Duncan Farms is a small 60 acre, permaculture-based, family farm just outside Huntsville Alabama.
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Howling Fresh Farms CSA Program is NOW OPEN for enrollment! Memberships are LIMITED.
This CSA offers 2 different subscription options (classic or veggie lover) with the ability to add-on products to your CSA order delivered straight to your home!
Please support our local small farmers and register at
www.howlingfreshfarm.com
Howling Fresh Farm
With another year ending, we look forward to a great 2024. We know that this is the time of year a lot of us look for clean, locally grown fresh food to kick start our new year. We want to take this time to share with you a NEW CSA PROGRAM by Howling Fresh Farm that runs through March to December.
This CSA offers a variety of items which can vary from premium organically grown produce, locally sourced meat (beef, pork, poultry), pasture raised eggs, mushrooms, artisan breads, specialty items, seasonings, and sweet treats with 2 different subscription options and the ability to add-on products to your CSA order.
Your decision to support local people helps small farmers, our environment and our local food scene.
Please tell your family and friends about the Howling Fresh Farms CSA program and make sure you follow them on social media and sign up for their newsletter so you get updates when their registration opens Howling Fresh Farm www.howlingfreshfarm.com
Thank you to Everyone! It has been a pleasure serving our community with local, healthy food.
FINAL CLEARANCE EVENT & PICK UP DAYS
While our shop and farm is now closed to the public, we do have some of our AMAZING pork in stock from our last round of processing. We truly believe that our pork is world class and hope that you are able to fill your freezers with the last of our inventory.
How does it work? Visit the link below and purchase any of the items online by the deadlines listed and we will have them ready for pick up for the following days.
Sunday January 22 10am-2pm
Saturday January 28 10am-2pm
FINAL INVENTORY PRE-ORDER
https://www.huntsvillefarm.com/pages/closing-sale
Our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is a $50 biweekly delivery program that includes a bag of fresh & local food delivered to your home. We strive to create the cleanest food possible, and never use any chemicals, synthetic fertilizers, antibiotics, herbicides, or hormones.
Tomorrow we will start our closing sale. We will be here from 10am to 4pm Tuesday to Saturday.
40% off Pork Products
50% off Steak Cuts
Additional Sale Items at Shop
Thank you everyone for your kind words and messages!
Hello everyone,
We don't normally take time to brag, but in this case we really wanted to highlight the work done by our herdswoman, Jess, over the last year, and provide you with more information about the pork products you will receive over the next few months in the CSA!
Almost two years ago, Jess dedicated herself to the idea that we should remove corn and soy from our feeds and increase the diversity of native forage available to the pigs. The impact of this on the pork specifically will be found in your newsletter and on our website, but the basics are that when you focus on increasing diverse forage and supplement with a soy and corn-free feed, the fat changes and actually becomes a healthy fat for you. The flavor is also unbelievable! This year we sent our pork to a nutritional analysis lab, and our pork fat is 54% saturated, 48% monounsaturated, and 6% polyunsaturated. The low polyunsaturated fat levels make it more stable when exposed to air and heat, creating less free-radicals while cooking than typical pork. Additionally, the USDA Nutritional Database says a 100g portion of pork chop has 20 IU of vitamin D3. We had our pork chops tested, and a 100g portion of pork chop (smaller than a deck of cards) has 72 IU of vitamin D3. That’s over 3x the amount, and it makes sense since our pigs are raised outside with sun on their skin their entire lives.
We are especially proud of these efforts, and of Jess. We are, here in north Alabama, and for you in your CSA, creating a level of quality in our pork that we don't believe anyone is matching anywhere in the U.S. If you care about the environment, our community, and your health, know that the pork you will be receiving over the next few months checks all of these boxes in a big way. It's sustainably (and regeneratively) grown meaning we could do this forever without ruining the environment or getting lots of external inputs; it's created jobs and opportunities for people living in Huntsville and making a living wage; it's delicious and probably some of the healthiest pork you will encounter!
