Thanksgiving

With Buy Local Saturday two days away I am thankful for all our local supporters. Not just our Beanhouses fans, but true local supporters. My family is 5th generation Little Comptonites. My Great-grandparents came here from the Azores. Their children, my grandfather and all my great aunts and uncles went to school in this town, and they farmed here. Back then you didn't leave town for something unless you were unable to get it here. You not only supported your neighbors but you relied on them, and they relied on you. That is what this town was built on.

Everyday should be support local. I see so many company trucks from out of town. We have some great contractors, painters, electricians and gardeners.......all from this town. All raising their families here and keeping this town small. We have a gas station, owned by a local family with children in our school system. Maybe the gas is a little more expensive, but you know who's pumping your gas, you get a smile, and your supporting your neighbor. We have local artisans and crafters that produce everything from fine art to hand made goodies. We have music teachers, tilers, and auto mechanics, all from this town and counting on you. And of course we have the farmers, this farmer who is thankful we had at least one turkey survive coyotes so that she would know what you all are missing!

So when you are considering leaving our sweet town to run errands think about who you could support right here in our town. Think about who you would like to support. Who you would like to count on and who you would like to count on you.

Like the last 27 years, we will again be making our hand-made wreaths. 27 years, we must be pretty good at it by now. Stop by and take a look. We will have all kinds, from balsam to boxwood. We will also have centerpieces and baskets. If you are looking for something special we are more than willing to customize a wreath( you should see some of the crazy shaped wreaths we've done) or even come to your house or business and green up your window boxes or whatever you need.

Enjoy your family today.

The Allens.....but mostly Polly today.

Beanhouses

104 South of Common

Little Compton, RI 02837

401.635.4091

www.beanhouses.com

November 2011

The Bean

Seasonal Newsletter of Beanhouses

November 2011

Here it is, Fall again. It feels as if it were just Spring, like we just planted those 1200 or so heirloom tomato plants. Last year we planted about half of that and had plenty to store for the Winter. There were a couple of tomatoes on our list from 2010 that we decided not to grow this year, and added a couple more varieties. It didn’t seem as if we ordered more seed than any other year but when it was time for the plants to go in the ground the numbers were doubled. There would have been even more if the chickens had not found their way into our make shift duct tape greenhouse and scratched around knocking a lot of the seedling out of their pots. Jeremy and I and the kids spent two afternoons planting the plants in seven and half rows while Cleo’s ipod blasted in the back ground. A few weeks later Olive and I began the Florida Weave, which was a sort of staking/ trellis plan for the tomatoes, which involved several hundred step in posts, many cedar posts buried deep in the ground and thousands of feet of bailing twine. It held up very well until the hurricane, and even then it was able to be pulled back up and staked again. When August came we had four very unique heirloom tomato varieties and an amazing cherry tomato. The kids and I were picking every day. The stand was full. We had more than we could sell at our honor system stand, that was for sure, and way more than we could eat. I just didn’t have the time to can them. As they went by we fed them to our meat chickens, who loved them. Even though they weren’t going to waste they weren’t being sold.

Jeremy commented that we had way too many tomatoes and next year we were not growing nearly as many. In my head I took this very personally. I had watered and turned those seeds under the grow lights. I schlepped water to the duct tape greenhouse, chased chickens, planted, replanted, replanted and replanted, staked, pruned and even braved a couple of snakes for those heirloom beauties, they would succeed! It felt like a challenge. I started emailing restaurants in the area that used local, chem-free veggies. I was finding a lot of places didn’t even know what an heirloom was, never mind want to pay fair price. Tomatoes were going for .63/ pound from the market in Boston. ( This sentence alone could be a book for me, so I will let it go at that ……for now.) I remembered the Market Mobile from a seminar I went to the past Winter. It was a sort of traveling farmers market for restaurants and markets. So, twice a week we predicted and listed what we would have on delivery day, twice a week we picked and packed for the Market Mobile and twice a week we delivered to Pawtucket to Farm fresh RI, where our heirloom tomatoes got put on a truck and delivered to the customers that had ordered from the online system that we listed on. It was very exciting. I was now known in certain circles as…..’ Tomato Girl”. I dubbed Jeremy “Cherry Tomato Boy”, he wasn’t too excited at first, but it grew on him. As tomatoes began to fade we began bringing Dahlias to the Market Mobile. City Feed and Supply in Jamaica Plains, Boston became our biggest fan. They were our biggest buyer of tomatoes and jumped right on board with the Dahlias. We have not checked them out in person yet, but have sent some friends and family up to the big city who have reported back that it’s a great place. A local market, offering all sorts of locally produced products. They also offer soup and sandwiches made with local produce. They are having a day in December for their farmers to come in for a tour, I am very excited and have already marked it on my calendar.

