Welcome to Stella's Veggie Ranch! This is our first year growing produce and producing art in Asheville, North Carolina and taking it to some of the various farmer's markets in and around our great city. We, by the way, are Chris and Cynthia and we live on old cattle pastureland with our two dogs, Stella Blue and Miles. This year we are farming about an acre, and hope to expand in the future once we get ourselves established.
Additionally, we are both artists who will be bringing samples of our wares with us, including original watercolors, hand-painted books of poetry and prose, photography, jewelery and many more hopefully interesting items.
We decided at the last minute to offer a very limited number of CSA subscriptions in order to raise some of the capital necessary to get fully underway. If you don't know, a CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), which is a way to connect the consumer to the farmer, with each committing to a seasonal contract. We, as farmers, grow a variety of vegetables, herbs and flowers sustainably without the use of synthetic pesticides, herbicides or fertilizers. You, as member of a CSA, purchase a share of the season’s harvest in advance. From late May to early October you get a box of freshly harvested produce from the farm every week.
The CSA arrangement helps the farmer with spring start-up costs including seeds, materials and equipment, and in return it allows the member to relax and enjoy the food that is delivered during the growing season. The CSA connects the member, first hand, to the ups and downs of their food production as well as keeping them more in touch with the seasonal offerings from the garden. When a share is purchased, the member accepts the risk of crop failure along with the farmer. However, by planting a wide variety of produce and careful crop rotation, the risk is lessened considerably.
We'd like to offer our thanks to those brave souls and good friends who took us up on our offer and we hope to provide them and our customers at the markets with the very finest veggies we can wrangle here at The Ranch.
We'll be posting pictures regularly to mark our progress and keep everyone informed!
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Organic Produce & Specialty Goods
Why Organic?
Buying organic food promotes a less toxic environment for all living things. Industrial agriculture doesn’t just pollute farmland and farm workers; it also wreaks havoc on the environment downstream. Pesticide drift affects non-farm communities with odorless and invisible poisons. Mono-cropping and chemical fertilizer dependency has taken a toll with a loss of top soil estimated at a cost of $40 billion per year in the U.S. plus adding an equally disturbing loss of micro nutrients and minerals in fruits and vegetables.
Feeding the soil with organic matter by cover cropping and careful soil maintenance instead of with ammonia and other synthetic fertilizers has proven to increase nutrients in produce, with higher levels of vitamins and minerals found in organic food. Scientists now know what we eaters have known all along: organic food often tastes better. Whether it is local fruit, imported coffee or artisan cheese, organic can demonstrate a reverence for the land and its people. No matter the zip code, organic has proven to use less energy (on average, about 30 percent less), is beneficial to soil, water and local habitat, and is safer for the people who harvest our food.
Eat more seasonally by supporting your local farmers market while also supporting a global organic economy year round. It will make your taste buds happy.
Good Things
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