Justin with Lawrence and Casey of CC Aquaponics

Four String Farm is pleased to announce our partnership with CC Aquaponics. Starting in January, we will include the fresh produce of CC Aquaponics (CCAP) in our farm share program.

CCAP is a new venture by Casey Williams and Lawrence Palreiro. They have worked four years to launch this project. Casey and Lawrence are committed to growing produce without the use of chemicals and they expect to receive organic certification.

We will continue to sell our own produce through the farm share. Our partnership with CCAP allows us to increase the volume and diversity of our vegetables, herbs, fruit, and flowers. Casey and I will coordinate our seasonal plantings to achieve the greatest variety of heirloom produce.

Our partnership will also help us maintain a continual and balanced supply of your favorite fruit and vegetables throughout the year. The challenges of nature–drought, flood, pests, and other surprises—will impact CCAP differently than our farm. By working together, we can ensure a greater supply of produce early and late in the season and have less likelihood of gaps in production.

In aquaponics, the nutrient-rich water from farmed fish tanks is circulated to grow plants hydroponically on rafts or in shale material. The plants filter and cleanse the water, which is circulated back to the fish tanks. “Aquaponics is one of the most sustainable methods of food production,” Casey said.

Kayla and I have been so impressed with Casey’s commitment to his customers, his passion for the business, and the way he has invested himself to master the art of farming. We believe our alignment with CC Aquaponics will be a great benefit for our customers.

For more information about the Four String Farm Share program, send me a message or subscribe to this site for updates.

We will share more information soon about CC Aquaponics and the benefits of this partnership to the community.

Young Plant Growing in Raft

Water Circulates through Shale Grow Bed

Fish in Tanks to Treat Water

Casey Williams of Corpus Christi Aquaponics

Water Circulates from Tank to Plants and Back

Running Yelling Baby gets a “Mom Face”

Emma is Gentle with the Plants

THE BEND is an upscale monthly magazine that celebrates the lifestyle, culture, and cuisine of the Coastal Bend.

Kayla and I are Culinary Editors for the magazine. We write a monthly column with recipes, plus other contributions.  Check out page 93 in the October issue below for some fun Halloween recipes.

Our friends Jordan and Kaley Regas are owners and publishers of THE BEND. Jordan is a writer. His passion for writing—for telling a great story–led him to launch the magazine, and in the process he has built an amazing business. He has a clear vision for the company and he and the team show endless energy in executing the thousands of details that make THE BEND a world-class publication.

Kayla and I are thrilled to be a part of THE BEND. The photography is gorgeous, the stories are compelling, and every single page of this magazine is beautiful.

Here are previous issues back to July 2014. Click here to subscribe and have this beautiful magazine delivered to your door.

Thomas Jefferson was our most brilliant president. He helped invent America, a new nation, from scratch. He conceived a grand vision for our country, articulated in the Declaration of Independence, and he served two terms in the White House to bring his vision to life.

America, at that time, ended at the Allegheny Mountains, but Jefferson saw a horizon that stretched to the Pacific Ocean–a land where thousands of new farms would rise from the black soil.

He sent Lewis and Clark to explore this wilderness, and at the opportune moment, he purchased the land from Napoleon. Jefferson personally drew the state lines of Middle America, and it is the choicest farmland on the planet.

Jefferson lifted our laws, our culture, and even our gardens from the dank conventions of Europe, where peasants fought for scraps from the tables of the lords. In Jefferson’s America, every man and woman could rise above his circumstances to create something beautiful–to create a better life.

For Jefferson, good food and wine fed not just the physical self; it freed the mind to dream. He was at his most creative when dining well. He designed his home and gardens at Monticello, an architectural masterpiece.  He invented the swivel chair, the dumb waiter, the lazy Susan, and he invented what was, up to that point in history, the best plow in the world.

Jefferson was an ambassador of agriculture. He toured the lush gardens of France and sent sketches to farmers back home. He purchased the best Merino sheep from Spain to start a new bloodline in America. And he literally risked his life by smuggling Piedmont rice out of Italy to help invigorate rice production in the Carolinas.

Jefferson mailed thousands of rare and unusual seeds to farmers across America.  He introduced tomatoes, okra, and many other vegetables to the American palette.

For Thomas Jefferson, good food and wine, enjoyed in a beautiful setting, with the intelligent conservation of decent people, was the highest achievement of mankind.

We will celebrate that achievement, that epicurean ideal, at the KEDT Food and Wine Classic this Thursday evening.  The VIP reception will be held at the art museum beginning at 6:30, and the main event will be at 7:00 at the Museum of Science and History.  Tickets are available here.

The best food and finest wine in Corpus Christi will be laid out in the museum, with the art and history of our country hanging on the walls. Good people will be there, and excellent conversation. The only thing needed to bring the evening to its perfection is your presence.

