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    Don’t know how to cook your new veggies? Google recipes for Market veggies. Then share your cooking experiences, and find new ones, on our Market Community Food Blog!

    Stop the Presses

    What Are We Up To?



     
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    Market NOW Open - Apr. 27, 2015


    Cucumbers, green beans, and tomatoes, OH MY!

    8 Great Benefits of Drinking Cucumber Water

    Ready To Order?

    sign in & shop now
    FIRST TIME CUSTOMERS You are invited to watch our Market Tutorial before you begin. If you do not receive an email confirmation immediately after you order, then you did not click the SUBMIT ORDER button and we did not receive an order from you. Call your Market Manager for help.

    SPLG BENEFIT: We know the Growers!

    One of the important jobs of your Market Manager is to build supplier relationships on your behalf. These ties with valuable local resources have been nurtured over years of give and take and getting to know each others’ work ethic. This makes it easier for our Customers to commit to supporting these important local resources. We are fortunate that our vendors—we call them Growers—have similar mindsets and have made a commitment to produce high quality, chemical-free produce and products for the local community. Building our Grower base was a big challenge when we first launched back in 2010. The trend towards chemical-free has exploded since then and now we have vendors pursuing us! Many of our Growers are small entrepreneurial enterprises like our own. We provide them with great online exposure in many ways and, in turn, they help our Market remain well rounded with high quality variety. We want you to know that several of the larger Growers who support us don’t really need our business. However, they understand the importance of small local businesses and take social responsibility by making an investment in our future. THANK YOU to all Growers—large and small—who provide healthy products for our grateful Customers!

    SPECIAL THANKS TO…


    Volunteer Rita Sewell for representing our Market at Eckerd College this past weekend for the “Food Security Conference: Focus on Production & Sustainability”
    Volunteers—and New England snow birds—John & JanJee Bean and sisters Anita & Rita Roux soon departing for their summer homes. These generous folks are important to our SPLG Volunteer Team and we look forward to their return for next season. We are really going to miss them!

    Volunteer Opportunities

    To sustain this Market for the long term, we will need more Customers to get involved as Volunteers. If you have a vested interest in keeping this Market going, please volunteer some time to make that happen. We have organized our volunteer needs by Grower and by Market. RIGHT NOW, the Market needs the most help.

    St. Pete Locally Grown Market in St. Pete is the hub for selling fine products of many of the Growers below needing volunteers—and all those listed on Our Growers page.

    Nathan’s Natural Veggies in St. Pete
    Pioneer Settlement Garden in St. Pete
    The Dancing Goat in Oldsmar
    Alexandra Lake Farm in Dade City

    Message from Your Market Manager

    ON SALE this week
    Several lamb cuts (loin and shoulder chops), white and red infused balsamic vinegars, grass-fed butter, white garlic, shallots, and specially formulated laundry soap for athletes (ALL SPORT).

    SPLG’s fruit basket
    Medjool dates, luscious local papayas, and Washington State fancy fuji apples. We partner with another local small business to meet the minimum purchase requirement from our large distributor of Certified Organic non-local fruits and veggies. Regrets that we are light on fruit this week as our partner was not able to participate. Fortunately, this is a rare occurrence. We will plan an abundance for next Market in two weeks.

    WELCOME New Grower Coeurisma
    Jenifer Slocum joins us this week with her own line of coconut oil using all Certified Organic ingredients. I was struck by her passion to have an impact on our local community. Read all about Coeurisma and then try out her products. Jenifer will be the speaker at our next potluck social on May 23rd where you can sample them and she will explain the health benefits of this saturated fat. One of her products is flavored with dark chocolate… Processed in a commercial kitchen in Largo, Jennifer makes small batches, to order, by hand. In the future, as demand for volume grows, High Pressure Pascalization (HPP) will be implemented for the product. Visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascalization for a definition. Coeurisma’s website is a work in progress and may reflect HPP in some browsers as the original launch intended to implement this process. Jenifer wants to be transparent and state that they are NOT currently using HPP in their operation but they intend to as soon as feasible. If you want to get to know Jenifer, you can meet her and sample her products at the Local Artisan’s Market located inside William’s Sonoma at the International Mall in Tampa on Saturday, May 2nd from 11am – 4pm.

