Stone Coop Farm Feedback Survey

As we mentioned in our announcement of our new property, we need your feedback and ideas for the 2012 season. We will be doubling the amount of land we will be growing on so we will be able to offer many more shares and products. Please complete the short survey by Monday, December 19th.  Thank you for taking the time to help us plan for next year!!!

Click here to take survey

Stone Coop Farm is expanding!

We just closed on 30 acres in Green Oak Township. It is a beautiful site and we are planning where things will go such as the new hoop houses, barn, well, fields, etc. It is only 3 miles from Hamburg Fitness Center and is located on Musch Rd, behind Holy Spirit Catholic Church. This will allow us to offer more shares and grow a lot more food! In 2012 we will be growing on 5 acres (we had 2 acres in 2011) and we will be starting to offer more products. We will be getting chicks in the spring of 2012 so we will have eggs available next fall/winter. We will be sending out an end of the year survey via email next week for input on the 2011 season and what our customers would like to see on the farm in 2012. This input will be crucial in our planning process. If you are interested in being part of the survey and are not currently on our email list, send an email to Joannee: joannee@stonecoopfarm.com

SCF's new land in Green Oak Township on Musch Road

Winter Sales Begin Today

The hoop house is planted and all ready for our winter crops. If you'd like to see how we will be growing things this winter in our hoop house please let us know.  We'd love to give you a tour.  It's pretty amazing how these crops can survive our Michigan winters without any heat. Here is a photo showing how different the house looks for the winter: hoop house

It is time for us to start our online sales.  Please bear with us as we figure this out.  Your ideas, suggestions and input will be greatly appreciated to help us make this a smooth process for everyone. We will do one next week, one in December and we hope the plants grow enough by mid January to do at least 2 a month from January through April.  We will start our regular weekly markets again in May.

Here is how it will work this winter:  

1. We will email you on Friday letting you know what we have available. (if you're not on our email list and would like to be, send Joannee an email ASAP)

2. Email us your order no later than noon on Monday.  Orders will be taken on first come first serve basis.  

3. We will let you know by Monday night if we can fill your order and if not we will let you know what we can provide.  We will also let you know how much it will cost.

4. Pickup will be at Hamburg Fitness Center.  We will be near the front desk from 4:00PM to 6:30PM.  We will have your order pre-bagged so it is ready to go.  If we have extra items that have not been sold we will have them available too.

Market members - we will be honoring your remaining balances through the end of December.

Items available for Tuesday 11/22

Lettuce salad mix - $4 (5 oz bag, same size as Earthbound Organic container)

Spicy Salad Mix - $4 (5 oz)

Spinach - $4 (5 oz)

Radishes - $2 a bunch (D'Avignon - mild French breakfast radish, 8-12 in bunch)

Hakurei Turnips - $2 a bunch (small, sweet salad turnip, 5-6 in bunch)

Ripbor Kale (curly leaf) - $2 a bunch (8 oz)

Lacinato Kale (smooth leaf) - $2 a bunch (8 oz)

Swiss chard - $2 a bunch (8 oz)

Long Pie Pumpkins - $1.50 to $4.00 depending on size

Winter Squash (Confection, Burgess Buttercup, Spaghetti) - $2.00 to $4.00

Mini Gourmet Beets - $4 a quart

Onions (yellow and purple) - $0.50 each

Kossack Kohlrabi - $2.00 each

Green Tomatoes - $1 a quart

-Joannee

St. Paul's Boutique and Bake Sale

If you are missing our fresh vegetables, you have another chance to purchase some this weekend. We will be at St. Paul's Holiday Boutique on Saturday from 9:00 AM to 3:00PM. St. Paul's Episcopal Church is located on the Millpond in downtown Brighton. Their address is 200 West St. Paul's Street, Brighton, MI 48116 and they are back on the one-way street behind Yum Yum's. There will also be a bake sale, including lots of Holiday cookies, a raffle, hand made gifts and lots more. Here's the link with more details - https://www.churchpost.com/view_mail.php?id=cp4e9ee530bf8

Market Members who still have money in your accounts - we will be honoring that money until the end of December.  This would be a great opportunity to use some of your remaining funds.  We will have a couple other opportunities, but we will have the biggest selection this Saturday.

