Don't forget the next order deadline is October 8th at midnight, delivery on October 13th. Please remember to place your order on time, as late orders can be a disruption to all farms involved.

Please read the Entire Newsletter – it contains information on our new Late Order policy as well as Thanksgiving Turkey news!

The crunch is on for the fall and winter preparations to begin. So far we have missed the couple of light frosts that the lower valleys have had already. Our basil however is being all picked today! We have been enjoying the late raspberries too – they are the best! Lots of tomatoes are still waiting to be made into sauce this week too. Luckily between our Tuesday and Thursday delivery weeks, we have a little extra time to focus on farm and garden tasks. So since we’ve had all kinds of time, we decided it was time to finally get that rescue dog we have been talking about so we spend time in training! Lucy, Lucille, Lacy, we are still trying out names for her; she’s a sweet “follow you everywhere” German Shepard with a little something else that makes her tail really long and her legs very prettily shaded. She has black stripes on the top of each toe!

There has been a little growling with Shadow and Maggie, mostly about food, but we think she is adapting quickly and will be a great pal on herd checks through the pastures.

I’ll make it short this month since there are other announcements to follow.

LATE ORDER POLICY

We have finally determined that we must establish a LATE ORDER POLICY including a late order charge of $7.00. We are not trying to deter you from placing your order, just trying to make up for the extra the time we spend coordinating any ‘off our farm’ products. We are very glad to accommodate you with an order when you have been out of town, you are craving something you want to add, or your schedule has been too crazy to think too far ahead and plentiful other reasons. So hopefully you’ll think of the extra contribution as a donation to the farm for our extra scurrying around happily fulfilling your order.

With so many members and so many locations it becomes hard to keep track of the ordering process between Chris and I and all the farms, bakers and cheese makers when late orders are coming in one at a time past the order deadlines and especially when it is over the weekends. Unfortunately, our gathering of all the items for the Tuesday orders occurs over the weekends when we also attend farmers markets on both Saturday and Sunday. 

The farms drop off their products here at their convenience by at least one day prior to the day of delivery (that is Monday morning at the latest for Tuesday deliveries and Wednesday morning at the latest for Thursday deliveries) but some farms bring them 2 days before. Our Rock Hill Bread order deadline is Friday at 2 for Tuesday orders and Monday at 2pm for Thursday orders.

Sometimes late orders are very easy to deal with when there is extra space in the CSA box for more items and all the items are stored here, or the order is placed before we even begin packing. Sometimes, like last week, we have to make up a whole new small box as the extra items would not fit with all the packed items we had all ready. And this is at 5 am on the delivery day! I am opening boxes and inserting orders as we pack the truck. I’m always afraid I’ll make a mistake in the fog of the ‘too early in the morning’ routine. All this discussion is not meant to whine about the extra work but to justify the $7 charge as a real labor cost in relation to the deviations in our normal procedures we jump through to make the orders happen.

Here are some guidelines for you that list easy vs. harder items for us to get on short notice.

These are the Easiest for us to gather for a late order as long as they are in stock:

·                         Beef             – stored here for both farms, LWF and MBF

·                         Chicken         – stored here for both farms, KNK and JVF

·                         Goat’s milk cheeses, yogurts – Gillis Acres farm is 3 miles away

·                         Eggs             – we generally order extra eggs just in case

·                         Maple Syrup  – Sugar Mill farm is 4 miles away

·                         Honey – stored here

·                         Granola         – stored here

·                         Jam              – stored here

·                         Pork              – stored here

·                         Turkey          – stored here

These items need extra coordination and we may not be able to get for a variety of reasons:

·                         Cows milk products

·                         Goat’s milk products

·                         Sheep’s milk products

·                         Lamb (both farms)

 

Our Bread ordering deadline is 2pm - 3 days prior to the delivery -

·                         So for Tuesday deliveries we have to place the baking order by Friday at 2pm.

·                         For Thursday deliveries we have to place the baking order by Monday at 2 pm. Monday

Bread is pretty much impossible after that except for unusual circumstances.

So we will begin this new policy with the October deliveries and hope you all understand. Thanks for all your support and loyalty to our farms and our foods.

TURKEY NEWS

In the next week we will once again be offering the Thanksgiving Turkeys. They will once again be frozen (just for 2 weeks) and shrink wrapped nice and tightly as Stonewood Farm always does. Early next week we will open up the Holiday Turkey menu item so you can place separate orders for your birds and keep separate orders for all the other deliveries in October and November.

The turkeys will be delivered on the Thursday, Saturday and Tuesday prior to Thanksgiving Day based on the specific CSA schedule we have with your site. Please see your CSA Lewis Waite Farm Poster for the exact date.

The turkeys are offered in 2 pound increments starting at 12-13.99, 14-15.99, etc. up to 30 pounds. At the farm they grow turkeys as large as 45 pounds, but only a few! So if you’ll need larger ones than 30 pounds, they can be specially requested. We’ll keep you posted about our discussions with Stonewood that have just begun. We’ll know the price per pound very soon.

So start your holiday planning (it seems way to early!!). The order deadline is usually during the first week of November. Remember, we always receive extra turkeys for those who cannot plan that early.

We are proud of the farm network we have created to provide you some of our region’s fresh and family grown products. We hope you enjoy them all and we also hope to expand our offering as time goes by and we get better at our coordination with everyone.

Please take care, enjoy this lovely weather and fall colors and as always, come and visit!

Nancy and Alan