Info 2012

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WHAT IS A DAVE’S PRODUCE PACK:  Each week, beginning in mid-June, we will bring your veggies, artisan bread, a dozen of free-run eggs and seasonal fruit to a pickup point in  your area. The first few packs have many greens, but the first legumes, root vegetables and largest variety begins in early July. We always make sure we have a desirable mix of all vegetable types. On harvest days we get up at 5 am, so all the veggies that are perishable are picked the same day they are delivered to you. This means that you are getting the freshest vegetables possible. Under Dave’s guidance, the team will plant, weed and harvest the largest variety of vegetables possible. Click here to see samples of what we brought customers last year.  No chemicals, pesticides, insecticides, herbicides or chemical fertilizer will be used.

WHO?:   This year’s team is really taking shape.  We have a great group of enthusiastic farmers who can’t wait to bring you the best produce possible.  Andrew is an archaeology student at Memorial University in St. John’s, Newfoundland. Inspired by watching the DPP team hard at work in summer 2011, he was determined to join the roster for this season. Alex Eaton has the experience every team needs. He lives next door to Dave’s farm and stopped on a daily basis for the last two years to give us advice and chat about everything veggie. Fascinated by the potential of what DPP will accomplish in coming years, Alex is excited to join our team and put his years of landscaping and gardening experience to good use.  Kirstie Clynick is a certified chef with a keen interest in nutrition.  A chef’s perspective on the farm will go a long way when we are getting your produce packs together.  Long-time friends Amanda Balestreri and Jessica Rydwansky are both graduates of Mount Allison University.  They both jumped at the chance to work for Dave’s Produce Packs and are bringing mountains of energy and enthusiasm to the team.  Rounding out the team will be Fraser Day (aka Frazzle Dazzle).  He’s Hampton’s handsomest man.

MORE THAN VEGETABLES: As expected, Marcus will be joining us again this season with his amazing artisan bread. He will be baking at Kredl’s Corner Market and some of his products may be available in the store or at least by order. Grants, owned by Gilbert Matheson, will be supplying the eggs again.

FRUIT: If available chemical free, we will always try to provide fruit such as strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, apples and cranberries. In season 2011, our customers received fruit every week. We also discovered that local Shiitake mushrooms are in high demand. Our friend Jamie from Springfield provided as many as he could last season, but now that we know just how popular they are, Jamie will ensure a consistent supply for this season.

MEAT: Local, grass-fed meat will be available again, possibly from a few different farms in our area. We will aim to make this service easier to use this season. Dave has also made arrangements with a few local farmers to raise chickens in their pasture, the natural way, to ensure a steady supply for a large portion of the season. Although it is not yet final, a certified organic farmer near Sussex will be raising turkeys in his pasture specifically for DPP customers.  They will be available fresh at Thanks Giving and frozen at Christmas (it gets too cold for turkeys to be outside after November).

PRESERVES AND PIZZA: New this season we will have a member of our team focus on homemade preserves such as jams, pickles, salsa, sauces and whatever you’d like to request.  Gourmet U-bake pizzas may also be available made with organic whole grain crust, our veggies, and local cheese. These items will be available for purchase separate from the produce pack.

CHEESE: We are now connected with a lady who makes her own goat cheese. You may know Kim Bennet from the Kingston Market, but her products will now be easily available at your pickup points. We are also interested in offering more local cheese and possibly seafood. As these products become available we will post them to be ordered on our website.

MORE VARIETY: If you ask our customers from last season to compare their 2010 produce packs to their 2011 packs, they would say it was like night and day. We learned so much last year about crop planning, variety selection, presentation and efficiency. We built on our mistakes to provide better variety, more of the essentials and more choice. In 2011, a major focus was business growth, expanding from 100 weekly packs to 300. We have no intention to grow much more (perhaps 325 or 350) and our plan for this season is to improve to a whole new level, focusing primarily on quality. We experimented with many crops and ideas last season and with our new knowledge, intend to put our ideas to work.