For those of you who found it hard to get a hold of some of our Cleo’s Cluckers ( our free range, chem-free eggs) fear not, we have added 300 peeps to our flock. While they are less than 3 weeks old now, come Spring they will be laying like crazy. We are working on a new nesting box idea to hopefully keep them laying where we can collect them instead of the woods and fields. I am sad to say that we only had one Narragansett turkey survive the coyotes. We had tossed around the idea of raising some for Thanksgiving when a friend had some extra that they passed on to us. When they were old enough we let them free range. They were so much fun, they would let the kids hold them and perch on their arms. They would follow you around when you were in the field, sometimes even cross the road to come and say hi. Within a two day span coyotes had taken all but one, some of them even during the day. I’m not sure where we stand now with trying them again. It was such a great experience right up until it wasn’t……those darn coyotes.

Besides the baby chicks, we have also added a new girl donkey to the farm. Her name is Darla, she is all white, very friendly and gentle. She has become fast friends with our other boy donkeys Alfalfa and Buckwheat. She enjoys running and playing but I can just tell she often finds them to be very silly boys and just sits back and watches them. Sir Wallace of Beaverhead is also joining the farm for the Winter. He is a Scottish Highland bull. We have two heifers and a cow in our herd that we have to repopulate, but until now we didn’t have a bull. I have been very worried about the mayhem that would go along with introducing a bull into the pasture. I have heard horror stories, even witnessed some not so ‘romantic’ encounters on this farm. So the thought of a several hundred pound bull sort of scared me. While on his way here, Sir Wallace’s owner called and said’ please don’t laugh at my bull’ and left it at that. This made us wonder why would we laugh? I was picturing this huge, strange beast with one crooked horn, torn ear, tattered fur and definitely smoke coming out of his nostrils. When the trailer pulled up I cautiously peeked through a crack in the back to see the most adorable bull ever. He was small with curly hair in his eyes, looking much more scared than me. He gently walked from the trailer to the gate with nothing more than a make shift rope harness. It took an hour or so for everyone to settle down in the field, there was some chasing, some sniffing, but definitely no mayhem.

Blue, our Australian Cattle dog is in her whelping box as I write this. Blue is usually by Jeremy’s side, either on the job or on the farm herding cows or chickens. She is very upset to be on bed rest, although lately her herding is just standing in one place barking and getting in and out of the tuck has been a chore of its own. So, she is home, panting, wriggling around, getting up and down and biting the occasional strange man she encounters. (You can’t blame her really). Her due date is this coming weekend, so hopefully by then we will have added some more Australian Cattle dogs to the farm as well.

This newsletter was originally going to be a quick email reminder about our chickens, but I had so much news to share that it turned into a newsletter. So, we have plenty of our frozen chickens still available. They were pasture raised by us since they were a day old, no antibiotics, no hormones, and no chemicals. They were allowed to free range and often ate heirloom tomatoes and goat’s milk whey. They are our best meat chickens yet. There is a man that visits Little Compton every year and stops by for one of our chickens, saying the only place he has been able to get a chicken that tastes as good as ours is in some small village in France. Oo la la. Our fresh chicken sales got interrupted by Hurricane Irene, luckily someone let us put them in her chest freezer that was attached to a generator so we didn’t lose any. So if you ordered one and forgot to pick it up, or maybe you were too busy getting bread and milk, or maybe you want one or two now, drop us an email or give us a call. We have 4-6 pound roasters, delicious in any size! How about popping a frozen one in your crock-pot in the morning? Or a nice oven roasted locavore dinner?

