by Deb Ritchie | Jan 9, 2023 | Weekly Share
Happy New Year!
With our 25th Anniversary year under our belt, we’re excited to bring in a new season!
2023 Vegetable and Fruit CSA shares are now available!
You can also reserve your grass fed/grass finished beef today and sign up for Garden Seedling shares!
Renew online https://nativeofferings.com/wp/. Click on Purchase.
Use the coupon code: RENEW2023 to apply a discount to your share price.
Renew by paper form-email deb@nativeofferings.com to get one in your inbox!
If you have friends who want to join please direct them to our website. There is a printable form there that is for new members.
Updated Business phone # (716) 801-0915. (This is Deb’s cell number).
Native Offerings Farm Share 2023 News
2022 reviewed
Thank you for having us grow food for you in 2022. It’s amazing how many people we can feed from our little farm. There aren’t very many vegetable farms around. When flying, we get window seats and look out the window hoping to see vegetable farms. You can tell if a farm is in vegetable production by the greenhouses, row covers or reflection from plastic mulch flashing light; sometimes you can see blocks of vegetables. We read and hear about food shortages, people being hungry, food inflation and when looking out that airplane window we see thousand of square miles where food could be grown. There could be tens and thousands of farms like ours and we wouldn’t have to worry about not having enough food.
Organic certification
Plastic is a problem. It seems that everywhere you look, there is plastic garbage. We even have micro plastic pieces in our bodies. Unfortunately, agriculture is a big plastic user. We use it for greenhouse film and as mulch (for weed suppression). We don’t have an option for our greenhouses but we do for our fields. Biodegradable mulch has been on the market for many years now and is allowed in Certified organic production in Europe but we can’t use it here. For this reason we have decide not to re-certify our vegetable fields. It is time to stop being part of the problem!
Our transplants will still be certified organic. We will still use organic growing practices like we always have.
Field Crew and WWoofing
We are very excited to have Mark Printz working with us this coming season. Mark has over 20 years experience in vegetable growing as the farmer for Canticle Farm in Alleghany. We are also looking for a couple of hard working field hands to round out our crew! Email deb@nativeofferings.com if interested.
We have been a WWoof (willing workers on organic farms) site for the past two seasons. We host volunteers or travelers on the farm in exchange for the experience of living the farming life. We WWoof’ed on a farm in Florida last year. It was a great way to see and experience another farm (and to have a base to explore places around Homestead!).
Garden Seedling Shares
We made some changes to the Garden Seedling Share based on customer feedback. Instead of a set garden share, now you can take the plants that you want for your garden. You can now pre-purchase seedlings in increments of $25, $50 or $100. You get a discount off our regular market price. We will send you a list of the crops that we will be growing. Just let us know what you want, send your “wish list” back and let us grow your seedlings for you. Most of the varieties are the same ones we use on the farm, which we have had success with and taste great!
ALSO, we will be growing a selection of seedlings bred for and adapted to growing in containers and other space restricted environments. These varieties will be ideal for your porch or in a pot beside your sunny window!
Check here for more info: https://nativeofferings.com/wp/shares/garden-share
We hope you’ll be joining us again this year!
Eat Nourish Thrive
Deb and Stew
Send us an email if you want greater flexibility with your share payments-we can work a payment plan out with you!!
by Deb Ritchie | Nov 14, 2022 | Weekly Share
The week before Thanksgiving and snow is on the ground. I love this time of year; it’s full of hopes, holidays, family and gathering. It’s nice to see the snow and to have colder weather. The warmth of the past couple of weeks really brought a plethora of insects out, likely trying to reproduce yet one more time! We need winters that get cold, it helps with insect control (somewhat); breaking cycles and potentially freezing any unhatched eggs.
The share this week is larger for the Thanksgiving holiday (same amount of greens and 1 1/2 times the weight). Greens include: tat soi, mustard, kale, collards, cauliflower, brussel sprouts and thyme. Everyone will get a cabbage. Roots and storage crops include: potatoes, onions, carrots, beets, kohlrabi, daikon, turnips, winter radishes, parsnips, rutabagas, apples and winter squash.
As a reminder, there are no shares on the week of Thanksgiving. We’ll start right back up the week after (Nov. 29th for OP and Dec. 1st for Buffalo)!
We are offering our POP UP holiday share again this year
It’s a good way for non CSA members to stock up on their favorite NOF organic veggies and local apples just in time for the holidays. This one time purchase of our Season Extension CSA holiday share can be a great gift to yourself or someone else!!
Where: Either of our pick up locations
When: Tuesday Dec. 13th in Orchard Park, Thursday Dec. 15th in Buffalo
For more information and to pre-purchase a holiday share visit www.nativeofferings.com
Click on Holiday Share!
by Deb Ritchie | Nov 7, 2022 | Weekly Share
I have to apologize, last week my email program crashed and it took almost a week to fix it! It was frustrating to say the least but now that’s all behind us and it’s working just fine now. :). Our field crops have been holding out pretty good due to all this lovely weather we’ve been having. We even replaced the ripped plastic on one of our greenhouses this past week. That’s a first! Usually the fall is much to windy and dismal for a job like that and it get delegated to the spring but, not this year! I’m thankful that it is done-it’s always a stressful job holding on to a 100′ by 24′ piece of plastic in hopes that the wind won’t pick up and carry you off!
I’ve reposted my message from last week again here so we can be all caught up! See below!
It’s the first week for our Season Extension shares this week. The summer is sadly over but we are enjoying this last bit of good weather. With temperatures in the 60’s and 70’s it does seem like winter is very far away……
But…. we’re not fooled, we are plodding along: getting all of our crops into storage. The last major crop to be put into storage this week will be cabbage. Think of how important cabbage was to pioneers! A nutritious vegetable that can keep well into the winter and made even more delicious and nutritious by fermenting it.
