GROWER & MARKET NOTES

We may be a few days shy of Summer Solstice yet but our temperatures sure don’t know that! It’s a reminder of how blessed our Market is to have a great place for order delivery and pickup every Friday morning! We are always indebted to JD Boone and Dothan Nurseries for hosting Market at Dothan. Between the curtains and the fan and opening the refrigerator and freezer all along it’s reasonably comfortable in the Market Shed. And we greatly enjoy serving our growers and customers with the best local food to be found in the area!

New & Relisted Products

in case you missed it last week

Blackberries – Avalon Farms Frozen Blackberries – Avalon Farms Garlic Scapes – Different Variety of Garlic – Avalon Farms Onions – 3 lb bag of Kinston Sweets – Avalon Farms _~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

VIP SUMMER SCHEDULE Market will not open June 25 There will be no pickup Friday, July 1 Our newsletter and normal ordering will resume July 2

At this time we anticipate being open every week following through the end of July. While we hope it’s not necessary, because of the multiple storms being predicted this season (as storms affect product availability) we may switch to bi-weekly ordering late summer.

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From our Question & Answer Page.

How do I order?

4 EASY CLICKS…HERE’S HOW:
Click #1: Add To Shopping Cart
Click #2: Proceed To Checkout
Click #3: Choose your “PICK UP LOCATION”
Click #4: Place This Order

Each Saturday at 5pm, an email is sent to all of our registered customers with a link to our website notifying that the site is ready for shopping! Orders are placed here on our website. This is our only method for ordering and is designed to reduce the amount of time it takes you to shop and for us to process orders.

Customers have 72 hours to place their order. Shopping closes Tuesday at 5pm.

VIP to make sure your order was placed by checking your email for an order confirmation! WARNING – If you neglect to specify a location you will not receive an email confirmation and your order will disappear into cyberspace! Always check to be sure you receive an email confirmation! We hate it when people show up to get orders that did not go through!

On a side note, if you ever have an issue with your order after Market closes please notify us at marketatdothan@gmail.com and we’ll do everything in our power to help you.

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We thank you for your interest and support of our efforts to bring you the healthiest, the freshest and the most delicious locally-produced foods possible!

GROWER & MARKET NOTES

THANK YOU for another great week! We’re so happy for the beautiful weather, the Great Farm Food Products, and the opportunity to serve you.

New & Relisted Products

Blackberries – Avalon Farms Frozen Blackberries – Avalon Farms Garlic Scapes – Different Variety of Garlic – Avalon Farms Onions – 3 lb bag of Kinston Sweets – Avalon Farms _~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The following was lifted from our Question & Answer Page. This, of all our questions, may seem like “old hat” to most of us, it is there to help those navigating our site and system for the first time. And we’ve all been there.

Will I have to buy vegetables I don’t want?

While some of our vendors offer traditional CSA boxes, the bulk of our products are listed on an individual basis. This way you get to order what you want, in the quantities that you want, from the farms that you want. The weekly update provides current Market information, grower announcements, new and returning products, and helpful information. We encourage you to browse the Market every week as the products our farmers list constantly changes depending on what is in season and becomes available. You might just find your new favorite food!

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AVALON FARMS:

Woo Hoo! Blackberries are ripening now. These are SO good. Big berries with great taste. Will also be offering Frozen Blackberries. They make great additions to smoothies. Use in recipes. Or tasty ice cubes, to keep that glass of wine cold.

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MOUNT MORIAH: Wow! Absolutely crazy that we are in the month of June! Just wanted to say a big thank you to all of y’all who support our small businesses! We truly appreciate you! This month is a very special one for us. That reason is because I’m due to have my first baby June 17! We are having a baby boy and just so excited. We are taking it one week at a time with all the markets and plan on keeping with it until baby boy makes his appearance! My husband has been extremely supportive of me continuing my business and has been a big help. We hope y’all have a blessed weekend! 

What “kid” wouldn’t want to play here?

Mount Moriah’s booth at our annual Mother’s Day Open House

We thank you for your interest and support of our efforts to bring you the healthiest, the freshest and the most delicious locally-produced foods possible!

GROWER & MARKET NOTES

We hope you’ve had a great week and want to say THANK YOU to everyone who ordered last week. There are three new products listed:

Frozen Blanched Yellow Waxed Beans from Grows in Rows Raw Propolis from 3LC Apiary Texas Legend Onions from Grows in Rows

Please check the category listings for relisted favorites.

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We’re keeping things brief today but not without wishing you a thankful and blessed Memorial Day.

We thank you for your interest and support of our efforts to bring you the healthiest, the freshest and the most delicious locally-produced foods possible!

