CSA Season is Starting

June 18, 2010
Welcome to the 2010 Lida Farm CSA season! This is our 5th season operating a CSA in the Pelican Rapids area, so we should know what we’re doing at this point!
If you’ve come to this blog looking for news from the farm this spring and past winter, you’ve been sadly disappointed since I write little in the off season. But now that produce is coming in expect an entry every week about the going-ons at the farm, what’s in season and in the CSA box, and my general musings about small farms and the like. We also highlight a recipe each week which features a veggie in season.
Overall spring has been good as we get ourselves organized for summer. Spring is a time we ramp up on projects we just can’t pull off in July or August when we get on a treadmill of plant, harvest, wash and repeat.

For example, This year we offered a chicken share where people pre-arranged whole broilers which we’ll deliver late summer or early fall. Now that we’ve promised all these people some 250 chickens, we actually need to raise them. Part of that is giving them a place to live, so my carpenter father-in-law Don and I have been diligently building a lean-to off the side of our woodshed (mainly Don…he’s the professional. I just haul tools and stuff for him). It still needs some tin for the roof, but the hard part is done we hope. As you can see from the picture, the lean-to juts into our pasture, so, when the chicks arrive they will have easy and free access to grass and pasture.

In the box:

Salad Mix
Napa Cabbage
Spinach
Baby Bok Choy
Strawberries
Daikon Radish
Catalina Dressing
Taken from the U of M nutrition program that Maree teaches at Pelican Rapids Elementary
Ingredients:
2/3 cup canola oil (or other vegetable oil)
1/2 cup sugar or equivalent sugar substitute
2/3 cup ketchup
1/2 cup lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon onion powder
Mix all ingredients well. Store in refrigerator.
Serving Size: 2 Tablespoons

Annual Membership Drive

March 3, 2010


Well, we’re getting ready for another season and we’re putting out the call for members!

This little blog entry is like my own form of an annoying public radio membership drive: “We can’t do this without you, the members…” And this is absolutely true. Seriously. We can’t. We will be starting hundreds and hundreds of transplants soon, a big risk when you consider the tending, planting, weeding, and harvesting that comes between us and a finished vegetable crop. If we didn’t have our CSA membership who already paid up to receive a share of the season’s harvest, we’d be a bit more hesitant about putting all those plants in the ground hoping somebody’s going to purchase all that produce when harvested.
We are changing up our CSA program a bit this year. We continue to have a “regular” CSA share ($400) where you receive a delivery of a mix of produce every week, but we’ve also added a couple other options:
  • The “every-other-week share” ($225). The name kind of says it. You get a delivery every other week and we’re starting this especially for couples who get overwhelmed by a regular share. Chet and Paulette Nettestad of Pelican Rapids were our every-other-week trial run last year, and, from talking with them, it seemed to be a good amount for two people and worked out well.
  • The “a la carte share” (increments of $100). This is a customized delivery every other week, and, like an a la carte menu, you choose what you want from our online order system (www.localdirt.com) earlier in the week and we deliver on Fridays. Think about it as having a tab with us. You put in $100, $200, $300 at the beginning of the season and we keep track of what you order and let you know your balance monthly. On our site we also carry Organic Valley dairy products, meats, and eggs you can order too. This is a “use it or loose it” option. You will have from now until December to use your tab and whatever is leftover will be donated to Lutheran World Relief, because it’s a little harder for people around the world to feed themselves than for us here…I like their approach to sustainable rural development and I’m a Lutheran.
  • The “chicken share” ($60). You receive 6 chickens (5-6 lbs) in three deliveries from late summer to early fall. The chickens will be whole, frozen, and plastic wrapped just like a whole chicken in the store.
So, if you are interested in becoming a member of Lida Farm, please get in contact with us. Our e-mail is lidafarmer@gmail.com and our phone is 218-342-2619. Call with questions…you won’t be bugging us. Our brochure about our CSA program and the order form are linked below. But please make sure we are not filled up for the season and you’re in our delivery area before sending in the order form.
Click here for a brochure about our CSA
Click here for our order form

Lida Farm in Winter

January 10, 2010

What happens on the Farm all winter? Although you’d think that we would try to do nothing, I keep finding projects to do. So far has been a laundry list of repairs and maintenance which I’ve been trying to get to for a long time: fixing the sheep feeders that have been broken the last 6 months, cleaning the chicken coop, putting in a glass pane in the barn that I shattered 2 years ago…it goes on. One of the biggest projects was putting woven wire fence around the back pasture so those sheep have something to eat in the middle of the summer next year.

But probably the project I’m most proud of so far is our skating rink. Neither of the kids have skated before, but they did both get skates for Christmas this year. I figured there’s no better place to learn than on the pond across the sheep pasture. It took a few hours of shoveling, scraping with an ice scraper, and taking water out of a fish hole with
a gallon jug, we were in business!
Me putting on the finishing touches, sweeping the snow off with the broom.
Willem’s first skate

Neufchatal and Cream Cheese Special

November 9, 2009

We will be delivering again this Wednesday, November 11 throughout the area. I’m thinking we’re the only organic dairy route in the nation, so join up to say you’re on the cutting edge.

We have organic cream cheese and Neufchatal on special at $2.25 each and still have a good number of whole chickens for sale as well as some winter squash. Please order through our local dirt site to let us know what you’d like:

https://www.localdirt.com/user_product_list-a241.html?id=1535&type=delivery


We will also be doing one other delivery before Thanksgiving and will have our own lamb available at the end of the month. You can also arrange to pick up if that works better.

Orders for Sunday

October 16, 2009

Here at the end of the produce season, this is your last chance to stock up on some things before we go on vacation. We’re sitting on a mountain of winter squash we’re selling for a real deal at $5 for 1/2 bushel as well as the last of the onions and peppers.
We also got in a set of small roaster chickens (4 – 4.5 lbs) and still have the range of Organic Valley cheeses and butters available. Order up at our Local Dirt site http://www.localdirt.com/products-a213.html by Saturday evening and we’ll deliver on Sunday afternoon. If you’d rather pick up on the farm on another date, that works too.