Hello everyone, and Happy New Year! We hope you enjoyed a warm and restful holiday full of good food, friends, and family. 2020 is here, and the recent warm weather has us thinking of spring. We are working to make improvements for this season, including some farm stand modifications, crop rotation and seed planning, equipment repair and maintenance, deer fence repair/replacement, and hopefully an expansion to our Pick-Your-Own garden. Our fruitful 2019 season allowed us to purchase a new-to-us, smaller tractor, which we have been using to mow and maintain hard-to-reach areas that were being overtaken by invasive plants. We’re excited to get a handle on these invasive species and make room for more native plant diversity to feed our pollinators!
We are now accepting applications for our 2020 CSA program. We hope you will consider joining us for 20 weeks of fresh produce this season! Please visit our 2020 CSA page for information about this year’s CSA, and let us know if you have any questions.
Subsidized “Food for Friends” shares are available again this year; please let us know if you could benefit from or contribute to this program! We will also be partnering with BOTL Farm in Ashford again this year to make eggs available to our members. See below for information about the egg CSA:
BOTL Farm, a sustainability-focused livestock farm in Ashford, CT, is offering an egg CSA for pick-up at Willow Valley Farm’s on-farm CSA location (Monday/Friday only). The eggs will be available at the same time and place as you’re already picking up veggies and will last the same period of 20 weeks!
By becoming a member of the egg CSA, you will pick up one container of 12 eggs each week during your normal veggie pickup. The eggs will be packaged in reusable containers which *must be returned* at the following week CSA pickup (this helps reduce waste and cost).
If for any reason you cannot pick up your egg CSA on your scheduled pickup day, email danielle@BOTLFarm.com two days in advance. Danielle will coordinate an alternate pickup for your week’s eggs at BOTL Farm. This alternate pickup is allowed twice within the 20-week CSA season.
Total cost of the egg CSA is $120.
To sign up, send an email to danielle@BOTLFarm.com.
More information on this local farm and their eggs available below:
Our flock of laying hens is primarily crosses of Rhode Island Reds, with a few Easter Eggers, Barred Rocks, and New Hampshires for variety. All the chickens live on pasture and, like all our other animals, are rotationally grazed. Their nesting boxes, roosts, and supplemental feed (not to mention weather protection) are in a sweet-looking 1980’s mobile home that we drag around with our tractor to take the chickens to new areas. They are free to pass in and out of their coop/mobile home as they please and they spend most of their time doing what we affectionately call “chicken stuff,” which means walking in circles, scratching, and pecking at the grass/snow looking for tasty bugs and things. The chickens are supplemented with corn-free, soy-free, non-GMO feed and plenty of granite grit (they like that sort of thing).
To conform with our mission of full-circle sustainability and to deliver the highest quality farm products, we adhere to these farming philosophies:
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perform intensively managed rotational grazing each year for as long as weather and grass production allow
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when needed, use only corn-free, soy-free, non-GMO, and spray-free supplementary feed
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maintain breeding stock to control the health and genetics of our animals
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grow specific heritage breeds who can:
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thrive in our Northeast climate of hot summers and cold winters
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breed successfully to maintain and grow our herds
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grow and flourish on a grass-based diet
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