SNAP payments for CSA

We just became authorized to accept SNAP at our farmers market and will be able to accept SNAP for CSA payments. We’re very excited to be able to do this! It does require us to make some slight adjustments to how we usually accept payment because SNAP customers cannot use their EBT cards for online payments. SNAP also cannot be used to pre-buy food.

Here’s how we’ll make this work:

• We’ll ask SNAP customers for a 2-week deposit ($44) in cash or check that we will refund at the end of the CSA season.

• Customers will pick up their boxes each week as usual.

• At the end of each month, we will be at pick up locations in person to swipe your EBT card for that month’s shares.

You will only be able to purchase vegetable shares with SNAP, but you can still purchase add ons with a credit card. The sites we’re currently planning on for SNAP payments are Rooster + Hen store on Wednesdays and Red Emma’s Cafe on Thursdays. If you’re interested in paying with SNAP at another site, email us we’ll try to figure it out.

We will hold spaces for folks who want to pay with SNAP, so if you’re interested, you can add your information to this list. We will follow up with you so that we can get you signed up.

Planning for COVID-19

We feel very grateful and honored to be able to keep doing what we love during this frightening moment in time: growing food for our community. We’re continually recalling this gratitude as we look toward the next few weeks and months of the global COVID-19 pandemic.

No matter what happens, we’re going to need to eat, and we’re committed to growing food for you. It’s worth noting that there’s no evidence that food is a transmission route or source for COVID-19. Plus, as farmers, we already do a whole lot of social distancing.

The situation is changing moment by moment, and so our plans will change, too, but we want to keep you up-to-date on our current contingency plans.

Here’s what we’re doing now:

• We’re planting lots of seeds and plants in the ground!

• It’s currently just the two of us (Bryan and Joanna) working on the farm and we are taking social distancing extremely seriously. We are also washing our hands all of the time, which we do in any case because we handle food.

• We’re reviewing our food safety plan (which we are happy to share with you - just send us an email) which includes not working when you’re sick and lots of hand washing. We’re working on implementing a paid sick time policy for staff once they start work in April.

• We’re staying informed about best practices for keeping our customers and soon to be workers safe and healthy.

• We’re offering a reduced down payment option from now through March 31st. You’ll need to pay for 2 weeks of deliveries up front, and then you’ll be charged per week for the remainder of the season. We hope this helps folks who are losing hours at their jobs or feeling generally financially insecure right now.

• We’re applying to accept WIC and SNAP at our farmers market stand and for CSA payments to help fee our food insecure community members.

• We will continue to pack shares to order and we’re looking into single use packaging. We will not be reusing wax boxes for the time being.

• We’re waiting to see when businesses reopen before we secure alternate pick up sites for our CSA members picking up at businesses.

• We may do some pop up sales through the Harvie Farmstand in April. For now, you can find our produce on Chesapeake Farm To Table and get it delivered right to your door!

• We will be at the Bel Air Farmers Market starting in May and we’re figuring out how we’ll set up in a way that is as safe and clean as possible, which will involve more pre-bagging and may involve online pre-orders.

• We’re exploring the logistics of a Food Access Fund that CSA members could contribute to to cover the costs of food donations, EBT processing fees and reduced cost CSA shares for food insecure households. Stay tuned!

We will keep this post updated as we learn more and make more decisions. We know we’ll get through this, and we know that we will get through it together.

New place to read about the farm!

You can stay up to date on our farm by reading the Latest Happenings on our Harvie page. Harvie is our CSA management website and this is where we now post our CSA newsletter each week. Here’s the link: https://www.harvie.farm/profile/good-dog-farm. Enjoy!

We also have a longer, jucier newsletter that’s just for CSA members! If you’re curious about the farm and would like a sample newsletter, add your email to the pop up that appeared when you first got to this page!

Last Week of Winter Share

Digging in for 2019!

Last Week of Winter Share

Hi everyone! We’ve arrived at the final week of our winter CSA shares. We hope you’ve enjoyed all of the winter veggies, and thank you for your support!

We will be deactivating our Small Farm Central website on March 15th. We recommend you roll over your existing CSA balance by March 15th because that’s the last day of our 5% Early Bird Discount; however, if you can’t create your new account by the 15th, your balance will still be available once you make your decision.

To roll over your balance now, reply to this email and we'll send you your personalized discount code. Then create your new CSA account on Harvie. 