GROWER & MARKET NOTES

To Our New Customers

We look forward to serving you well! ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Thank You to everyone who ordered last week. Pickup went so smoothly despite deadlines, unexpected events, etc. We’re always glad to work with you if something comes up so please don’t hesitate to reach out if something interferes with your Friday morning pickup plans. All you have to do is call.

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A technical reminder about ordering: DON”T LEAVE YOUR ITEMS IN THE SHOPPING CART! Market at Dothan’s shopping cart works like other online stores in that you have to click PLACE YOUR ORDER for it to go through. We recommend checking your email after ordering for the confirmation message sent after each order is placed.

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AVALON FARMS: Relisting CUCUMBERS this week!

MOUNT MORIAH FARMS: Hope everyone is getting ready for a wonderful Summer! All the babies on the farm have gone to their new homes so we are back to just our adult does. We are currently milking five of them twice a day and they have settled into a beautiful routine. Thank you to all of y’all who have supported our small business by purchasing from us! We sure hope you are enjoying all of your orders for your pets. I have failed to mention that if you have purchased milk from us that we would appreciate it if you would return the jar to M@D. That would be fabulous and helps keep costs down! We also hope everyone has a fantastic Memorial Day!

3LC APIARY is listing PROPOLIS for those of you into natural remedies. It is listed under Medicinal Herbs as bees make it from plant resins.

GRIER ACRES: This is Jeannie and Harry and we have been super busy. Kidding season for our ‘practice goats’ just ended earlier this month. Our garden is looking so good. We are struggling to get the gourd like items in ground. We are going to try using landscape cloth since the area has not been used for gardening much and tends to have lots of weeds. We have thoroughly been tilling and hand weeding our row crops. Beans and peas look great. Our usual okra staple looks great. Our turnips and collards are also looking good. Jeannie harvested the turnips for us and her mom about a week ago. So tender. Our onions are almost ready to be picked. Our garlic is also doing good and some is starting to cure now.

We have been working on tractor but Harry is going to probably have to take it to John Deere. He is also hoping to get our hay baler and sickle mower operational. We would like to grow hay/square bales for our goats. Hope everyone else is doing good.

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A Word About Garlic Scapes – Some of us had to learn what scapes are and how to use them!

We thought you may be inspired by the following mouth watering ideas.
1. Scape Pesto: Far and away a favorite use for garlic scapes is pesto, either straight-up or mixed with herbs like basil and dill. Pesto showcases raw scapes in all their glory. Scape pesto can be very pungent, but it mellows substantially after a few months in the freezer. This writer likes it best in the middle of winter, but I think that’s one part mellowing and two parts deprivation.

2. Grilled Scapes: Another great, and very different, way to showcase scapes is to grill them, tossed with a little olive oil, salt, and pepper, over direct heat for about two minutes. Flip them once, halfway through, and finish with an extra sprinkle of flaky salt and maybe a bit of lemon juice and zest. They’ll be charred in spots and just soft enough, and their flavor will have sweetened and mellowed dramatically. Grilled scapes are surprisingly reminiscent of asparagus, and surprisingly different from raw scapes.

3. Scape Hummus: For the same reason they work well in pesto, scapes are a brilliant swap-in for garlic in your favorite homemade hummus. They work especially well in a lemony, tahini-free hummus, which really gives them a chance to shine. Edamame “hummus” with scapes works nicely too, and color coordination is tough to argue with.

4. Scape Compound Butter: Scapes would make a lovely compound butter with a little lemon and maybe some fresh thyme. You could use the butter to make a tarted-up garlic bread, and other foods could be tossed on the grill and finished with a nice slice of this melting goodness.
5. Scapes as aromatic: To take a more utilitarian approach, you can slice scapes to whatever length you like and use them as you would garlic, as an aromatic in a wide variety of recipes. Scapes lose a lot of their bite when sautéed, more so than garlic cloves, so use at least three or four times as much scape-age as you would clove-age.

6. Scapes as Vegetable: Scapes also work well as a vegetable, cut into lengths and added to stir-fries or blanched and added to salads, much as you might use green beans. They’re chameleons among vegetables.

7. Scape Soup:
If you don’t like the texture of the scape heads, they work fantastic and add unique flavor in soups where garlic or chives are used.

We thank you for your interest and support of our efforts to bring you the healthiest, the freshest and the most delicious locally-produced foods possible!

GROWER & MARKET NOTES

THANK YOU for another great week! We’re so happy for the beautiful weather, the Great Farm Food Products, and the opportunity to serve you.