I have been watching a great deal of documentaries on food production while shelling beans. Food Inc. is one of my favorites, but King Corn and Ingredients are a close second. Fresh is in my Netflix queue. These movies are eye opening even to me who lives on a farm, producing beef, chicken, eggs, fruit and vegetables. There movies should be watched by everyone, but especially the people who feel they are eating natural or humanly. You truly don’t know how your food is grown unless you see it for yourself. After watching these movies I have decided the only solution is to be a Beanivore! Look for Beanbucks 2012 coming soon and support our CSA and our farm.

Don’t forget we make the finest boxwood and mixed greens wreaths around. All hand made by us, with the freshest materials. We are glad to make custom sizes and shapes too. Wreaths and holiday arrangements will be available around Thanksgiving at our honor system stand or drop us a line.

Don’t forget your chicken,

The Allens,

Jeremy, Polly, Cleo, Cyrus, Olive and Xan

www. Beanhouses.com

Beanhouses

104 South of Common Road

Little Compton, RI 02837

401.635.4091

****Since I have written this Blue has had her puppies! 8 adorable babies. Both Blue and her pups are doing great.

recycling

I thought I would try a shorter newsletter, a blog right? Our newsletters seem so overwhelming to me, we have so much to say, so much to tell you, we get excited, it must be an over load of information. So I will try to blog, notice I said try. Right now with kids home from school and snow on the ground it seems like a great idea, come April with seed boxes filling the house, gardens needing to be edged, baby chicks, muddy boots.....you get the idea, right?

When I was a kid I lived with my Great Aunt and Uncle. They both grew up on farms here in Little Compton. I'm not sure recycle was a word then, but it certainly was a way of life. We didn't have a recyle box in our house or at the dump, I mean transfer station. We had a compost bucket in our sink and a mulch pile in our yard. We had a paper bag full of old newspapers, junk mail and anything burnable, we had a burn pile in our yard. We had boxes in the basement where we kept containers that could be used again and again, my favorite being coolwhip containers which we always used to store brownies. We had a bucket that held swished cans, after they were emptied we would cut out the other side and jump on them, that way they took up less space. We had boxes of old greeting cards, that were cut up in following years and glued to colored paper to make new greeting cards. We had baskets of old tea cups with broken handles and chips that had been thrown out at the homes where they worked (cooking, cleaning and gardening). The tea cups became saucers for the pots of geraniums that filled our house from January to May. The geraniums were clippings from plants pulled from gardens where they worked and tossed into the compost. The clippings sat in old jelly jars for weeks rooting in our kitchen window until they made it into the teacups. Not once did I hear the word recycle, it was just common sense. As I write this I sit in our office filled with egg cartons. Someone started a rumor that to buy eggs from us you need to bring your own carton. Not true, but certainly appreciated. The state requires us to black out other farms info, but incorages the reuse of egg cartons. There are days we finds stacks of egg cartons at our stand or in our cooler. Sometiems pint and 1/2 pint boxes. Just when I think I am going to have to buy nursery pots for our perennials (which would totally raise our $5/pot price), stacks show up in our yard. Our newest projects of reusing materials have been egg mobiles. We collect wood, old fencing, wheels, you name it and make them into laying houses. We have used everything from lobster pots to wine cellar doors.
So before you recycle something, see if you could reuse it or maybe pass it on to some who can.

The Holiday Bean

I was having great difficulty posting photos and info regarding our holiday decor. I was however, able to post pictures to our website. So, please visit our website www.beanhouses.com to see some of our wreaths and trees.