Here is what we will have available on Saturday:

Lettuce Mix

Spicy Salad Mix

Spinach

Radishes (D'Avignon - the French Breakfast variety)

Hakurei Turnips (fresh sweet salad turnips)

Carrots

Beets

Tomatoes (the very last of the season!)

Green Tomatoes

Winter Squash (Spaghetti, Butternut, Confection, Burgess Buttercup, Red Kuri)

Pumpkins (Long Pie and Kakai)

Onions

Kossack Kohlrabi

Cauliflower

Broccoli

Brussel Sprouts

Kale

We hope to see you on Saturday!

-Joannee

Got leaves? We can use them!

It's that time of year again when it seems like every weekend is spent collecting the leaves from one's yard. If you're looking for someplace to put your leaves after you get them collected*, Stone Coop Farm is willing and able to take them off your hands! Leaves are very useful on the farm for mulching and adding fertility to our soil, and we can always use more. There are several options for us to get the leaves from you:

-You may drop your leaves off at the farm in yard waste bags (paper bags preferred) any time of the day. Just follow the two-track road back from the gravel parking lot. You will see a large, beige tent to the left after you round the bend. You can drop the bags off under the tent. Only pre-bagged leaves will be accepted if you choose to drop them off this way.

-If you'd like us to come pick up the leaves, call us on the farm phone at 810.588.7137 and we can schedule a time to pick them up with our truck. Please have the leaves either in bags (paper yard waste bags preferred) or on a tarp/sheet for transportation.

*Stone Coop Farm only accepts pre-bagged leaves or leaves that are collected together in some manner using a sheet or tarp.

Winter Produce Online Sales

Don't miss out on fresh produce from Stone Coop Farm after the farmer's market season has ended! Sign up now on our email list to receive weekly updates and ordering information on our winter produce. The only way to purchase our produce this winter is through our email/online sales. Just email Joannee to get signed up: joannee@stonecoopfarm.com Several of the produce items that will be available after farmer's market has ended:

Beets
Chard
Green Tomatoes
Kale
Kohlrabi
Onions
Pumpkins (sweet pie pumpkins)
Radishes
Salad Mix
Turnips
Winter Squash


We have three markets left before we begin online sales: Wednesday Oct 26 4:00-6:30 at Stone Coop Farm, Saturday Oct 29 8:00-1:00 at Brighton Farmers Market, and Saturday Nov 12 at St. Paul's Episcopal Church 9:00-3:00.

Delicious Winter Squash

At Stone Coop Farm, we grow a variety of winter squash. From the commonly-known acorn and butternut to the less-well-known red kuri and delicata, all of our squash are packed with nutrients and flavor. Winter squash are easy to prepare, and many varieties will store for up to 6 months on the kitchen counter. This wonderful veggie also tastes great and carries with it many health benefits. Winter squash are high in antioxidants, specifically carotenoids, and their seeds are full of beneficial omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids. Their flesh is a good source of fiber as well.

Winter squash is very easy to prepare in the kitchen. For a simple roasted squash, cut it in half, scoop out the seeds (you may save the seeds to roast separately on a cookie sheet) and lay it face-down in a baking pan. Bake at 400F until a fork can poke through the outside skin—usually about 30-45 minutes. Remove the squash  from the oven and scoop out the flesh. The skin can be discarded into the compost pile (though some varieties, such as delicata, have edible skin like a baked potato). You may add seasonings such as salt, pepper, thyme or rosemary if you want to go the savory route, or honey/maple syrup, cinnamon or nutmeg if you prefer something sweet. The cooked flesh can also be used like canned pumpkin to make pies, tarts or added to pancakes, breads and muffins. Did you know that when you buy canned pumpkin pie filling in the grocery store, it is actually often butternut squash rather than pumpkin?