New & Relisted Products

Yellow Squash – Avalon Farms Fresh Tender Green Beans – Grows In Rows Zucchini – Avalon Farms Turnip Leaves – Grier Acres Zephyr Squash – Avalon Farms Garlic Scapes – Avalon Farms New Basket & Rug – ScrappyChic Kinston Sweet Onions – Avalon Farms _~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Have you looked around our website recently? It’s only natural that the Market Page get 95% of the site use, but there’s a lot of other valuable info in there as well. We’re going to share a few things in the coming weeks, starting with info from our Question & Answer Page. The reason for this is that we’re often presented with questions that are already answered in this section of marketatdothan.com. It is required reading for new vendors but often the rest of us forget it’s there or are too busy to look things up. Hopefully this will help.

What makes your Market different?

FRESH: Fresh produce in your order is picked no more than 48 hours prior to delivery.

LOCAL: Our growers are Wiregrass residents within 50 miles of Dothan. We do not sell anything that is trucked in from out of the area.

SUSTAINABLE: Market at Dothan DOES NOT ALLOW GMO’s, CHEMICAL FERTILIZERS, PESTICIDES OR HERBICIDES. Our vendors are carefully vetted on both their growing philosophy and practices. While most of our growers are too small to invest in organic certification, they DO use organic/sustainable methods to grow your food. You may learn more about each farm on our Grower page.

YEAR ROUND: You read it right. Because we don’t participate in truck farming, you can’t get fresh strawberries in September or corn in January. But, because our growers are super sharp and know what they’re doing, we are able to offer many products outside their traditional growing season.

We make no claims to be like other markets and invite you to check us out! You will find a wealth of information on our Home Page, the Market Page, the Grower Page and hopefully everything else here on the Q&A page. The
Weblog contains newsletters with a wealth of information. There are two Facebook pages for announcements and interaction.

If that’s not enough, just come by and visit us at the Dothan location one Friday morning and take a look for yourself! We would love to meet you!

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GRIER ACRES: Just truying to stay up and at em. Harry has almost got us irrigated with solar power and water from creek with ram pump. We have a new baby goat—a doeling. Jeannie stays busy with her mom. We picked a few turnips for her for mothers day and will have some for sale this week if anyone is interested. Our collards are a little slower. Our gourds died that we planted so we restarted. Irrigation was not set up and I think just dried up.

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AVALON FARMS: Finally! We have squash. All 3 kinds: yellow, green and green/yellow. Ha Ha 
The cukes will show up in a week or 2. My favorite Kinston Sweet Onions are ready! 

Garlic News: The Elephant Garlic has started sending up scapes (flower stalks) which are fun to eat. The scapes also signal that the bulbs are starting to form and should be ready to harvest in 4 weeks. The Music Garlic will start scaping after the Elephant Garlic. Music Garlic is a robust, stronger flavored garlic than the California white usually found in the grocery store. Looking forward to trying that.

We almost lost the squash plants 2 weeks ago. Suddenly the leaves had these yellow spots! A fungus of one sort of another (there are so many when dealing with heat and humidity). After multiple sprayings, alternating between neem oil and potassium bicarb (close cousin to baking soda) the plants are looking better. They’ve started producing but I’m still finding fungus damaged baby squash I have to throw away. 

We thank you for your interest and support of our efforts to bring you the healthiest, the freshest and the most delicious locally-produced foods possible!

GROWER & MARKET NOTES

Thank You

to everyone who came out to the annual Mother’s Day Open House today.

It was a beautiful day and it was lovely to see you. _~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mother’s Day: Yes, we know not everyone who receives this newsletter is a mother, but you do have one! We hope you have sweet memories if you’re not able to appreciate her personally this year.

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We are resuming our regular weekly schedule with Friday pickup this week. Right now the next scheduled Market break is July 2 – July 8. We may take off additional weeks late summer depending on how vegetables are holding up.

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With this newsletter being drafted on Friday evening we don’t have an update on New and Relisted products for next week, so be sure to check the listings for your favorite items. You never know what you may find!

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If you enjoy cooking videos or new ways of cooking familiar foods then Przepisy od Katarzyny might be for you.

Przepisy od Katarzyny is a youtube.com channel we learned about this week when a sweet sister shared this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PloaaxZkEas

So far the other vegetable videos I’ve watched are equally intriguing. Let us know if you try any!

We thank you for your interest and support of our efforts to bring you the healthiest, the freshest and the most delicious locally-produced foods possible!

GROWER & MARKET NOTES

Next Saturday

is Dothan Nursery’s annual Mother’s Day Open House

VIP FOR MARKET CUSTOMERS: Order pickup will NOT be on Friday but will be from 10- 12 on SATURDAY MAY 7 during OPEN HOUSE

We’re very aware that some of you do not care for the hustle and bustle during these events and to avoid that we request that you pull up to the Market Shed, “covid style” for curbside delivery. That way you don’t even have to get out of your car if you don’t want to!