We recommend that you sign up for your summer + fall shares soon - shares are selling fast!!

But it’s still snowing!!!

Again, many thanks to you, winter CSA members! We hope we can keep growing for you in 2019! Let us know if you have any questions about our new CSA shares.

— Joanna & Bryan

On the Brink

It just keeps snowing!

On the Brink

Hi everyone! Hope you’re reading this in a cozy, toasty place. The past couple of weeks have tantalized us with springy weather, and then snowed all over our dreams. We’re so close to getting going…but it’s not quite time yet. We have almost everything we need to get started in our possession like seeds and potting mix. We just don’t want to get ahead of ourselves and end up with giant baby plants with no where to put them because the ground is still too wet. As of this week, it’s been officially declared an El Nino Winter/ Spring this year, which leads us to believe it’ll be wetter than average again. This makes us feel gloomy, but can’t fully dampen our spring spirits. It’s about to be both of us full time on the farm, and we’re getting AMPED!!

As we organize ourselves for spring, we have decided that the last week of our winter CSA will be March 6th. We’ve sold out of many of our favorite winter goodies, and we also need to switch to our new web ordering system, Harvie and stop paying for our current service. We’ll extend the early bird sign up discount until March 15th so that folks can still order up through March 6th and then transfer their balance to a summer share. Once you’re ready to transfer your balance, send us an email and we’ll send you your personalized coupon code that will roll over your remaining balance. Feel free to let us know if you have any questions.

Building up a surplus of sleep while we can

JOIN OUR 2019 CSA

Easier Ordering

We’ve switched our CSA website to a new service called Harvie that will make ordering your share much easier! We’re super excited, and guess that you will be too!

Still Customizeable

Instead of picking items each week, you’ll set your produce preferences at the beginning of the season, and receive only your favorites in your box. You can swap items before you receive your box or add extra vegetables for special events or preserving the harvest.

Still Has a Flexible Schedule

Pick up a share either weekly or biweekly. Going on vacation? No problem! Put your share on hold for the week, or reschedule for another pick up. We’re offering two 14-week seasons (June - mid September and mid September - December) this year for added flexibility.

Additional Pick Up Locations

Grab your share from HEX Ferments, Prime Corner in Hampden, Ednor Gardens or Charles Village! Plus, our newest pick up location for our South Baltimore friends: Bar Method in Locust Point!

Payment Plan Available

Pay in full or use a payment plan: 25% down at sign up, 25% the first week of delivery, and then the remaining 50% balance will be divided equally on your weekly pick up schedule.

DISCOUNTS FOR EARLY BIRDS

Sign up before March 15th and receive a 5% discount!

Sign up for both summer and fall shares and receive a 5% discount!

Do both to receive a 10% discount!

Lavishing the salad mix while it’s the start of the season

Thanks everyone! We can’t wait to grow for you this summer and fall!

- Joanna & Bryan

Get Yourself a Hat!

Treat yourself to a Good Dog Farm cap! They have adjustable mesh backs to fit all head sizes. Available in your CSA box - just add it to your box from the Farm Swag department.

And don’t forget to order your share for this week by Monday!

Conference season

Good morning, everyone. It is decidedly not wintry today, but we did get some good snow dogs time in last weekend. FYI, we’ll likely only be doing newsletters every other week for a little while, as there’s very little to report with 10F nights on the forecast.

This weekend kicked off our annual mini conference season. Our region has two wonderful sustainable agriculture conferences every year. Friday and Saturday was the Future Harvest - CASA conference in College Park, while the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture will be held in a few weeks in Lancaster. There are trade shows, workshops on everything from effective workforce management strategies to how to bake bread with local flour, and many opportunities to catch up with old friends in the region and make new ones. If you have dreams of starting your own farm or garden, or local food business, it’s a great place to start.

This year Joanna learned about options for diversifying our business with mushrooms, and Bryan taught a workshop on wholesale opportunities for the small farm. CASA also honored Chip Planck, a retired farmer from Loudon County, VA, who, with his wife Susan, is a legend in our region as one of the originals doing and promoting organics in the DC area. Chip is a big reason why Joanna and I are farming together today. After retiring from farming himself, he has helped nurture networks of new farmers in the region, and has served as president of the CASA board, stewarding it’s strategies for sustainable farming education and development for many years. Joanna and I met at a CASA training series, and we’ve learned a great deal of what has made us successful at CASA-led programs. I remember Chip saying before a workshop, that we were all there to learn lots of details about how to plan and sell and be successful, but that the most important part was to have the passion to just go out there and do it, and make it work as you can as you go. That inspiration has stuck with us, and it was really lovely to see Chip honored in this way.

