Market Reminder

ALFN Members,

Remember to finalize your order in the market before tomorrow at noon. Squash has officially arrived in the market! Welcome summer squash…welcome Spring!

News

I’m saddened to announce one of our growers was vandalized this past week. Debe Hudson with A B C Nature Greenhouse & Herb Farm had a vandal ruin one of her greenhouses by ripping the plastic, disabling the wood burner, and leaving the doors open during a freezing event over the evening. Unfortunately, most of Debe’s plants were killed due to the loss of heat. As many of our farmers know, the early part of spring is a time to get a head start on the market and provide produce as early as possible. This damage has put Debe back on the season, and she will not be able to sell any plants until the middle of the season. In a local economy, when a producer suffers, we all suffer for them. Let’s find ways to wish Debe the best and support her as she works to overcome the setback.

Take care,

Kyle Holton
Program & Market Manager

Market Is Open

ALFN Members,

The “market” is open and busting with spring energy! As most of you know, the market will be open for orders from Sunday at noon until Wednesday at noon. Early orders can grab items that are high in demand or low in quantity. But don’t worry, every time I get on the market Wednesday morning, there is still an abundance of produce and high-quality items.

Upcoming Events

Make sure you mark your calendar for April 2nd. The Southern Center for Agroecology will be hosting a Spring Planting Festival with plant sales as well as speakers discussing seed saving, composting and planting for pollinators. The event will also host a seed exchange. The event will take place at Fletcher Library as well as on the premise of Little Rock Urban Farming down the road from Fletcher. For full details and schedule, go to their facebook event page or to the Southern Center for Agroecology Website.

Related to seed saving, I’m sure many of you are making preparations for a veggie garden this year. I’ve always enjoyed looking through seed catalogs. The variety, color and uniqueness of various breeds always entice my vision of what is possible and cultivate my curiosity. However, there is also a resilience in using saved seed as well. When we save our own seed, we winnow generality into local opportunity. ALFN takes pride in providing local food to local consumers. But can you imagine not only local food economies, but a local farming culture that grows local varieties specific to our own bioregion? When we save seed, we encourage breeds from catalogs to adapt to our own particularity whether it be humidity, heat and drought or specific local diseases. By selecting seed, our food base becomes more robust. I’m a fan of Carol Deppe, an author, gardener and promoter of saving seed. In one of her recent books, she provides the broader reasons for saving seed…in this case corn seed:

“Corn is at the core of modern agribusiness, the most important food crop in North America. In no other crop are the values of modern commercial agribusiness as thoroughly embedded. There is nothing we can do that is ultimately subversive – there is no act of gardening that is so profound a rebellion, there is no act of eating that is so potent a blow for food quality and food system sanity – as to take back the corn crop in our own backyards, and grow, breed, eat, and save seed of corn based upon an entirely different set of values.” (from The Resilient Gardener: Food Production and Self-Reliance in Uncertain Times)

Doesn’t Deppe make you want to put a bandanna on and get out in the garden? Plant away!

All the best,

Kyle Holton
Program & Market Manager

Market Reminder

Good Evening ALFN Members,

Remember to finalize your order in the market before tomorrow at noon.

The market is beginning to bust with spring produce. This Saturday, we are having another Community Market Day and Robert Lashley with Willow Springs will be with us. Robert is full of knowledge, experience and insight. Remember to drop by and greet Robert. Shoot, you may even get a few good pointers on spring planting from him!

Also, Weal & Woe will have more tulips available for the Easter weekend. This Saturday is a market day you don’t want to miss!

See you there!

Kyle Holton
Program & Market Manager

Volunteer Sign Up: Volunteer Spot

The Market Is Open

Welcome ALFN members to another week on our local market full of common, exotic, sensusal, savory, sweet, and nutritious products cultivated and prepared by local growers.

What Is New This Week?

We are nearing Easter weekend and the pivot into spring weather. Weal & Woe will have some beautiful arrangements of Parrot Tulips on sale this Saturday, so look for them at market. These flowers are really spectacular with wide explosions of color.

I’m always finding surprising items on our website. This past week, I realized A B C Nature Greenhouse & Herb Farm sells Water Fern, Azolla pinnate. These aquatic plants are fantastic. They grow on the surface of water very quickly providing habitat for other marine creatures. However, Water Ferns fix atmospheric nitrogen due to a symbiotic relationships with blue-green algae. Many agricultural traditions in the East use Water Fern as green manure in rice fields as well as supplemental feed for ducks and chickens. How cool is that!!! Setting up a small pond in a backyard is a great way to not only use Azolla, but provide habitat for indigenous amphibians and beneficial insects. Of course, you don’t have to have a plant to enjoy Water Fern. Any small space that can hold some water will allow Water Fern to quickly reproduce for a unique, sustainable source of fodder or compost.

Next week, we have our third Community Market Day. This month we will welcome Willow Springs Market Garden on Saturday. Make sure you get an order so you can drop by and see Robert. I tell you, every time I speak with Robert, I learn something new about gardening. He is a skilled gardener and has a keen interest in unique plants and foods not traditionally found in grocery stores or farmers markets. Make sure you give an extra ten minutes to greet Willow Springs this next week.

Enjoy the week!

Kyle Holton
Program & Market Manager

Volunteers Needed Tomorrow

ALFN Members,

We are short volunteers for this Saturday with four open slots. If you are able to help during one of the two shifts, please sign up on Volunteer Spot.

