Love is Love Cooperative Farm Mansfield, Georgia - January 2024

Greetings Friends & Happy New Year!

As we turn our attention to the beginning our third full year of farming at the new farm site in Mansfield, we are feeling blessed, grateful and grounded. 2023 brought many highs (and a few lows, tbh). A few of our highlights include:

• A fantastic lineup of apprentices: one from Georgia Organics and two from the Anne Saxelby Legacy Fund (miss you Ari, Kate & Kayden!)
• Many, many incredible dedicated volunteers
• A truly remarkable and dedicated team

• Growing lots of food! We grew over 40 different fruits and vegetables and nearly 120 different varieties, producing 116,000 pounds (or 58 tons) of food

• … and flowers:arranging 812 bouquets and 1288 bunches of flowers
• … and plants:+/- 23,000 plants to home gardeners+/- 1,700 seed plug trays to farms around the southeast
• Our plants ended up in many notable public gardens around the city of Atlanta including:

1. The rooftop garden at Georgia Tech’s Kendeda Building
2. Home Depot’s Backyard Garden at The Mercedes Benz Stadium
3. Central Georgia Technical College
4. JF&CS Gardens
5. Star Provisions and Summerland Farm

• Custom growing certified organic plants for other farms around the southeast. ?(Farmers! If you’re interested in purchasing certified organic seed plugs for your farm, please e-mail: [email protected])

• Expanding our greenhouse with the help of the talented team from EcoParadigm. ?(Farmers! If you need help building or repairing your infrastructure, call these guys.)

• Providing CSA shares to (+/-) 400 customers for 34 weeks of the year
• Hosting a farm dinner with Chai Pani and Outstanding in the Field
• Delivering fresh produce to many of the city’s best restaurants, including:Chai PaniFarm BurgerTalat MarketLittle BearLucianDeer & Dove (Congrats, Chef on the James Beard in 2023!)Little TartButter & CreamBig SoftieStaplehouse& many more!
• Delivering fresh produce and flowers to fantastic wholesalers, grocery and food service providers including:Fresh HarvestCommon Market SEBon Apetit at Emory University
• Welcoming our CSA members for Strawberry U-pick in the spring

• …and potluck dinner in the fall (Y’all, thanks so much for coming and for being in our CSA!)

• Opening new fields, including one with a grant to study bermuda grass remediation via cover crops with UGA
• Seeing our mugs on a Fresh Harvest Delivery Truck

As always, time flew. ?We worked hard and had a lot of fun. ?And we would not have been able to accomplish as much without a rock solid group of wonderful humans around us to help support and participate in the work. ?A huge thank you to all who worked, shopped, volunteered and visited with us.

Turning our sights to 2024, we want to share information about food, plants and jobs on the horizon.

COMMUNITY SUPPORTED AGRICULTURE!

As we expand our growing space, we’re expanding our CSA. We’re seeking new CSA members for the 2024 season. ?The Winter CSA starts this week! Learn more and sign up here.Please help spread the word if you can. ???

We have several pickup locations to choose from:

• Wednesday afternoons at Sceptre Brewing in Oakhurst
• Thursday afternoons on the farm in Mansfield (Newton County)
• Saturday mornings at Wood’s Chapel BBQ in Summerhill
• Saturday mornings at Community Q BBQ in Decatur

This will be our 17th year offering a CSA to our community. The CSA is not only the cornerstone, but also one of the most joyful parts of our business. Here are few reasons our members join year after year:

• Eat healthier food
• Try new veggies
• Enjoy fresh, high quality, superior tasting vegetables
• Support a local business
• Know a farmer and where food comes from
• Help take care of the earth! ?
• Belong to a vibrant and kind community and build relationships with vibrant, kind and interesting people
• Receive exclusive perks like you-pick strawberries and gatherings on the farm
• Introduce children to a farmer and build a relationship with a farm
• Savor the add-on shares – everything from milk, bread and cheese to coffee, peanut butter and rice are available — and of course limited flower shares from farmer Monica.

We hope you’ll consider joining our community if you haven’t already done so. If you have questions, you can read a lot more about it on our website.

If you know you want in, use this form to sign up now. Sign up for the full year to save $$$.

If you’re local, you can even ride your pony to the pickup.

SIGN UP FOR CSA NOW

PLANT SALES - SAVE THE DATE

Our Spring Plant Sale will be Saturday, April 6th. Look for the web store to go live in mid-February.

Our Fall Plant Sale will be Saturday, September 7th. (Web store early August).

As usual, we plan to provide activities, workshops, vendors, music, farm tours, food and fun! We hope you will plan to join us. ?

WORK WITH US

We’re hiring full and part-time farm crew. ?You can learn more and apply here.

We send you love and gratitude from all of the worker-owner farmers at Love is Love Cooperative Farm and we hope to see you sometime, somewhere very soon!

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p.s. Don’t forget SNAP / EBT customers get 50% off of plants and CSA shares thanks to our partners at Wholesome Wave Georgia.