• Pumpkin Patch and Hay Rides
• Scavenger Hunt
• Market Stand, with all of our farm fresh, fall staples
• Live music all day
• PCC Chef’s Cooking Demonstration and Samples at 1pm
• Cascade Harvest Coalition and PCC Farmland Trust Info Booths
• Corn on the cob and fresh apple cider
• Kid’s activities, including face painting and crafts

It’s still a month away, but be sure to mark it on your calendar now!  And look for a coupon in your box in the coming weeks.  We hope to see you there.

(WARNING: Due to a glitch in the Matrix, our audio isn’t of the highest quality. It won’t happen again.)

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This week we hope to see the first Red Haven Peaches from Cliffside Orchards.  If they aren’t able to pick enough this weekend, we will still have peaches and will pick up their peaches the following week.

We do have first of the season local corn!  And more beautiful tomatoes, yellow beans, pluots, melons, apples, etc.  All WA grown.  The next 4 weeks or so mark the height of the local season.  Enjoy and thank you for your support!

You’re invited to join Terra Organics at Tahoma Farms this Sunday, August 22nd for a very special POTLUCK.

Bring the whole family to the farm for an opportunity to meet the Tahoma Farms family, and other Terra Organics members like you. We’ll set out a veggie tray and have salmon on the bbq.  Please bring a dish to share and enjoy a self-guided stroll of the fields, a walk along the Puyallup River, a look at the farm’s operations, and good company.

Guided tours of the farm will be at 2:30pm and 3:30pm, with the potluck dinner starting at 5pm.

Tahoma Farms is located @ 21108 Orville Rd E, Orting, WA, 98360.

On the other end of the spectrum is an egg factory in the middle of Iowa, where millions of birds lay millions of eggs per day (32 million egg cartons recalled times 12 eggs per carton divided by 90 days of production equals 4,266,666 eggs per day where the average hen lays one egg per day).

It’s hard to imagine how far and how fast we got away from decentralized and local production of food.  The recent recall by Wright County Egg has now reached 17 states (including Washington) and the number of reported cases of salmonella linked to the eggs is over 2,000.

Nationally, only 0.4% of all food purchased by consumers comes direct from the farmer.  We’re working with you to grow this number, and as our distribution network grows so does our ability to keep local farmland in production, plant heirloom seeds and raise heritage breeds of animals, keep dollars in our community, and, not least of all, deliver incredibly fresh, seasonal fruits and vegetables.

If you are free on Sunday, please take a drive out to Tahoma Farms, at 21108 Orville Rd E, Orting.  We will be there from 2 to 6 pm.  There will be guided farm tours at 2:30 and 3:30, and a potluck dinner at 5:00.    We hope you can join us!

There’s also a graphic that I’ve been holding onto for a while, and it now seems timely to share it.

The subsidy regime pits commodity growers against vegetable and fruit growers, and McDonalds and others buy fillers and subsidized meat, dairy, and grains at an artificially low cost.  The foods that should be accessible to the least healthy amongst us have little to no price supports.  So long as corn syrup and factory meat and dairy dominate the $60 billion a year farm program in this country, McDonalds will always dominate the way food is produced and consumed in this country, no matter how many new farmers markets are springing up around the country.

But, of course, that doesn’t mean we can give up the fight.

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And in the middle of winter – when the only variety that we can offer is to alternate between rutabagas and turnips, apples and pears – we always have one eye to the summer when virtually all of our produce is sourced from local farms.  And so this week marks the convergence of the Pacific Northwest box and the Small box, as every item in both boxes is from Washington this week.  And this is only the beginning.  If last year was a good indication, it will be November before we see the two boxes taking a divergent path again until next summer.

We hope you enjoy the variety and selection of our freshest, most local produce of the year.

Because our sprinklers run 10 to 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, and new transplants and seeds were sown in the days before the pump failure, we are working overtime to try to get our well back online.  In the mean time, we have a 4″ “trash pump” pulling water at a rate of 250 Gallons Per Minute (GPM) out of the Puyallup River.  We are very fortunate to have both ground and surface water rights for our land.  If we didn’t, and without any other possible recourse, the crop loss would devastate the farm.

The good news is that once we replace the pump we won’t have to worry about another unbudgeted $8000 expense (at least not the same unbudgeted $8000 expense) for another 15 to 20 years.