Trust, Integrity and Social Accountability

Sometimes there are opportunities to stand up for something that you believe in. We recently had one such chance at one of our local farmers' markets. We thought that the Powder Springs Farmers' Market would be a good place to bring our vegetables and meet folks in our area including other farmers. Well, it was a good place for some of those things, but we soon realized that the market was not keeping their end of the bargain. The farmers' market is operated by a board and a market coordinator. They set their rules at the beginning of the season and all vendors signed an agreement to follow the rules. Among their rules is a restriction on selling produce that was not grown by the vendor- wholesale produce. It's the same stuff you would find in the grocery store- these vendors go down to the Atlanta Farmers' market where other wholesalers are selling commercially grown produce from around the country and the world for dirt cheap. The re-seller then takes this produce to a local farmers market, gussied up with bushel baskets and a thick southern accent- oh, and don't forget the boiled peanuts, and hocks his wares for cheap and makes a killing off of unsuspecting customers. "Oh yeah, I grew ALL this stuff- best watermelons you've ever tasted- just put them on the truck last night." You can hear the lies echoed through the farmers market parking lot. One customer recently found a "grown in the USA" sticker on this wholesaler's "homegrown" cantaloupe. Well, many farmers markets around Atlanta have wised up to ol' vegetable hockin' Joe and have created rules that prohibit this practice. The Powder Springs Farmers Market has some similar rules on their books- with a few exceptions, or loopholes as you might call them. You see, several board members for this market are from the local Merchants' Association, and they have one goal- to increase the downtown foot-traffic in order to increase patronage in their stores. They want as many vegetables as possible all season long, even when the vegetables are out of season- like tomatoes in May, or watermelons for the 4th of July. Vendors who resell are supposed to post a sign that the items is not grown by them, and the items must also be Georgia grown. But instead of enforcing these rules that would help keep the market fair, the board just looks the other way and allows the rules to be broken. The result? Rampant wholesaling, lying vendors, and the "real" farmers get undercut by the low prices of resold vegetables. Well, we brought our complaint about the lack of enforcement to a member of the farmers market board. He not only refused to enforce the rules, but threatened to call the police if we came to the market and caused a "disturbance." He didn't appreciate our point of view to say the least. Somehow, because he was in a "volunteer" position, he was not responsible for enforcing the rules they had laid out. It is our belief that in these types of situations, a long lost tool called "social accountability" must be resurrected. Somehow it is offensive to hold someone accountable- he even threatened legal action if we went public with this- well here ya go sir- no, I won't print your name, but it's pretty easy to figure out who's on the board that's not a farmer.

What has happened to community values? Why must everything be rationalized along economic lines? Can't we understand that a constant predisposition towards "earning a buck" is not what's best for our society? I hope that anyone who reads this will take seriously their position as community members, as people in society, and live with integrity, honesty and claim some values and stand by them! Contrary to what Mr. Merchant board member or Mr. Lying wholesaler think- it's OK to believe in something and stand up for it. So, we will no longer be selling at this unfair and corrupt market- I hope that customers of this market will get to know their produce vendors- a few bad apples can spoil the bunch in this case. I would tell you, like I have before, to ask the vendor if he or she grew their produce, but in this case, you would have gotten a bold faced lie. If we are going to change our food system then we have to stand up for the values that it must represent- honesty, transparency & sustainability for starters. If farmers' markets begin to sell the same food that is available in the grocery store, then we have not really changed anything- "local" and "natural" become just a marketing scam. If local food networks are to be more meaningful than the conventional food system, then consumers must begin to gain more knowledge about agriculture and food so that they can hold farmers and vendors accountable. Likewise, farmers may need to raise their expectations of consumers. Perhaps there should be more than just a monetary transaction over food? Should consumers be more involved in farming and food so that they form closer relationships with farmers? I don't know the answer, but I know that sometimes you have to look closer to understand the difference between a scam artist and a hardworking farmer.