Another, oven-free way to cook a squash is in the microwave. Once again, cut the squash in half and remove the seeds. Place in a deep, microwaveable bowl and add about 4 tablespoons of water to the bottom of the bowl. Cover the squash and cook on high for 6-8 minutes.

There are also a couple of delicious recipes on our website for winter squash:

Roasted Squash Soup
Squash Tart

And remember, you can use certain varieties of pumpkins (sweet pie pumpkins) as a substitute for winter squash, and vice versa!

-Shannon

Stone Coop Farm field cleanup volunteer workday

We will be having a workday for the farm on Saturday, November 5th from 8am-12pm. We will be working at our location at Tuthill Farms. For directions to the farm, please visit Tuthill's website, or send us an email. Some of the jobs we will be doing include pulling out landscape fabric, pulling out drip tape and pulling t-posts. This is a big job and we need as much help as possible to get the field cleaned up!

If you can't make it for the whole time, that's ok. If you would like to help out but feel that the physical demands of the tasks are too much, you may be interested in supporting the other volunteers by bringing snacks. There are bathrooms and water available onsite (and lots of adorable, attention-loving goats). There will be no rain-date for this project! We will be working rain or shine, so come prepared for all weather possibilities!

If you plan to attend, please email us by Monday, October 31 with the time you will be coming and if there will be more than one person coming with you. Once again, we really need all the help we can get! This is a job far too big for just two people!

Thank you!

-Shannon

Autumnal Sunshine

What a beautiful autumn we have been having! After the cold, rainy last few weeks of September, we were slightly worried it was going to be a cold, soggy season. What a pleasant surprise to have started October with warm, sunny weather. Out on the farm we have been enjoying not only the warmth but also the beauty of the fall colors as the hickories and maples blaze their way into the season with glorious oranges, reds and golds.

Harvest continues, though it has been slowing since latter part of September. The tomatoes in the field have all but stopped producing (though those in the hoop house continue to surprise us with their production), and last week we cleared out the main field at the farm. We will soon be planting and mulching garlic in several rows while the rest of the field will be sown with cover crops for the winter. Winter squash is still coming in from our location at Tuthill Farms, especially butternuts and spaghetti. We have harvested at least a thousand pounds of winter squash in the past three weeks! Needless to say, our arms and backs have been a bit tired.

Pumpkins coming in from the field

This coming Wednesday, October 12th, is our last distribution for Summer Share members. We will be having a potluck for ALL members (Market Share members included) to celebrate our first season. The potluck will be from 5:00pm-7:00pm in the distribution/market tent at Stone Coop Farm. Please email Joannee if you plan to attend and celebrate our first season with us!

Aerial view of Stone Coop Farm taken by a pilot friend.

~Shannon

Harvest

We have been very busy with harvest since the beginning of August. Now is the time when just about every summer crop is producing to its fullest, and we're out in the field 12 hours a day just trying to keep up with the exuberant plants. Last week, we harvested around 300 pounds of tomatoes, over 200 pounds in one day alone! The rainfall and beautiful weather has been a much-needed blessing after the heat and dryness of mid-summer.

Beautiful heirloom tomatoes

Though having all this food coming in has been wonderful, we're definitely ready for harvest to start slowing down as the weather cools for the fall. We'll still be harvesting many of our cool-season crops—broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, kale, chard, brussel sprouts, salad mix, etc—into November. Last week we also cleaned out the eggplant beds in the hoop house and planted spinach, lettuce, arugula and brassica salad mix. All but the lettuce will overwinter in the house. We're starting some field clean up this week as well, tilling in old beds and planting cover crops for the winter.

Summer isn't over yet, though! Our Summer Shares still have five weeks of distribution left and farmers market will be in full swing until the end of October. Harvest Festival in Brighton is coming up at the end of this month (Saturday, September 24, 8:00-1:00). The market will be on Main St in downtown Brighton. It's a great time with lots of vendors, music and crafts. Hope to see you there!

