Welcome to summer! We’re excited to be bringing your first summer veggie shares this week, on schedule and earlier than we expected. This week is the first of 20 summer pickups and we’d like to warmly welcome new and returning members for another season of delicious eating. We are so glad to have you all in our little farm community and are happy to once again be bringing in big harvests of what we consider to be the best food around! This season is our 9th season on Cedar Down Farm and Jeff and I (Leslie) are happy to have Jess Martin returning to work with us this year and to be welcoming Michelle Doherty to our team. We are the 4 folks, and 8 hands who are growing your food this season and we’ll be seeing you each week at your weekly pickup.
In case you are wondering, what you are reading now is your bi-weekly newsletter which will keep you informed about the food in your shares and with some info about what’s happening on the farm. We aim to provide lots of info about how to best enjoy the fresh veggies that you will be picking up weekly and give you a little insight into what goes into growing those veggies. So, please dig into these newsletters and also visit our website for lots of recipes hand-picked to make delicious meals from the veggies in your shares.
As a little intro for new members (and a refresher for everyone else), your veggies are grown entirely by us here at Cedar Down Farm. We are certified organic and our mission is to provide the freshest, most nutritious and most delicious food to you while caring for our soil and farm ecosystem in such a way as to keep it healthy and vibrant in perpetuity. That means maintaining farming practices that build soil health – using crop rotation, growing extensive cover crops, working to reduce tillage and avoiding any chemical fertilizer, herbicide, pesticides or fungicides. It also means working to preserve biodiversity on the farm in the form of natural areas, hedgerows, and spaces for pollinators to live and by conserving and protecting water.
We know firsthand how big of a difference this all makes to the flavour and nutrient density of your food and we know that you will taste it too!
We look forward to seeing you all at pickups this summer. Please feel free to get in touch anytime or ask any questions you might have at pickups. We’ll also be holding our annual open house and barbecue in early August and hope to see you there!
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