That’s it for us this week. Bundle up this weekend and eat some cabbage! And don’t forget to…

JOIN OUR 2019 CSA

Easier Ordering

We’ve switched our CSA website to a new service called Harvie that will make ordering your share much easier! We’re super excited, and guess that you will be too!

Still Customizeable

Instead of picking items each week, you’ll set your produce preferences at the beginning of the season, and receive only your favorites in your box. You can swap items before you receive your box or add extra vegetables for special events or preserving the harvest.

Still Has a Flexible Schedule

Pick up a share either weekly or biweekly. Going on vacation? No problem! Put your share on hold for the week, or reschedule for another pick up. We’re offering two 14-week seasons (June - mid September and mid September - December) this year for added flexibility.

Additional Pick Up Locations

Grab your share from HEX Ferments, Prime Corner in Hampden, Ednor Gardens or Charles Village!

Payment Plan Available

Pay in full or use a payment plan: 25% down at sign up, 25% the first week of delivery, and then the remaining 50% balance will be divided equally on your weekly pick up schedule.

DISCOUNTS FOR EARLY BIRDS

Sign up before February 28th and receive a 5% discount!

Sign up for both summer and fall shares and receive a 5% discount!

Do both to receive a 10% discount!

It's 2019!

Getting into the New Year’s redecorating spirit!

It’s 2019!

Happy new year again! Almost one week in and it’s really feeling official. Bryan is deep into budgeting and crop planning, and I’m wrangling our 2018 books getting them ready for our saintly accountant. That being said, we’re still cleaning up from 2018. Before we know it, it’ll be March and we’ll be running around like chickens with our heads cut off! In an effort to offer you the best CSA in 2019, we have big news now…

JOIN OUR 2019 CSA

Easier Ordering

We’ve switched our CSA website to a new service called Harvie that will make ordering your share much easier! We’re super excited, and guess that you will be too!

Still Customizeable

Instead of picking items each week, you’ll set your produce preferences at the beginning of the season, and receive only your favorites in your box. You can swap items before you receive your box or add extra vegetables for special events or preserving the harvest.

Still Has a Flexible Schedule

Pick up a share either weekly or biweekly. Going on vacation? No problem! Put your share on hold for the week, or reschedule for another pick up. We’re offering two 14-week seasons (June - mid September and mid September - December) this year for added flexibility.

Additional Pick Up Locations

Grab your share from HEX Ferments, Prime Corner in Hampden, Ednor Gardens or Charles Village!

Payment Plan Available

Pay in full or use a payment plan: 25% down at sign up, 25% the first week of delivery, and then the remaining 50% balance will be divided equally on your weekly pick up schedule.

DISCOUNTS FOR EARLY BIRDS

Sign up before February 28th and receive a 5% discount!

Sign up for both summer and fall shares and receive a 5% discount!

Do both to receive a 10% discount!

What We’re Drinking

Feeling like you need a restorative beverage after holiday indulgences? Try some spearmint tea from our friends at Hydes Hill Herbs. It’s cooling and cleansing on your insides. Drinking it as a hot tea still feels warm and wintery despite its chilly properties. Available in the Herbs and Teas section of Small Farm Central.

Rosie is not ready to stop holiday eating!

Feel free to let us know if you have any questions about our summer/fall CSA - we hope you’ll join us!

Cheers!

- Joanna & Bryan

Happy New Year!

Whipporwill peas are one heirloom southern pea from which we salvaged enough seed for next year.

Good afternoon. We’re back from our holidays in New England feeling rejuvenated, and ordering is open for Wednesday, the 2nd. Christmas was an excellent time to put the farm on the back burner for a little while, and now, after some much needed beauty rest, we’re very excited for the 2019 season. We had some major disappointments in 2018, as well as some successes, but we’re confident that we can learn from our mistakes (while praying for better weather). March already can’t come soon enough!

Most of our plans for 2019 involve doubling down on things we do well like kale, squash, potatoes, while also cutting out some of our biggest flops like cabbage and cauliflower.

