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Great Country Farms

Community Supported Agriculture, CSA, Produce Farm, U-Pick, Field Trips in Loudoun County, VA

Pick your Own Fruit Farm

CLOSED for the 2019 season.

Winter Office Hours: Tuesday-Thursdays 10am-4pm
540-554-2073
18780 Foggy Bottom Road, Bluemont, VA 20135

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What’s My Delivery Day This Year?

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2018 CSA Delivery Schedule

Find the zip code of your delivery location.

Tuesday: 22201, 22202, 22203, 22204, 22205, 22207, 22209, 22301, 22302, 22310, 22314, 22315

Wednesday: 20105, 20120, 20121, 20136, 20151, 20152, 20155, 22003, 22015, 22030, 22031, 22032, 22033, 22042, 22046, 22124, 22152, 22153, 22180, 22181, PLUS Pamela Allen Group

Thursday: 20132, 20147, 20148, 20164, 20165, 20166, 20170, 20171 (EXCEPT Pamela Allen Group), 20175, 20176, 20191

Forgot your group site’s zip code? Check here:

Tuesday Group Sites

Herzfeld Group, Montana Street Group, Allan Group, Lyon Village/Krieger Group, Crystal City We Work Group, Moomaw Group, Motley Fool Group, Huntington Forest Group, Church Courts Group, Caputo Group

Wednesday Group Sites

Pamela Allen Group, Musci Group, McNerney Group, Clifton Townes Group, Crestwood Pediatric Group, Wellness Connection, Great Harvest Vienna, Olio2Go, Fontana Group, Bishop Group, Ewell Group, Gildea Group, Van Horn Group, Hamaker Group, Mosby Woods Group, Audley Farm Group

Thursday Group Sites

Sonak Family Chiropractic, Romaezi Group, Donohue Group, Mirra Group, Great Harvest Herndon, Great Harvest Ashburn, Reston Children’s Center, Leesburg Chiropractic, Brew LoCo, Wine’ing Butcher Group, Ellinger Group, Broadlands Nature Center, Flanagan Group, Evergreen Sportsplex 

Why Local Food?

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If you’re new to farm food or still considering your first CSA membership, you may be wondering exactly what makes this food different from convention grocery store fare. Most of the answers to that question lead to more questions, so we thought we’d point you to some resources that move the information train forward.

Let’s start with a list of basic factors. This particular list comes from the University of Washington’s “Whole U” wellness initiative, but most CSA farmers would come up with similar reasons.

  1. Local foods are fresh.
  2. Local foods are seasonal.
  3. Local foods have a higher sustainability quotient.
  4. Local foods promote variety.
  5. Factors 1 through 4 combine to make local food considerably more nutritious than food from the industrial system.
  6. Local foods promote local economies.
  7. Local foods create community.

Many resources are available to explore those factors in more detail. We’ll point you to some of them.

This post from an organization called Local Harvest starts with the feature that initially attracts most local eaters — taste — and it makes a useful connection between taste and nutritional density. Here’s a word about the source:

“Local Harvest is a community project, initiated by the Ethical Consumer Group, with a view to providing a resource to make it easy to find local and more sustainable food sources.”

This article from Scientific American discusses the alarming probability that nutritional density has been slowly bred out of most food in the industrial system. Industrial farming selects for size, growth rate, and pest resistance, not optimal nutrition. On top of that, it tends to use growing practices that damage soil, such as raising the same crops in the same fields year after year, with the help of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides.

“Because of soil depletion,” the authors report, “crops grown decades ago were much richer in vitamins and minerals than the varieties most of us get today.”

Unlike its industrial counterpart, our soil gets better every year because we enrich it with tons of compost and nitrogen-fixing cover crops. And since our soil is strong and we’re always changing crop locations, we don’t have to select for size or pest resistance. So our fruits and vegetables are more nutritious than what you’re likely to get from industrial sources.

A note on the source: “Scientific American, the longest continuously published magazine in the U.S., has been bringing its readers unique insights about developments in science and technology for more than 170 years.” Learn more here.

If the process of breeding nutrition out of the food supply interests you, try this article from the New York Times, which follows the process back to its earliest origins.

Check back for links to more websites as we continue to explore the question over the next few months.

5 Apple Varieties to Pick in mid-September

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It’s peak apple picking season in northern Virginia. I was thinking about posting tips for apple picking but found that there are already some excellent posts out there… my favorite is 10 Tips for Organizing an Apple Picking Outing with Kids.   One of the tips is to plan to get lots of apples and plan what you’ll do with them.   So, to help with those planning efforts, here is a list of apples ripe in northern Virginia in mid-September.  We’ve added photos, descriptions of their qualities and tasting notes.  Now you’re ready to pick lots of apples!