Also, join us in celebrating Jess, her hard work over the last year in getting us here, and please enjoy the products as you start to receive them! I will be enjoying some of the pork chops on the grill with a little salt and pepper 🙂
Thanks
- The Duncans
www.huntsvillefarm.com
Fall, for our herdswoman Jess, is time for traditional hog harvest. These next two months will be bittersweet for us and our hogs. Jess has been spending her days with the pigs for just over 5 months tending to them daily. While here, they are free to roam pasture and are treated with respect and given the best life possible in order to thank them for the meat they will provide to us.
Just this last week, we sent out the first round of our pasture raised hogs out to processor. We will continue to process all of our hogs from now until November, and expect to have our world class pork chops, breakfast links and more starting to arrive in mid October. As we get closer to the arrival of more of our pork to go into your CSA, we are excited for Jess to take over our newsletter. Jess' experience and style of regenerative agriculture not only focus' on the management of our land, health and lifestyle of our animals, but also the nutrition and quality of our meat. Her passion for what she does is undeniable, and insightful when it comes to knowing what you are consuming and how it gets to your plate.
Today’s Fall CSA 🎃
1 Dozen Eggs, 1 Ground Beef, 1 Ground Pork, 1 New York Strip or 1 Chuck Eye, 1 Artisan Lettuce, 1lb Apples and 1 Sweet Cinnamon Pumpkin Lotion Bar
We also have an amazing addition to your CSA this week created by Lauren, our beekeeper. This week, she has made a special lotion bar with a seasonal flair to celebrate fall for our CSA members. These all natural, organic, beeswax lotion bars are amazing for dry cracked skin. Lauren has provided some information about why she chooses to create lotion bars using natural beeswax.
What is Beeswax?
Beeswax is created in the glands of young bees. It is chewed, warmed and manipulated for use in the hive to store pollen, honey and raise young bees. Bees must consume around 6-8lbs of honey to produce 1lb of wax, making beeswax an expensive and valuable resource for both the bees and the beekeeper. After harvesting honey, a beekeeper is left with beeswax capping's that can be rendered and used in personal care items.
Why is Beeswax Good for Skin?
Beeswax is a natural humectant that acts as a barrier to prevent moisture from leaving your skin. It can also protect your skin from toxins in the environment. Beeswax has been used for thousands of years to lubricate, waterproof, condition and polish. Our lotion bars contain no water, and the beeswax seals in all of the moisture provided by the sweet almond oil, jojoba oil, coconut oil, cocoa butter, shea butter, vitamin E and essentials oils.
5 years ago, the Duncan’s planted some pawpaw trees, and they fruited for the first time this year!
Pawpaws are the largest edible fruit native to the U.S. They belong to a tropical fruit family known as the custard apple or Annonaceae. The pawpaw is the ONLY member of that family (a family with over 2000 species) that is not found in the tropics, but instead lives in our own backyard, from northern Florida up into snowy Canada. The pawpaw wandered away from it’s tropical origins over the course of millenia!
The fruit has a flavor and texture that is like a cross between a banana and mango. With it’s tropical looking leaves and mango-like appearance, it is a unique native forageable when compared to North America’s other native fruits (berries, persimmons, grapes, wild plums, etc.).
Never heard of or tried a pawpaw? You’re not alone. Many people nowadays haven’t. But they used to be a well known and loved part of North American culture. Native peoples had the earliest experiences with this fruit and later early settlers ate it as well. There was never a need to cultivate it as it grows abundantly in the wild. When humans stopped going to the woods for food, most forgot about the pawpaw. So far it hasn’t appeared in grocery stores because of it’s short shelf life, short fruiting season, and it’s inability to ripen off the tree if it’s harvested too soon.
Will pawpaws be available at your local grocer someday? Maybe. But for now, the pawpaw belongs to those who forage it in the wild, the small farmer, and those that plant them in their yards. It ripens very quickly and does not tolerate too much handling, making it difficult for stores to source and stock.
While our small pawpaw harvest is coming to an end, you can still come see the trees when you visit our farm shop! We hope to have more to sell next year. Meanwhile, we encourage you to plant them in your yard and go on a pawpaw hunt next time you go on a hike! Pawpaws remind us that there are still adventures to be had and new native foods to explore in our ecoregion, and encourages the question - what else grows around you?