The Bean - Volume 4

I am going to start this newsletter by introducing ourselves. It probably would have been a better idea to do this in the first issue, but I think back then the people that were receiving this knew us well, it was more like an extended family update. As time goes by, and with the use of the internet our extended family has grown and some of us may not know each other as well as we would like. So, I'll go first. We are a small family owned farm. We have four children between the ages of 7 and 12. They all work on the farm. They have certain chores that they are responsible for individually and some we do as a family. I am a fourth generation Little Comptonite, my great grandparents farmed the land across the road from where we farm now. My Grandfather and Great Aunts and Uncles farmed on local farms. My husband started farming at 14 on his aunt's farm in Westport, Allen Farms. We met on a local farm as teenagers. We ARE farmers. We started our business over 13 years ago as a gardening business and greenhouse grower, over the years we did less wholesale growing and more gardening. We have dabbled in retail but love the freedom of our honor system stand. We have been selling in season chem-free fruits and vegetables, the BEST free range eggs around and fresh flower bunches all in front of our house with a hanging scale and a coffee can. While we take our word and responsibilities seriously we try to make everything we do fun and enjoyable. We are the silliest farmers we know! We have been trying to get this newsletter out seasonally to keep everyone up to speed with our busy farm.
We skipped a frost this year and went right into a freeze, at least in our Dahlia field. All of the Dahlia tubers were dug this week, and packed away in our basement until the Spring. Last year we over wintered some Cannas as well as Dahlias and had a great success with them this Summer. They are dug and in our basement as well. We estimate about 2000 Dahlias and about 1000 Cannas. Its always interesting to see what happens in the Spring. The Winter is like its own growing season below our living room. Some varieties seem to thrive in one environment when others won't survive at all. Jeremy moves them around in late Winter, early Spring to see how they are all doing and make sure we have a good variety of colors. We were able to sell all our Dahlias at the stand this Summer, in previous years we have done some wholesaling, but word must have gotten out about our large, fresh $5.00 bunches!!
We had three batches of meat birds this year. We chose a Freedom Ranger variety, this is a non- GMO variety that is an excellent forager. Other varieties we tried in the past seemed to do nothing else but eat grain despite the fact we were moving them twice a day so that they could forage. We hope to have the meat birds be free range next year as well as pasture raised. We met some new customers this year that were thoughtful eaters. They have done research and put in the effort to finding local meat,eggs and vegetables. They understand the cost and effort involved on our end, they more than talk the talk. It was very refreshing and encouraging because its hard to sell chicken for $5.00/lb when you can go to the supermarket and get it for .99/lb., sometimes even with labels like 'cage free', 'pasture-raised' or 'organic'. Most of these chickens have never stepped foot on a blade a grass. They are raised by factory farms, fed antibiotics and shipped all over the country before they end up in your fridge. Our chicks are shipped to us at one day old with no antibiotics, they are fed and cared for by us and our local employees, they then travel about 5 miles to be processed by Jeremy, Cleo and two other local men and then back to the farm. That's it. If you haven't tried one of our chickens, you really should. We still have some available in our freezers and will be taking pre-orders in the spring for fresh chicken in the summer. We really had a lot of fun having 'Fresh Chicken Friday's'. We set up our canopy, scales and coolers. We met some of our loyal customers and exchanged recipes.
We had the eggs, we added the meat poultry and to complete the pasture management cycle we added beef. Our Scottish Highland cattle have been grass fed and rotate around the field with the egg laying chickens following closely behind, We plan on having beef available for Christmas.