-Shannon

Crazy for Purslane!

If you have been to farmers market the past couple of weeks, or are a summer share member and received your share last week, you will know that we have been introducing a new veggie: purslane (Portulaca oleracea)! This wonderful plant, generally considered a weed in the US, is used in cuisine all over the world. It is particularly popular in Greek, Middle Eastern and Mexican cooking. It contains more omega-3 fatty acids than any other vegetable and is high in other nutrients such as calcium, magnesium, potassium and iron. The taste of purslane has been described as tangy with a hint of saltiness.

As far as cooking this wonderful green, purslane can be used in a diverse array of dishes. It is equally delicious raw as it is cooked. We have been putting it into our salad mixes for the past few weeks. It can be cooked just like spinach after trimming off the larger stems (smaller stems are fine to eat). Check out our Recipes page for a multitude of ways to use purslane. Next time you see it in your garden or yard (which you probably will), rather than pulling it out and throwing it away, give it a taste in the kitchen. We hope that soon everyone will be enjoying purslane!

- Shannon

How to hunt a tomato hornworm

One must be crazy to spend the morning searching through 600 tomato plants for the 4-5 inch long tomato hornworms that are so cryptically disguised in the foliage as to be nearly impossible to see. I call it hunting. First you must track the beasts, looking for defoliated plants and poop. If you find a defoliated plant, you check to see if the ends of the branches that have been munched are green or brown. If they're brown and dried over, then they are not fresh and the hornworm has most likely moved on. Similarly, if the poop is brown and dry, there is a good chance the hornworm is not in the vicinity any more. However, green branch tips and green poop means the quarry is nearby. Then begins the difficult task of locating the caterpillar.

They are the same color as the tomato plants, bright green, and have stripes and spots that blend in with the mottled sunlight filtering through the tomato leaves. I'm not sure what my trick is to spotting them. Sometimes I see the bright red "horn" on their back end. However, rather than looking for colors, I usually look for their shape: an oblong lump on the plant stem. They will sometimes rear up, making them easier to spot.

Once they are spotted comes the task of prying them off the tomato plant. The little beasties cling to the stems with great tenacity. I grab them from behind the head, as they will often projectile spit green goop while they make a furious click-scraping noise, their bodies wiggling and pulsating. Their defensive attempts are lost on me. Once I have them ripped from the plant, I survey the beauty of their stripes and eye-spots. They have distinctive spots running down their bodies that look like eyes, probably used to ward off predators. I've noticed that the largest, most distinct spot right behind their head has a wide variation in the color of the "iris". Some are blue, some red, some yellow, some black, some green. Do those with particular colors of eyespots have greater rates of survival than those with other colors?

After brief contemplation of such things, I throw the hornworm on the ground and smash it with my foot. It pop-snaps like a cherry tomato does in your mouth (sorry if I just ruined cherry tomatoes for you) and lime-green goo squirts out from beneath my shoe. Thus ends the life of another tomato-murdering hornworm.

-Shannon

Storing Your Veggies

One important part of fresh produce is knowing how to store it. Most of the items we grow prefer to be stored in plastic bags (or sealed containers) in the fridge. However, some things prefer not to be refrigerated. Below are storage tips for a few commonly mis-stored items.

Storage Tips of the Week:

Tomatoes—prefer to be kept out of the fridge. When chilled below 55 degrees, they lose some of their flavor and start to get a mealy texture. They will stay in great shape for a week or longer on the counter in your kitchen.

Eggplant—Ever notice eggplant with brown spots? Those brown spots are chilling damage. They prefer to be stored between 60 - 80 degrees. So please keep these on your kitchen counter as well.

Basil—Basil stores well two ways: in a plastic bag in the fridge or put a bouquet of basil in a glass of water or vase and enjoy the beauty and scent until you are ready to use them. Change out the water every couple days. We recently had someone keep their bouquet in the kitchen in a vase for a month!