Please enjoy these videos of our pigs eating (and planting) pawpaws! 5-7 years from now, the seeds that the pigs planted will be fruiting trees that will feed our pigs each August. It is a good example of how with some land management and the use of livestock, we are restoring the ecology of the land that we tend to.
Thanks for reading,
- Jess, herdswoman at Duncan Farms
To our valuable CSA Members:
Kaitlin and I wanted to let you know about a few changes we are making to our current CSA program and why we are making these changes. We know this will be a long read, but by supporting our farm you have become part of our story and we want to keep you up to date. Please read the full update here:
https://www.huntsvillefarm.com/pages/policy-updates-for-2022
We have a few more Apiary tours left for 2022! 🐝🍯
Join our beekeeper for a talk on the life of the honey bee and the equipment needed to keep them. Next, suit up and head out to the apiary to open real hives and learn about bee jobs, how honey is made and to spot the queen. Lastly, we’ll head back to the shop to taste and see how different honey products are made and sample honey straight from the hive.
Visit our website to sign up today:
https://www.huntsvillefarm.com/products/apiary-tours
Our beautiful fresh onions went out this week in our CSA 🧅
Wondering what these beauties are? Nero tondo radishes!
Nero Tondo radishes contain high amounts of beneficial compounds called glucosinolates, which give them a peppery flavor and provide immune-boosting, anti-viral and anti-cancer properties. They also contain a unique phytochemical called MIBITC that works to stimulate detoxifying enzymes in the liver. 🖤
Have an eggs-tra special day! 🐓🥚
Calm farm mornings
Interesting in learning more about the life of honeybees? Join us for a hands on class with our beekeeper Lauren! 🐝🍯
Visit our website to sign up!
www.huntsvillefarm.com
Chard harvest 🌈🥬
Our shop will be closed this Sunday. You can still check us out at Sunday from 1pm-5pm or by visiting us at the shop tomorrow 10am-2pm!
CSA Box of the day!
1 Package of Ground Beef
1 Package of Ground Chicken
1 Dozen Eggs
1 Bunch of Collards OR Swiss Chard
1 Dinosaur Kale
1 Large Head of Lettuce
1 Package of Dayspring Dairy Sheep Cheese
Happy healthy chickens hiding in the shade under their mobile chicken house 🐓🏡
💕💗 We love our babies
Beautiful radish harvest ❤️🤍💜
We are one step closure to creating a silvopasture paradise in our hog paddocks. Silvopasture is mostly open grassland with some scattered trees for shade. Last season we selected these ash trees and let them grow. This year the trees are tall enough to provide shade! What's even more exciting is that the hogs are clearing out vegetation under them so the trees wont have to compete with anything. We are working with our land and animals to create an oasis. We are excited about how they are continuing to shape the land out here. All under the green ash trees two weeks ago was thick brush and our porkets (baby pigs) cleared it. Now it provides them shade, and a place for shade loving plants to thrive. Once the hogs move on, more biodiversity!
Bee alert!! 🐝
In early April we installed 20 new hives to expand our farm apiary. These new hives will help us continue to create more raw honey products, and gives us an opportunity to educate our local community about the life of the honey bee and the impact that local bees have within our regenerative farming practices.
Todays CSA is featuring ✨
1 Dozen Eggs 🪺
1 Package of Bacon 🥓
1 Package of Ground Beef 🥩
1 Bundle of Swiss Chard or Kale 🥬
1 Green Garlic Stalk 🧄
1 Bundle of Young Celery 🎋
1 Package of Shiitake Mushrooms 🍄
1 Packet of our Egg Seasoning 🧂
Make sure you check out the quiche recipe in our newsletter 🍳 Happy cooking!
Ladies and gentlemen, we present to you… the Duncan Farms Porkets!
Lush pastures for lambing season 🥰🐑
New for 2022! Apiary tours! 🐝🍯
Join our beekeeper for a talk on the life of the honey bee and the equipment needed to keep them. Next, suit up and head out to the apiary to open real hives and learn about bee jobs, how honey is made and to spot the queen. Lastly, we’ll head back to the shop to taste and see how different honey products are made and sample honey straight from the hive.
