The Statesville Credit System

We're renaming our Statesville Home Delivery program and calling it the Credit System, because in addition to offering occasional home deliveries, this is also the system we're offering for customers that want an alternative to paying cash for orders they pick up at the farmers market.

PAYMENTS  Credit system customers maintain a balance with us to pay for orders.  To get started, we ask that you pay $150 and plan to spend at least that much over the course of the following 12 months.  The first $150 is non-refundable.  We ask that subsequent checks be in increments of $100 or more.  Smaller cash payments are fine, so long as you hand them to us in person at the market (or our farm.)  If you want to leave a payment for us at your house for us to pick up when we're delivering an order, then it needs to be a check.  Anything you add to your credit after the initial $150 is fully refundable.

USING YOUR CREDIT AT THE FARMERS MARKET  You can use your credit to pay either for items you pre-ordered by e-mail or select at the farmers market for any purchases totaling over $8.  For totals under $8 we prefer that you simply pay cash, but we'll charge 

DELIVERY FREQUENCY  Home deliveries will be offered on a very irregular basis.  During the farmers market season we will offer home deliveries less often (but almost always on Saturdays, sometimes before, sometimes after the market.)  
  In the colder months we don't come to Statesville every week, but we'll offer home deliveries more often on the weeks when we do come.  So in the colder months you'll typically have the option of meeting us at a particular time at the farmers market location or we can leave you order at your house (i.e. do a home delivery.)  The day and time will be given in the e-mail newsletter.

ORDERING  We'll send out an e-mail 2-3 days before each intended farmers market and/or home delivery.  We'll typically leave a 24 hour window for you to place your orders.   Simply e-mail us a list of the items and amount of each item you would like.  You can order whichever weeks you want and skip whichever weeks you want.

MINIMUM PRE-ORDER AMOUNT  We don't have any strict limits, but on weeks when we're setting up our stand at the farmers market, we prefer that you not pre-order by e-mail unless you're placing an $8 or larger order.  In that case, please just pick out what you'd like from our farmers market stand.  However, please do pre-order any herbs you'd like as wella  as any items marked "by pre-order only" regardless of whether your total order will be over or under $8.

SHORTAGES  Most of what we have to sell will be practically limited to one degree or another, and we expect demand will randomly vary a lot from week to week, so there will surely be weeks when we don't have enough to fill all the orders we receive of some items.  In that case, we'll give priority to the customers that are the most regular in ordering.  And sometimes we won't be able to harvest any at all of things we thought we were going to be able to harvest when we sent out our e-mail newsletter ahead of time.  If we don't have enough to fill your order, we'll short you whatever we have to, and, of course, deduct from your balance only whatever we actually deliver.

ITEMS MARKED "PROBABLY CSA ONLY" If you see items on the list marked "probably CSA only" that means we expect we may not have any of that item left after packing CSA shares.  Please request these items anyway if you'd like them.  There's always a chance we'll have to short you on an item, so if an item is marked "probably CSA only" that just means the odds are greater that we'll have to short you, but it doesn't mean we won't have it or that you're not allowed to order it.  About half of the time when non-CSA members have ordered "probably CSA only" items we have been able to fill those orders.

DROP-OFF FEES 

 There is no drop-off fee for orders of $23 or more. For orders less than $23, we charge 20c for every dollar less than $23 (so there will be a 20c drop-off fee for a $22 order, 40c for an $21 order, 60c for a $20 order, 80c for a $19 order... $2 for a $13 order... $3 for an $8 order...
  If we don't have enough of an item to fill your order and we have to short you, we'll nonetheless count that item toward your order total for calculating your drop-off fee (unless it's a "probably CSA only" item and you're not a CSA member.)

RECEIPTS  We'll e-mail you a receipt of the credit you used with your last order together with a running tab of your remaining credit.  This should help you determine when you need to add to your credit.

DELIVERY AREA  Our regular delivery area is the part of Statesville west of I-77, south of I-40, and north of Hwy 70.  Other areas, particularly if they're very close to the regular delivery area or between our farm and Stateville might also be options, so if you'd be interested in the home deliveries but don't live in our regular delivery area, please ask.  Picking up your orders at someone else's home that does live in our delivery area is also an option if you don't live in our delivery area yourself.  Picking up at our farm is also always an option.

RETURNING ITEMS AND REUSABLE BAGS We very much appreciate you saving food grade plastic and paper bags for us (and any other reusable containers that you receive from us).  If we're delivering an order to your house you can just leave these on your porch and we'll pick them up or you can return them to us at the farmers market or our farm.  We're also glad to pack your order in your reusable bags.  To get started, just give us at least two bags with your name written on them.  Then each week, leave your empty bag out for us to use the next time you place an order.

TO SIGN UP Call us with any questions: 704-546-5074  Then make sure we have your phone number, home address, and e-mail address, and contact us about making your initial payment.  Then watch for our e-mail newsletters and order whenever you like.