Speaking of Christmas....don't forget we are still making wreaths, boxwood trees and centerpieces. We will have a variety of centerpieces available at our honor system stand starting the week of Thanksgiving and then add wreaths and boxwood trees. We have been making moss wrapped frame wreaths for over 20 years. We use a lot of local greens in our centerpieces and mixed greens wreaths. Feel free to contact us to customize your order or arrange for us to hang your wreath for you. The more unusual the better, we have been know to make wreaths in all shapes and sizes, including squares and letters.
Besides adding beef to our farm this year, we also produced some value added products. With our excess produce we created jams, jellies, pickles and relishes. The fruits and vegetables used were raised by us, so that we could insure that they were completely chem-free. We rented a local certified kitchen and canned our products. Relishes and pickles are: Sweet Pickle Relish, Sweet Sandwich Pepper Relish, Bread and Butter pickles. Our jam and jelly list includes: Concord Grape, Rose Hip, Horseradish, Chocolate Mint, Hot Pepper, Super Hot Pepper, Raspberry, Pear and Apple. The canning didn't start until the end of the Summer, so we will have to wait until next year to add Strawberry and Blueberry to the list. It has been very exciting preserving our harvest. It feels like a mix of culinary arts and mad science- and we love it!! While doing local shopping I have noticed a lot of products that have been-'made for' some local farms. Our stuff is grown, made and canned locally, by us. You can check out our preserves at our stand on nice days – our labels don't like the rain, or contact us and we can get them to you.
The biggest challenge this year was keeping up with the egg demand. Our chickens are offered a variety of all natural food and are truly free-range- as our neighbors will agree. This seasons egg layers were original Rhode Island Reds, Dominiques, and Brown Leghorns for heritage breads, along with Americana mixes, which are a South American breed that lay a greenish- blue egg and are excellent foragers. We started with about 200 laying birds this spring and rarely had eggs in our cooler and never had them in our fridge. Most of the time the eggs would sell as they were crossing the road to get washed, weighed and packaged. We are starting to hatch our own layers to cut the cost of buying peeps and to keep up our effort of becoming more sustainable. While discussing adding more egg layers for 2011 we decided to do a break down of what it cost us to provide you with a dozen eggs. Our current price is $3.00 per dozen. Each chicken costs us $10.00 before it lays its first egg, which takes about 6 months. This amount includes feed, electricity and shavings. This amount does not include labor. At this moment we have 100 layers (the population is down due to coyotes) , they are laying around 3 dozen eggs a day. All natural grain for a week costs about $50.00. Egg cartons are .35 a piece. 3 dozen a day times 7 days a week = 21 dozen a week. 21 dozen x 3.00 = $63.00. Minus the $57.35 for food and cartons and we are bringing in a whopping $5.65. If you didn't notice there wasn't any labor in those figures. We have decided to raise our price. Local eggs at a nearby market in Westport start at $5.50 a dozen. We think $5.00 would be fair. Our loyal egg customers are very important to us and we do not want to lose any of you, so we will be offering Bean Bucks again this year, which will allow you to reduce the price to $4.00 dozen.
So, once again we will have Bean Bucks. Bean Bucks is a CSA ( community supported agriculture) with our own spin. You pick the amount you want to spend. Any amount there is no minimum. When we receive your completed sign up sheet and payment we will send you your Bean Bucks worth 135% of your share between now and the end of 2010 or 125% between January and the end of April 2011. Your Bean Bucks can be used however you want, whenever you want at our honor system stand. You can use them within a couple of weeks or spread them out over the season. This money helps us cover Winter cost and get going in early Spring. In return for helping us out, you get a better deal- on an already great deal, help the local economy, support local agriculture, reduce fossil fuel use, eat in season and basically be a super human being! Sounds like a deal for both of us.
Now you know what we've been doing. Stop by for some eggs or jelly and say hi, check out our ever improving website or follow us on Facebook for a more immediate update on what we are doing.
Know your farmer, know your food.
The Allens -Jeremy, Polly, Cleo, Cyrus, Olive and Xan
www.beanhouses.com
104 South of Commons Road
Little Compton, RI 02837
401.635.4091


