Providence Farm, Central Lake, MI

Certified Organic Produce & Strawberries - Pastured Pork

(Central Lake, Michigan)

23 Mar Wed 2016

Your Impact on Local, Organic Farms, Yeah!

"There is anticipation every Friday when I pick up my share. Inside are the most gorgeous organic fruits and vegetables. Then my mind goes spinning on what delicious and healthy meals I can prepare for the week. It has challenged my culinary skills to use all the items in my weekly meal planning or freeze what I can't use. We will be looking forward to the same delicious veggies in our winter meals. Thanks for the newsletter and the preparation suggestions for your wonderful produce, Andrea!" Ruth Ann Ventura

Thank you, Ruth. It's our pleasure. I have to say...

Cute Girl Holding Rainbow Carrots Demand is increasing for Real. Good. Food. Yeah!

More organic farms are in the area than ever before. And, local organic produce and pastured meats are being offered from more of us farmers through out the year.

Is it an easy business to get into? Is it easy to avoid burn-out? Is it easy to make a living? No. No. & No. But that's where you come in.

Thank you. Thank you for buying local. Thanks for going out of your way to pick-up your share or visit us at the outdoor market, when you could do "one-stop shopping" out of the rain or wind or sleet...

Thank you for allowing us to pay more for organic seed & certification, hire quality people, buy tools, and make loan payments.

Thank you for enthusiastically spreading the word about CSA's Farm Shares like ours to friends who are new to the concept, so that eventually, small and medium-sized farms dot the landscape again, and grow food for their local communities like they used to.

Thanks for inspiring us to stay in the game, sacrifice, grow and grow better.

Thank you for your delicious potluck dishes, encouragement in notes, hugs and recipe sharing. Thanks for taking the time to know us, visit "your" farm, and learn about what we do and why we do it.

Thank you for understanding that farming, especially in this highly diversified way, is cost intensive, exhausting and worth it.

Gratefully yours,

Ryan & Andrea Romeyn

Week 6 CSA 2015 Thanks

2016 CSA Garden Shares like the one above are still available. Head to our website to learn more or Click here to sign up for your delicious garden share, organic strawberries, or pastured pork share from Providence Farm this season.

Upcoming Providence Farm-Spiration Events

(We're passionate about living soil, thriving plants & healthy people!

Farm-Spiration gatherings are meant inform, inspire and connect us as we all strive for better health.)

Thursday, March 24th: 9:10 AM

"Winning The Mental Battle of Physical Fitness and Obesity"

This is the title of a fascinating and funny talk given by Ogie Shaw. "Physical Fitness does not have to be complicated. There are psychological aspects to staying motivated for fitness and then a few rules to adopt for success. The speaker presents his ideas on motivation, measuring your fitness level, and exercises to become fit." Discussion will be around HOW to GET MOTIVATED and STAY MOTIVATED for life, so that exercise is a priority, not a luxury... and "I'm too busy" is a phrase we don't use any more.

8:10 optional meet-up at Barnes County Park for a walk/hike along the lakeshore rain or shine, then meet 9:10, at our farm house. NO COST.

Please let me know if you ARE coming, so I'm ready for you healthy snack-wise. Thank you.

Saturday, April 23rd: 10:30 AM CTCT-20160226_162351_7

Meet at Barnes County Park to walk the beautiful lake shore or woods, then at 11:30

head to the farm house for a shared potluck meal, see the new lambs, Belties and unique beauty of Spring at Providence, along with viewing the short TED Talk "Exercise and the Brain" by Wendy Suzuki.

Wendy's research focuses on the role of aerobic exercise in improving learning, memory and cognition. Discussion will be around this video as well as the hearing the results from anyone participating in the Providence Farm HIIT challenge. (Here's a hand-out for that if you are interested, hop on any time.)

Please let me know if you are coming, so we are prepared for you!

Saturday, June 18th, 4:30

Summer Solstice Potluck, Party & Farm Tour! Since this is a special day, if it's terribly stormy weather, rain date is for June 25th, same time. The food is A-MAZE-ING. We'll have our old-fashioned tractor train, cloth sac races, paint-your-own organic rocks, a sheep-dog presentation, farm tours, our bevy of antique tractors (that we really use on the farm) and more. Bring appropriate footwear, a dish to pass, table service for your family and lawn chairs or a blanket. Here's a peek from last year's enchanting Summer Solstice party.