One exception is dry beans. We had big plans for legumes this year and seeded over 2 acres. After a summer of drought and deluge, we harvested almost nothing, but next year we’ll be at it again. We were however successful at growing out enough of some rare heirloom bean and pea seeds so as to put those varieties into production next year.

One of those varieties is a drought tolerant southern pea (today’s black-eyed peas) called Whipporwill, which was brought to the US through the slave trade and was grown at Monticello. We’ll be tasting these tiny peas tomorrow as the traditional “red pea” in our new year’s Hopping John, along with some homegrown mustard greens and a friend’s pork. We’ll let you know how it is and hopefully we’ll have loads for you next winter. Happy New Year!

Me at the Harvard Fogg Museum enjoying some modern potato art and confirming that fresh potatoes are indeed powerful.

Picking Things Up

Our beautiful cover crop daikon radish pulling nutrients up from the deep soil horizons

Picking Things Up

We were able to catch up on some clean up this week with the warm, thawing weather. We also got very wet and muddy. Bryan planted lots of onions for harvest next summer. I continued cleaning up plastic mulch from this year’s summer crops, which feels like a never ending task. We do a lot of picking things up and putting them down somewhere else around here, and this week was no exception. Seemed like a good week to draw attention to this humble act since it’s not masked by the more fun aspects of growing food, like picking up a crate full of tomatoes and putting it down somewhere cool. While we are still in clean up and recovery mode, we are happy to still be harvesting loads of fresh greens each week and gearing up to be excited about the 2019 growing season. We’ll be buying our potting mix for next year’s transplants on Monday, in fact!

No CSA Pick Up on December 27th

Heads up that there will be no CSA pick up on December 27th since we’ll be travelling for the holidays. Get all of your goodies this week!

What We’re Eating

Polenta with Beans and Mustard Greens

We ate lots of creamy, dreamy polenta this week! We tried this recipe, plus a bolognese-style red sauce served over polenta. Both have been scrumptious and do great as leftovers.

Adapted from New York Times

• ½ pound (about 1 1/8 cups) dried pintos, red beans, borlottis or other similar heirloom beans, rinsed and picked over for stones (we used pintos), soaked for about 4 hours or quick soaked

• 5 cups water

• 1 small onion, halved

• 1 medium or large carrot, diced

• 3 garlic cloves, 2 crushed, 1 minced

• A bouquet garni made with a couple of sprigs each parsley and thyme, a bay leaf and a Parmesan rind

• Salt to taste

• 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

• ½ teaspoon red pepper flakes (more to taste)

• 1 pound mustard greens, chopped

• 1 tablespoon tomato paste

• 1 cup polenta

• Freshly grated Parmesan or feta for serving

1. Chop 1/2 of the onion and set aside. To cook dried beans, drain soaking water and transfer to a heavy pot. Cover with 1 1/2 to 2 inches of water, and add more water as necessary. Over medium-high heat, bring to a gentle boil and skim away foam. Add unchopped halved onion, crushed garlic cloves and bouquet garni, cover, reduce heat to low and simmer 1 hour. Using tongs, removed halved onion and whole garlic cloves. (My beans cooked quicker than this, so make sure to taste and test them as they’re simmering.)

2. Meanwhile, heat olive oil over medium heat in a medium skillet and add chopped onion and carrot. Cook, stirring, until beginning to soften, about 3 minutes, and garlic and pepper flakes. Continue to cook for another couple of minutes, until onion softens. Stir vegetable mixture into beans. Add tomato paste and salt to taste (I use at least 1 1/2 teaspoons), cover and continue to simmer very gently for 1 hour or until beans are tender all the way through and their texture is plush and velvety. Remove and discard bouquet garni.

3. Add greens (depending on the size of your pot you may have to add a portion at a time, cover for a minute until the first portion wilts, then add the next portion and so on until all of the greens have been added) and continue to simmer for 5 to 10 minutes, until greens are tender but still have some color and life in them. Taste bean broth; it should taste rich, delicious, a little spicy. Add salt as necessary. Keep warm

4. Meanwhile, toward the end of the cooking time for the beans, cook polenta; or wait until beans are done and start polenta or grits. When done, spoon into wide soup bowls and press down in the middle with the back of a spoon. Spoon beans and greens with broth over polenta or grits. Top with a little Parmesan or feta and serve.

Rosie, still small and cute

Thanks everyone, have a great week!

• Joanna & Bryan