-Joannée

Another Hot Week

It's been another hot week, but we were lucky enough to get some much-needed rain at Stone Coop Farm on Monday. The tomatoes, peppers and eggplant at Tuthill Farms—the location of our 2nd acre of growing space—are getting much bigger. The winter squash there is also getting large and spreading its vines out in every direction

We have a ground hog enjoying the kale and hearts of the lettuce heads at Stone Coop, so we're hoping to catch him in the next couple days in a live trap and relocate him to another home.

We've been doing a lot of work in the u-pick space laying out new beds and paths. There's also a good deal ready to harvest out there: chard, kale, cherry tomatoes, snow peas, basil, tarragon and mint. Members of the farm are free to come out and enjoy the harvest from u-pick any time so long as you've been through an orientation of the space with one of the farmers. If you need an orientation, come by on Wednesday when we're having market and one of us will be glad to show you around.

Come by and see us at market tonight or Saturday morning. We have lots of yummy things available!

-Shannon

A successful harvest and distribution

 A big thanks to all our members for making the first distribution such a great success! It is so encouraging that we have the community support that we do, as it shows that more and more people are concerned about where their food comes from. Thank you for choosing local and organic! We had a wonderful time meeting everyone and talking about the produce, and we hope that those who received their shares have been enjoying the food.


If you have any recipes that you tried out last week and enjoyed, consider sending them to us in an email, and we will add them to the website to share with everyone.

We look forward to another bountiful distribution this week. The drill is the same as last week, so if you have any questions, please refer to the previous post for clarification. Remember that the u-pick area is available for members coming to pick up their shares, as well as to market members. When you come to distribution, just ask one of the farmers to show you where to go. We will be happy to direct you.

 The hoop house tomatoes are getting ready to ripen.

They should be ready in a few weeks!

-Shannon

First CSA Summer Share distribution this week

The first CSA distribution for CSA Summer Share Members is this Wednesday, June 15th, 4:00-6:30 at the farm. For directions to the farm, see the Contact Us page. Remember that we're on the same property as Hamburg Fitness Center and Camps. We will be in the red and white striped tent on the hill behind the gravel parking lot of the Fitness Center.

If you're not able to make it to the distribution, make sure you call us by 6PM on Wednesday so that we can make arrangements for you to pick up your share on Thursday. If we don't hear from you by 6PM on Wednesday, your share will be donated to Gleaners Community Food Bank. A friend may pick up the share for you if you can't make it, but call us to let us know who will be picking up your share.

Check out the Frequently Asked Questions page if you have any questions about distribution. If your question isn't answered there, feel free to call or email us before Wednesday and we'd be happy to answer your questions.

As always, Market Share members and those who are not members of the farm are welcome to come to market Wednesday night as well.

See the Farmers Market page for the list of what will be available at market this week.

-Shannon

Is it monsoon season?

What a crazy spring! We have been battling the flood waters out at the farm, attempting to lay out new contours to our roads and paths so we don't lose any more of our beds. A canyon has eaten some of the cilantro bed, and some of our onions are precariously close to tipping over a precipice. We had to save some washed-out potatoes (now happily in the ground once more and growing quite well) and created some gullies to divert the raging torrents to keep any more damage to a minimum.

Perhaps it's part of a farmer's job to complain about the weather. Come August, we'll be looking to the skies for rain. A positive to the cool, wet weather is that our kale and chard are doing very well. We harvested quite a bit this morning at our space at Tuthill Farms and are very excited to have it for our customers tomorrow at the Brighton Farmers Market. Check out the Farmers Market page for more information on what we'll be having at market. Hope to see you in Brighton this weekend!

-Shannon

Another good week at the farm

This week has been a busy one! Then again, what week isn't this time of year? We've been battling the quack grass at Tuthill Farms and are slowly making a dent in the grass growing in the beds. The radishes are doing quite well out there—we had our first taste of them this week, mmmm! They will be some of our first edible items at market in a couple of weeks.

