Friday afternoons on the farm are made more fun when it is Happy Hour! The Brewery at Maple View Farm has Happy Hour every Friday from 3-5pm (Happy 2-Hours anyone??).  Get $1 any beer you buy during those hours.  Sit outside with friends in our comfortable Adirondak chairs, or hang out inside around our big communal table.  Having fun? Then stay for our weekly Trivia game from 6-8pm!

$20 per carload​

Come down to the farm for Pony Rides from 1-3pm on Saturdays.  Kids 3-12 can ride one of our lesson horses or ponies.  One ticket ($5) is good for one lap around the ring.  Or purchase a wristband for $20 for unlimited rides from 1-3pm.  No parents in the riding ring please. Purchase tickets/wristbands at The Brewery.

Join us for fun on the Farm for Father's Day weekend.
The Brewery will be open on Friday 3-8pm with Happy Hour ($1 off beers) from 3-5pm and then TRIVIA starting at 6pm.  1st 2nd and 3rd place winners will win gift cards for a return visit to The Brewery. The Z Catering food truck will be with us.
Saturday The Brewery is open from 1-8pm and we'll have LIVE MUSIC from J. Lamm and Finn at 3pm. We'll also have dad's favorite Bear's Barbeque Food Truck.
On Sunday we'll be open from 1-6pm with Hannah's Field playing at 3pm.  Dolly's Dogs and Tots will be serving up delicious hot dogs and tater tots. 
The Farms own Farm Picnic will be available for purchase any day The Brewery is open. 

We are about to watch another cornfield in town get developed - houses, condos, roads and driveways. I’m sure the people who will live there would love our little farm town.  But will it still be a farm town when they get here? What makes a farm town? Are you still a farm town if travelers through town don’t see any farming? 

We are 3rd generation farmers. in 1950, my husband’s grandparents moved from their small plot in East Hartford, to a beautiful piece of land in just south of the center of town on Rt. 10 in Granby. They noted how flat it was and how the brook wandered through it, bisecting the 50 acres and therefore providing easy access to water - something coveted by farmers.  But they didn’t start the farm.  It was already a working dairy farm and the cows and tractors came with the land, written right on the deed registered in town hall.  Our land that provides food for our family and our neighbors has been farmed back to Granby’s settlement in 1635, with the land along the southern part of Route 10 divided in long strips from the road down to the Salmon Brook.  

Passing the farm through generations can be tough.  Many "farm kids” don’t want to come back to the family land.  Too much work.  Not enough money.  And this is reality for lots of family farms. But really, a family farm is a small business.  In order for the family farm to survive, the small business has to thrive. Otherwise, the only option is to sell the land. When we patronize family farms, we’re not just supporting the current farmers, we’re encouraging the next generation as well.  Thriving family businesses are more likely to be handed down generation to generation and therefore farmland is more likely to stay in farming.

Many farms are doing a great job diversifying, adding value added products and creating multiple income streams: veggie farms that use the produce they grow in their on-farm restaurant, goat farms offering soap, vineyards offering a space for weddings.  Our farm just opened an on-farm brewery where we feed our spent brewer’s grains to our pigs.

By the time the developer is talking to the planning and zoning board it is too late.  Some sort of development is under way.  The time to save farmland is right now - so get out and stop at a local farm store, eat brunch or a slice of pie, have a beer, or a glass of wine.  Our Farm Town depends on it.

You know it’s “cool” to eat local – to call yourself a locavore, wear a man-bun and grind your own fair trade coffee.  You feel good about yourself because your banana farmer in South America is getting paid a fair wage and you know the names of your local farmer’s kids.  But really – What’s in it for YOU to shop local?  I mean, it’s expensive, it’s time consuming, right?  Maybe not so much when you consider the whole picture.
 

