Shalom Orchard Organic Farm and Winery

Dear CSA members and Friends of Shalom Orchard,

Well, March is here and it is time to join the CSA for the 1010 season! We have been planning the gardens and ordering seeds and amendments. Thank you to those who joined early to help us with cash flow for those purchases!

We have been interviewing apprentices and we are happy to tell you about our crew! As some of you know, Jim is now working full time at College of the Atlantic. Figuring out how to cover the work he did here seemed daunting. He will continue to manage the winery, but he did all the tractor work and fruit growing as well. But we put it out to the universe and wonderful folks have appeared. We will have 6 apprentices this year! And we have a family on the farm! Tali and Sequoia have Zalea, 4, and Solan 1. Sequoia is a winemaker himself and has worked in wine shops. He will assist Jim in the winery and Tali is interested in the gardens. Lauren and Andrew are also a married couple. Andrew is experienced in fruit growing and worked in a large orchard in Southern Maine. They may be building a cottage on the farm. Lauren is also interested in the gardens and both Tali and Lauren are very interested in fiber. Some of you may have met Alice, who has been here for the winter. MacKenzie will also be arriving at the end of May. We also have some WWOOFers coming through out the summer and fall. We are feeling very fortunate indeed to have such motivated folks on board. We look forward to having a small community here!

We are looking forward to trying some new interests. We will be experimenting with growing some heritage breeds of meatbirds this summer, in addition to the ones we have grown in the past. We are also interested in having some outdoor wine tastings. We plan to grow flowers again this year!

Here is the info on the CSA:

Join our CSA and be part of our Farm Family. Here’s how it works: you can purchase shares for $10/week, $20/week, $30/week or any other amount based on your family’s need. We have found that $20/week is about right for two people. Multiply the share weekly amount by 14, for the number of weeks we operate in the summer and fall. This will be your total share amount and is to be paid by 4/1/10.

Pickups at the farm are on Wednesdays, 3:00 – 5:30 PM. I will send you an email on Sunday or Monday with a list of what’s available and the MOFGA prices. This will enable you to choose what you want that week and fit it into your share amount. You can always go over your share amount for the week and pay by check.

We offer a full range of veggies and herbs throughout the summer and cherries, blueberries, raspberries, peaches and kiwis. You can also buy our processed products as part of your share, like preserves, blueberry syrup, applesauce, fresh cider, cider syrup and our famous pesto! We also raise meat chickens, turkeys and eggs (in beautiful shades of blue, green, pink and brown!). Also, we raise a variety of flowers that you can purchase separately. And, of course, our certified organic wines and meads are available for sale at our store.

Please email me or call 565-2312. Our mailing address is: P.O. Box 4, Franklin, ME 04634.

We hope to grow for you this summer!

Charlotte Young Shalom Orchard Organic Farm and Winery

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Dear CSA and Friends of Shalom Orchard, We hope this finds you enjoying the quiet and beauty of winter! We have had some changes here since the end of last season. Jim has taken a full-time job at College of the Atlantic in the IT Department. As many of you know, computers are a passion of Jim’s and the perfect job dropped in his lap, and he couldn’t refuse it. Of course, not having him on the farm full-time has presented us some challenges.

We are very fortunate to have Alice here as an apprentice. She came as Sarah and Sammie were leaving and is living in the loft. We hope she will be with us on a part-time basis through the summer. She immediately trapped the raccoon that was killing the chickens last fall in a coop, which enabled our tenant to shoot it. We had tried to trap it, but it outwitted us, but not Alice!

Serendipitously, we were contacted by a couple who are interested in learning farm management. They are Tali and Sequoia and they have two little children. They arrived last Wednesday and are settling into the apartment. Both have some farming experience and Sequoia is especially interested in winemaking, which is very helpful with Jim working off the farm. Thursday morning, after arriving Wed. night, we had three lambs born. Sequoia jumped right in and managed Spike the ram, so that we could attend the lambs. All are doing well and one is brown with white spots! We may call her Harlequin, because she looks like she has a mask on, nickname “Harley”. Now we can get some colored fleeces! It is really great to have children living on the farm – it has been a while.

As those of you who have been with us a while, you know that we place an order every year with Fedco through the Hancock County MOFGA chapter. We get large discounts on seeds and amendments. These are big savings that are passed on to you. This order has to go out on Feb. 1. We hope that as many of you as possible can send your check for your membership now, so that we can take advantage of these savings.

Here are the prices:

$10/week share = $140 for 14 weeks $20/ = 280 $30 =420

If you want a larger share/week, just multiply the amount you think you will use by 14 – the number of weeks we operate the CSA.

Please mail to: Shalom Orchard P.O. Box 4 Franklin, ME 04634 Our phone is: 565-2312 for questions

We hope all of you will be with us again this year! Things are shaping up to be a good season!

Thank you, Charlotte

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Hi Everyone, We will also have some broccoli this weekend! It is 3/#. Thank you, Charlotte

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