Various Lettuces and Spinach, Intensively planted
Friends, the next Four String Farm Share will begin January 6 and run through the end of March. To sign up for the program, please click on the link below. We have a limited number of shares available, and we will secure the shares based on who signs up first, so please sign up soon to secure your place.
Click here to sign up now. The sign-up form is also available at Coastal Bend Health Foods.
The Four String Farm Share is a weekly box of our farm fresh products. Your box each week will contain a wide variety of our freshly-picked produce and a selection of our eggs, chicken, pork, or beef. The contents of the box will change over the course of the program depending on season and availability.
Four String Farm will deliver your box on your designated day each week at noon to Coastal Bend Health Foods (on either Tuesday or Friday, please let us know your preference). I will e-mail you in advance with the contents of your box. In these messages, we will also offer details about how the food is grown and include recipe ideas from Kayla.
The cost of each weekly Farm Share box is $68. A $272 payment will be due on the last drop of the month to keep your farm share coming for the next month. You are more than welcome to pay for all three months up front as well. For January, you can pay when you pick up your first box.
In addition to the protein/produce in your box, as a farm share member you will receive a 10% discount on all Four String Farm products sold at Coastal Bend Health Foods. And as a further thank you, we will include a new CD from our radio program, “Your Wholesome Heritage Garden, Volume II”.
Each week, the produce in your box will reflect the harvest of our farm. Many factors influence availability: seasons, weather, pests, and unforeseeable circumstances. The contents of the box—the volume and variety—will vary each week. Some weeks, the boxes will be very heavy, and other weeks, the boxes will be relatively lean.
We will provide a balance of produce and protein in each box to deliver the maximum value over the program. Every week, you will eat just the same as our family.
The protein selections will include a wide variety of cuts of pork, beef, chicken, and eggs—whatever is available that week in the cycle of raising animals. Animals are part of our farm, and they are essential to growing our produce, so we include them as part of our offering. You will enjoy a great diversity of tastes and flavors in these cuts, raised on pasture or gardens, and grown completely without steroids, hormones, or antibiotics.
Additionally, each week, Kimmi will include a special item in your box from her store, a sample of something really good, like honey, produce, or other healthy and delicious products.
Our goal is to provide your family the greatest value over the program. We want you to be very happy and satisfied with the quality, variety, freshness, flavor, and health of your food. By partnering with us over this period, you make it possible for us to focus on your family and bring you the greatest value of wholesome and delicious food.
We will begin another Farm Share in April that will run through the end of June. The first choice to sign up for that program goes to current Farm Share customers. So, by signing up now, you can secure your place for six months of farm fresh food!
Thank you, friends, for your partnership with our farm!
Justin–I’m healed from my hip replacement and still painting vegetables. Looks like yours are ready to be photographed. When is a good time to come out.??? PS. Love your articles and recipees in The Bend and I hear you on NPR!!! Good job!
Thank you so much Carol! I am so glad you are enjoying the radio and magazine work! It is a labor of love!
I can’t find your e-mail address to schedule a time to come out. Can you e-mail me at justinbutts@clearwire.net to schedule a time? Thank you so much Carol!
Dear Justin & Kayla,
First, happy holidays to you both and your families!
We have heard good things about your farm produce deliveries made at Coastal Bend Health Foods from friends, and in years past, loved Justin’s deliveries of eggs and produce right to our front door! Neat how your business has grown ! We still want to support you both and be able to enjoy your local offerings. We do not, however, want the chicken, pork or beef. Can we sign up for your produce and eggs, no other meats? That would be soooooo wonderful! We have been ordering the organic fruits & veggies Kimmie is offering every-other-week from another supplier and will continue with that plan if you cannot offer another alternative. Please let us know if there are options. We love the NPR segments Justin! You are both so smart, educated and do an outstanding job of continuing to educate others in our health, diets and nutrition and choices. Thank you both! Hugs to all of you …’specially Emma!
Hello Patti! We thank you and Brink so much for your support over the years. We truly appreciate you guys and how YOU have helped us keep going!
We are offering the farm share with a mix of produce and protein. We designed this package to maintain balance in our program.
Animals are essential to our method of growing chemical-free produce, so we include protein in our offerings. Our chickens, pigs, and cows condition and fertilize the soil to enable us to grow vegetables. Much of our produce is actually directed to animal forage. The pork chops and roast chickens are just as much a part of our gardens as the tomatoes and carrots, so they are also a part of our farm share.
One hundred years ago and back, every small farm in America looked like ours. Every farmer kept chickens, pigs, and cows, and possibly goats, sheep, etc., in addition to growing produce. The output of the animals balanced the nutrient uptake of the plants. Without manure, the gardens would quickly fail. And without healthy protein in their diet, the farmers who tilled the land would soon collapse.
Protein is also essential to balance the economics of our business. Vegetables and herbs are extremely high-labor products; especially tomatoes, beans, carrots, and other garden favorites. However, vegetables are very low in profit. Protein, on the other hand, is less labor intensive than produce, but drives more profit per unit.
Beef, for example, is the lowest labor unit for a farmer, because it feeds itself everyday on grass with little help from the farmer, and a lot of product is processed all at once by a third-party butcher. However, beef drives the highest profit of any of our products. You have to plant/grow/pick/pack/deliver a LOT of carrots to generate the profit of ONE beef rib-eye. That is why Greg Edelen, the most successful (and, without a doubt, the smartest) small-scale farmer in South Texas, sells grass-fed beef, pork, and chicken, and no produce at all. If we were to only sell produce, we couldn’t grow enough products with our limited labor (me and Kayla) to keep our business going.
Animals are an important part of the balance and biodiversity of our ecosystem. If we did not incorporate animals into our gardens to till, fertilize, and condition the soil, we would be fatally tempted to use chemical pesticides and fertilizers. If we did that, our business would most assuredly fail, no question about it. The chemicals would disrupt the ecology of the soil and we would soon have poor crops and terrible pest problems. However, by using animals, we have created an extremely healthy ecosystem that is genuinely sustainable. Not only that, the more diversity in our program, the greater our output per acre. This balance is the key reason that two workers can generate so much delicious and healthy food in one of the hardest places in America to grow produce.
Our physical health is also part of this balance. Protein is essential to our diet, and to get the most out of our food, we should eat the healthiest and cleanest protein possible. There is no comparison whatsoever to our protein and what is sold at the supermarket. And what is being sold in our farm shares is a real value.
We have evolved our program over the years from selling at farmers’ markets and roadside stands, to farm-to-table delivery, and then to retail. We have learned quite a lot about growing food in the brutal terrain and fierce weather of Rockport (which is next to impossible) and about building efficiency into our operation. The poor soil and brutal climate of our area does not give us many options in terms of growing food. We must make the most of every square foot of farmland and every hour of our labor.
We are continually working to learn more, to get smarter, and to build our proficiencies. As we improve our soil health, which takes time, we will have more options to pass on to our customers. When you consider the forced bundles and contracts that cell phone companies, insurance agencies, and other high margin companies force their customers into, what we are doing seems very straightforward and very fair. And those guys are raking in unimaginable amounts of money, and we are barely making it.
I hope this helps clarify our approach. Thank you again Patti, you and Brink, for being such wonderful customers and for being such an inspiration to us. We love you guys and we thank you thank you thank you for supporting your local businesses! All the best to you, Justin