1. TRUST.  Do you want to know how your food is produced?  Looking into the eyes of the person who made it means a lot more than any certification from the US government. (Or even worse – other countries’ governments – did you know that agreement about Organic Practices varies from country to country?)  We’re taking other countries at their word when they put it on their label.  Your local farmer eats what she produces, feeds it to her family, hosts friends with that food and sells it in the community in which he lives.  Where his children go to school, where their family goes to church and where her family has lived for generations.  There’s no higher stakes at getting something right than that.
2. LAND PRESERVATION.  Farmer’s are a great deal for a local tax base.  For every dollar in taxes that a Connecticut farm pays, they only use $0.31 in services.  That’s land preservation at its very cheapest.  Get it- by supporting your local farm, you are saving on YOUR taxes!  To maintain a rural feel to your town, the public must support local agriculture.  You won’t be driving by a hay field if you don’t buy the local farmer’s beef.  You won’t enjoy vistas of tomato fields if you don’t join your local CSA.  Farms are businesses and they need customers to stay solvent.
3. CONVENIENCE.  It may not seem like it’s convenient to stop at a couple of farms on your way home from work, or on Saturday morning, or with the kids in the back seat, but maybe give it a try.  You might find out it’s even MORE convenient than the local big box shop.  I mean – you can’t exactly leave your kids in the car while you go into the grocery store, but you might be able to park right outside a small farm store while the kids watch the cows from the comfort of their car seats.  You might find that one of your favorite Farm Stores sells a little bit of everything – meat and veggies from their farm, plus milk and cheese from a neighbor farm.  Sometimes making a new routine can be a challenge, but you find out it’s actually easier for you in the end.
4. VALUE.  If you compare, dollar for dollar, locally produces food, you might find that the local stuff seems more expensive.  But sometimes it’s not.  Be careful about how you compare.  Don’t compare a pound of pasture-raised beef from your local farmer to the stuff on sale in the big box that came from who-knows-where and was made from animals that lived who-knows-how.  Compare apples to apples (no pun intended) when you shop – are items advertised with their price per pound, or priced per item?  Many times the price per pound is quite similar.  When you shop local, 100% of your money stays in your community – double that of when you shop in a big box. 
5. EDUCATION.  Never heard of kohlrhabi?  Don’t know how to cook a beef shank?  Your local farmer will help you!  Check out the farm website, or CSA emails for recipes and directions.  Show up to Open Farm days and ask questions of your farmer.  Bring your kids and let them “meet their meat” and pick their own berries.  It’s important to know that pork chops come from a pig and that blackberries grow on thorny canes.  It’s  only then that we have a true appreciation for our food.  It should matter how the pig was raised before you put a piece of bacon on your plate.  It’s only when you walk out into a field that you understand how little of the broccoli plant is the crown part.  Understanding provides motivation not to waste.  It’s what makes you want to use the leftover bacon in a frittata the next day and chop up the broccoli stems for your stir fry.  And that the start.  The little bit that each one of us can do to make our earth a better place to live.
6. HEALTH.  Americans suffer unnecessarily from diet related disease and chronic illness including diabetes, heart disease, and even some cancers.  We struggle to find the “PERFECT” diet – Paleo? Mediterranean? Atkins? Vegan?  What’s at the root of all these diets is that they all put an emphasis on eating REAL FOOD.  Shopping local means eating real food.  Not stuff that comes out of a package.  And everyone from the Surgeon General to Dr. Oz agrees that the path to health is not paved with processed food.  Fruits and vegetables, high quality meat and dairy (along with plenty of movement) are the backbone to healthy living.  The health of you and your family are affected by the food you choose to buy.  You are making healthcare decisions three times per day.

 
So, that’s what’s in it for you:  A lot.  Hope to see you soon.
 
-Farmer Kate

This is the written transcript of my comments made during the Public Comment section of the 2/3/16 Board of Ed meeting.

