The Sustainable Life

THE SUSTAINABLE LIFE We have created a new way for local farmers, gardeners, and food producers to increase the number of healthy food options available in our community. We want to provide for you, our friends and neighbors, an assortment of local foods that are more nutrient dense and sustainably raised than what is available at the grocery store. We are a company that is dedicated to the localization of Noblesville's food economy. It takes a whole system design approach to successfully implement lasting and significant change to the complex structures that meet a community's basic needs. Read about us in Hamilton County Business Magazine! A LOCAL FOOD ECONOMY. There are many ways we can move toward a more sustainable life, but the most critical is that our food supply comes from within our community. Relying on big chain stores for nourishment is not sustainable. Having a table full of locally produced food will not only insure that you have access to rich, nutritional foods, but also a meaningful relationship with those who are committed to growing it for you. THE PRODUCE CSA -FREE DELIVERY TO DOWNTOWN NOBLESVILLE -Deliveries will be made on Mondays 9:00 am to 5:00 pm for 20 weeks, starting June through October. -Free delivery to outside neighborhoods if 6+ shares are sold in a neighborhood. -Free delivery to Carmel, Fishers, Westfield if 10+ can be dropped off at one delivery point. -If you're outside the downtown Noblesville area get your friends involved! Full Family Shares For $25 a week, you will receive well over $25 worth of organic produce.New this year, we will be providing recipe cards for each new or unusual item. You will have the ability to customize part of your share each week by participating in an email survey. Weekly Market Add-Ons You will also be able to purchase add-ons for your share: pastured meats, organic eggs, pastured butter, and more on the Online Market. On your weekly email survey just click on the items you would like included with your share, we will send you an invoice, and those items will be in your delivery. Any item listed on the online market can be purchased and will be included in your CSA delivery. Cost-Sharing with Neighbors, Friends If you feel like $25 a week of produce will be too much for yourself or your family, but you still want to have access to completely organic and locally grown foods, consider cost-sharing with a neighbor. If you were a member last year with an individual share, the 10% discount can also apply to a share split with your neighbor or friend! Each party should have a personal agreement and handle the distribution of produce. We are no longer responsible for it after we deliver it to the CSA members house. CSA Member Appreciation Dinner This year, we want to take the opportunity to bring everyone together for a dinner and tour at the Forest Garden in Noblesville! Within the growing season, we will invite CSA members, their families, and our farmers to come to the farm for a free dinner, prepared with the produce grown at the Forest Garden. Eat your food right where it was grown, and check out what other projects we have going on at our farm! Thank You! Farmers, members, neighbors and friends will all benefit from your interest in a healthier, more local way of eating. By becoming a member of the 2016 Noblesville Organic CSA, you are securing a truly organic way of nourishing your family for 20 weeks this season! You are also helping The Sustainable Life grow by investing in our farm before the season begins. Because of you, we are able to plant more produce, offer more shares, and spread the comforts and benefits of a local food economy further in the community! SUSTAINABLE FOOD PRODUCTION For a food production to be sustainable, it needs to have multiple streams of income to protect against many variables like weather or a change in market. When designing a system of food production, all of the possible options for production on a property need to be considered. A large percentage of the inputs that go into food production is the labor itself, and by stacking mutiple layers of production into one location or area on a farm, labor becomes more effecient. One example that we have used with great success, is the location of the over-wintering areas for our animals. Our chickens and pigs often need to be brought off of pasture in the winter, or during very wet times of year, to protect the pasture from damage. Our animals are moved around pasture daily to prevent over-grazing, and to encourage them to utilize different forages. Even so, we still need a winter paddock to keep them in. By building the winter paddocks at a higher elevation on the property, it allows the nutrients from the manure to flow into areas that will utilize the fertilization. Most farms would consider this waste! Because of the paddock's placement, we have eliminated the labor needed to clean up manure and the labor of fertilizing the crops grown down grade. To further explain the process, our pigs and chickens spend their winters in their paddocks in the woods. We have dug a small swale below the woods to capture all the water and nutrients and direct it into our orchard below. This orchard is newly planted, so there is room in between the trees, and there we plant our Market vegetables. By properly designing this farm or food system, we have been able to eliminate not only the labor of manure management, but also the cost of labor to apply fertilizer. By laying out the orchard on swales that are set on contour, we capture the rainwater in the swales, allowing it to soak into the ground and water the plants, instead of running off the property. This often completely eliminates the need for irrigation. OUR SERVICES The Sustainable Life designs, installs, and manages projects that sustainably produce food. Anything from extra space in a backyard, to organically restoring large land holdings that are currently being used to produce toxic corn and soybeans. We believe that even land that is considered to be 'unusable' (floodplains, scrub