Trevor's Corner - Fresh Fork Market

Summer 2020 — Week 1 — There’s A Season For Chicken

Week 1 of the Summer Season is here and we are excited! By now you should have already received a confirmation email with your pickup location, bag size and dietary plan, and payment information. If you have emailed or called in lately, we are experiencing a heavy volume of communications and may be a bit…

Agricultural Op-Ed Regarding Coronavirus

May 2020 – The Fresh Fork summer season is just 4 weeks away. And yes, we are still taking signups for our 12th Annual Summer Season. Demand has been up and we have locked in our prices and supplies, so weather permitting, it will be “business as usual.” Full details about the 2020 Summer Season, including our…

What about the shit?

The overwhelming amount of rain lately has had all the farmers feeling down. Yesterday we spent all day out in the rain trying to harvest lettuce and broccoli and collards, on top of trying to keep the pasture raised chicken comfortable in the fields of standing water. But I had to smile when Ananias, one…

A Wet Spring

I was recently asked about how the spring has been to farmers. If there is anything constant in farming, is that farmers love to talk about the weather and the weather is never what they want. In my opinion, there are two sides to every coin. The Bad Side of the Wet Spring The very…

Raising Pastured Poultry

Terms like free range and cage free can be quite confusing. Those terms are generally applied to laying hens, which are different from the meat birds known as broilers. Almost all meat poultry in the US is raised in broiler barns, generally in common configurations of 40 ft wide by 400 ft long, some longer. …

The Bees Have Arrived

This past Saturday Jason and Angie Bosler of Bosler’s Honey dropped off four hives at Wholesome Valley Farm.The hives were placed next to the future vegetable field. The honeybees, along with native pollinators will spend their summer pollinating the zucchini, melons, peppers, and tomatoes. The type of flowers that bees collect nectar from influence the…

Starting from Seed

Spring is here and that means it’s time to start seeds for summer. Starting seeds indoors gives farmers and gardeners a head start on the season. In the hothouses right now we have tender spring greens, celery, onions, and cabbage. Soon we’ll have summer crops like tomatoes, eggplant, and peppers as well. Most of the…

Making Maple Syrup

It is Maple Syrup season. When the temperature rises above freezing during the day and drops below freezing at night, sap in trees starts to flow. This sap is made up of sugars, water, and nutrients that the tree stored during the summer. Many trees can be tapped to make syrup. Trees in the Birch,…

Raising Pastured Hogs

Down at Wholesome Valley Farm the hogs we raise live most of their lives outside. Pasture raised pigs are allowed to root in the woods and pasture in the hunt for insects, nuts, and tubers. This allows our pigs to act like hogs (tear up the ground and make a mess!) and tillers that aerate…

Raising Laying Hens

Sometimes we take for granted the schedule and activities around a farm. Our tours highlight some of the disconnects that can exist between our customers and us as producers. These are great moments as we find our customers always interested in deepening their understandings of the cycles that bring their food from our fields to…