To all:
To give everyone a chance to have fresh local food for the Christmas Holiday, and since the weather prevented us from going to the markets this past Saturday, we will be at the Yorkmont Road Charlotte Regional Farmer's market on Tuesday Dec. 22 (tomorrow) from 1 until 5 pm.   At least Grateful Growers and Rosemary Pete will also be there during this time. We will all be in the farmer's building (the enclosed building with heat!).  See the link below if you have never been to the Yorkmont Road market.

Please note also that the Charlotte Regional market is not open on the Saturday after Christmas. (Dec. 26th)

Fisher Farms will  be bringing:
Our fresh batch of tomato sauce.
collard greens.
green kale
red kale
lacinato italian kale.

If you are sure you can come, please email us back so that we can predict how much to bring and even prepack your order if you desire.

The Yorkmont Road Market:
http://www.agr.state.nc.us/markets/facilities/markets/charlotte/fcharmkt.htm

Thanks,
Dane, Maria, and Gregori Fisher

--
Maria Fisher
www.fisherfarms1933.com
704-239-5255

Dane will be at home this Saturday as will Maria, Gregori and the new puppy, Jupiter (Jupey for short).

The weather man is saying it will be bad - well - not too bad - well really really bad - well in some areas - well only certain times of the day - well...Dane called me on the phone this morning from the field and called Saturday off.  Then he called back to see if I was going to be upset about it.  "Not really." I said.  But I grew up in Wisconsin - weather is a multi-layered affair up there.  Dane is cleaning the seed room now.  I am definately OK with that.

We have sauce that I think might make good gifts for those who are giving.  I will be in town either Monday or Tuesday.  If you would like some sauce for gifts, I can set up a drop off location and have it for you.  Just let me know.  Please include a phone number.

Eating.

I finally gave up and joined weight watchers on line.  So far I have not exceeded the weeks worth of points.  I started yesterday.  One personal challenge I have is coming up with decent food ideas and then getting enough time to implement them.  We have enough good food. We have enough access to other farmers good food.  So I have no good reason to put forth as to why I keep failing in the area of good meals.  The other day I saw Cassie at Friendship Trays (Grateful Growers) and in the process of bemoaning my annual September gain of 5-10 pounds, I asked her if I could pay her to make my family the weeks worth of meals from local food for September 2010.  Maybe 3 fresh meals and 2 frozen meals or some variation on that. She agreed to it.  She went on to say that if I got a group (20 or so) of people who wanted weekly meals set up for them that she would help me put it together and we could start earlier than September 2010.  So - what do you say?  Any interest?  Ideas?  Let me know.  Cassie is the MASTER of local food meals.  This could be really really good.

Shipping.

A duh moment.  I have shipped in the past from the UPS store off I-485 Exit 36 Rocky River Rd in Brookdale Shopping Center (Harris Teeter). Yanti is the owner operator and she was trained as an engineer with a strong secondary degree in it.  She runs the store like an engineer would run the store.  Fast, efficient, polite, helpful.  My experiences with Yanti are always positive.  All my family lives far away - so I use Yanti a lot.  Except this year.  I was in a rush and sent a big block of Grateful Growers Sausage to my mom in CA from Fed Ex in Salisbury.  It was hard frozen.  The weather was calling for chili.  So I talked with the clerk at Fed Ex and he assured me that the meat would get to my mom in 2 days.  Unless I wanted to pay over $100, then it could get there over night.  I did not pay the $100 and sent it off on Friday expecting my mom to get it Monday no worse for the wear.  Wednesday afternoon, on a fairly warm day in CA - my mom got the package and had to throw all of it out.  That sausage was grown with love.  Sent with love.  Requested by my mother with love. But how do I explain that to Fed Ex?  From now on I am going back to Yanti at the UPS Store exit 36 off of 485.  I have never had to sit in line.  She would have told me to go next door to Harris Teeter and get some dry ice.  Guess I will have to get out my paint set and make my mom some stationary.  I have some free time this Saturday and Gregori is pretty occupied with the new puppy - so, it should not be a problem.

--
Maria Fisher
www.fisherfarms1933.com
704-239-5255

Dane will be at Matthews and Maria will be at Charlotte.

We will have many ripe Beefsteaks
Few heirlooms
Very Few (probably hidden) Sungolds
Dane will have lots of summer squash
Maria will have little summer squash
Butternut squash
Romas!
Maria will have the 0,50 cent canners

The new field is literally days away from ripening.  But you know the saying - "A watched pot never boils."  This will ripen.  And when it does we will have the prettiest fruit until possibly beyond frost.  We are getting row cover to see if that helps with season extension.  I would like to see row cover with an (organic) additive similar to Puffs Tissues - to prevent cracking from the late falls humidity and temperature changes.  Is someone working on that?  We will be back in the sungolds and big tomatoes soon, Until then,I am going to get my laundry caught back up.

I mentioned before that there would be a Farm to Fork Dinner from 6-10 on the 26th of September at the Bed and Bike Inn, Goldhill, NC.  The theme of this Dinner will be "Community Alive" and the proceeds go to benefit Slow Foods and Friendship Trays. There are 68 tickets available and the cost is $75.  The farmers will include an emphasis on Stanley County without exclusion for other counties of course!  It will be a 5 course meal with wine parings and the Chefs will be announced in the next newsletter as soon as I have final confirmations.  There will be a silent auction from 6-7 pm.

