Archive for April, 2009
Planning your meals around what’s in season can be a tasty experience and satisfying way to enjoy food. It may be daunting to imagine only utilizing fresh food that’s growing nearby, but here are some tips that may help:
- Purchase seasonal foods in enough quantity to last for several meals.
- Wash and cook what you purchase right away.
- Use the freshly cooked ingredient in several meals by creatively adding it to different dishes.
- Divide and store in the refrigerator to be used throughout the week.
Let’s take an example from OurLocalFoods at Thornhill Farm. We’ll plan a few meals around a yummy seasonal item from the CSA box!!
Our spring garden is in full bounty of seasonal greens. We have an abundance of Curly Mustard, Russian Red Kale and Turnip Greens. Yummm!
Let’s cook two pounds of curly mustard. Wash the beautiful lacy chartruese leaves and leave in the collander to drain. Finely dice some garlic or shallots. Heat a tablespoon of fresh green olive oil in a large wok or saute pan. Have a half cut fresh lemon for the finish.
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Today was filming day… which is really good because we want to document what’s going on out here at Thornhill Farm. We had SunbayMedia out to do the filming. They captured the planting that’s going on, the new plants in the hoop house, our take on organic farming- the beneficial insects, compost tea, etc. We also talked about how OurLocalFoods fits into the local economy; specifically, we employ local residents, and sell food in the local area.
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Our Local Foods attended the 2009 Earth Day Fair at Park Circle in North Charleston, SC this past Saturday, April 18. It was a really well attended event, and we had a lot of information about the farm, CSA (Community Supported Agriculture sign-up forms), and plant starts to give away to help people “green” up their patch of Earth. Here’s some photos of the day:
Our Local Foods at Earth Day 2009 in North Charleston, SC
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We have 300 chickens on the farm now - they arrived last weekend. We have a chicken tractor for them to live in (see the picture below). The chicken tractor is a chicken house built on a trailer. Our Local Foods would like to acknowledge the incredible design of the chicken tractor by George and Celeste Albers of the “Green Grocer” on Wadmalaw Island (just outside of Charleston, SC). The house has booms sticking out on each side with a shrimp net draped over it that hangs down to the ground. This area is approximately 25′x35′ which is the area the chickens have to run around and feed in. Each day, while the chickens are in the house, the trailer is moved a bit to a new spot, and the chickens are let out to roam around. At night, the chickens go back in their house to roost, and egg laying is also done in the nesting areas. The reason for moving the tractor each day is so there are plenty of new bugs and such for the chickens to find and eat. In a nice symbiotic way, the chickens also dig up the topsoil, add some fertilizer to the soil, and reduce the insect count.
Our Local Foods Chicken Tractor
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-April 8, 2009
Today we finished potting up plant starts for the Plant Sale this Saturday, April 11. We have a “hoop house” full of potted plants (and a few flats) that are ready for putting in the ground, now that the weather is warm enough for them to thrive outside. We have tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, and many other vegetables, as well as some nice flower starts. Be sure to drop by and see us at 215 Coleman Blvd in Mt. Pleasant (near Shem Creek) - sale starts 9AM.
Well, we almost got washed away yesterday. The report was more than 5″ of rain in 12 hours… so now we’re trying to dry off. We’re never ones to complain about rain - sometimes we just wish we could control when and how much comes down. But, there’s a lot to do in the fields, so we’ll back out as soon as the ground dries enough to get back in there.
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