brief respite

Ok, we took a while to get back to this blog.  Dreams seem never to have a logical progression and our plans are no exception.  But we are of the determined sort and that seems to be the primary prerequisite for homesteading.  Still, priorities asserted themselves.  We were busy moving and settling into our community.  Our design/build business needed some time to grow and strengthen, especially in this economic climate.  And our first project together as a couple turned out to be our most joyous.  To us was born Israfel Shae Collins on July 29th.  Nothing seemed as important than caring for her. At the same time, nothing drives us to build our home more!

Honing our goals, we are set on occupying the land first and foremost, and then setting things in order as we can.  Lil' Izzy needs her home.  We have chosen a new site for the first occupation, a cliff overlooking what is now a full creek.  We will not be able to integrate vast sheep fields and gardens as before on the northern side of the lot, but out from our living room we will be able to hear the gurgling sounds of nature far below and our house will nestle into the hill and trees above the flood plain.  We will leave the existing clearing on the north side of the property for the main house yards and farm as we can manage to cultivate them in the future. Nevertheless, this more modest homestead site will have orchards and bees and gardens and dog yard and chickens and all that our permaculture and architecture training can create on a quartz laden creek cliff.  

This will be our first stand.  Our Creek House.    Look for plans as we develop them!

Putting things in order

For the first time last night, I felt my baby kick in her mother's womb. I am going to be a daddy. There is nothing like that feeling to put the pressure on a would-be homesteader. There is no house, no garden, and no nursery. We seem so unprepared.

The first rule for an architect and former Scout is to be prepared. Plan well. Follow the plan. But when the plan changes on you, ADAPT!

We did have a plan. My soon-to-be-wife and I put a contract on a farm last summer. It had fences and cross fences, house and barns, creek and lake. Incredibly, it had a huge new shop that I could start my construction business from right away. It was made for us. We were so excited!!! We even considered having our wedding ceremony on the grassy lawn by the lake and swing dancing in the barn, but the logistics were too unmanageable. We did plan a wedding nearby and promised to host our families at the farm when they visited. We adopted our Great Pyrenees puppy from one sheep farm to grow up on our farm and then acquired a trained Border Collie from another, since our Aussies were not trained yet for herding. Arrangements had been made with still another local sheep farm to provide us a small herd. Everything seemed gloriously ordained.

Two months into the process of quitting jobs and packing to move from Houston, the seller breached his promise to sell the farm to us. As was natural for two architects, we had planned our first five years of growing the sheep farm. We had shopped for trailers and tractors we thought we would need. We ordered quinneas, ducks and chicks to be delivered to the farm to start the process of de-bugging the place and composting. All that planning was derailed as we began the painful process of realizing that the seller would never sell us the land. There were no farms anywhere like this one. The fowl were redirected to Houston during the negotiations, but we had to release the fast growing ducks into a nearby lake. The keets grew quickly too and we had to release them too. Reality set in hard that our dream would not start as ideally as we had hoped.

Eventually we found this other land with a creek that we could maybe afford to build our own homestead. We would have to start from scratch. We rented a house sight unseen and started our move. The chickens live mostly in the garage awaiting a protective coop and fencing on the land. The wedding went beautifully with the family happy with hotel arrangements. We remained undeterred in our hopes and dreams. We took it as a sign that we were to be die-hard homesteaders after all, when we discovered we were pregnant with a honeymoon baby. An incredible surprise but a welcome one!

Plan, plan, adapt. Just because it seems we are doing everything out of order, just means that we did not know the order that things were supposed to happen.