I had the opportunity to speak to the 4th graders at Wells Rd School a couple of weeks ago.  Mrs. Cloukey asked me to speak.  The children were doing research for opinion pieces they were writing and after reading articles and watching a video on the subject of school lunch, they asked me to serve as a further source.  I was asked to come speak because as a farmer, a mother and a community member, I am known to have strong opinions on the topic.  In fact, I spoke to you about school lunch two years ago (you can find those comments on my website).  I made the same case to the 4th graders that I made to you two years ago:  processed food has no business in our schools. 
 
It was a fun back and forth with my engaged audience.  I first asked them why they came to school in the first place?  Hands went up with answers like “to learn”, “schools have resources we don’t have at home”, and “teachers”.  Then I asked if learning about nutrition was important.  Yes, they said emphatically, citing that you could only live a certain amount of days (we weren’t really clear on EXACTLY), without food or you DIE.  And, food helps keep you healthy.  I told them, that in fact the administration agrees because there is curriculum about nutrition taught in our schools.  Then we talked about messages inside their school.  Do you have R rated books in the library? I asked them.  NO, they answered. Well, how about those motorcycles they let you ride out on the playground…  those must be fun, I egged them on.  After some roaring laughter, we agreed that teachers and the administration don’t offer just any toys and games to play with on the playground, but only ones that are appropriate for the ages of the kids at school.  What about signs like these:  do you see signs like these in the lunchroom?
I wrote on the board:

2+2=5
 
PUT YOU’RE TRAY HERE
 
Laughter again.  Of course not.  Because we don’t teach math and grammar ONLY in the classroom.  Positive messages are posted everywhere in school.  And that’s why we should give positive messages through the food we offer them every day.  After a discussion about what is good food and testing my hypothesis: Good Food Grows, it was clear that processed food is not good food.  Quick test for you:  Do Doritos grow? Pop Tarts?  I’ve been combing through my seed catalogs for a few weeks now and still haven’t seen a Doritos seed.
 
This conversation is again timely because the US government recently released the 2015-2020 Federal Dietary Guidelines.  This year, more than ever, the guidelines are clear:  processed food is NOT good for our bodies.  We NEED to limit added sugar and salt.  But this is not a discussion about outlawing processed food.  If you want to eat a bowl of Doritos this weekend while watching the Superbowl, I promise I’m not coming over to your house to grab them out of your kid's hand.  I’m not lobbying Stop and Shop to stop selling anything in a package.  I’m asking you.   School.  Stop telling our kids that added sugar and salt is OK for their bodies.  That’s exactly what you’re doing by putting a pile of chips right at the end of the lunch line.  And, honestly, you’re telling parents it’s OK too.  But as parents, we’re not there to see how our kids are moderating.  And many of them aren’t.  Talk to the cashier of the Wells Rd. lunch line.  I did last week.  She is very upset about the kids she sees who end up buying and eating a strawberry milk, a couple of cookies and a bag of chips for lunch.
 
Now, I understand that the school lunch program needs to be profitable.  We need to think outside the box and brainstorm new ways of doing things in the lunchroom.  Because it is unethical to be balancing the budget of the school lunch program by offering our kids snacks that current science says are not good for their bodies.
 
I spoke to you about this two years ago and we made some progress.  Healthy School Lunch certification is a great thing.  But just because our government says that Baked Doritos can be included in a “healthy lunch”, doesn’t mean we have to toe the line too.  We’re not in the pockets of the Big Food companies they way the USDA is.  I’m bringing this up again now because the stakes are about to get higher:  Next school year we will be sending our kindergarteners, our 5 year-olds to Kelly Lane where they will have access to a healthy hot lunch every day.  Please don’t send them the message that chips and ice cream are part of that healthy lunch.
 
I’m excited to get to work on this.  I had a great talk with Dave and Rosemary at the Wells Road cafeteria last week and am looking forward to meeting with them again to brainstorm ideas.  But in order to make lasting change in our community, the Board of Ed and the administration need to embrace a vision of health for our kids and then we need to put it into action in every cafeteria in the district.  I very much appreciate your time.  I am always reachable and would love to hear from you at katebogli@cox.net.