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Thursday, January 12, 2012

Wishful Acres January Newsletter

Happy January to you all!  Here at Wishful Acres Farm, we've been enjoying this mild winter weather and hope you have as well.

Have the winter blues?  Help banish them with some free-range eggs from Wishful Acres Farm!  Free-range eggs like those raised on our farm are highly valued by chefs as well as nutritionists.  Why?  They are loaded with more vitamins & healthy fats than any eggs you will find in a grocery store (plus they taste out of this world!).  Here are the statistics on free-range chicken eggs compared with conventional eggs, courtesy of Mother Earth News magazine:
 1/3 less cholesterol• 1/4 less saturated fat• 2/3 more vitamin A• 2 times more omega-3 fatty acids
• 3 times more vitamin E• 7 times more beta carotene

Our eggs are super fresh and will remain good for at least 6 weeks.  The cost is $3 per dozen.  Why not make a trip to our farm, buy a bunch at once and be set for 6 weeks?  You can contact me to place an order by calling my cell phone at 815-990-2380 or emailing me at wishfulacres@gmail.com.  If you don't wish to make a trip to our farm for pickup, we can deliver to your Freeport home for a modest $3 fee no matter how large or small the order.
There are huge plans in store for our farm in 2012, which marks our 3rd year growing for you! 

In addition to the organic vegetables, fruits, herbs, and eggs you've come to expect, we're greatly expanding our CSA program (Community Supported Agriculture).  I've been working out the details for this year's CSA, and will be announcing some great additions & changes very soon.  One new change: we'll be offering a Friday evening CSA pickup at our farm that will feature a "trade" table, so you can exchange some things in your CSA share if you'd prefer a different vegetable.  Additionally, we'll be creating a CSA share pickup option at the Freeport Farmers Market on Saturday mornings, and our home delivery service will continue with a few changes (it will probably be on Saturdays instead of Fridays, and there will be a small fee for the home delivery service).  I hope the additional pickup options and trade table will be of benefit to our CSA members, and also I'm adding a HUGE amount of new vegetable varieties this year - you'll see even greater variety in the 2012 CSA.  We hope you'll join us for the 2012 CSA program, where healthy eating is made easy!  You can learn more about our CSA program by visiting the CSA page on our web site: http://www.wishfulacresfarm.com/CSA.html .

We'll also be adding meat chickens, turkeys, and we're even thinking of raising a few pigs to provide pork for sale.  As with the other meat animals we plan to raise this year, our pigs would also have access to the outdoors rather than being confined indoors their entire lives like grocery store meat.  Raising animals in a humane way is very important to us (not to mention the meat is so much more delicious).  What do you think?  Pastured pork, anyone?

As for fresh vegetables, alas the strong 30-50 pmh winds we had the first couple days of January tore the plastic off most of our low hoophouse tunnels.  During those 2 days of high winds, when the plastic was blowing off the low hoophouses, temperatures plummeted in the single digits.  Goodbye, lettuce.  So long, tatsoi and arugula.  Adios, mustard and turnip greens.  But what a fun and educational growing season it was, and next year we'll take even greater measures to keep the plastic intact and protecting our crops.  The spinach was hardy enough to survive, but we've reached the time of year when the short day length has stunted growth.  There won't be any extra spinach to sell again until spring, when day length grows and the vegetables grow along with it!  My goal is to provide fresh vegetables year-round (yes, in our cold corner of Northwest Illinois).

Another plan on the books for 2012 is the on-farm store.  The yellow mobile home on our farm is now halfway renovated.  This will provide the location for our on-farm store, where the Friday evening CSA shares can be collected, and other products such as meat, eggs, and organic vegetables will be available for purchase.

So, if you'd like to purchase some of our delicious eggs please give me a call at 815-990-2380 or email me at wishfulacres@gmail.com.
To learn more about the 2012 CSA, visit http://www.wishfulacresfarm.com/CSA.html .

Hope to talk to you soon,

Penny

1 comment:

  1. Hi Penny,

    You guys are doing some excellent things! How exciting.

    ReplyDelete

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