(Kayla in Vineyard in Cephalonia)

My wife and I stood with a farmer in her vineyard in Greece, on the western island of Cephalonia. The hills rose behind us into the mountains, and in front, the ground sloped gently down to the Ionian Sea. The grape leaves were green in the hot sun, and not a blemish on them.

The farmer laughed at our questions about garden pests. She said garden pests had never existed in Greece. She fertilized her soil with sheep in winter and picked her grapes in the summer and never worried about pests. Farming, for her, was that simple.

Coming down from Delphi, the road winds in and out of the rocky cliffs, and on the last rise above Itea, the Gulf of Corinth appears, blue and shining, and for thousands of acres down to the water, olive trees, and not a pest upon them.

There are miles of well-tilled fields along the roads from Pirgos up to Patras, onions, cabbages, lentils, and chickpeas, patchworks of tomatoes and sugar beets, then fields of pumpkins with the vines withered in the reddish dirt, and finally ripe round watermelons with green and golden stripes; and in all of that farmland, there is not a single pest.

In Athens, fig trees grow from the broken sidewalks where pulpy fruit drops between the cracks and the seeds sprout, and nobody bothers to cut them down or tend to them, but still the trees grow tall and the branches sag with the weight of fresh figs, and there is not a sign of pests upon any the trees.

For reasons of climate, soil, and plain old luck, the gardens of Greece have been blessed since the age of Achilles.

South Texas, of course, is far from Greece, and this is not a land free of garden pests. Gardening today is actually more difficult than it was for our ancestors. Native Americans tilled the soil in a time of garden purity, before Europeans introduced non-native pests to the soil.

The worst of our pests came from Asia in the 20^th Century. These plant-devouring insects proliferated mainly due to industrial agriculture. The chemicals meant to kill them only made them worse.

But, as we have learned on our farm in Rockport, you can virtually eliminate the pest problems from your garden. We cannot restore the American Eden, but we can recover the garden purity of former days—a purity that is highly effective in practice.

In this series on natural pest control, we will explore strategies to fight pests; including some ancient techniques that may surprise you. Next week, we will discover how garden design–the placement of the plants themselves–can repel pests from your garden.

(Kayla in Itea, about to swim to the other side)

(Grape Leaves)

(Vineyard View toward Mountains)

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!

We remember the Pilgrims mainly for their role in the First Thanksgiving, but the Pilgrim’s greatest contribution to history actually came after the feast that made them famous.

The first garden in Plymouth Rock was a communal planting of corn, beans, and squash. Every Pilgrim was expected to work in this communal garden and each would share equally in the harvest.

Following the First Thanksgiving, Governor Bradford noticed that harvests were on the decline. A few of the people were doing most of work, but everyone took an equal share of the harvest–workers and shirkers alike. The workers began to lose their enthusiasm, and crops suffered.

In April of 1623, Governor Bradford made a decision that would have profound implications on the colony. He divided the communal garden into individual plots. Each family was granted their own plot to cultivate as private farmland. They could keep or sell their harvest as they saw fit.

The harvests multiplied beyond the greatest expectations of Governor Bradford. He said he never saw families work so hard as they did on their own land. Even “the women now went willingly into the field,” he said, “and took their little ones with them to set corn”.

The Pilgrims set up trading posts throughout New England to sell their surplus. They traded with Native Americans for furs and sold produce to the waves of settlers arriving from Great Britain. Plymouth Rock prospered on the proceeds of their gardens.

This uniquely American concept of freedom flowed into every new settlement in New England, and a powerful sense of individual liberty took root in the region. It is no wonder that the revolution that created the United States began in Boston.

The American economy broke away from the feudalism, socialism, and communism of the Old World. In America, every citizen would have the freedom and opportunity to rise above his circumstances. This concept would later be called The American Dream, and it would change the world.

The Pilgrims did not pass this idea to future generations through high-blown speeches or self-serving monuments. They handed down their idea of freedom through well-tended gardens and plentiful harvests of corn, beans, and squash.

Seeds of Corn, Beans, and Squash for a Three Sisters Garden

(Four String Farm Pastured Turkey, from the cover of The Bend Magazine, photo courtesy our friend Rachel at http://www.racheldurrent.com)

Friends, please order now to reserve one of our delicious turkeys for your Thanksgiving table!  We only have a few turkeys left, and they will go fast.

These turkeys were raised on pasture and spent most of their time developing a wonderful flavor on gardens of corn, beans, and squash.  The turkeys are really exceptional this year.

Our turkeys are $4.99 per pound, and they weigh between 15 and 20 pounds.  These local, pastured turkeys will be freshly processed for your Thanksgiving dinner and have never been frozen.

To reserve your bird, please click on Coastal Bend Health Foods and fill out the form.  You can pick up your bird on Tuesday or Wednesday before Kimmi closes for the day.

Click on The Bend Magazine’s November issue to see Kayla’s roast turkey recipe, along with tips for making giblet gravy, winter greens, and roasted root vegetables.

Thank you for shopping locally!  Have a Happy Thanksgiving!