At the Stone Coop Farm property we have planted the entire hoop house with tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and basil. Those heat-loving plants have been growing like crazy this past week with all the hot weather we've been having. We got potatoes in the ground at both Stone Coop and Tuthills (a lot of potatoes) and have finally finished planting the remainder of the scallions.

As usual this weekend we will be at Brighton Farmers Market from 8am-1pm. We will have tomato, pepper and eggplant transplants available, including some wonderful heirloom tomato varieties. My sister-in-law, Jackie, will also be at market with us, selling her delicious and creative home-baked goods. In the afternoon we'll be back at the farm, pulling the wire for our brand-new deer fence that we've worked on this week. Let's hope for some good weather for market and fence-building!

-Shannon

First markets this week

May is here, and that means farmers market season has started! Our first market is today, Wednesday, May 4 at the farm 4:30-6:30. We'll be in the red and white tent above the gravel parking lot next to the fitness center. It's been a cold, wet spring, and that means we have less available this time of year than usual. We will, however, be selling tomato transplants at the market today. At Brighton's Farmers Market on Saturday we will have tomato, eggplant and pepper transplants available. Check out the Farmers Market page for updates on markets.

-Shannon

We have our hoop house!

What a great turn out on Saturday! With volunteers from Selma, UUAA and many individuals from the community, we were able to complete the hoop house in a day. A fun time was had by all, and I think we all learned quite a bit along the way. A great many thanks to everyone who came for the build! We couldn't have done it without you!

 Here we are completing the frame of the hoop.

 The plastic has been pulled and now we're wiring it to the frame.

 Rolling up the sides to set the automatic roll-up.

After a long day of hard work, the hoop is done!

To see more pictures from the build day, check out our Picasa photo album.

In other news, May is here, and that means this is the first week for the farmers market! We're very excited for our first markets this week. The first is on Wednesday afternoon at the farm, 4:30-6:30. Later in the week on Saturday we will be at Brighton's Farmers Market, which runs from 8:00am-1:00pm. Make sure to be checking the Farmers Market Info page during the week to see what we'll have available at market.

Hope to see you there!

-Shannon

April showers...

Another week begins...with more rain! We keep on telling ourselves that the rain is a good thing, as it gives us at least an extra hour in the day when we don't need to be watering plants. It does, however, make working outside rather chilly and damp. The couple days of sun we've had in the past week have been a welcome relief, that's for certain. We've been busy planting at the farm, rain or shine. More onions are in, as are parsley, chives, strawberries and horseradish.

From left to right: chives, curly parsley, flat leaf parsley, and two rows of strawberries under mini hoops

We've also been taking advantage of the rainy days and working inside, seeding tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and kohlrabi. Some of the tomatoes we seeded a month ago are thinking it's June and time to go in the ground! Once the hoop house is up this coming weekend we can give them their wish. They'll be happy to be out of their pots. Speaking of the hoop house, it was delivered today! We spent the morning moving all the parts to the back of the property where we'll be building. It was an exhausting morning, and we were very thankful for the tractor!

Using the tractor to carry the bows back to where the hoop house will be built. It was a tight squeeze down the two-track!

-Shannon

Hoop House Build

We're scheduled to build our hoop house on April 30th. With the help of Selma, we will be building all day at the farm and will hopefully have the hoop finished by the end of the work day. Anyone is welcome to come and help out for all or part of the day. Meals will be provided. For more information, check the link to the build on our events calendar on the right side of the page. If you have any questions about the event, email Joannee or leave a comment to this post. Go here to sign up for the build.

Moving right along

Things have been moving right along on the farm this week. We have been planting our broccoli, cabbage, onion and chard transplants at Tuthill Farms and are all caught up with our transplant schedule out there!