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Help Us Share The Harvest!

Every season, Ryan and I make it a priority to share what we grow, and we've seen the need in northwest lower Michigan grow each year with us. We never want to turn a family away who'd love a CSA share, but can't afford it. So along with giving families full-season shares each year, we donate a wide variety of our organic vegetables to The Manna Food Project & more area food pantries, including Good Samaritan Family Services in Ellsworth, which serves over 700 families each month!

All totaling several thousand pounds of produce each year. It's really beautiful how it all works. We plant, grow, harvest and wash a lot of food. At sorting time, it's not all cosmetically beautiful, or the right "size" for store shelves, but otherwise fresh and healthy. Veggie farming generates extra nutrients that can nourish our community.

If you'd like to help us expand our reach, you can partner with us by donating any amount to go towards our "Sharing The Harvest Fund".

You may designate whether you want to add more to our food pantry donations or you can sponsor an individual family with a CSA share.

Each new 18-22 week CSA family is given a free From Asparagus to Zucchini - A Guide To Cooking Farm-Fresh Seasonal ProduceCookbook, invited to our CSA potlucks, tours and events, as well as sent helpful email newsletters with recipes and storage tips, just like all of our new CSA members!

Ready to commit, have questions or know a family who'd appreciate fresh, nutritious, local produce through our Sharing The Harvestprogram? Email us.

Andrea_6

11:51 AM EDT

17 Dec Wed 2014

THANKS FOR AN AWESOME 2014 FARM SEASON!!!

As our 2014 season is coming to a close, we wanted to THANK YOU!

Your commitment to our farm is our foundation. Period. We literally could not do it with out our community of families, both CSA Garden Share families and our regular farm market customers.

Many of you sign up for CSA garden shares in the Spring so we avoid big loans with interest. That's HUGE. We also appreciate your long-term commitment. Bad weather can cut farm market sales dramatically! And many shoppers leave by mid-August. That's why we consistently thank you by giving you more for your money in every CSA share box! We realize that the abundance of food may have overwhelmed a few of you, but as it is a bonus, please know that that gives you the freedom to share the extra with a friend or neighbor as well. :-)

We also deeply appreciate the emotional support, especially from June - September, when entire months are consumed with 14-16 hour days. Your words, spoken or written, of encouragement and thanks add energy to our minds and bodies. Even kindly delivered criticism about any quality issue is much appreciated, as we strive to quickly remedy any problems for all, so all of your experiences are overwhelmingly positive.

We really value your participation and input in this process. Thanks to all who've given us your honest opinions at the end of the season about how things went for you this year. We heard that many of you appreciated the flexibility in three areas: Being able to switch share pick-ups, putting shares on hold, and substituting one or two items.

We also had rave reviews about our two family days & farm tours and are planning on more on-farm events for next season already.

Please hear our heart-felt appreciation for your part in our lives and business. We are where we are today as farmers and feel confident in our future because of our CSA members from 2006 until now. :-)

Because we have CSA members like you, as well as farm market customers and the purchases at Grain Train and Oryana, Ryan and I learn and improve every year!

- We've been able to decrease some of our costs with key equipment and practices, keeping CSA and farm market prices competitive.

- We've also been able to give four individual families + four food pantries thousands of pounds of produce this year! That's exciting.

- Not only that, but this year alone, we've employed over 25 local families, which has been one of our biggest goals, and three serious current and future organic farmers! :-D

- Finally, we have all the land under our management (over 100 acres) in organic certification!

I'm not telling this to you to brag, I'm simply letting you know... so that you understand the collective impact of all of our local support over the years. We recognize and APPRECIATE the direct correlation. You are AWESOME!!!

Have a wonderful, amazing day. :-)

Andrea & Ryan

Andrea_6

01:41 PM EST

27 May Tue 2014

Yes, Shares Still Available for 2014's Season!

Hi Farm Friends and Local Foodies,

We are pleased to be able to expand our organic garden share offerings this season. That means will have garden shares available for many more families! This time of year, people frequently call asking if we have any more shares available. The answer is "YES!" C'mon, and join the farm, it's not too late!

