“Just realized I made 4 different dishes this weekend with zucchini….! and have  much more left.”

‘Just a farmer’ you said and I laughed ‘cause I knew all the things that farmers must be able to do.

They must study the land then watch the sky and figure just when is the right time and why

to sow and to plant to buy and to sell to go to the market with cattle and well…

You know the books that farmers must keep to pay all those taxes and be able to sleep

and you know the fixin’ that farmers must do when machines like mad monsters blow a gasket or two.

I guess when God needed folks to care for His earth he chose “just farmers” cause He knew their true worth

Jay and I will certainly buy a farm share this upcoming season…  We may be interested in the Thanksgiving Box add-on and/or a Winter Box add-on if you do that.

At the very end of December Jay fell skiing and fractured his hip.  He had surgery to repair the break and now we hope and pray for the bone to heal.  We won’t know how well the bone is healing for another month.

I wanted to share with you something one of the nurses caring for Jay in the hospital said.  It was a day and a half after the surgery and they were getting ready to discharge him.  I asked the nurse to show me how to change the dressing so I could do it for Jay at home.  When she removed the bandages she looked at the wound from the incision and said, “I can tell you eat healthfully because your wound is already healing nicely.”

Over the course of 2009 Jay and I have paid more attention to what we eat and where it comes from.  Although we aren’t close to eating only locally grown food, we like to think we eat a lot more of it than average Americans.  We bought a quarter share of a locally pasture raised cow that is the best beef we’ve ever had, towards the end of the farmer’s market season we became pasture-raised egg converts, and we’ve given up vegetables that come from other countries.  And of course there are all the wonderful vegetables you and Brian and your team grow.

I suspect some of our relatives, and maybe some of our friends, think Jay and I are a little “out there” with our local eating ideas and practices, but I firmly believe that the food choices we have been making are paying dividends right now as we watch Jay recover.

Thanks for growing such delicious, nutritious food.

Peace,
Trisha M.

We have been members of Dancing Roots Farm ( DRF ) for going on four years now. We have two boys, one almost 10 and one who is almost 5 years old. We are so proud to think that our youngest will not be able to ever remember a time when we were not going to the farm to pick up our share.

Now almost 10 years old

Our family loves Farmer Shari, Farmer Bryan and all the wonderful people at Dancing Roots who work so hard for us year round. We are lucky enough to live within a mile or so to our farm just east of the Sandy river in beautiful Troutdale Oregon and our kids look forward to going each week. We all enjoy seeing Tavish, ( DRF’s sweet and very loveable yellow lab ), to say hi to other members and to fill up on fresh, delicious, nutricious, scrumdellyicious veggies… many times when we get home with our share I notice a few carrot tops with missing carrots… hmmmm… maybe we are raising bunnies?

Farmer Shari is always glad to answer questions – give information on items some members may not have had experience cooking with before and to visit. This is what a CSA and a community is all about. We know where our food is coming from and who is raising and caring for it. It doesn’t get much better or more sustainable than that.

I have my laptop in the kitchen area and sometimes after we bring home our veggies I will go right to the DRF’s web site to look and see if anyone has posted a new recipe or to review Shari’s recommendations for the week.

We wish we could give ten stars to Dancing Roots Farm!

The Schmidt Family ( Bruce, Mindy, Gary and Gavin )