I am also excited to announce a farm dinner featuring our food at Ratcliff on the Green Farm on the 20th on October.  Call Ratcliff on the Green for details (704-358-9898).  I am sure that the website will be updated soon.

Thirdly - I am proud almost to tears to have tasted Blues Mediterranean Tomato Salad.  It is pure art in both aesthetics and taste.  They have layered all of our different tomatoes featuring the rose blush of our Gregori tomato and put hand-made herb coated crackers to separate the layers.  There is a mint yogurt cheese on top complimented with micro greens.  There are special olives the likes of which I have never tasted before and it is almost infused with a tangy spicy sweet mini red pepper from someplace exotic!  The perimeter has Sungolds and Chocolate Cherries cut in half and accenting the tastes!  There is a reduced sauce I lack culinary words for (in a good way.)  The whole experience is delightful.  I STRONGLY recommend it.  Intellectually, my favorite part of the experience is when I asked Chef Sam and Chef Gene for a picture to include and Sam said "No.  It is art and it is meant to last only a moment."  How Zen!  

--
Maria Fisher
www.fisherfarms1933.com
704-239-5255

Dane will be at Matthews, Maria at Yorkmont, Marcel at Davidson and Jason at Tailgate Market.

We will have:
Beefsteak , Gregori, Mecklenburg and Pink Tomatoes
Beautiful Yellow Squash from a new field.
Dane will have gorgeous green zucchini from the same field.
Butternut squash at Yorkmont and Matthews
Potatoes at Yorkmont and Davidson
Dried tomatoes at Davidson - few.

Sungolds:

Every year we plant more and more sungolds.  They are popular because of their high sugar content.  Plus, they have that great orange color. With the heat and rain, they have been producing  at about 70% capacity.  Which is funny because usually with the heat, they produce really well - but the rain makes them pop their skins open.  As a seed delivery device - popping open when the rain comes by is good.  As a highly desired sugar delivery device for humans - not so much.  We have promised all of our sungolds this week to our larger delivery customers (restaurants and country clubs).  We have a new field that is coming along - then we will have "too many" again.

What to do with plastic:

We use drip tape and black plastic for row cover and irrigation for about 2 years or longer before we lift it up and renew our fields with manure.  One of my goals is to be able to get away from all the black plastic or to recycle it.  Dean Mullis told me that other growers would like to recycle their Ag-plastic too.  Somewhere along my travels I got on a governmental news letter that speaks of garbage issues in the state.  I was pleased to see the following information about plastic recycling.  I had lucky Jenny pursuing this earlier in the summer and she had hit a sort of dead-end with it.  I hope this contact ends in a darn good lead.

"Recycling Agricultural Plastics - North Carolina is home to numerous farms and nurseries that utilize agricultural plastics. When the growing season has ended or when these plastic products have outlived their usefulness, they are generally destined for a local landfill. However, there are growing recycling options for items such as plastic flower pots, nursery trays, greenhouse cover, bale wraps and other agricultural plastics. DPPEA is working on developing a network for "AG" plastics recovery and encourages local governments to contact us for information about how to develop programs to recover these products.  Check our markets directory at www.p2pays.org/dmrm/ for our new listings using the search terms, "Plastic" and "Agricultural Plastics". For further information, contact Tom Rhodes at (919) 715-6516 or Tom.Rhodes@ncdenr.gov."

I like this quote:

"A man of words and not of deeds is like a garden full of weeds." -
Anonymous from page 151 The Winter Harvest Handbook -Eliot Coleman

Almost lastly:

Here is a picture Arron took out in the field of a baby birds nest.


I have more news - but you may have to wait until tonight or tomorrow to hear it.

--
Maria Fisher
www.fisherfarms1933.com
704-239-5255

Dane will be at Matthews, Maria at Yorkmont, Marcel at Davidson and Daniel at Tailgate.

We will have:

Beefsteak tomatoes
Pink tomatoes
Limited quantities of Gregori and Mecklenberg tomatoes
Sungolds
Chocolate cherries
Romas
Canning tomatoes
Summer squash
Yellow spring potatoes

The weather has been hot, rainey and cooler all this week.  This makes tomatoes crack. Although many are still good, we have thrown many away.  Often I have wished for a pot bellied pig to be on the farm following us down the rows on the outside of the field - eating all the cast offs as they fly out from the mass of green tomato leaves. Instead we end up with driveways in between the rows full of red tomatoes against the brown dirt and green grass.  It is a absent-minded hobby of mine to smoosh as many as I can when I am driving up to the barn to get more bins.  Someday I am going to go off our "road" checking my rearview mirror to see how many I got.

You can tell who is picking by the rate of tomatoes flying up out of the field.  If it looks like the Tasmanian Devil might in there - it is Dane.  If there are high arching ones here and there - it is me. If you hear them flying fast - don't see them leave the field and then you hear someone proclaim that they have been directly hit followed by tons of maniacal laughter - it is Daniel and Ryan (22 and 20 years old).  There have been lots of red dirty shirts between those two this week.  Dane still thinks he is the tomato-fight king though.  I heard him instructing Daniel, "The best one is the triple whammy.  You use the first tomato as a decoy and as they are trying to figure out where it came from you nail them with the next two tomatoes in rapid fire - making sure that the last tomato is half mushy so it explodes when you hit them!"  Maniacal guy-laughter from both of them.

I hope this week it is dry.

--
Maria Fisher
www.fisherfarms1933.com
704-239-5255