Farmstand Hours for the Summer Season

Sorry for any confusion about the farmstand hours! We changed the Wednesday hours to make it more convenient for folks driving home from work and I forgot to update our blog. The farmstand is currently open on Wednesdays from 4 pm - 7 pm. We also sell through the Athens Farmers Market on Saturdays from 8-12. We plan to add more hours, including a Friday evening egg pick-up, starting later in the season. Hope to see y'all out there!

Extra! Extra! Read all about it!

We are up to Issue 8 of our Native Sun Farm weekly newsletter! It's a great way to keep up with our happenings - where we are selling that week, what we have for sale and possibly a recipe or a haiku! We also got some REAL press this week from an article in our local paper, the Oconee Leader! Thanks to reporter Mary Anne Carroll for coming out to visit our farm. If you live in Oconee County, then you will get your Leader in the mail today.

Also, you can follow us on Facebook or Twitter!

ELF Market Farm to Garden Sale

Join us on Saturday, March 26th at the East Lake Farmer's Market in East Lake, Georgia for the Market Farm to Garden sale. We will have kale, collards, chard and leaf lettuces to sell, as well as potted herbs and worm castings! We will begin our regular season of Saturday markets starting April 9th in Athens.

Who we are: Native Sun Farm - A Certified Naturally Grown farm outside Athens, GA

Where we are: 1560 Jimmy Daniel Rd, Bogart GA 30622 (1 mile south of Sam’s Club)

Where we sell: Wednesdays @ our farmstand on Jimmy Daniel Road from 4 pm - 7 pm

Friday evening egg pick-up @ our farmstand from 6 pm - 7 pm (starting mid-July)

Saturdays @ the Athens Farmer’s Market

What we sell: Certified Naturally Grown fruits and vegetables and farm fresh eggs

Want to join our mailing list?

You can pre-order for the week and pick up at the farmer’s market or make an egg order for Friday evening pick-up. We promise not to bombard your inbox! We send out an email once a week letting you know what we have in the field that you can pre-order. Pre-order season begins the first full week in April.

Spring Season is approaching!

Who we are:

Native Sun Farm - A Certified Naturally Grown farm outside Athens, GA

Where we are:

1560 Jimmy Daniel Rd, Bogart GA 30622 (1 mile south of Sam’s Club)

Where we sell:

Wednesdays @ our farmstand on Jimmy Daniel Road from 4 pm -7 pm

Friday evening egg pick-up @ our farmstand from 6 pm - 7 pm (starts mid-July)

Saturdays @ the Athens Farmer’s Market

What we sell:

Certified Naturally Grown fruits and vegetables and farm fresh eggs

Want to join our mailing list?

You can pre-order for the week and pick up at the farmer’s market or make an egg order for Friday evening pick-up. We promise not to bombard your inbox! We send out an email once a week letting you know what we have in the field that you can pre-order. Pre-order season begins the first full week in April. To register, send an email to nativesunfarm@gmail.com and put "Mailing List" in the subject line.

In the mean time, you can still find our produce for sale at Athens Locally Grown.

Make your orders by Tuesday for Thursday evening pick-up at Ben's Bikes.

It's salad time!

Our hoophouse is hopping with salad greens! We've had number of lettuces that have been solid producers throughout the winter and we've been able to sell them through the local online farmer's market. Recently, I had a random Thursday off of work and thought I'd help out Farmer Brent in the fields for a full-on "harvest" day. Thursdays are the day that customers pick up their produce orders from the weekly online sales. Depending on the number of orders, it can be a very EARLY morning to get everything harvested and packaged for delivery. This particular Thursday was a big day for Native Sun and it took both Farmer Brent and I four hours to harvest, wash and package two coolers full of lettuces, kale and herbs. I had a whole new appreciation for what he does every week. I couldn't believe how much work it was to wash and dry all that lettuce! It involved a number of soaks and then placing the lettuce in a mesh bag and literally swinging it around until you wring the water out. Later that evening, after a little bit of whining from me, we hopped on the internet and found a Youtube video showing us how to convert a washing machine into a giant salad spinner. Farmer Brent wasted no time in snatching up a washing machine from the Habitat ReSource store and after removing the agitator and giving it a thorough cleaning, we were up and running. Now we can dry ten pounds of lettuce in less time than it took to do a pound!

We are so excited because spring is just around the corner and we have trays and trays of seeds getting started right now. We plan to re-open the farmstand in April and we will have a bounty of delicious veggies, fruits and farm-fresh eggs! We'll keep you posted on opening dates, but for now, check out our weekly offerings from www.athenslocallygrown.net.

No Rest for the Weary

What do farmers do in the winter? Well, our fearless Farmer Brent keeps on going! Native Sun has been growing through the winter in the recently expanded hoophouse. When we're not tending to delicious lettuces and greens, we're scheming up next year's crop and building fun farm implements like the one in the picture. That is a wheel-hoe constructed from our nephew's "big boy" bike. Fortunately, he didn't mind us using some parts to create this fabulous little weeding device. The next project is a bed shaper that will attach to the tractor and do just what it sounds like - shape the planting beds!

Native Sun has also recently become officially Certified Naturally Grown! We will be applying to have a booth at the Athens Farmer's Market in the spring. If the promise of delicious locally grown foods isn't enough to convince you to come by and visit our booth, then at least stop by and meet our new farmhand. Baby Boy Lopp is due right around the time that the radishes are ready to harvest.

We're still here!

Though our last post was way back in June, rest assured that we're still playing in the fields! It was a busy summer, full of heaps of produce, plenty of learning experiences and more than a few fun surprises. The farmstand was open on Fridays and Saturdays throughout the summer and was often staffed by family and friends. Our top seller by far was heirloom tomatoes. Folks were buying them straight from the vine! We also sold quite a bit of produce through locallygrown.net and Brent has enjoyed meeting other farmers and local food supporters through that market's network.

Any small farmer can tell you that there is always plenty to learn and we've been humbled this summer by all of the knowledge and hard work that goes into the production of what we put on our plates. We were frustrated by a mysterious deadly force on our tomato crop, only to discover too late that we could have prevented it. We have to thank the Cooperative Extension office for finally cracking the case. We also learned that a sweltering Georgia summer can knock even a strong man down if he isn't drinking enough fluids. We thank Athens Regional Medical Center for rehydrating Farmer Brent and instructing him on how to prevent heat exhaustion. Despite our sparkling personalities, we learned that our farmstand tends to sell just as much produce whether we are there or not. The "honor system" that we set up on off-days when the stand wasn't staff seemed to work out really well for our customers. We plan to continue that next year for the neighbors who have become our regulars throughout this season.

We were also graced with pleasant surprises throughout the summer. Farmer Brent came across great deals on greenhouse equipment, farming implements and soil amendments. His resourcefulness and good fortune has helped to keep us trucking along and looking forward to a bigger, and even better season next year. The biggest surprise of all ,though, is a personal one. We will be welcoming a new farmhand to the household next February. Baby Lopp's impending arrival only reinforces the reason why we want to be out in those fields. High quality, fresh, local food supports not only our environment, but also our local economy. We want the world to be a better place for our little guy so we're just going to keep on doing what we're doing and hopefully getting better at it every year.