BUY LOCAL !!!!! BUY FRESH !!!!! NOW MORE THAN EVER !!!!

  In the past couple of days there has been more and more evidence that we should all be buying our food from local farmers that we know and trust and to buy food fresh from them.  That doesn’t get any more obvious until you read that Tyson Foods has recalled something like 40,000 pounds of beef in June and 380,000 of deli meat in August and now has recalled over 50,000 pounds of ground turkey because of safety.  How obvious does it have to get that these agri-businesses cannot be trusted to provide us with a safe food supply.  Tyson, ADM, Monsanto, Cargill etc control a very large amount of the national food source and they can’t be trusted.  They have proven this over and over and over.  Instead of buying tainted meats from one of these agri-monsters look to the local farmer in something like a 5 county area around the valley (or wherever you live).  I can 100% guarantee you that your chances of getting tainted meat from a local farmer is near zero, compared to these giants.

   We have carried locally grown, pesticide and chemical free cantaloupes for all the years we have been in the business of selling locally grown foods.  Not once have we had a listeria scare like the one from Colorado that supplies cantaloupes over better than half the country in supermarkets that we all know the names.  We have sold thousands of cantaloupes over the few years we have been in business.  I have made the joke many times that if we could sell nothing but corn and cantaloupes, I would be happy.  They are a mainstay of what we sell.  The fact that I can tell you exactly where every cantaloupe we have ever sold comes from.  I know with absolute certainty that they are all locally grown, pesticide and chemical free.  It doesn’t get any better than that.  It doesn’t get any easier than that.  Even when you look at the prices.  We have sold them for as little as a half dollar and not ever sold them for more than two dollars each.  I have seen the ‘big stores’ have them for three and three and a half dollars a piece on a regular basis.  It is cheaper and more economical to buy local.  It is safer and healthier to buy fresh.   It really is a ‘no brainer.”   See us any weekend, weather permitting, at the Blue Ridge Market in Saylorsburg.

BUY LOCAL, BUY FRESH, BUY FROM US !!!!

What a difference a summer makes

OK, OK, I know it.  I don’t use this blog very often.  I run in spurts.  There have been times I have blogged twice in one day and now this time there has been a few months that I have not blogged at all.  I admit that I do use Facebook a lot and The Verba Farm @ Williams Point does have a group account there.  That does not excuse that I don’t use this one very often anymore.   I vow to try to blog more here, as well as other places.

Yesterday we took part in the first ever Bethlehem Vegfest at the Greenway in Bethlehem, PA.  We had no real expectations of what was going to be there, as it was the first one they ever did.  We would have been happy and not surprised if 15 vendors showed up and 200 customers.  We were very surprised when there appear to be about 150 vendors and more likely 5000 customers.  We had a very successful day.  We sold a lot of produce, but beyond that made a lot of very valuable contacts. 

If the contacts work out (and it is UNLIKELY that they ALL will) then we will have a winter home for selling produce year round, we will have a customer that is a local restaurant that wants our produce in their line, we will have added a signature tea blend that will carry “The House of Bickert Blend” as its name, we will be supplying a gift house with hand woven Holiday gift items the Chuck produces, we will have an impact against agri-business and making sure small businesses have a bigger part of the food industry.  All that in one afternoon.  It is tough being a produce superhero.

The weather was near perfect for the event and we had a great time.  Can’t wait until next year to do it again.