Fruit

Lots of different fruits all ripening at the same time now. Roughly in clockwise order starting in the top left: Asian pears, apples, pawpaws, European pears, kaki and hybrid persimmons, jujubes, hardy kiwis, che fruit, muscadine grapes, figs, blueberries, American persimmons.

 

Statesville Saturday morning farmers market

 From roughly early May to late October, we're typically at the Statesville Saturday morning farmers market from roughly 8:30 through 10:30 a.m.  The market is at the corner of Front and Meeting Street in downtown Statesville.  For details, call us or get on our e-mail newsletter list.

Jute

 

Malabar spinach

 

Photos of the week

Beautiful weather, beautiful skies.

Moved the pigs to a fallow garden rotation.  They are enjoying it and we're happy to have them fertilizing the garden.

The late planting of green beans is looking better than our fall beans have looked in years.

Another photo of the green beans.

Monday morning we asked ourselves what projects were on the agenda for this week.  By Monday afternoon we realized replacing the well pump was going to be the major project.  Thankfully the pump was giving out gradually so we still had minimal water to use until we were able to tackle the project on Wednesday and we've had enough rain lately the garden didn't need to be irrigated.  With some help from friends and beautiful weather, we got the pump replaced and everything seems to be working well.  How nice to have things break just half way on a Monday instead of all the way on a Friday!

Bamboo shoots

    We've been cooking and eating our bamboo shoots for years and really like them and very much recommend them.  They're really a treat to us, especially at this time of year when there aren't many fresh vegetables coming out of the garden besides greens.  We use them in more or less traditional Asian-type stir-fries together with vegetables and/or meat, but we've also enjoyed them with fried eggs for breakfast or simply as a side dish sauteed in butter, also sometimes in soup.  Most of you have probably eaten bamboo shoots in Chinese food, but we've enjoyed fresh bamboo shoots so much more than canned bamboo shoots or however restaurant shoots are preserved.  Even after boiling they remain firm, almost crunchy, very roughly like a carrot that's been sauteed without being boiled.  So the texture is very nice together with softer vegetables or with meat.  The taste is comparable to fairly mild starchy foods like rice or Irish potatoes or bread, and it somewhat fills the role of a starch for us, even though they're nutritionally closer to asparagus (which is also a shoot vegetable.)  If any of you are eating anything like the keto diet, which seems to be popular recently, you might especially appreciate a vegetable that can substitute well for actual starchy vegetables.  Because the taste is fairly mild bamboo shoots are often used together with stronger flavored vegetables and sauces, but we've definitely enjoyed them in very simple ways, too, like just sauteeing in butter.

  Although we've been eating and enjoying bamboo shoots for years, we're still experimenting and figuring out whether it's better to soak the shoots in water before boiling and how long is best to boil them, so we don't feel ready to advise others on those details.  For that you can probably find better recommendations online from people with more knowledge and years of eating bamboo shoots than we have.  As we understand it, bamboo shoots (at least of the species we have) shouldn't be eaten raw but should definitely be boiled as at least a first step.  If you have any experience doing anything with fresh bamboo shoots (from harvesting to cooking to preserving for later consumption), we'd love to hear about experience and recommendations.  One thing we haven't seen online but that seems to be working very well for us is to cut the shoot in half lengthwise as the first processing step.  That seems to make it a lot easier to separate the outer leaves and remove the shoot inside.

  The shoots we're harvesting now are from a species called moso.  We've read that moso provides about 80% of the bamboo shoots eaten in China, and if you've had Chinese food in America, it's probably the species of bamboo you've already eaten.  We'll have shoots from another type called vivax that shoots later this month and into May.  There's a small but noticeable difference in taste.  Our family is basically undecided on which we like better.  Try them both!  They're both about the same size.  A single shoot can weigh up to around 2 pounds before processing, but the shoot is inside a leafy, shuck-like portion that isn't edible, and similar to asparagus, we discard the lower portion of the actual shoot because it's tougher and more fibrous than the top portion.  So there's a large amount of what you'll get that you won't eat.  If you're going to use the shoots as just a small part of a stir-fry with lots of other vegetables you might use as little as half of a shoot per portion, but if you want the bamboo shoots as a larger part of a meal you might want more like one or two shoots per person.  We haven't weighed and calculated an average shoot weight yet, but we're guessing it will be around 1-1/2 pounds per shoot, so if you're ordering under 3 pounds we'd recommend ordering by the shoot, but for larger orders feel free to order by the pound or by the shoot count.  As vegetables go bamboo shoots seem to have a relatively short storage life (which is probably why most Americans have never seen a fresh edible bamboo shoot in a store or anywhere else), so we'd recommend boiling them very soon, after which point it seems like they'll keep fine for a few days in the fridge until you stir-fry them or do whatever else you're going to do with them.