Busy as Bees

Man this summer has absolutely flown by. I'm not saying it's over- but there are signs that the seasons- both cultural and ecological- are changing. Kids are going back to school, we are ordering our fall seeds like crazy, and some of our summer crops are winding down. The tomatoes will soon give in to the late blight, cucumbers succumbed to the powdery mildew (although we have another succession coming on), but the green beans keep rolling! We are harvesting some of the most beautiful french green beans I have ever seen! Adam has been working really hard to help all of our crops along- weeding, watering and most importantly- harvesting! We are also beginning to see the first of our okra!! We have the traditional clemson spineless variety, a slender burgundy variety, and a fat hill country red variety. Our silverqueen corn is almost ready- begging for rain!! We also have another crop of black-eyed peas maturing. We will have some red ripper peas very soon- they are nice and plump and pinkish in color- if you like peas you will have to try them.

As a part of our efforts to support ecological diversity on our two cultivated acres of vegetables, we have strategically planted buckwheat in rows between winter squash, around the second succession of summer squash, and anywhere in general with open ground. We use the buckwheat as a cover crop and it is useful for several reasons. The first is that it is fast growing, shading out other weeds. Second, it produces a nice head of small white flowers that attract THRONGS of bees and wasps which are beneficial insects- they help polinate plants and some of them will actually eat other bugs, like squash bugs, that like to eat our crops. THere is a serious vibration of bees going on early in the morning in the rows of buckwheat- I will post a picture of this soon. We are going to mow down the buckwheat before it goes to seed and leave it as a mulch for our winter squash to grow on.

We are still gearing up for our fall vegetable subscription. I will be sending out an email to all of the folks who have shown interest or signed our email list at the farmers' markets over the past month. We will start our subscription during the first week in October and it will run for 10 weeks until the first week of December. If you are interested in receiving a weekly box of organic vegetables this fall, please contact us as soon as possible to be considered. We only have room for about 25 shares, so space is limited. We will be serving our surounding area- including Dallas, Powder Springs, Rockmart and anywhere in between. We need to have a cluster of customers for each delivery location so tell your friends!! See the previous post for a list of the vegetables that we will be growing.

We hope that all of you continue to visit the farmers markets as the seasons change. There is no reason that most of the farmers markets should have to end anytime soon- we will continue to produce food for several more months!! Come say hello to us at the Dallas Farmers Market in the historic downtown every Saturday morning between 8am & 11:30. We are also regulars at the Powder Springs farmers market in historic downtown Powder Springs on Thursdays from 4-8. The farmers markets are alot of fun because they offer a variety of products in addition to vegetables, such as baked goods and honey. Both markets also have live music on some days. In Dallas we have enjoyed seeing the Llama's come visit (that's right- live llamas!) and the greyhound dogs! We also really enjoy talking to folks who come by and talking to the other farmers. We love seeing families come and it's a great way for kids to learn more about where food comes from.

Fall Vegetable Subscription

As summer vegetables are in full swing, we are already looking to the fall production. We have decided to offer a 10-week subscription to a weekly box of seasonal fall and late summer vegetables. Some of you may not be very familiar with this new way of connecting with a farm to enjoy their seasonal harvest. The way it works is that a farm finds interested customers who want to enjoy their fresh produce regularly and support the local farm in the process. Farmers need to have an idea of how many people are going to buy their products before they spend all that time and money producing it, so the customers sign up to become members of a seasonal vegetable subscription. Many people now call this model "Community Supported Agriculture" or CSA for short because it is literally through the support of the local community that the farm is able to be successful. As you might have noticed, most of the produce you buy in the store, and even some that you buy at farmers' markets (see previous post), is shipped in from other states, namely Florida and California. Many times the produce is picked unripe and allowed to ripen in transit, compromising the taste, nutrition and overall quality of the food. With our farm, we pick the produce the day before we sell it, if not the same day! And, your money is able to stay in the community, benefiting other local businesses and helping to preserve surrounding farmland. So, that's some of the reasoning behind it, now here are some of the logistics: Our Fall CSA will begin during the week of September 21st and will run for 1o weeks. During that time, we will provide you and your family with a weekly box of fresh, naturally grown vegetables. Each box will contain 5-7 different vegetables. We are selling the boxes for $20 each, but the vegetables are often worth more than that. We ask that each member commit to the entire season through one of our payment methods. Please ask us about those options. Finally, once we know where our customers are located, we will arrange some drop-off sites where we can meet to deliver your vegetable boxes. Ideally, we would like to have several customers for each drop site, so tell your friends! Vegetables will include: broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, beets, radishes, lettuce, winter squash, sweet potatoes, collard greens, mustard greens, turnips, swiss chard, garlic and spinach. Some of our late summer crops will also be included, such as green beans, summer squash and anything else that is still producing. Please contact us for more information and to sign up. We will only have 20-25 slots available so space is limited. To learn more about CSA programs, click here. To sign up for ours, email us or call. Our contact information is on our blog and on our listing here.