Our CSA Garden Share members enjoy online management of their account where they can add additional items to their boxes, put their share on hold, change delivery locations, and switch out items in their boxes each week!

We have been operating a successful organic Garden Share CSA since 2002 and offer an astounding variety of vegetables, making sure to include a great base of staples through out the season. 12 years of experience has allowed us to gain valuable feedback from our customers and make popular adjustments.

We really appreciate the commitment CSA members make for the duration of our farm season. In return, each box is calculated against our normal prices at farm market to give between 5% and 15% each week (Higher % off in August and September due to abundance!), on top of our extremely reasonable CSA prices.

We also strive to make it easy to transition to a CSA Garden Share by offering storage tips and recipes through emails and newsletters each week.

Our archived newsletters are available at our website, so you can make an informed decision.

May you have a great rest of you Spring and Summer, enjoying the local bounty Northern Michigan has to offer.

Andrea Romeyn

Andrea_6

11:22 AM EDT

04 Dec Wed 2013

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year 2014!

Ryan and I want to wish all of you a wonderful holiday season full of joy, happiness and rest as you make time for precious family and friends. Again, we are grateful beyond words for your support in 2013. We know we are blessed and strive to bless you in return by continuing in our craft of farming! We also want to acknowledge our dedicated and hard-working staff.

We still attend two markets a week and make weekly runs to the grocery stores. In that vein, if any of you were interested in some fresh and yummy collards or kale, winter squash, cabbage, potatoes, rainbow or orange carrots, onions, beets, turnips, parsnips, or smiles...we'll be selling them Saturday! (Boyne City library & Traverse City Building 50).

If you are interested in a 3/4 bushel box of carrots there are between 22-30 pounds in a box. Price for firsts is $1.50 per pound. Price for 2nds (only difference is that they are misshapen) is $ .75 per pound. You can keep carrots well in a refrigerator or in a garage or cold room that doesn't freeze. 34-45 degrees is best, kept in the box, with the plastic liner loosely covering them. They stay crisp and sweet for about two months. People have also told me that they like to blanch them and then freeze them in discs or sticks for much longer storage.

We will have carrots while supplies last. PLEASE email us if you want a box of carrots. Specify 1sts or 2nds we'll meet you at the farm market (or farm) with them.
We need orders ASAP for this week's markets so that we have plenty of time to pack them.

Thanks so much for helping us sell our wonderful veggies. We truly appreciate your business! Also, if you have a friend who you think would enjoy our farm news, recipes and fresh veggies and other offerings, please forward our newsletter.

Peace & Joy in the New Year! ~

Andrea & Ryan Romeyn

Andrea_6

08:01 PM EST

18 Jan Fri 2013

Providence Farm & CSA

Ryan and I want to wish all of you a wonderful holiday season full of joy, happiness and rest as you make time for precious family and friends. Again, we are grateful beyond words for your support in 2012. We know we are blessed and strive to bless you in return by continuing in our craft of farming! We also want to acknowledge our beautiful and hard-working staff.

We still attend two markets a week and make occasional runs to the grocery stores. We hear that a storm is coming, which may mean the end of harvesting any of our yummy greens! In that vein, if any of you were interested in some fresh and yummy collards or kale, we'll be selling them Saturday (Boyne City library & Traverse City Building 50). The list of available items are in the column on the left!

We will have carrots through February. PLEASE email us if you want a box of carrots. Specify 1sts or 2nds we'll meet you at the farm market (or farm) with them.
We need orders ASAP for this week's markets so that we have plenty of time to pack them.

Thanks so much for helping us sell our wonderful veggies. We truly appreciate your business! Also, if you have a friend who you think would enjoy our farm news, recipes and fresh veggies and other offerings, please forward our newsletter.

Peace & Joy in the New Year! ~

Andrea and Ryan Romeyn

Andrea_6

05:27 PM EST

Providence Farm, Central Lake, MI

23 Mar Wed 2016

Your Impact on Local, Organic Farms, Yeah!

17 Dec Wed 2014

THANKS FOR AN AWESOME 2014 FARM SEASON!!!

27 May Tue 2014

Yes, Shares Still Available for 2014's Season!

04 Dec Wed 2013

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year 2014!

18 Jan Fri 2013

Providence Farm & CSA

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