At the Stone Coop site we have had just as much activity. Electricity and water are set up now so we can water the transplants we planted into the u-pick area last week. More compost has been delivered, and we're starting to spread it into the field. We're also nearly sold out of Summer CSA Shares, so if you've been waiting to get one, now is the time to do so! 

Trenching for the water lines

-Shannon

Working on the u-pick area and our first compost delivery.

A break from the frigid temperatures (mostly) last week was a good motivator for us to continue work on the u-pick area. We finished cutting down the three trees in the space and used the trunks to build raised beds for annuals such as tomatoes, basil, kale, chard, beans and peas. It is very exciting to see the space taking shape with each day that we work on it.

We also received some black gold from Tuthill Farms last week! Brian came with a partial load of compost and delivered it in our field. The majority of this load will be used to ammend the soil in the u-pick area. Once the frost laws are off the roads, we can start getting larger loads delivered to the farm.

This week is our first week of planting outside. I'm in Oregon visiting friends from my college days this week. It makes me a bit jealous of their climate here, as the flowers and trees are blooming already, and the farmers markets have an abundance of greens, beets, radishes and turnips. Though there's plenty to be done before May when our markets open, I can't wait to start harvesting our first crops.


-Shannon

Planting warm season crops to remind us that it won't stay cold forever.

Over the past few days the weather has gone from pleasant and very much like spring is "supposed" to be, to cold and raw with ice and snow flurries. On Wednesday we decided to postpone our plans of working outside and instead worked on getting the warm season crops for the hoop house seeded. Using mini soil blocks, we seeded three varieties of basil, seven varieties of peppers and ten varieties of tomatoes. 

Punching out mini soil blocks with the soil block maker

 Seven varieties of peppers seeded and ready to go into the germination chamber

With sunny weather in the forecast, we're looking forward to getting out in the field again to continue work on our perennial and u-pick area. Our field at Tuthill Farms was turned this week, and the sight of bare earth is good encouragement that things will be green and growing soon enough!

Jim Tuthill and some of the newly turned soil at Tuthill Farms

-Shannon

Welcome to Stone Coop Farm's new site!

Hello all! Thanks for stopping by. It's great to be up and running online. With our new site/blog, we will be better able to communicate with our members and customers about the farm. Here you will find information about the farm and farmers, membership plans, harvest schedules, recipes, events, newsletters, contact information and more. Some pages are still under construction, and we hope to have the site fully updated by April.


A brief orientation of the site:


Beneath the big purple main banner, you will see green links to different pages. These pages contain detailed information as described by their title. Within some of the pages, at the bottom, are downloadable PDF versions of the information. Clicking on the link will redirect you to another page. There you can download the file, then return to the main website by using the back button in your browser.


Beneath the page links on the main blog page you will view the seven most recent blog posts in chronological order. You may comment on a post by clicking the Comment link beneath each post. Comments are moderated, so it may take several hours before your comment becomes visible. You may also share the blog on Twitter, Facebook and other various sites by clicking on their respective logos beneath each post.


Once again to the top of the page, now to the right side of the screen, you will find a list of upcoming events on the farm. You may click on each event to see more details.


Beneath the events are Labels, which are tags that we use in posts for ease of navigation. For instance, we will frequently post recipes on the blog. These posts will contain the label "Recipe", which will be shown in the aforementioned Label section. By clicking on the Recipe label, one can view all the recipes we have posted.


The Blog Archive is beneath Labels. Here you can find previous blog posts sorted by month.


Beneath the Blog Archive is an option to subscribe to the blog posts.


In our Links section beneath Subscribe To, we will have links to some of our favorite websites.


Near the bottom of the page, you can see our Picasa photostream, which is an online album of our pictures. Click on a picture and a new window or tab will open with our Picasa album where you can click through the farm's pictures.


At the very bottom of the page is the Farm's Blogger profile and an option to share the blog.




Whew, I think that's about it. Thanks for reading! We'd love to hear from you via comments or email.
Once again, welcome to Stone Coop Farm!


-Shannon
Co-Owner of Stone Coop Farm, LLC