    WELCOME BACK Strawberry Passion Farms
    With strawberry season over, Jerry & Charlie of Strawberry Passion Farms are still working hard in Plant City to grow other Certified Organic veggies. This week they’ve got cucumbers, strawberry onions, round yellow squash, and string beans. Let’s hear it for the basics! They will have produce available until June. Rumor has it they MIGHT try to grow all summer. Keep your fingers crossed! Do read about the Strawberry Onions grown in Central Florida. “…this onion is planted on the edge of the fields to keep bugs and pests away from the precious strawberry crops.” They are supposed to be impacted by the sweetness in the strawberries and we have some this week!

    NEWS from Faithful Farms
    Tara reports that “We don’t have any lettuce as the last cold snap damaged the leaves with freeze spots and we can’t sell them.  So it will be several weeks before we have them again. We do have spinach, etc. and new for this week Shishito peppers. Shishito peppers are generally mild but 1 in approx every ten will light you up. Chefs are going crazy for them right now. They add them to dishes but not as the main ingredient.”

    Have you tried our new DIRECT ORDER SERVICE?
    Debra Black of Mrs. Chippy’s Plant World is really moving forward to expand our Market’s capabilities. Our new DIRECT ORDER SERVICE makes it possible for you to order larger plants in bigger pots. Debra’s variety continues to “grow”. Did you know that you can filter by Grower to see all of her—and any Grower’s—items? Watch our Market Tutorial at the 2:10 time mark for instructions on that.

    WELCOME TO OUR NEWEST CUSTOMERS
    Once you have submitted your order, if in doubt about what you owe, you can always confirm what you have been charged for by checking your account history and viewing your most current invoice. Instructions on how to do that are on our Q&A page under the question entitled Since you don’t provide an invoice with delivery, how do I know what I owe? Also, since your vegetables are picked fresh within 24 hours of delivery, they should be lasting for WEEKS in your refrigerator. When you accept delivery, please take a few minutes to inspect your order to protect your vegetables from unnecessary spoilage. Lastly, it is imperative that you understand our policy on Unclaimed Orders found on our Q&A page. When you make a purchase you are agreeing to abide by this policy.

    SATISFACTION GUARANTEED
    Our Market has high standards for what it sells. Despite that—as seasons transition—the challenges of evolving weather and pesky insects can take its toll on the crops. Market Growers are being very selective about what they are willing to present to you. No, it won’t always be picture perfect (which is part of its charm) and sometimes an insect is going to evade capture! But we won’t send you anything that we wouldn’t eat ourselves. If for any reason we have goofed and you are dissatisfied, please report it to me right away so we can rectify the situation. That’s how we get better and we all benefit from that. Your satisfaction is key to our success as a resource for St. Petersburgs’ lovers of chemical-free, organically & locally grown vegetables.

    Upcoming Events

    All these and more are posted on our Calendar of Events

    WORKSHOPS & EVENTS

    • “Successful Urban Farming in St. Petersburg” on May 9th, 8-10AM Cost $35/$25. RSVP NOW
    • REAL DIRT: Make Your Own” on May 16th, 8-10AM Cost $35/$25. RSVP NOW
    • “Monthly Potluck Social”, May 23rd, Nathan’s Garden Tour Begins at 5:30PM for active Market customers, growers, and volunteers. BY Whoozin.com e-vite ONLY. SPEAKER THIS MONTH: New Grower, Jenifer Slocum, owner of Coeurisma, local provider of coconut oil using all organic ingredients, will speak on the health benefits of coconut oil and the energy this saturated fat provides.

    We thank you for your interest and support of our efforts to bring you the healthiest, the freshest and the most delicious locally-produced foods possible!