At Great Country Farms, all of our apple trees have been planted in the last 15 years so we are considered a “modern orchard” with dwarf trees designed for easy pick your own.  No ladders required!   Our varieties are names that you may not recognize but they have been derived from some of the best classic apples.  Take a wander through our varieties below and decide which options are best for you and your family.

Candy Crisp Apples on the tree

Candy Crisp Apples

Candy Crisp® 

  • Description:  This glossy yellow beauty is shaped like a Red Delicious apple with the top wider than the bottom and knobs on its flooring.
  • Parentage: This tree was discovered as a chance seedling growing in a Red Delicious orchard in New York.  Hence, Candy Crisp is thought to be related to and has a similar shape to Red Delicious but the skin color is golden yellow.
  • Tasting Notes: Firm, juicy and sweet with a somewhat pear-like flavor.
  • Uses: Sweeter  apple great for eating & dessert baking. Keeps well for 1-2 months refrigerated.

 

 

Jonafree apple on the tree

Jonafree

  • Description: deep red with creamy, white flesh and crisp, juicy eating quality similar to old-fashioned Jonathan, with 100% Jonathan flavor.
  • Parentage:Introduced in 1965 this apple was developed as a Purdue Rutger Illinois Coop from Golden Delicious, Jonathan and Rome Beauty  PRI 855-102 x NJ 31
  • Tasting Notes: Flavor is Jonathan-like, but less acidic.
  • Use: Great for Eating and holds up nicely for baking.  Great lunch box size apples.

 

 

Jonagold apple at Great Country Farms

Jonagold apple on the tree.

Jonagold

  • Description: this lovely red apple often shows golden striations.
  • Parentage:Golden Delicious and Jonathan
  • Tasting Notes: The Jonagold apple has a balanced blend of both its parents’ flavors offering the sweet-tart taste found in the Jonathan and the aromatic honey-like scent of the Golden Delicious.
  • Use: A great choice for cider, juicing and cooking. This apple stores well for 1-2 months refrigerated.

 

Ruby Jon apples at Great Country farms

Ruby Jon Apples on the tree.

Ruby John

  • Description: This more petite apples is deep red with creamy, white flesh and crisp, juicy eating quality similar to old-fashioned Jonathan, with 100% Jonathan flavor.
  • Parentage:Sport  (natural mutation) of Jonathan
  • Tasting Notes: Biting in reveals, well, a Jonathan which is an old classic, sweet and balanced and cidery, with flashes of spice.
  • Use: This smaller apples is great for lunches and snacks.
Shizuka apples at Great Country Farms

Shizuka Apples on the tree.

Shizuka

  • Description: This tall, large, yellow-hued apple that is mostly yellow with some green or red flush.
  • Parentage:Golden Delicious cross with Indo (Same parents as the Mutsu Apple)
  • Tasting Notes: This descendant of the golden has an almost buttery flavor that is mostly sweet with a hint of tart.
  • Uses: Eating, apple sauce and great for making dried apple rings.

Now that you know all about the apples ready to pick this season, here are some great links to Savor Apple Recipes and 15 Things to Do with all the apples you pick this fall.  Enjoy!

About Our Beekeeper

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The Wall Street Journal runs an article series called Second Acts, which profiles people who have taken up second careers later in life, and last fall they included Bill Bundy, our beekeeper, in that series. Julie Halpert’s article begins thus:

“When Bill and Sue Bundy bought an eight-acre farm in Leesburg, Va., in 1996, it was to help Ms. Bundy pursue a dream of raising sheep. Mr. Bundy had no idea it would lead to a second career for him as well.

Mr. Bundy spent 30 years managing biomedical laboratories, providing lab services and sophisticated tests that hospitals and physicians couldn’t perform in their own facilities. But when his employer, based then in Chantilly, Va., became the object of a corporate acquisition—triggering an uncertain future role for him—Mr. Bundy decided to retire in 2004, at the age of 60.”

Click here for  the rest of Wall Street’s report on Loudoun’s bee master extraordinaire.

Steve McFadden on the Future of CSA

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Steve McFadden

Steve McFadden, an independent journalist who’s been writing about Community Supported Agriculture ever since that way farming first came to America, made this quick pitch presentation at the national Rural Futures Conference in Lincoln, Nebraska back in 2013.

“It’s a talk about the first quarter century of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) in the USA, and the potential for CSA in the next quarter century,” McFadden writes on his Facebook page. “In my view, if pursued not as a ‘marketing strategy’ but rather as initially intended as a community enterprise based on associative economics, CSA can continue to yield a cornucopia of benefits: environmental, economic, personal and social. The talk concludes with a suggestion on how to more rapidly propagate CSA as climate and political turbulence accelerate. Video by my wife, Elizabeth Wolf on a hand-held iPhone.”

 

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