Bean Bucks application



□ Yes, sign me up for some Bean Bucks
Name_____________________________________________________

Address___________________________________________________

City________________State____________________zip____________

phone:______________________ email:_________________________

share amount_______________ x 135% Bean Bucks________________
before Jan. 31, 2010

(example: $100.00 share = $135.00 worth of Bean Bucks, $200.00 share= $270 worth of Bean Bucks)

share amount_____________________x 125% Bean Bucks___________
between 1/1/11 and 4.30/11
(example $100.00 share = $125.00 worth of Bean Bucks, $200.00 share = $250.00 worth of Bean Bucks)

The Bean - Volume 3

There are so many things going on this time of year that its great to get some news out, but hard to find the time to sit and write. I am canning relish and pickles and have sometime while I am waiting for the water to boil. Our all natural pasture raised meat chickens are finishing up nicely. They should be ready for you to take home on August 7th. So, if you have not done so yet, please reserve a broiler at www.beanhouses.com. This is our new website, it will allow us to keep track of the chicken orders. Its been hard in the past to remember who ordered what as they drove past us on South of Commons yelling out their car window. We are able to update the website with what is available at our stand and in the future we will be able to sell our grass fed beef this way. Shhhhh, don't tell the deer but our tomatoes are doing very well this year. We are putting an electric fence around our tomato field, then our donkeys and then another electric fence. We are really hoping this will do the trick. We have already harvested some plum and cherry tomatoes and by the time this newsletter hits the press the rest will be ready for picking. We have some great heirloom varieties this year, along with our favorite Japanese Black Triefle, and some tried and true varieties. It looks like we may have beans all summer, we have a French Filet String Bean, the we like to call wee-wee beans. They are very thin and sweet. Shell beans will be ready in about a week, followed by fava beans. We also have Oriental eggplants, summer squash, zucchini, green, chocolate and Cubanelle peppers and Poona Kheera cucumbers from India Available at our honor system stand.. The Poona Kheera are what I am using for my relish and pickles, they have a very thin sweet skin so no peeling needed. They have many stages of color, they start out light green and progress to a golden brown. The color doesn't seem to change the flavor but seems to scare our customers- be brave. The Dahlias are a little slow getting going because it was so dry this spring but by mid-August they should be blooming like crazy. The rest of the flowers are doing great, including the sunflowers and we have been able to keep lots of large colorful bouquets available at the stand. I am impatiently waiting for all of our 175 egg laying chickens to start work. Cleo's Cluckers production has been down. I started by going out to the field and giving the girls a pep talk, no luck. Cyrus got them a yummy treat called a 'flock block', still nothing- or at least not much. Now they have a new fence and we are still waiting. When they do start laying in full force get your omelette pans ready! My batch of relish and pickles are done. Come on by and get your chem-free veggies, flowers and eggs. Eat Local. Eat Your View.
The Allens Jeremy, Polly, Cleo, Cyrus, Olive and Xanwww.beanhouses.com104 South of Common RoadLittle Compton, RI 02837

Beanhouses goes CSA? sort of.....

Bean Bucks-2010
CSA with a Beanhouses spin
Sure we've considered the CSA (community supported agriculture) program before, people have asked for it, we've discussed it. We just weren't sure if it would work out as planned. Nothing seems to be a guarantee here on the farm. One years bumper crop can be gobbled up in an evening by deer. We don't use chemicals and all sorts of nasty fertilizers so we can't even coax our veggie or fruits in a better direction if the elements aren't ideal. So the thought of promising 3 pounds of beans in the middle of July scares us. A promise is a promise after all. But, the whole concept is so great, we get the financial help of starting up again after a long winter and you get a super deal on fresh produce, help the local economy, reduce fossil fuel use, eat in season, eat healthier and get to come visit us on a regular basis. Sounds perfect to us, how about you?
After reviewing other CSA deals we thought how every family is so different and how structured the CSAs seemed. We have decided to offer Bean Bucks for the month of April. You pick the amount. When we receive your completed sign up sheet we will send you Bean Bucks worth 150% of your share. Your Bean Bucks can be used however you want, whenever you want at our honor system stand. You can use them all in a couple of weeks or spread them out over the season. Tailor it to suit you. Print out sign up form and Mail to: Beanhouses 104 South of Common Rd. Little Compton, RI 02837
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
□ Yes, sign me up for some Bean Bucks 2010.
Name_____________________________________________________
Address___________________________________________________
City________________State____________________zip____________
phone:______________________ email:_________________________
share amount_______________ x 150% Bean Bucks________________
(example: $100.00 share = $150.00 worth of Bean Bucks, $200.00 share= $300.00 worth of Bean Bucks)