Alan and Nancy Brown At the End of Lewis Hill Lane Town of Jackson Greenwich, NY 12834 phone (518) 692-9208 or 692-3120 About the farm Benefits of grass fed animals Order form and product lists CSA groups we serve Newsletter archive Photo gallery Cooking tips Email Us

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News from Nancy & Alan at Lewis Waite Farm – July 2008

Fourth of July weekend is rapidly approaching – visitors are popping up from all around the east coast. My family usually comes for a visit about this time of year to celebrate a string of birthdays, the holiday weekend and the lull of early summer. My sister Judy and Taylor are here at their Battenkill River camp, and my nephew Chris (who lived here for a short time) and a bunch of friends will fill their house. My sister Beverly and my niece Laura are also coming here so Laura can play with the dogs, cats, donkey, horse and pigs. The cows don’t want to play (we are still at only 10 calves so most of the moms are walking balloons these days!). Jayme, who moved here from Astoria (Hellgate) last fall, is also having a crowd coming from afar and staying at her apartment. So there will likely be a rollicking cookout or two sometime this weekend. From the top of our hill you can see the firework shows up and down the Hudson River valley as far away light displays. The booms are not as loud and the crackling cannot really be heard but its still fun to see from that perspective. Chris and Walt are manning the farmers market in Dorset VT on Sunday so we are really looking forward to an almost weekend off!!

The weather looks like it will be wonderful and Alan is planning to mow some hayfields to keep up on the task of harvesting the 150 acres we hay. Our berry harvests are the other task we’ll start making a priority. We’ll need plenty of help picking the currants from the two bushes that are so loaded the lower branches are laying on the ground. These red currant bushes are very round (8 ft), not too tall (5 ft) and stay very compact and well behaved. The wild growing grape vines stretch and cling to anything to grab onto to grow or the raspberries row that gets wider each year despite the hard spring pruning of the canes. The blueberries have their wooden frame built and protective netting up and in place to protect them from the hungry blue jays. There are about 10 ripe berries and a million green ones! The veggie garden is filling up with delicious things to eat so everyone will be well fed. A few of our lettuces are just starting to bolt to flower and are quite beautiful this year so there will also be lots of green salads.

My one regret last week is not being able to attend the NY Ag & Mkts Food Safety issue meeting in Albany last Friday. The draft document from a series of listening sessions around the state was supposed to be reviewed. I am not sure of the realm of topics that are being addressed in this policy being developed but I would sure like to see my high priority food labeling issues in there somewhere. I wish that all GMO food ingredients, all irradiated foods, all nano-technology food and cosmetic ingredients, and country of origin should be a part of every label on our food.

Have a wonderful, happy and safe weekend, Nancy & Alan

For West Harlem CSA -

We apologize to the West Harlem CSA members who did not get their orders last month. We brought the boxes to the Church in the kitchen to the right of the stairs but still have not found any sign of them. The members who ordered spent extra time trying to find out where their orders were. We are very sorry that they did not receive them and that they were inconvenienced by the mix-up. We have instituted a new policy when delivering to the Church with Michael and hope this solves the problem of the delivery and distribution. We mean to please and make things easy to order and receive, so please don’t let this incident prevent you from ordering in the future.

Add this to the Harry Honey House notes-

Raw honey will not be available until early August when Derek makes his first harvest of the hives. Sorry, but we are all learning to eat seasonally right???