Harvest and going to Market

Our summertime vegetables have finally started rolling in and we have been able to start providing naturally grown produce to our surrounding community. We first visited the Dallas Farmers Market and we have really enjoyed meeting folks there and sending them home with a couple of pounds of green beans, some tasty cucumbers or some colorful heirloom tomatoes! So far, we have the following items for sale from our farm: heirloom tomatoes, green, red and orange bell peppers, hot peppers, french-style green beans, regular bush snap beans, fresh basil, black-eyed peas, corn, pickling cucumbers, slicing cucumbers, lemon cucumbers, squash and zucchini. We have also been visiting the Cedartown farmers' market on Tuesdays- it's quite a bit slower but we have enjoyed getting to talk to folks and meet the other vendors. Finally, we visited the Powder Springs Farmers' Market yesterday. We met some really wonderful people from My Dad and Me Family Farm who produce vegetables, raw cow's milk, broiler meat chickens and homemade breads. Much of our time was spent getting to know these wonderful people. The market would have been better had it not been for a few produce vendors who were simply hocking stuff they had bought from a wholesaler. They sell the same produce you would find in a grocery store for dirt cheap and many consumers can't tell the difference. It is the worst thing for farmers like us who have worked so hard to produce clean, fresh, local food only to have somebody who has not sweated and worked undercut us. I challenge all of you reading this to ask the vendor if they grew it or where it came from- You can tell the farmer who has been working hard to bring you good food because they will be able to look you honestly in the eyes and tell you it came from their own hard work. Then you will know why it cost an extra dollar or two- because it is reflecting the true cost of food, keeping your local farmers in business, and it is going back into your own community. Ok, enough soap-boxing but we just had to vent about that. Please come out and say hello to us at any of these local markets: Peek's Park in Cedartown on Tuesdays from 6:30am-8:30am, Downtown Powder Springs on Thursdays from 4pm-8pm, and Downtown Dallas on Saturdays from 8am-noon! If you cannot make it to one of these markets and especially if you are Rockmart, please contact us and we will make arrangements so that you can buy some fresh, naturally grown produce from us. We follow organic standards but we are not certified- no synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides- and we are growing our crops from organic and heirloom seeds!

Late June Update

Well things have been very busy over at Turtle Bend Farm this month. The top picture is Mecca and her niece, Alyssa, in the field of blooming buckwheat at sunset. The bottom picture are the freshly staked and tied heirloom tomato plants.

Adam has working sun-up to sun-down this month to get the farm running and he has succeeded! The plants are about to catch up with us, but until then, here's our mid-June farm update:

Irrigation

Despite the fact that the rest of the continental United States has received record rainfall for the month of June, Northwest Georgia has not. East Tennessee, North Carolina, and Northeast Georgia have been hammered with afternoon thundershowers, while 50 miles to the south Turtle Bend Farm has seen no June rain. The farm field has literally received 0.3 inches of rain for the month of June in a month that normally gets around 4-5 inches of rain. To make matters worse, temperatures have remained in the low to mid nineties everyday. Needless to say, irrigating our two acres of vegetables has become a time consuming task. Fortunately, the drip irrigation that we have installed beside the tomatoes, peppers, and beans conserve labor, time and water. The dry conditions have forced us to water crops such as corn and sorghum, which can usually be drought resistant. We do not have a good system for overhead watering yet, so Adam has been moving the tanks and the water pump around the field in order to irrigate with overhead sprayers. If we continue without rain the irrigation system will have to be revamped so that it is not so time consuming and laborious. The creek levels have dropped from the lack of rain but are still maintaining their summer flow.