The Season Extension shares are structured so that there is a “greens” portion and a”roots and storage crops” portion.
The greens are a numeric count so that you will have a choice of heads or bunches of any and all greens we have. There will be tender greens such as: arugula, tat soi, mustard, and vitamin greens in the mix as long as they hold out. Our more hardy greens like kale, collards and cabbage will be around into the colder days coming.
Roots, storage crops and fruit (apple mostly and some pears) will be weighed. You can have your choice of any of these crops up to your poundage (dictated by your share size). These crops include: potatoes, onions, carrots, beets, kohlrabi, daikon, winter radishes, turnips, parsnips, winter squash and of course apples.
We won’t be posting regularly because of the “free choice” nature of the Season extension share and the fact that most of the crops will be similar week to week. We will post if we have some exciting new to share though!!
Enjoy the bounty!
by Deb Ritchie | Oct 31, 2022 | Weekly Share
It’s the first week for our Season Extension shares this week. The summer is sadly over but we are enjoying this last bit of good weather. With temperatures in the 60’s and 70’s it does seem like winter is very far away……
But…. we’re not fooled, we are plodding along: getting all of our crops into storage. The last major crop to be put into storage this week will be cabbage. Think of how important cabbage was to pioneers! A nutritious vegetable that can keep well into the winter and made even more delicious and nutritious by fermenting it.
The Season Extension shares are structured so that there is a “greens” portion and a”roots and storage crops” portion.
The greens are a numeric count so that you will have a choice of heads or bunches of any and all greens we have. There will be tender greens such as: arugula, tat soi, mustard, and vitamin greens in the mix as long as they hold out. Our more hardy greens like kale, collards and cabbage will be around into the colder days coming.
Roots, storage crops and fruit (apple mostly and some pears) will be weighed. You can have your choice of any of these crops up to your poundage (dictated by your share size). These crops include: potatoes, onions, carrots, beets, kohlrabi, daikon, winter radishes, turnips, parsnips, winter squash and of course apples.
We won’t be posting our weekly share because of the “free choice” nature of the Season extension share and the fact that most of the crops will be similar week to week.
Enjoy the bounty!
by Deb Ritchie | Oct 24, 2022 | Weekly Share
The last Summer and Fruit shares are this week! That went by fast! We’ll have Season Extension shareholder check in sheets at distribution this week so you can check if you have a share or not (…last winter when some you signed up for the CSA was a long time ago!) I will also be sending out the Season Extension share schedule later today to just the Season Extension shareholders who are already signed up. If you realize that you wanted a share and didn’t sign up or if you are just deciding, you can still purchase online or reach out to me directly deb@nativeofferings.com
This is our last week at the Wednesday East Aurora Farmers Market (7am-1pm). We will be at the Elmwood Bidwell market this weekend and possibly next if there is good (not freezing) weather (Saturday 8am-1pm).
This week’s veggie share contains:
Butternut squash, peppers, greens (choice of tat soi, mustard, vitamin green, kale and collards), a choice of potatoes, parsnips, beets, radish, Japanese turnips and kohlrabi
this week’s fruit share contains:
3 lbs bosc pears and 3 lbs your choice of apples
We do hope that you have enjoyed your shares. Please reach out to us with any comments!
Enjoy!
Deb Ritchie
by Deb Ritchie | Oct 17, 2022 | Weekly Share
Pasture management 101: Get your cattle out of their pastures before they eat the grass down to nubs and before the wet late fall weather settles in. Our cows have had the summer to frolick around out in our pastures. Late last week, we brought them to one of the rotational grazing plots close to where they come into their winter home, the cattle yard. We don’t want them to eat too much of the grass because then, in the spring, the grass will be slow to grow and delay the cattle’s release from the yard back into their beloved pasture.
Cattle yard 101: pile up lots of bedding for the cattle to keep them clean and have ample drainage so excess moisture can drain away. Our cattle yard gets a regular clean out once a year. All that manure and hay gets piled up in the yard during the winter months when the animals are happy enough to stay closer to “home”. We clean the yard and pile up their droppings and make compost piles in the fall before they come off the pasture. These aren’t your regular compost piles that you have in the backyard. We make 50 ft x 10′ windrows and pile them as high as our tractor will reach. Thankfully this year we got some help from a neighboring dairy farmer whose really busy season is over to help with the clean out of the yard (freeing Stew up so he can focus on getting our veggie crops out)! It takes time and lots of trips from the yard to the pile and back again. It also ties up two of our tractors: one for scooping, one for hauling.
Our compost piles sit for at least a year but more than often two. We “flip” them (more like heap them back up high) once a year in the summer. It’s an important part of our nutrient plan to have this soil amendment and to utilize “by products” from our animals. The value of our cattle is greater than the value of their meat. They not only maintain our pasture lands and provide nutrients for our veggie operation but also keep us entertained with their antics (sometimes they race around the pasture, head butt each other and chase down foxes)!
Your veggie share contains:
choice of greens (tat soi, vitamin green, mustard, kale, arugula), scallions, peppers, carnival (an acorn type) winter squash and/or pie pumpkins, carrots and/or beets
Your fruit share contains;
Your choice of apples and bosc pears
Enjoy!
AS A REMINDER: Summer veggie shares and Fruit shares end next week! OP’s last Summer veggie and fruit shares are 10/25, Buffalo’s last Summer veggie and Fruit shares are 10/27.
Season Extension shares are available and start 11/1 and 11/3. 🙂