Farm To Family at the BG Farmers Market This Friday!

This Friday starting at 1:30 the BG Farmers Market has partnered with WIC Farmers Market Nutrition Program, Farm to Family Project and WSU Extension to educate the public about healthy eating! 2.00 produce vouchers will be distributed to the local WIC clients to use at the BG Farmers Market, bags of produce will be handed out to selected families, and Sandy Brown from the local extension will be doing some raw veggie samples for you to try! Pick up a flyer from the Market Manager Booth to learn about seasonal eating and information about the Plant A Row For The Hungry campaign as well!

Holy Smokes BBQ will be there and longtime vendors Two Creeks Farms, Herrs Farms, Griffin Woodworks, Rosemattel's Farm, Iko Farms and more!

Remember, anything fresher is still growing!


The BG Farmers Market is located on HWY 503 and 199th Street at the Gardner Center Shopping Plaza.

Find out more about the BGFM at their website.

Happy Birthday Farmerette

I almost let this day slip by without wishing one of our hardest working farmers all the very best on her birthday today.

Happy birthday, Brenda and thank you so much for all you do for our community.

You can wish Brenda a happy belated birthday at the Battle Ground Farmers' Market this weekend.

The market will open it's 6th year at the Gardner Center on 503 and Eaton Road (199th) with two market days ! Easy access and high visibility so you will know you are at the right place!

April 24th-October 2nd Saturdays 9-3

May 7th Friday Market 2-6pm

Call (360) 576-9767 for info

For Exact Location of the market

Click Here

You can also keep up to date on the Battle Ground Farmers' Market via their new blog.

Battle Ground Farmers Market Set to Open THIS WEEKEND!!

Announcing the sixth season opening of BG Farmers Market! - Date: April 24th 9-3
Location: Gardner Center Plaza on HWY 503 and 199th (AKA Eaton Rd) at the South entrance to Battle Ground Washington.
Sponsors: Battle Ground Farmers Market Association, Coldwell Banker Commercial, BG Curves, Dan's Tractor, Solar Espresso, WA State Farmers Market Association, Healthy Kids Legislation, Clark/Cowlitz Farm Bureau, Plant a Row for the Hungry, and more!

Contact: BGFM Market Manager Brenda Millar (360 576-9767 www.battlegroundfarmersmarket.org or email battlegroundfma at yahoo dot com

During our grand opening we will celebrating Earth Day, t-shirt and market buck giveaways and community based activities. Master Gardeners will be on hand to answer your gardening questions. Rojo the Llama will also be making a special appearance!

Your Battle Ground Farmers Market Wooden Tokens are redeemable only at this market thanks to the second year of the Wireless Technology Project Grant. Credit/Debit/EBT Cards are welcome as well as the up and coming WIC/Senior Produce Vouchers to be distributed at the beginning of summer. Please refer to our website for more information on vendor and product offerings!

Remember, anything fresher is still growing at the BGFM!

Hunters' Greens x 2

Jim at Hunters' Greens has a lot going on (both in the field and in his head) this time of year. And I for one am always glad to be a recipient of his mullings and musings. Here's a message from Jim regarding our local CSAs, CSA customers, and some thoughts on what you can do to directly support your CSA farmer or farmerette.

Dear Shareholders,

CSA shareholders of Clark County, your farmers may require your assistance. I address this message not just to my own CSA shareholders, but to the larger community of "supporters of
agriculture."

By way of a caveat, I have to admit that I have been neglecting my relationships with my fellow CSA farmers for the last year or two, so check with your farmers to check the relevancy of my remarks to their particular situation.

Here's the deal. The word on the wire is that CSA farmers are having trouble filling out their complement of shares this year. Various theories are circulating to explain this problem, such as: "It's the economy stupid!", and "We're just getting too many CSAs in the county." While these two factors may make the job of finding shareholders a little more difficult, I think it would be sad if our farmers despair on the basis of these theories.

But you can help! Shareholders helping out was an integral part of the original North American CSA model as it developed on the East Coast, but somehow we rugged western individualists have seemed to leave that piece out of the puzzle. As the pioneer CSA farmer in the county I stand guilty as charged as a poor role model. But even I from time to time accept a little help and even rarely, ask for it.