forest, steep grades) can still be used to generate some kind of food for your family, and on an even larger scale, feed your community too! SOME OF OUR PROJECTS -Multiple small and large scale produce farms. -A full scale perennial fruit, berry, and nut orchard with over 100 different varieties. -Pasture raised, Certified Organic fed chickens and their eggs. -Eight greenhouses, designed for growing produce year round. -Forest and pasture raised, organic pork, turkey, goat and game birds. -Rotationally grazed, pastured, 100% grass fed beef and lamb. -Quail eggs and meat, fed Certified Organic feed. -A nursery producing locally adapted edible fruit, nut, berry plants. -A nursery producing locally adapted herb and vegetable starts. -Organically produced indoor micro-greens and sprouts. FOOD TO OUR COMMUNITY Aside from simply growing these foods, the key to this system's functionality is the ability to get the products from the producer to the customer in a timely, convenient manner. We have developed an online market called the Noblesville Real Food Market, and this is how it works. On Wednesday our growers list products online that they will have available for harvest Sunday for the weekly delivery on Monday. Customers have from Wednesday at noon until Sunday at noon to place their order. Orders must be $25.00 or more to receive free delivery. Deliveries are made on Mondays THE PRODUCE CSA -FREE DELIVERY TO DOWNTOWN NOBLESVILLE -Deliveries will be made on Mondays 9:00 am to 5:00 pm for 20 weeks, starting June through October. -Free delivery to outside neighborhoods if 6+ shares are sold in a neighborhood. -Free delivery to Carmel, Fishers, Westfield if 10+ can be dropped off at one delivery point. -If you're outside the downtown Noblesville area get your friends involved! Full Family Shares For $25 a week, you will receive well over $25 worth of organic produce.New this year, we will be providing recipe cards for each new or unusual item. You will have the ability to customize part of your share each week by participating in an email survey. Weekly Market Add-Ons You will also be able to purchase add-ons for your share: pastured meats, organic eggs, pastured butter, and more on the Online Market. On your weekly email survey just click on the items you would like included with your share, we will send you an invoice, and those items will be in your delivery. Any item listed on the online market can be purchased and will be included in your CSA delivery. Cost-Sharing with Neighbors, Friends If you feel like $25 a week of produce will be too much for yourself or your family, but you still want to have access to completely organic and locally grown foods, consider cost-sharing with a neighbor. If you were a member last year with an individual share, the 10% discount can also apply to a share split with your neighbor or friend! Each party should have a personal agreement and handle the distribution of produce. We are no longer responsible for it after we deliver it to the CSA members house. CSA Member Appreciation Dinner This year, we want to take the opportunity to bring everyone together for a dinner and tour at the Forest Garden in Noblesville! Within the growing season, we will invite CSA members, their families, and our farmers to come to the farm for a free dinner, prepared with the produce grown at the Forest Garden. Eat your food right where it was grown, and check out what other projects we have going on at our farm! Thank You! Farmers, members, neighbors and friends will all benefit from your interest in a healthier, more local way of eating. By becoming a member of the 2016 Noblesville Organic CSA, you are securing a truly organic way of nourishing your family for 20 weeks this season! You are also helping The Sustainable Life grow by investing in our farm before the season begins. Because of you, we are able to plant more produce, offer more shares, and spread the comforts and benefits of a local food economy further in the community! OUR MEAT. All of our animals are rotationally grazed through pasture or forage areas every day. These pastured animals live a happy, healthier life. The taste and nutrient density of their meat proves it! The meat we sell is not comparable, on any level, to what can be purchased at conventional grocery stores, or health food stores. Our standards for nutritious meat production far exceed the USDA Organic standards. Our birds, pigs and some rabbits are fed minimal grain to supplement their foraging, but it is always certified Organic or even better, grown by our farmers. Our beef and lamb are 100% grass-fed from start to finish. Beef, pork and lamb is pre sold by the whole or half animal. All meat is available in individual cuts at retail prices in the online store. Chickens, quail, rabbit and duck can also be pre-ordered at wholesale prices in packages. DAIRY Our raw milk comes from 100% grass fed, pastured raised cows. It is labelled 'not for human consumption. Pet use only.' by state law. We are not offering to sell you this milk! Just contact us, and give us cash to pick up some milk for you when we go to the farm where we get it. CHICKEN AND EGGS Our chicken egg layers are rotationally moved on pasture and consume a natural diet. Our quail layers are in large cages but are given sprouted grasses and grains daily. Our birds are fed some grain to supplement their foraging, but it is always certified Organic or even better, grown by our farmers. No matter what the package marketing says, no store-bought eggs compare to our local, organic eggs! Once you start eating our eggs, all other eggs are a disappointment! OTHER PRODUCTS The seeds we offer are either saved by us, or are certified organic seeds that we purchase in bulk from the most reputable companies for our own farms. The plants we sell are propagated by us. Some trees and other perennial plants are purchased from another company as seedlings or bare root and grown out to market size on our farms. Dried herbs, spices, seeds and plants are available online when they are in stock or in season.