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We are excited to offer our second season of weekly produce subscriptions from Burns Best Farm. Due to the success of last year's program, we are gearing up for an expansion in 2010.  Mike has been busy for weeks, starting transplants and planning our crop list and rotational schedule. He got our seeds way back in January and we are thrilled to see new varieties of beans, peppers, and tomatoes arriving in the mail.

We are offering a delivery day into East Cobb/Marietta on Mondays this summer in addition to our on-farm pick-up on Wednesday afternoons in Ringgold. Additionally, we are increasing the season from 10 weeks to 14 weeks of freshly harvested fruits and vegetables.

Here's what a couple of customers said last year abour our CSA:

My husband and I were fans of all of Burns Best's produce, but especially the arugula and heirloom tomatoes.  They were delicious, and so different in taste from the supermarket varieties.  Also, in trying to use everything we received in our CSA bags, we learned to be more creative cooks and incorporate fresher ingredients into what we cooked.  We went the entire duration of the CSA without opening a can or frozen bag of vegetables. -Susan

I must honestly say my wife and I were thrilled with the quality, freshness, taste and value of the produce we received during those ten weeks, and we wished the season could have gone on longer.-Karl

Please send me an email:  contactus@burnsbestfarm.com and tell me that you are interested in buying a subscription.  I will send you the document with details that pertain to your location and pick-up day.  

We are looking forward to serving you this summer.  Please contact me with any questions! 

Today was a very successful market sales day at the Marietta Square Farmer's Market and a big thanks to all of you who stopped by, chewed the fat, and took home a few heads of lettuce, some radishes to spice up the salad, or a dozen eggs.  Without your repeat business and the encouragement you give us when you buy our produce, this farming gig would be much less rewarding.

In case you picked up my business card today inside the egg carton and you are checking out the website for the first time, I wanted to steer you to a couple of links on other wibsites that do a much better job of explaining our pastured hens and the eggs they lay. (Actually, I can do a pretty good job of explaining it most days, just not on days when I'm up at 4am to sell at the market!)

The Food Renegade discusses the differences in pastured eggs, cage free eggs, and organic eggs.  Before you pick up another over-priced carton from the grocery store, read these descriptions and you'll be more informed about what you're really buying.

Mother Earth News does a great job in this article showing the nutritional improvements in a pastured egg when compared with any other method of raising hens.All of a sudden, eggs aren't looking like little cholesterol bombs anymore, are they? Vitamin A? Vitamin D? Don't we hear everywhere that we need to be getting more of each of those?  I thought so.....

Ok, just one gratuitous egg photo from the file, just because I love them so much:

I have always wondered how the Egg Hunt became a traditionally observed activity.  Even as a kid, I thought it was kind of strange to dye eggs different colors and then hide them. The church where we attended when I was small used to have a real competition (back when kids were allowed to lose in public, or better yet, back when one kid was allowed to win over all the others!) and the Easter egg hunt was hotly contested.  I don't remember ever winning, but I remember being mad about losing.

All those memories have flooded back to mind the last three weeks as we've been experimenting with one set of the penned chickens.  These hens are some of the first flock we ordered and we've been moving them around the property every day or so for the last two years. The pen (bottomless, which allows them to scratch, peck, eat grass and bugs) has been in slow-motion structural decline and almost three weeks ago, one smart chicken got through the plastic mesh netting we'd thrown over the top to keep critters out. 

I had one hen on the loose, but I caught her pretty quickly and put her back in.  When I woke up the next morning, she was back out, and she'd brought a friend with her.  Two out, eight in the pen.

Being outside was better than being cooped up (pun intended) so those two stayed on the lam and one more ventured out through the hole in the net. All of a sudden, I had three free range chickens, a Rhode Island Red and two Aracuanas. Chickens are not terribly brave (that's why we use "chicken" as a playground insult) so they stick pretty close to their friends in the pen and we've provided them with water and some feed.  But mostly, they wander around and scratch up weeds and bugs and grubs. And they are fertilizing the field where the lettuce/beets/arugula/cherry tomatoes will be growing this summer.

And then, I started to find the occasional egg.  I figured they were laying somewhere, but I could never catch any of them in the act to know where they were nesting.  I found one blue egg, laid by one of the Aracuanas, in a bucket that was turned on its side two weeks ago, on the rainy day.  But nothing else for almost a week.