So the kind of help I'm asking you to offer your farmer here is in the area of marketing. For we introverted, "I'd rather be out in the field talking to my plants" farmers, marketing can be tough. And its getting to that time of year that our fields are exactly where we should be. If every CSA shareholder copied off three brochures and handed them out to likely friends or co-workers, that just might be enough to get the job done. Our latest shareholder was signed up through such an effort (Thank you Eric and Eileen, and Clay).

Are there sympathetic businesses you patronize that might lay out some brochures?

But there is another level at which CSA members might want to help. The traditional image of the help shareholders give farmers is spending an afternoon weeding or harvesting crops. But might it not make even more sense if shareholders offered help that came from their own area of expertise or labor of love. Natural born marketers might offer to help design and implement a marketing campaign, avid speakers might offer testimonials at social, trade or religious gatherings, writers could write articles for newsletters (this techno- illiterate can't even conceive of the new electronic media possibilities).

A few shining examples of this kind of help come to mind. Our own CSA member Heather Lehman (of atrocityarts.com), first offered, and then insisted on building and maintaining our web site. Heather claims we are allowing her to use us as a guinea pig, but the quality of her work and her known dedication to the local food movement bely any selfish motivation. Heather's offering has been incredible. Occasionally we show our gratitude by "allowing" her to come pick some surplus, or past prime produce that we are too exhausted to pick and market ourselves.

On a more community wide level, the work of Glenn Grossman and Sunrise O'Mahoney come to mind. Glenn's "Clark County Food and Farm" website offers a comprehensive view, with commentary, on the farm and food scene in the county. Whatever role Sunrise plays whether it is struggling to grow a food co-op, or coordinate plans for the 78th Street Farm, Sunrise always keeps an eye out for the welfare of local small farmers.

These folks have made giant contributions and no one expects that kind of "agricultural support", but maybe you have a skill that you could "guinea pig" on "your" farmer. Call her and find out.


And here's an update from the farm from Hunters' Greens:

Farm Update

The intrepid Clark County Farmerette Brenda Millar of Rosemattel's CSA looks like she may yet make good on her promise to have radishes and salad greens for the opening of her Battle Ground Farmer's Market this Saturday at the Gardner Center. The greens may qualify as micro-greens, but the radishes look like they just might size up in the next few days. To round out her tables she will also be harvesting some over-wintered collard greens, leeks, chives, pea shoots, herbs, green garlic and our undiscovered delicacy the "sweet collette." Visit her stand if you're craving the "first fruits" from this property in 2010.

Meanwhile, down in the Hunters' Greens fields, tiny baby bok choy, mustard and arugula seedlings are sprouting up between rows of tiny walla walla onion starts. The carrots were actually able to break through the rain packed soil, the next question is whether it will be soft enough for their roots to swell. Meanwhile around the green house a sea of plants in seed blocks is growing to cover Brenda's tidy plant benches. Most of these are Jim's, Brenda's remain in the green house and in little shelters she builds with various plant protection fabrics. Spinach and lettuce plants are sprouting true leaves, signaling they only await well tilled soil to drop them into so they can begin the race to June. But ah, there's the rub, unlike Brenda who scratches what she can into the cold earth, Jim insists on waiting for the precisely correct soil conditions to do his final tilling, soil amending and transplanting. Those conditions may have arrived during a brief window this week-end, but we'll never know because Jim was curled quietly in his bed sweating out the mother of all crud bugs; swine, seasonal or other, it was brutal. In his early farming days he might have crawled out to the fields, but fifteen years of experience have convinced him that it WILL work out in the end.

Observing this sense of calm juxtaposed against Brenda's frantic efforts reminds of us of the great gift of owning land with a home, free and clear. In the days of the family farm, such a gift was passed on from generation to generation, but today's new small farmers don't benefit from that tradition. It is painful to watch the Brendas and David Knauses struggle to achieve their dream in the face of daunting odds. Watch for a longer essay on this subject in our blog, Notes From the Margin.

Hunters' Greens Farm Update - 4.5.2010

When last we wrote, it was sunny and warm. We farmers must be optimists, because we were sure that weather would last all spring. So here it is in the mid-thirties, blowing and pouring, certainly this can't last forever.

