|
|
Happy weekend! Hope you are all well, staying dry and eating delicious food!
It’s finally starting to look like the season here at Crooked Row. With a colder start to spring and then these wild heat spikes, our fields have been a little cranky, and the plants are about 10 days behind in their growing cycles from where they were this time last year. But they are growing, nonetheless! We just began picking out of our younger strawberry patch (it’s a few pints every day, in a week we’ll have much more), the lettuce we kept under row cover is beautiful, and we are already trellising the tomatoes and cucumbers in our high tunnels! Our summer carrots and beets germinated well. Every season is always shaped a little differently, but we’re all feeling great going into June.
Our Summer Hours!
Monday – 12pm-4pm
Tues-Fri – 10am-5pm
Sat-Sun – 10am-3pm
We’ll be in all weekend and for just a couple of hours on Monday if you need last-minute Memorial Day supplies, and we are stocked with these beautiful lettuce heads and lettuce mix, bok choy, napa cabbage, radishes, green garlic, scallions, hopefully some strawberries, and some extra cucumbers, zucchini and broccoli we brought in from the organic co-op for the holiday weekend. We are still well stocked on our salsa, ketchup and tomato butter, eggs and dairy, the Conscious Cultures cashew cheese and fresh and baked tofu, bread from The Daily Loaf and baked goods from Warm Sugar, meat of all kinds, pickled items, jams, and ferments. We’ll be restocked on apples and coffee again by Tuesday.
And we have an AWESOME first Friday coming up. On June 3rd, this Friday, Cellar Beast Winehouse will be joining us with wine and cider from Noon until 5pm, and then Jodi from Gauker Farms will be in with her beef orders and coolers for those of you who’d like to peruse her offerings in store from 3pm-5pm. If you’re looking to order beef for pickup, links to the pricing and Jodi’s contact info are listed in this Facebook event!
Also joining us this Friday from 3pm-5pm is our beloved Laura from Warm Sugar, with an extra special selection of eats and treats to start your June off strong. First Friday is a great opportunity to mosey in and meet the makers behind these amazing goods, and to treat yourself heading into the summer.
A Bit of Housekeeping!
There are a lot of new names on this email list, so I figured I’d cover some of the frequently asked questions that we field during the stand days. Always feel free to ask questions! Odds are, others have the same questions that you do.
- Preferred payments – We accept cash, cards, Venmo and Apple Pay, but we are still a business that prefers cash if you have it! We try to keep a lot of change on hand for this purpose, but if you’ve got smaller bills when you’re in for a few things, it always makes the day a little easier. If you’re paying with a card, we ask for an $8 minimum because of the various Square fees attached to those sorts of transactions.
- Parking – As we move into the busier season, we see a lot of, well, creative parking choices. And I’m sure you have, too. I highly recommend parking in the back lot area, behind the building. The driveway around the barn is a wraparound back out to Wolf’s Crossing Road and 309, so there’s no need to turn around beside the building, or in front of the building, or anything like that. When too many folks are parked up front at one time, lined up next to each other, cars end up backing on to 309 without full peripherals. I watch with my heart thumping. Keeping the front freed up for the occasional senior shopper, or someone who has some trouble walking, or a parent with a wee one in the car, or even a new patron who doesn’t yet know about the back lot, keeps the hazards down for everyone.
- Rearranging the Stand – We’ll be moving some food around in the next couple of weeks as the days get warmer. Last year, those tall meat freezer had to run pretty hard all summer, so we’re setting them up in the back room with the Maker Market so they are out of some of the direct sunlight. We’ll be keep to smaller display freezers up near the counter for the Kreeky Tree pies and the Warm Sugar quiche, cookie dough and treats, and we’ll be adding shelving to that wall to display more fruits and veggies out in the stand, but not right out in the sun. Ask at the counter if you have ANY trouble locating items while we are in the middle of this Tetris project.
- Farms and Signage – Every season we add new vendors, and I’ll be updating our stand signs to include new farms, their locations, and their growing/producing practices. The folks at the counter can help with these questions while I catch up with the signs.
- Community Compost – We’ll be shifting from our wooden standing bin out back to a composter donated by one of our patrons, and we’ll have it a little closer to the parking area soon. I’m going to put some signage right there for folks using it as far as what can go in. Please, please, ask up front for the guidelines before tossing things in. Full, unopened bags of cranberries and limes cannot be composted. I can’t be digging through the compost to open bags of old fruits and veggies and to pull out plastic grocery and produce bags (even if you think it’s the kind that will deteriorate, they won’t work in our compost). Thanks for understanding, and for making this opportunity available and easier for all of us.
- Emails! – I think I’ve cleaned up all the duplicate emails from my spreadsheet, but if you are getting these monthly messages from me twice, please let me know and I’ll correct that.
We have a smaller, mighty crew this season and we are getting it done! Everything from our field tomatoes to our second succession of summer squash is in the ground, and our winter squash was just seeded this week. We’ve been taking turns between the fields and the stand, but we should have some more regular help starting in the stand this week, so some more of us can focus on the fields as the plants really take off. If you’re in the CSA, (which is starting on Tuesday!), you’ll be getting another email from me in the next day or so with all the details about your boxes and pickup!
Thanks, everyone, for joining us on this organic journey and for trusting us with your kitchen pantries and fridge shelves. We look forward to feeding you now and in the months to come!
All the Best,
Liz
Crooked Row Farm
3245 Route 309, Orefield, PA
484-773-6559