Thank you!!

Kyle Holton
Program & Market Manager

Market Reminder

ALFN Members,

Remember to finalize your order in the market before tomorrow at noon. Thanks to the ingenuity of many of our growers who extend seasons, spring produce is already here. I can’t get over the kind of greens, lettuces and root crops available right now. Don’t worry, the veggies will be there next week, but why wait?

DARK Act

The DARK Act is up for a vote in the Senate tomorrow. If approved, the law would not require mandatory labeling on GMO products. The industry has spend more than 100 million in lobbying efforts to fight mandatory GMO labeling. With circus act underway in the main tent, it is possible this approval could quietly be passed into law. If you get a chance, call your senator and give ’em an ear full!

Stay on your game out there! Pack sunscreen and mittens for the rest of the week:)

Cheers,

Kyle Holton
Program & Market Manager

The Market Is Open

ALFN Members,

The market is open! We are entering the ides of March full of surprises and delights. Keep an eye out for perennial crops to emerge out of the ground whether they be asparagus spears or labrynthine morels on the forest floor.

Updates/News

We are excited to announce that ALFN won a $1000 grant from the Super Service Challenge which supports volunteer-based initiatives. Thanks to your votes, we were able to receive this money…wahoo!

Reflection

The world of cost benefit analysis attempts to count all objects, creatures and possibilities into quantifiable units. When a capitalist, market-driven culture meets the natural world, it reduces all ecological relationships and individuals to discrete units…numbers. Our whole system of money is based on the assumption everything can be counted. A market culture believes everything from the sand on the seashore, to the fish in the sea, to the minerals in the ground, to the cabbage above the ground can be counted. From the counting, markets assess value. On a counting scale, we assign worth. Our labor is counted and assigned value based upon how many units are counted. For the capitalist country, even the worth of citizens is assigned worth based upon quantifiable units called currency.

But all this counting raises a simple question. Can everything be counted? Are some aspects of Earth uncountable? Unfathomable? What happens to the aspects of earth we can’t count? Do they just disappear under the bulldozer’s blade of market interest? Consider the pressure put on managers of the land…farmers who are in relationship to the land? The market squeezes interest and attention only into objects that can be counted and valued. The wetland is drained so we can count more lettuce heads. But there is a deep in the wetland and a deep in the sky that we cannot count. From the complexity of land and sky, life is supported. The unfathomable places of our landscape are where the gifts of life emerge. Human-made markets may not be able to quantify weeds, butterflies and frogs, but these are natural individuals that help weave a tapestry of life onto our planet. Our counting civilization has wrecked havoc on what cannot be counted with green numbers.

When we exchange green numbers for produce, we aren’t identifying the true worth of kale, carrots or cabbage. The money merely counts an exchange made for a much deeper gift we truly cannot count. Our economics are built on a deeper mystery we cannot fathom, nor quantify.

“To sum up: a system of conservation based solely on economic self-interest is hopelessly lopsided. It tends to ignore, and thus eventually eliminate, many elements in the land community that lack commercial value, but that are (as far as we know) essential to its healthy functioning.” (Leopold in The Land Ethic)

Have a great week,

Kyle Holton
Program & Market Manager

Market Reminder

Good Afternoon ALFN Members,

Remember to finalize your order before tomorrow at noon when the market closes until Sunday. There is still plenty of options to choose from with eggs, meat and veggies. Also, feel free to sign up to volunteer this weekend. We have still have two slots open for the early shift. You can sign up here: Volunteer Spot.

Have a great afternoon!

Kyle Holton
Program & Market Manager

The Market Is Open

ALFN Members,

The market is open! We have plenty of egg options including duck eggs, spinach galore, new cheeses, local baked goods and an assortment of meats. The market is already beginning to show signs of spring!

Updates

For those of you wanting to follow the local mishaps of chicken ordinance in Little Rock, a member of ALFN started a facebook page where everyone can begin to communicate and possibly organize. If anything, the page can provide conversation and knowledge-sharing among Little Rock chicken enthusiasts. Give ’em a like here: Little Rock Urban Chickens

ArkansasGives

Mark your calendar for April 7. From 8 AM to 8 PM Arkansans can give to their favorite non-profits. ALFN is on the list again for this year, and we are excited and thankful for the promotion ArkansasGives provides to statewide organizations. During this one-day event, each donation you give will help your favorite nonprofit organizations qualify for additional bonus dollars from Arkansas Community Foundation. All participating nonprofits will receive a portion of a pool of bonus dollars provided by Arkansas Community Foundation; the more a nonprofit raises, the more of the bonus dollars it will receive. We will have our own page during this event. Look for future email reminders! Last year, over 2 million dollars were given to non-profits after the one day event! You can also follow the twitter conversation here: ArkGives

Have a great week!

Kyle Holton
Program & Market Manager

Market Reminder

Good Afternoon ALFN Members,

Remember to finalize your order on the market before tomorrow at noon.

Also, remember to make a strategy for pick-up on Saturday due to the races. We may not have to make hunting and escape plans in the wild like our ancient descendants, but this weekend’s foraging adventure may take a bit of forethought.

Los Tacos has informed me that there will be tamales this Saturday! How cool is that! Not only will you be able to pat yourself on the back for making the trek out to the market, but you can purchase a gustative reward!

See you Saturday!

Kyle Holton
Program & Market Manager