Our crops of broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, cucumbers and lettuce (except for the last crop) did not do as well last season as we hoped. We think we now know how to ensure a successful crop and we will do our best to do so this season. We learned that eggplant and peppers grow much better in the greenhouse. Last year, our tomatoes were totally wiped out by blight, an airborne fungus. This season we intend to grow larger numbers of all three inside a greenhouse and have new insights on blight resistant varieties widely used by organic growers. Also, after learning that it is possible to grow eggplant and peppers well in this climate, we’ll grow many more, especially peppers. We produced very few melons, but they were amazing.  We will do our best to have at least a couple melons for everyone this season. Sweet potatoes and Turnip were a total failure last season. We spent about $500 and two days labour to produce 50lbs of sweet potatoes. We know what we did wrong and we hope to have a plentiful crop. We are putting together our crop plans now, so any suggestions are welcome. We grew nearly 60 different types of vegetables in 2011 and hundreds of varieties. This season we will expand even more. We will post a full list of all the crops we are planning to grow on our website soon.

Our main goals for this season are to increase variety in the produce and products we offer and to establish sustainable farming methods, which will ensure healthy soil and allow us to extend our season so we can provide nothing but the best for more weeks of the year for the years to come. We would like to follow the examples set by some Annapolis Valley farmers who have mastered the art of season extension and are able to offer fresh vegetables into December. Our goal for this season is 25 weeks.

IT MIGHT BE TOO MUCH FOR ME: We offer two sizes of packs, $50 and $40 packs.  Essentially, the $50 packs are approximately $38 worth of veggies from our garden plus the eggs, bread and fruit. This will be best for families, or couples who eat lots of veggies. The $40 packs are approximately $28 worth of veggies from our garden plus the eggs, bread and fruit.  This will be better for single households or couples who eat an average amount of veggies.  We are convinced that anyone can consume a $40 pack in a week, but if you are not committed to home cooked meals at least five days a week, this is not right for you.

WHAT IF I GO AWAY FOR A WEEK? If you will be away for a week or two through the season, just let us know the week before and we will take your name off the list for that week and you do not have to pay. You can also choose to donate your pack to the Romero House Soup Kitchen, or let a friend or neighbour try it for a week. The vegetables keep growing even if you are away, so many people take their pack with them when they go camping, but if that is not an option, we understand.

MAKING IT EASY: While we are challenging you to commit (if you haven’t already) to healthy eating and healthy cooking, we want to make our food as pleasure-filled as possible. To make this easier, we are growing more types of vegetables and will do everything we can to help you cook them. Our website (www.davesproducepacks.com) has become a valuable resource for recipes for each vegetable. We will continue posting our recipes and we also want you to share your recipes by posting them yourself.

PICKUP POINTS: We plan to have eight or nine pickup points. The seven points from last year are SFL Sussex (tentative), Kredl’s Corner Market, SFL Quispamsis on Hampton Road, SFL on Rothesay Avenue, UNBSJ, the entrance to Harbour Passage near Harbour Station and 1216 Sand Cove Road in West Saint John. Our two new pickup points will be the Irving Refinery (tentative) for their staff and a pickup point in Rothesay* (probably near the commons), to split up the crowd we had in Quispamsis. We will be at these pickup points from 5pm – 7pm (4:30-6:30 for UNBSJ and Irving) with your veggies. Please bring your own bags and you will walk along our set up and choose one item out of each bin. Some bins contain two different items, which means you can choose one or the other. There will also always be a swap box at the end where you can choose to leave an item you’d prefer not to have in exchange for another. Please see the photos from last season on Facebook to see exactly how it works. If you are hesitant to become a customer because you live and/or work somewhere off the beaten path, please email Dave and he will find a way for it to work.

*Food for thought, pardon the pun: By having a new pickup point in Rothesay, splitting the crowd of 100 families
who, in 2011, picked up in Quispamsis, each Rothesay family drives approximately 5 kms less each way to receive
their vegetables. If 50 families are in Rothesay and they drive 10 kms less each week, that saves 500 kms per
week, 12 500 kms per season, and about 1250 litres of fuel. We did the math, did you?

HOW TO BECOME A CUSTOMER: Please signup on our website. Like last year, we ask that you secure your spot as a customer by sending a $100 cheque, cash or email money transfer made out to Wolpin Enterprises Inc. This deposit goes towards your last two packs of the season, which will be $50 value for everyone because we provide some extra storage veggies to last a few weeks into the cold season. We will keep you informed with a weekly newsletter starting in June, including a final list of the items of each week’s pack and links to recipes that we will be posting on our website. Each week you need to bring a cheque or cash when you pickup your pack, except for the last two packs of the season, which you are paying for now with your deposit. You can also pay for your pack via email money transfer at least 48 hours before your pickup day or setup AFT (Automatic Funds Transfer).