One of the reasons Jim has nearly given up on season extending row covers is that they are always blowing away. He still uses burlap to cover the carrot seed, but it blew off days after it was installed and weighed down with pebbles. I guess we'll just have to take what nature brings.

Meanwhile, Brenda has been sprouting salad greens and radishes under her row covers, hoping to have them ready for the opening of the Battle Ground Farmer's Market on April 24. Good luck with that Brenda!

Both of us continue to seed things in the green house and in any warm corner we can find, Brenda on top of her refrigerator and Jim in his home made germination chamber (three shelves with six flourescents for light and two incandescents to add heat all wrapped in an insulation blanket).

Brenda and Jim have teamed up to promote CSAs through local neighborhood association newsletters and meetings. We have an article and presentation coming up here in Brush Prairie in May.


Diane & Jim Hunter
Hunters' Greens CSA
Brush Prairie, WA.
(360) 256-3788
Email
http://huntersgreens.com

Press Release: BG Farmers Market's Sixth Season Opening!

Press Release:
Announcing the sixth season opening of BG Farmers Market!

Date: April 24th 9-3

Location: Gardner Center Plaza on HWY 503 and 199th (AKA Eaton Rd) at the South entrance to Battle Ground Washington.

Sponsors: Battle Ground Farmers Market Association, Coldwell Banker Commercial, BG Curves, Dan's Tractor, Solar Espresso, WA State Farmers Market Association, Healthy Kids Legislation, Clark/Cowlitz Farm Bureau, Plant a Row for the Hungry, and more!

Contact: BGFM Market Manager Brenda Millar (360) 576-9767 www.battlegroundfarmersmarket.org or email battlegroundfma (at) yahoo.com

During our grand opening we will celebrating Earth Day, t-shirt and market buck giveaways and community based activities. Rojo the Llama will also be making a special appearance!
Your Battle Ground Farmers Market Wooden Tokens are redeemable only at this market thanks to the second year of the Wireless Technology Project Grant. Credit/Debit/EBT Cards are welcome as well as the up and coming WIC/Senior Produce Vouchers to be distributed at the beginning of summer. Please refer to our website for more information on vendor and product offerings!

Remember, anything fresher is still growing at the BGFM!

Spoken & Written Word Services Available From Local CSA Farmers

Hello Community Members!

On behalf of two local community supported agriculture farmers, we would like to present to you our public service outreach and article writing services at no charge! Seasonal eating on a local level is becoming more and more popular yet many folks do not know how to get in touch with the all of the options local csa farmers have to offer. We would like to share with your group/organization to illustrate a version of community supported agriculture and how that ties in to the farming viability of the Clark County areas your members may not be aware of.

Feel free to return this email or give us a call to find out how we would are able to tie in a monthly article for your monthly or quarterly newsletters and 20 minute presentation of what a CSA farm operation is. We will also include the details of efforts and benefits behind it all.

Looking forward to hearing from you soon!

Sincerely,

Brenda Millar and Jim Hunter
Rosemattel's and Hunters Greens CSA Farmers
(360) 576-9767

2010 VSA Shares and CSA Coffee Talk w/ Rosemattel's CSA & Five Star Farms

Open House CSA Farm Produce Subscription Information Night Every Monday of November at 8806 NE 159th Street Battle Ground WA 98604. Learn how your subscription to a CSA farm is healthy for your family and the "growing" community! By supporting your local Clark County Farmerettes you are keeping agriculture alive! Free admission!

Free coffee or tea and take home an organically grown winter squash. Other farm products available for purchase as well.

Don't have time for an open house? Already know what a CSA is?

Also accepting payment plans for 2010 CSA Season! Pick up days are as follows:
Monday Afternoon at 159th farm from 1-3
Monday evenings at Barberton Grange 4:30-5:30
Wednesday Afternoon from 2-4
Friday Afternoon from 2-4
Saturday at BG Farmers Market located at 199th and 503 (BG Cinemas Shopping Center) 9-3

For pricing and harvest week details, please see
rosemattelscsa.com
fivestarfarms.biz