Then I started to look very closely, slowing down from the usual rush of chicken chores to walk carefully and really notice what is always sitting around. And here, in the blackberry plants-in-pots, I found another Aracuana nesting spot.

Here is the spot where I found the treasure trove last weekend.  In the corner where the basement wall meets the porch/shed foundation, the Aracuanas both laid 8 eggs in four days, all piled up on top of each other.  I was so excited to stumble on their secret cache that I scooped them all up and forgot to take a picture!

Today's new location is on the gravel floor of the greenhouse.  We've been leaving the door open in this nice weather and both the Rhode Island and one of the Aracuanas shared a quiet corner to leave me these gifts.

Now, I walk through the yard deliberately, with a basket handy to gather whatever little presents these funny hens decide to provide us each day.  There are now five hens on the outside and the new two are scouting out new locations; I follow them with my attention, if not my actual presence so as not to scare them off.  It's just like the Easter Egg Hunt at church, except these taste much better, the colors are much prettier, and I'm the Winner Every Day!

I have been doing some blog reading lately (I know, you're thinking, THAT'S new and different) and just today have come across two different postings that relate to a subject about which I spend a lot of time thinking.  Some of you have heard me voice concern about where "the country" is headed.  Some of you have politely nodded while I take off on "the economy" and what's wrong with it.  Thanks for listening to me, even if you think I'm nuts.  So on that disclaimer note, here are a couple of other blog postings you should read.

If chickens capture your imagination, you should think about keeping chickens in your backyard. No, stop laughing. I'm serious, and so is this helpful, handy checklist of what to do to keep hens in your suburban backyard.  My chickens have been one of the best parts of moving to the farm and if we had to go back to urban/suburban living, I'd be sneaking some of the girls in there with me.  You should really think about this!  The eggs alone are worth the effort.

All of you who keep a tomato plant in a terra-cota pot on the back deck but wish for more than a flower garden in your yard (or even a community garden down by the swim/tennis complex) need to look at this piece called "Facing the Zoning Monster."  With nationwide food recalls, salmonella outbreaks, and e.coli scares headlining the news each night, you could secure for your family a safe source of just about any fresh vegetable you need.  There might be a bit of civil disobedience required, but hey! It's better than not paying taxes!

I keep thinking that things are not, moving forward, going to be the same as they've always been.  We've been priviledged to see a great abundance of everything, but we may be at a point in our nation's history where greater need will be the rule in the years ahead. 

The time to plant a garden is not when you realize you're hungry.  It's when times are good (or at least better than bad!) and you can figure out what you're doing.  Which means, the time is now. 

(BTW, this is Denise writing.  Mike is not nearly as paranoid.)   

We've been busy this winter working on some projects that have been on our list for a while.  The biggest project was the construction of a new "Egg Mobile."  What is an Egg Mobile?  It's basically a hen house on wheels that serves several purposes here on our farm.

First, because our hens have access to the pasture, they get the added benefit of being able to feast on fresh grass and bugs in the sun and fresh air.  The hens thrive in this environment and the result is eggs that are as much as 20 times higher in omega-3 fatty acids, contain less fat and cholesterol and 40% more vitamin A. The flavor puts a store bought egg to shame.

Second, the hens drop their manure on the fields, making them nice and green without use of chemical fertilizers.  At night the hens move into the trailer and roost on 2x4's that go across the trailer.  The floor of the trailer was removed and replaced with a wire floor that also lets the droppings fall to the ground. The house is surrounded by a mobile electric fence powered by a solar charger, which works to keep the predators out at night.

Lastly, the egg mobile will make our lives a bit easier here on the farm.  Before, we used smaller pens that had to be moved by hand every day.  The egg mobile is moved every 4-7 days.  The eggs will be easier for the boys to collect this summer with the nests on the outside and our newest batch of hens will begin laying eggs (hopefully in March.)

I had a lot of help building the house this winter.  Credit should go to Larry Pierce (Supervisor, metal roofer and siding),  Larry Holcomb (door builder, siding and moral support), David Spangler (Chief Engineer/Siding/Roofing).  Other credits:  Larry H's nail gun - a real time saver.  Cooper Burns (Wire Flooring).  Let me also mention that no OSHA laws were violated during the construction of this behemoth.  We decided against the wet bar on the inside.  We are confident that all corners are "perfectly" square with expert carpentry and any look otherwise is a problem with your eyesight. 

In the next posting I will show you another project that will hopefully help us get more production out of our existing planting areas. See you soon.