OUR MARKET IS GROWING!

The Market is open Thursday Noon – Monday 9:00 a.m. After that, ordering is disabled until Thursday noon-ish. Pick up your order Tuesday 4:30-6:30 p.m. only at Rancho Alegre Farm at 2225 Givens Road, Dacula, GA 30019. New to The Market? Learn about how it works here.

EXITING NEWS!
Our market is growing! Since I became market manager in October, I’ve been tracking our sales and we are showing a general upward trend in order $$$. This is exciting because as our market sales grow, we can bring in new vendors. I have been assured that Rancho Alegre Farm is kind of far out in the country, which I continue to try to wrap my head around – being from what now seems as a fairly remote part of Ohio (23 miles round trip to grocery, 52 miles round trip for my kids to go to school, very difficult to see a neighbor from the kitchen window). We moved on purpose to an area where we have better and closer access to everything.

My point is that there’s a symbiotic relationship between farmers and customers – we have to have good farmers to attract a lot of customers, and we have to have a lot of customers to attract a wide variety of farmers. This latter makes it difficult to have specialty items listed on our market. Although I don’t have a problem with some competition among farmers when it comes to offering products, I am much more concerned with creating an ever-increasing variety of products.

Be sure to pick up market brochures when you come Tuesday to share with your friends, family, co-workers, and random people on the street :-) The more customers we have, the more variety we will be able to offer! We are definately on our way, and it will take all of us to grow the market!

MARKET NEWS
We have pastured chicken from Mother Earth Meats in stock again. Be sure to order as early as possible because it is a popular item! Sadly, we cannot stock as much as I would like – we simply do not have the freezer space to store it. They have a really good $99 package you can order directly from them and have shipped to Rancho Alegre for pick-up on the fourth Saturday of the month. I have not confirmed July’s schedule yet, so be sure to call Tracy first if you have a tight schedule. No. 1 on my list of future purchases is a small chest freezer so I can start ordering in bulk!

Mother Earth Meats also has elk, seafood (frog legs anyone?), wild Alaska salmon and other items. I really like elk, its’ taste is much more similar to beef than venison.

If you do try something from MEM besides chicken, let me know what you think, I’d love to talk about it here.

For those of you new to the market, our in-stock Mother Earth Meats is a group buy, and as such, is not listed under Fresh & Local. Go to Group Buys — > Mother Earth Meats, to make your selection. Bulk orders directly through MEM should have our farm listed as the delivery address.

FARM NEWS
I have copied the following info from the farm newsletter I sent out over the past couple days concerning a farm project in development with a non-profit organization. One of Pilar’s biggest passion is teaching about farming and healthy food and our partnership with Project Generation Gap will help more kids be able to attend our farm summer camp. If you do not get our newsletter, please give the following a read:

Project Generation Gap has teamed up with Rancho Alegre Farm to send deserving kids to Farm Camp.

Project Generation Gap believes that traditional growing methods are being lost and our food supply is being compromised. Using the garden as the genesis, PGG intends to ‘bridge the gap’ between our elders and our youth, food producers and consumers. Our vision is to create a community of intergenerational gardeners; cultivating relationships as they cultivate the land using sustainable, respectful growing practices. Through educational programming, volunteerism and hands- on workshops, we intend to reinforce the three main pillars of any sustainable community: education, stewardship and respect.

Please help us achieve our goal of giving deserving children an opportunity they might not otherwise have. By purchasing one of our stylish, organic t-shirts, you are becoming a part of our grassroots effort to support the next generation in becoming healthy, well informed, contributing citizens. Every 5 shirts sold means one child goes to camp! 100% of the profits from this campaign go to the kids. Our goal is to sell at least 100 shirts by July 13th. To purchase a shirt, visit here

To learn more about the vision and goals of Project Generation Gap visit here.

To register your child for Rancho Alegre Farm’s amazing camp go here.

• If you have questions, please email Learn@ranchoalegrefarm.com.

Thank you all and have a wonderful, safe and healthy Fourth of July week-end!

CLICK HERE NOW to Shop Gwinnett Locally Grown!

Debbie Moore
Market Manager
grow@ranchoalegrefarm.com

Fresh Wishes,
Pilar Quintero
Market Host
Rancho Alegre Farm

If you are interested in Goat’s Milk and can pick up any day but Tuesday, contact Nik The Goat Guy at 404-542-0981. Goats have to be milked every day and a week-end pick-up would be lovely. Please contact him first though, we can’t accommodate walk-ins due to hosting private events almost every week-end!

Please contact grow@ranchoalegrefarm.com for questions pertaining to Market or Raw Milk. It is very difficult to return phone calls. Remember to interact with us on Facebook and follow us on Meetup to get notification on all our wonderful events and news.