Looking for Local food? Input your Zip Code or City:
and find a Farm, Farmer's market, Co-op or Restaurant near you!
OGII is a Yahoo list of my creation. We discuss all sorts of things that happen in the Agricultural world with an political/sustainable slant. If this sounds interesting than sign up today by entering you name in the box above.
We Sell the Best and Compost the Rest
What the farm share got the last week of May 2009. Yummy stuff
Now Taking Members for the Winter Share (Nov through Jan) We still have some room left for our Winter Share Intitiative. Contact us by Oct 31 if you are interested in joining us for our local foods adventure. Spots are filling quickly.
Winter Share Nutz and Boltz
Winter share will have on farm pick up twice a month, cost will be $300 for the winter season ($50 a week). The shares will be larger than a summer share and will mainly be food that can store for months like taters, winter squash, onions, carrots, parsnips, garlic, pears, dried herbs, leeks, etc.. If the weather is good to us, leafy greens (arugula, kale, spring mix, lettuce) and other things from the hoop houses will also be included throughout the season (we will certainly have them the first 2 or 3 pick-ups). The Winter Share starts Wednesday November 11 and goes through Wednesday January 20 for 3 months/6 pick-ups. We have 6 shares still available this year
After a several year hiatus, the Boulder Belt Farm Share Program is back in action. Our farm share program supplies our members with a weekly share of seasonal food grown on our sustainable farm. Like other such programs, members are basically buying a share of the farm and paid out in weekly dividends of food. Members also get the rare privilege of seeing where and how their food is grown and thus they become much more knowledgeable about and connected to their food and the farm upon which it is grown. The more knowledge one has about where their food comes from and how it is grown means the less they will have to use the industrial food system as their proxy as to what food they put in their bodies. By eating more locally and supporting local farmer and farms, all of us can have a safer and much more sustainable food system and healthier lives. Joining the Boulder Belt Eco-farm Farm Share Program is a great way to do all of this and more.
Farm Share Program's Nutz and Boltz
Season Length
2010 season TBA . We break our program down into 1 month (4 week) segments so members can come and go as their schedules allow. This allows members to skip parts of the growing season they may not appreciate to the fullest. If you hate salad green and peas but love tomatoes and peppers we would advise you not to join up until August when the greens are not growing and the maters and peppers are in season
Cost Cost is $120 a month (4 weeks) payable at the start of the month. A Full season costs $930 before Apr 1st. After that we take $120 off each successive month so if you buy a full share in May it will be $810, June $690 and so forth.
Pick-Up On farm pick up only. Pick up days are Tuesdays and Thursday. Unlike more and more CSA type programs that offer delivery, we have on farm pick up only. If you are considering signing up with Boulder Belt consider this carefully. Is driving out to the farm once a week going to be a chore for you? If so perhaps you can find some friends to sign up with you and everyone can share the driving (take turns picking up each other's shares) We used to do the CSA delivery thing but found that by doing so there was zero connection/community between the CSA members and the farm. We feel that CSA is an amazing way to reconnect eaters with where and how their food is grown. This is perhaps the most important aspect of the CSA ideal/ideal. But in order for this to happen the eaters have to come to the farm. So that is why we have on farm pick up only.
The Crops We grow over 50 different crops including peas, cabbages, lettuce, onions, garlic, carrots, beets, strawberries, potatoes, zucchini, eggplant, tomatoes, sweet and hot peppers, leeks, turnips, parsnips, asparagus, rhubarb, popcorn, kale, chard, basil, sage, tarragon, oregano, dill, thyme, chives, garlic (Chinese) chives, spring mix, arugula, cantaloupe, watermelons, cucumbers, pears, apples, parsley, savory, cilantro, radishes, celeriac, green beans, dried beans, spinach, mizuna, turnip greens, Mustard, specialty melons (rare and wonderful)
Shares Each week members will receive a bag of seasonal food grown in the Boulder Belt Eco-Farm market gardens. It is the farm's choice as to what goes into the shares but it will be a usable and tasty variety of 8 to 12 seasonal produce items. For example:
Spring Share (May) might have the following
a bunch of chives
a 6 oz bag of spring mix
1/2 pound of lettuce
1/2 pound of spinach
1 pound asparagus
1 bunch radishes
1/4 pound arugula
1 Hd cabbage
1/2 pound snow peas
1/2 pound sugar snap peas
1 pint strawberries
Summer Share (August) might have
2 medium zucchini
2 pounds heirloom tomatoes
2 peppers
2 eggplant
1 cantaloupe
1 1/2 pint raspberries
a bunch of beets
2 large heirloom cucumbers
1/2 pound chard
4oz arugula
1 pound sweet onions
1 garlic
Fall Share (October) might have
1 pound potatoes
1 pound pears
1 pound apples
1 pound red onions
2 leeks
6 oz spring mix
1/2 pound heirloom lettuce
1 butternut squash
1/2 pound kale
1 pound carrots
2 peppers
1 bunch scallions
Generally, the shares, if you were to buy each item separately at our farm store or at the farmers market would be worth more than the $30 a week members pay for the food via their farm share membership.
Other Perks Coming to the farm to pick up one's share is a part of our attempt to reconnect as many people as we can with farms, but it is not enough. We email all our members a weekly newsletter with news of the farm, a list of what is in the share (there are often a few unfamiliar items) and usually a recipe. Read past farm share newsletters here. We have monthly Farm tours and a pot luck dinner here on the farm. We open our farm to our members (and their family/friends) the 3rd Sunday evening of the month. We do a farm tour than get down to eating the fine food we all bring to the pot luck dinner. This is community building, i.e. members will get a chance to meet face to face which, otherwise probably would not happen as members are coming from Oxford, Eaton, Dayton and Richmond, IN on different days and at different times. If the weather is willing we can have a bon fire by the pond and do some star gazing.
Flexibility We have been running CSA type programs on and off (more on than off) for the past 12 years and one thing we have found is that it is best to be flexible. So, unlike some other programs, we do not require that members pay the entire season up front or that they even have to commit to an entire season. We have been catering to the university crowd for a long time (Miami and Earlham College) and know that school schedules are too often in conflict with the average CSA schedule. You want to support a farm but you are gone for most of the summer and simply cannot afford to pay for food you will never use. The Boulder Belt Farm Share programs avoids this unpleasantness by allowing our members to pick and choose which months they wish to participate. Not only that, but we don't ask that our member pay everything upfront, instead you can pay in one month segments. This means you are paying only for the food you will use. And it gets even better, you can pay for your Boulder Belt Eco-Farm share program on line via our Local harvest CSA listing. Click here and find out more
Refunds Like many other CSA type programs, we require our members to share the risk of farming with us. Farming is inherently risky, we do what we can to minimize the risk such as planting a wide array of different crops, succession planting, using crop protection such as hoop houses and row covers, not to mention our expertise at growing food crops. So far we have yet to have a major crop failure in 15 years of farming, but it could happen. If it does, we will not be issuing refunds as this is the risk we all take (and while members might be out up to $120 we farmers will be out tens of thousands of dollars). We also do not issue refunds for missed (forgotten) pick-ups. We will send out an email each week reminding all members to pick up their share(s) along with other information. If you let us know a week or more in advance that you cannot make a pick up we will reschedule you for a later date or give you a $30 credit at the store.
To join the farm Share program or for more information email We will never sell or trade your email address