LOOKING FORWARD TO SEEING EVERYONE!

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AVALON FARMS: So happy to finally be able to offer a few veggies. This week we’ve added Leeks, Spring Onions (from our Kinston Sweets!) and really new for us, Lettuce!

Saw the first squash bloom this morning! So about 2 weeks or so on those. Sugar snap peas are also blooming. Oh, and little tomatoes and pepper blooms! Spring is like that…super fast and super slow at the same time. Ha ha

So many things “coming soon”. Don’t lose faith. 

New & Relisted from Avalon Farms Spring Onions Leeks Leaf Lettuce _~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

HORTONS FARM: If our farm had a gossip column the latest headline might go something like this:

Old Dog Learns New Trick The Mouse is Playing While The Cat’s Away Grandmother Takes On Daring Endeavor

All would fit and yes, moi is the dog, mouse and grandmother who climbed up on this bad boy and did some WORK last week.

The backstory is I’ve always been secretly envious of ladies who drove tractors like my mom and others I’ve known. And my Mr. seldom let me near the controls of any of the heavy equipment he used to operate. But when this came home last year he sat me in the seat and let me operate all the controls in case I ever needed to do something heroic. (Like I would remember what each of 3 joysticks, each with multiple functions would do without practice. Plus it has tracks instead of wheels.)

So I’m getting in some practice! So far I’ve moved a lot of dirt, pulled out some roots and debris doing prep work for my first new raised bed in the original garden in a bit over 25 years. With a little help from friends we were able to get some root vegetables in. I’m eager to get back at the controls to prepare for the next installation.

We thank you for your interest and support of our efforts to bring you the healthiest, the freshest and the most delicious locally-produced foods possible!

GROWER & MARKET NOTES

While we announced it April 9, with all the Easter hustle and bustle we neglected to mention in last week’s newsletter that M@D is holding to a bi-weekly schedule until Open House on May 7.. There are several things that factored into this decision:

1. Several vendors are not listing product till they heal from injuries. This means less yummy selection to order from.
2. More vegetables soon, we promise!
3. Gas Prices

We’re thankful to hear that Viki (Richter Farms) and Kathy (Grows In Rows) are improving and know they will return when the time is right. And those veggies over at Avalon aren’t getting smaller! We have it on good authority Avalon will have lettuce next week.

We’re all using this time to be still and know, to renew, to grow and maybe even plant something else.
Hopefully you are too! And if you are caring for things in your own soil let me throw some ideas your way.

• Dothan Nurseries has a great selection of vegetables including potato and onion sets . . . and asparagus!!!! If you’re into herbs like your market manager consider horseradish too. It’s also a perennial that comes back year after year.

• Don’t get carried away with the latest garden fads as illustrated below. With the World Wide Naked Gardening Day being one week from today just . . don’t. While the technique is safe and even sustainable it’s not necessarily effective and might not be legal.

Just Saying.

• Invest in a citronella plant. Scrappy Chic says moving potted ones to where they’re working or relaxing outdoors cuts down on the need for insect repellent. Potting them also means they can be moved indoors during winter freezes.

• Odd containers are a lot of fun. Recently my grandsons had a fit over a plastic dump truck hauling a load of succulents I had pinched from around the house.
• A little color can go a long way. We were so smitten by the Gerbera Dasies at Dothan Nurseries yesterday a couple followed us home.

_~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Don’t Forget: Open April 30 for pickup on SATURDAY MAY 7 at MOTHER’S DAY OPEN HOUSE

We thank you for your interest and support of our efforts to bring you the healthiest, the freshest and the most delicious locally-produced foods possible!

GROWER & MARKET NOTES

With this being the weekend we celebrate the Resurrection and new life we’re very aware that everyone is busy with plans/family/activities, etc. So this newsletter will be very brief! Several things to share:

1. Our vendors have been reminded to update their products but if they’re like many of you (and this editor) they may get to it . . . . whenever! So if you place an order over the weekend you may want to check back Monday or Tuesday in case anything has been added. Sometimes this happens normally anyway, but we’re especially aware of the possibility on holidays.

2. The vegetables are coming! Locally grown foods are seasonal and while tomatoes have little blooms right now, they are still some weeks out from being ready to eat.

3. WE APPRECIATE YOU SO MUCH! This market exists to serve you and we treasure the trust you continue to give us through life’s ups and downs.

We thank you for your interest and support of our efforts to bring you the healthiest, the freshest and the most delicious locally-produced foods possible!