Garlic granules

 Simply add this dehydrated garlic to anything that will cook for awhile or grind into garlic powder.

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.

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 $24 or more. For orders less than $24, we charge 20c for every dollar less than $24 (so there will be a 20c drop-off fee for a $23 order, 40c for an $22 order, 60c for a $21 order, 80c for a $20 order... $2 for a $14 order... $3 for an $9 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.

Chinese cabbage slaw

  Chinese cabbage makes a delicious crunchy mid-winter salad.  Simply grate or chop finely the cabbage, carrots and yacons.  To this add vinegar and salt.  Optional salad additions are sesame seeds, dried fruit, nuts, ginger and turmeric.

Red-cedar Christmas trees

  We are working at clearing an overgrown pasture and it has a lot of red-cedars growing in it that look to be a good size to use for Christmas trees this year.  If you're not familiar with what red-cedars look like, here is a link with some pictures.  Red-cedars smell very nice.  We have decorated red-cedar Christmas trees multiple times and they are the traditional tree in our area for those who would go cut their own instead of buying a tree from the mountains.  These trees were never sprayed.  And they have been growing in the open which means they are their natural form, not pruned to be shaped like perfect cones (for better or worse, depending on what look you want.)

 

 

Photos of the week

There was a lot of preserving happening here this week, especially of peppers.  We love roasted peppers.  Here are some roasted corno di toro, ready for freezing or canning.

We butchered our old hens this week, canning the meat and broth.

The neighbors delivered loads of broom sedge mulch for the gardens.  It's hard to get a perspective from the picture but these are huge: 6 feet tall and 5 feet wide.  We use mulch in the garden to suppress weeds, conserve moisture and add organic matter.

Black snake in the late turnip patch?  No, just the soaker hose.  We haven't gotten any rain since Hurricane Helene so we're keeping the sprinklers and soaker hoses going in the fall crops.

Here is just one of the fun varieties of lettuce that grew from lettuce breeder Frank Morton's lettuce mix.

 

Photos of the week

 

Sweet potatoes all boxed up and curing

Peanuts for roasting drying in the sun

Acorns for the pigs drying in the sun

7.5 lbs

Chestnuts

   We've enjoyed chestnuts ever since a friend with a tree let us gather some from his yard, and every year we enjoy them more and more.  But we're still figuring out some of the details of how best to store and prepare chestnuts for roasting (and boiling, although we mostly prefer them roasted.  We also eat a raw chestnut now and then, but we mostly roast them.)  We did an experiment this evening with different methods of scoring chestnuts, and we also compared roasted chestnuts that had been in refrigeration for a few weeks to roasted chestnuts that were just collected.

  We definitely preferred the cured chestnuts to the freshly harvested.  Chestnuts sweeten with proper storage (in the refrigerator but protected from drying out too much), and they also shrink away from the shell just a little.  The chestnuts that we've had curing for the longest have been in the fridge for about a month, and we didn't notice any signs of any of them going bad.  (There's always a small percentage that have imperfections when we collect them, but no more had started to go bad.)  We can't remember exactly, but we think we kept them in the fridge for 2-3 months the last time we had a good crop (2019?).  That's probably close to the limit of how long they'll keep in the fridge.  It seems the flavor continues to improve at least through about 3 weeks, although that may vary some with the temperature and humidity of your refrigerator.  For longer term storage, we roast them just like we would to eat them and then freeze them.

  In order to prevent the nuts from exploding in the oven when we roast them and in order to facilitate peeling the shell off afterwards, we score the shells.  We tried a couple new-to-us scoring methods today that seemed to work better than using a knife like we used to do.  One method was to make a hole in the shell with a small nail and a hammer.  That seemed to be enough to keep the steam from exploding the chestnuts in the oven, and we were able to crack most of the chestnuts by hand after they were roasted, and the remainder cracked easily enough with a regular hand held nut cracker (like for walnuts, hazelnuts, etc.)  We only tried that with chestnuts that had been in the fridge for a few weeks, though, and we're not sure if it would work with fresh chestnuts, but it was a very easy method and worked very well with the nuts we roasted today.  The other method we tried was to use scissors.  That also worked very well, and unlike the nail and hammer, it's a method we've seen other people recommend as well.

  The scissor method can be seen in this video at about the 1:24 mark.  If you watch the rest of the video, beware that he uses globalist-industrial measurement units -- we'd recommend roasting the chestnuts at around 375-400F, which is what his recommendation converts to -- and we don't bother with wrapping our chestnuts in a towel after taking them out of the oven, as our chestnuts seem to peel very easily without that extra step.  They do seem to peel a little easier while still warm than after completely cooling down, but either way works well enough.  Also be aware that chestnuts will become slightly squishy with storage, which with a fresh nut and improperly stored nut might be an indication of a bad nut, but it's exactly what we look to happen with properly cured chestnuts.