**Special Orders and the online shop are only visible to current members of the Summer Season. To join up, either signup online or reply to this email. **

Rotated Daily on Organic Pastures

Broilers - the meat chicken - are not ruminants. That means they can never be "grassfed." I know some folks market them this way. That's not true. A broiler lacks a rumen, the special organ that cattle and sheep have that allows them to live off of grass.

Our broilers do, however, live on pasture and are rotated daily. This allows them to eat grass, seeds, and bugs while spreading their manure around the fields.

The photo here is of our "drag pens." There are 31 of these that must be moved daily. It's a lot of work but we end up with a healthy chicken that's plump but with some texture from exercise.

A Season for Chicken

Because the broiler are raised outside, we have to do this during the growing months. That's May thru October for chicken.

In addition to the drag pens above, we also have 4 large shade wagons that run a flatter field. These are guarded by our team of Great Pyrenees dogs. Hank, at the top of the newsletter, is boss dog, and Leanne, giving Allyson the paw, is the sweetest of all! They are a joy to have around and they do their jobs happily!

Discounts on this week's share meat

Each week we offer 10% off on the items going into that week's share.

This week -

• chicken breast, 2 per package
• Mild Italian Chicken Patties, 4 per package 1.25# package

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

Our signature homemade pies are back. It's "pie season" as we say. Fresh fruit is in and let's enjoy it!

We start with macerating our berries in a little organic sugar. The berry "liquor" that drains off is reduced and added back to the fresh berries and rhubarb to make a rich filling.

We bake it in our house made crust of organic whole wheat flour, butter, and lard. It's flaky and flavorful. The pie is topped with a crunchy and sweet crumb topping of oats, butter, and organic sugar.

EXTRA STRAWBERRIES

Our growers are at peak production and this is the week to put up strawberries if you want to.

$8.00 per quart

Bulk Deals? Check the site tonight to see what we have. We won't know what our harvest looks like until we pickup today's berries and get projections for the rest of the week. Expect updates to our site after 5 PM.

This week several of my suppliers are lost without their email! It's quite funny to hear an Amish guy complaining about his email service being down!

Our communications

This article could get long if I explained all the intricacies, so I'll do my best to just hit the high points.

One of our challenges with listing items for sale -such as strawberries this week - is that we really don't know what we are getting until we pickup. That's because it's hard to predict what will ripen and when, but also because we can't reach many of the growers.

Many of our smallest growers - which usually are the strawberry growers - are of the most conservative sect of Amish - the Swartzentrubers. They don't have indoor plumbing, let alone phones! They are truly a tough bunch of people who can get anything done.

Then there are more modern sects that allow everything from community phones to cell phones and restricted internet.

A Limited and Less Convenient Email

Within the last 5 years, many groups decide to allow some form of email. Most of it is being offered thru an approved vendor with Anabaptist origin called eMyPeople. Depending on the group, you can either have a desktop email client like MS Outlook or Thunderbird, or you can use a fax service.

Yes, fax. Some of the growers have to fax a handwritten letter to a fax number then it sends me an image of the message. Not very searchable or convenient, but it works.

Others have more standard text based email, but it's not web-browser based. It's a POP3 system (think old days AOL setup on your MS Outlook) that relies on a private email provider.

Filtered and Safe

The elders who make the rules in many of these groups tend to associate email with internet, and if it's internet, it's nudes. The service provider they approve guarantees to filter emails of inappropriate content. This is why they can't simply use GMail or the likes.

An Internet Dividing the Church?

One gentleman I spoke with told me his group's conference this spring actually updated their rules to regress and change back from text email to a fax based service. This caused an uproar of which many of the districts furthest from the center of the church are not enforcing this. Members of his church are talking about joining a different church that allows them email if it comes to that. I joked with him, "As a boy did you ever think internet would divide your church before the option to drive a car?" He laughed in agreement.

Email Back to this to Get In this Week!

We are still welcoming new members to the summer season. To get in this week, it's easy:

1) Reply to this Email

2) Tell us where you want to pickup and which bag (from the menu below).

We'll setup your account.