Harvest

Even though we got a late start in our first season, everything looks good and we are fairly close to our first big harvest. We are planning to attend our first markets next week, possibly on July 4^th. The heirloom tomatoes look good and are tied to tobacco sticks we picked up while visiting family in North Carolina. It was a time consuming task so hopefully it will support the weight of the tomatoes. We will have to figure out a better system for next year, when we anticipate doing twice as many tomatoes. Our bell pepper plants are heavy with green peppers and some are starting to turn their beautiful shades of yellow and orange. We will likely bring some green bell’s to sell next week while we let most of them ripen on the plant. We will also have a good first crop of green beans, squash and zucchini. Our black-eyed peas are looking extraordinary with their dark green leaves and yellow flowers. We aren’t sure if we will have the time to actually shell the peas for our customers or if they will just have to do that on their own. We have considered investing in a pea sheller but we have heard that they can damage the delicate peas.

Planting

In anticipation for our fall season we ordered plenty of winter squash like butternut, pumpkins, and spaghetti so they can be ready in October. Winter squash are planted in the summer and stay on the vine till it dries in the fall. They are called “winter” squash because they will keep through most of the winter. We have also been keeping up with our successions of green beans so that we can have tender, young green beans for our customers throughout the entirety of their season. We have also recently planted a crop of sorghum sugar cane, which will hopefully provide a small bit of molasses and a good seed crop for next year’s larger sorghum patch. If we have any extra molasses we will pass that on to our customers this year, and next year we plan to have a larger quantity.

Local Harvest Website

We have created a listing for our farm on a website that has been successful at creating a database of local farmers, farmers markets and restaurants that produce, sell or buy locally produced foods. Local Harvest is a good tool for anyone looking for sources of local food. You can see our listing here and view the list of crops we are growing and see when and where we will be selling them at farmers' markets around our area.

Early June 2009

Irrigation:

Our system is set up and is complete with two 275 gallon water tanks, a gas powered pump, drip irrigation, and cool spring-fed creek water. Special thanks to Morgan Hardware, of Rockmart, and their friendly staff for helping us with the proper PVC pipe connections. (wow, that was confusing). Another big thanks to Chaz Holt of Holt Heritage Farm & Supply in Euharlee, GA for his help with ordering our drip irrigation set-up. There were a lot of unknowns when it came to the amount of pressure coming from our tanks to the drip lines but, it is up and working without a problem. So basically the water is pumped into the tank and then gravity and the weight of the water pushes the water through the drip lines which are at the base of each plant. If only we could eventually find an affordable solar powered water pump we would not be using any fossil fuels to irrigate our fields. We will post pictures soon.

Planted and Planting:

We got a late start this year because of the move from Alabama but have been busy to get in everything that we can. So far we have about 300 heirloom tomato plants that are looking really good, 150 sweet and hot peppers, 2 varieties of green beans, various southern peas, sweet potatoes, summer squash, zucchini, cucumbers, black beans, silver queen corn, several types of melons, and swiss chard planted. We got our second round of seeds in yesterday so we are really enjoying watching the rain fall today. We have yet to plant our pumpkins and our sorghum sugar cane. We also have a good crop of buckwheat coming in- we are just using this for a cover crop but we might try to harvest some of it depending on how difficult and laborious it might be without the proper equipment.

Harvest:

We just harvested our first crop of Turtle Bend Farm: Garlic. It is planted and the fall and matures in the late spring and early summer. Most of this garlic will be cured, dried, and used for seed garlic next year so we can have giant harvest and have some for sale. The varieties were artichoke and creole which are suited for warm weather. Special thanks to our first summer intern of the year and long time friend, Zack Pozebanchuck. He is pictured in the bottom photo weeding the garlic plants and Adam is in the middle photo.