Order form ready...

My trip to DC was fantastic, thanks for asking. I had so many complete uninterrupted thoughts I didn't know what to do with them all. Traveling first class on a train is extremely cool. If someone else is paying (thanks, father in law!). Our hotel served kerrygold butter in little foil packets. We saw many, many rotundi.

PREORDERS coming in SEPT 13
Milk: 1 Naomi W, 1 Brenda, 1 Laura-Lan, 1 Ruth
Cream: 4 Camille, 2 Brenda, 1 Naomi W, 1 Naomi S, 1 Tonya, 2 Beth, 1 Ruth
OV pasture Butter: 4 Naomi W, 3 Ruth, 4 Brenda, 1 Glenda
Fage: 1 Ruth, 2 Brenda, 2 Beth, 1 Naomi W, 3 Naomi S, 1 Laura-Lan, 2 Tanya
7 stars yogurt: 1 Laura-Lan, 1 Kathy, 2 Naomi W (2 extra)
NbN sour cream: 2 Ruth, 2 Brenda, 1 Naomi W (7 extra)
we have so many extras of the sour cream that I put these up in the regular order form rather than with the other preorders.

Top sirloins:
Kathy (?) 3 (Kathy, I started to erase names before I recorded these, but I'm pretty sure it was you?)
Naomi W 2
Heddy 2
Laura-Lan 8
Karen 3
Brenda 6
Beth 8

Butter
Another 55 pound block of grassfed butter is coming in September 27th. For those of you who are new to the group, HERE is a review of our butter choices. I know I say I ain't gonna carve that thing up in that butter post, but I will. It will be neatly cut into 2-5 pound segments and wrapped in saran. Camille provided a tool that makes it much easier than my original method, plus I'm all out, so I'll be taking much of it myself. For those of you who ordered the little Organic Valley butters, it's okay if you want to back out of that and wait two weeks for the cheaper butter from the big block. Just email me, and I'll take it. Personally I like having both available. I use the bulk stuff for baking and cooking, and I like to have the OV packages for table use. Because I have become just that spoiled. The OV packages are 3.80 for 8 ounces, and the Natural by Nature stuff from the big block is 4.40 per pound. You won't be ordering that until the week of the 27th, but I wanted to give you a heads up, since getting that giant block of butter is sort of a big event. (We've been ordering "salted" butter, but we all agree that what we've gotten in the past is NOT salted. I just noticed that they added "sweet cream" butter to the order form, so maybe they got it all figured out and it really WILL be salted this time.)

Norman's Muscadine Grapes
from Norman: "I have some excellent muscadine grapes that are ready for picking.
The varieties are: Carlos (small bronze), Scuppernong (larger bronze) & Noble (small black).
The vines have been organic for 6 years - never sprayed - fertilized with manures & compost for the past 6 years.
Publix and Wards are selling them for $2 to $4 /#."
Norman's are $2 a pound, prebagged in 1 or 2 pound bags. They won't be on the order form, just email me or respond here if you'd like him to bring you some. Let us know which variety and how much. He'll be picking them early Monday morning.

Okay, on to THIS week's offerings! Thanks for the replies to my request for requests. Some of the requests are actually on the "specials" list this week! Broccoli, Grapes, granny smith apples, and pears! (we ended up with 30 pears here and ate every last one of them.)

Organic jarred garlic: we've come close to getting this in the past. Crushed garlic in 8 ounce jars for 2.75. 8oz is one of the taller skinny jars, not the tiny squat one, but not the huge one, either. It's in the "misc" section of the order form.

Ginger. I'm not real familiar with ginger. It's $6/lb through Albert's, which I think is the same as regular nonorganic ginger. And I have no idea how much ginger is in a pound. So I'm listing it by the half pound (anyone know if that's like, one root?)

Onions: This comes in a case of 16 bags. Sixteen! If you're wanting onions, consider getting two bags and chopping one bag for the freezer. I just don't see us ordering 16 otherwise.

Red bell peppers. Here's one of those things that makes me do a double take, and then it turns out it's out of stock or something. But usually our red bell peppers are 5.50/lb. This week they have one listed that's $1.5 per pound. No lie....
Oh, I just called to say, Really? Is that for real?? and they said that these are wrinkled, maybe soft walls, only for cooking/freezing, no returns. They aren't beautiful and crisp, apparently. So I put them on there, thinking that if I'll be chopping and freezing onions, I'll do the same with these red peppers. They come in pretty high on the most contaminated produce list. As does celery...

And so I was inspired to put celery on, too, as I could make a mix of chopped onions, red peppers, and celery and freeze for soups and such.

Tomatoes: They come in a group of 3, but the price per pound, so you can make an informed shopping decision, comes to $2 a pound. 3 tomatoes would be about 1.25 pounds, so these would be smaller "big" tomatoes.

Mushrooms. We've never gotten mushrooms from Albert's, but they're on special this week. These are cimini, which are THESE, not the white ones, but the sort of button-like tan ones. They are immature portobello mushrooms.

Apples: prices are starting to come down. Our cripps pink is down a big .15 cents per bag, and the greens are "granny smiths", at $4.25. And SQUEEEEEEE!!!! I see the debut of Honeycrisps! OMG, these are what I imagine the fruit is like in Narnia or Rivendell. They are 3.20 a pound right now. Which honestly isn't that far off what they are anyway, even for conventional. But here comes apple season!! (I'm going to hold off on the Honeycrisps for the price to come down a little.) Mixing green and red apples is good for pies. Sweet and sour. Both are being offered this week.

Berries: I left them off. They're $4 for the blueberries and raspberries, and $5 for the strawberries, and I'll certainly put them on if someone wants them. That's still a good price compared to organic in the store. But they just aren't in season, and it's not the best fruit buy at the moment. Just let me know if I should put them back on, though. I do miss strawberries.

Nectarines: still trying to get out of weighing things. These come in a 25 pound case, so I'm just dividing them into 10 equal parts by counting. So 2.5 pounds each share. That would be maybe 10 of them? My numbers might be wrong, but you'll definitely be getting 2.5 pounds, however many that happens to be.

Pears: They're red "starkrimson" this time.

Kiwi. This was sort of a last-minute addition, just because we've never gotten them before. I really don't know how many come in a 20 pound box, or how many you'll be getting when you order a pound. My best guess leads me to think you'll be getting five kiwi fruits. But this variety, "golden", is apparently "in season", so I'm trusting it's an okay price. Here's the company they're coming from. (kind of neat to see pictures of how they're grown)

One last thing. We aren't getting loose greens this week, but I understand that greens are going bad in your fridge before you eat it. If I keep mine in the bundle it arrives in, it wilts by the next morning. But if you put it in a vase or sink of cold water asap, it'll stay crisp. Or even regain its crispness if it's already started to wilt. Then when you get the chance, go ahead and chop it up, dry it as well as you can, and put it in an old clamshell (one of the plastic containers our salad mix comes in) or in a publix bag. Mine stays good for nearly two weeks like that. Half of my kale from two weeks ago is still in the fridge, cut up in a publix bag, still in good shape. Those cut n clean greens stay in the fridge for a long time, at least two weeks, since they've already gotten that treatment. So maybe those are better for us. They weren't on the list this week, but look for those in the future.

That's all I think I need to say anything about. Everything else is pretty normal stuff.

Here's the order form.