Visit our website to sign up today:
https://www.huntsvillefarm.com/products/apiary-tours
Check out some of our beautiful CSA baskets from this week! New exciting produce 💚🌱
Spring is here!
We have some great activities planned this year on the farm, and have been very heads down on our planting and planning for the remainder of the year. Winter is always tough for us, as we have less produce than we're happy with, and with the ever changing weather and it can be a real struggle. We're thankful for those of you who stick with us through thin times, and reap the rewards of thicker times. We are trying to change the food system, we are working on expanding our gardens and our products every year. If you've been with us for more than one of any season we hope that this progress is visible over time. This year will be no exception. Here are some cool things happening on the farm this year.
- More tours: We are setting up to provide more classes and tours. In addition to being able to see the farm any weekend you'd like to come out, we are also working to provide more structure here that we can advertise to you around specific outings, animal days, garden days, production days and so on.
- More events: Last fall we sampled a very quick wine tasting day - this was a big hit. Stay tuned, as we're likely to do this again in May and would love to meet many of you! We are constantly looking to work with more food creators, improving our herb garden, and have plans to do more culinary experiences as soon as we can.
- More products: We've partnered with more local artisans who create wonderful products. We've expanded our lines of compostable and eco friendly products in your bags, and we've hired more experts who have started on the farm this year, with production to come (we've added 20 bee hives and a new beekeeper who's making amazing wax-based products that you'll see eventually at our shop and on the addon store)
- More gardens: we've nearly tripled the size of our produce production for the 2022 season - this means more of everything, and at the best margin we can grow it at.
There are many other initiatives that we're working on as diligently as we can. We don't always remind ourselves to communicate these initiatives and it's been a while since we have as we've been very heads down lately working on them! All of these things are done with you in mind, and a thankfulness for the partnership you've created with us, your local farmer. Please stay tuned for more information on the above as we announce more of these programs, put more into your CSA, and expand our partnership with you in the coming years!
Happy Earth Day! 🌎 🌱
Here on the farm we consider ourselves Stewards of the land; Working with it rather than simply taking what we need from it. Our entire operation revolves around our relationship with the earth.
It is the medium through which we grow our produce to share with our customers. It provides food for our grazing animals and flowers for our honey bees, among so many other things!
In turn we protect it by using organic farming practices- no sythetic fertilizers, pesticides or herbicides. We also use cleaners and soaps that are bio-friendly. We strive to strengthen the health of the earth by rotating our animals throughout all our pastures to naturally fertilize the land and prevent over-grazing. We pick up compost around the city to turn into beautiful soil to continue the cycle over and over again.♻️
Thank you, Mother Earth & our customers. We couldn’t do it without y’all. By supporting small businesses like ours, you too support a sustainable planet!
1259 Salty Bottom Road
Gurley, AL
35748
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Morning sights and sounds from the farm 🥕
5 years ago, the Duncan’s planted some pawpaw trees, and they fruited for the first time this year! Pawpaws are the largest edible fruit native to the U.S. They belong to a tropical fruit family known as the custard apple or Annonaceae. The pawpaw is the ONLY member of that family (a family with over 2000 species) that is not found in the tropics, but instead lives in our own backyard, from northern Florida up into snowy Canada. The pawpaw wandered away from it’s tropical origins over the course of millenia! The fruit has a flavor and texture that is like a cross between a banana and mango. With it’s tropical looking leaves and mango-like appearance, it is a unique native forageable when compared to North America’s other native fruits (berries, persimmons, grapes, wild plums, etc.). Never heard of or tried a pawpaw? You’re not alone. Many people nowadays haven’t. But they used to be a well known and loved part of North American culture. Native peoples had the earliest experiences with this fruit and later early settlers ate it as well. There was never a need to cultivate it as it grows abundantly in the wild. When humans stopped going to the woods for food, most forgot about the pawpaw. So far it hasn’t appeared in grocery stores because of it’s short shelf life, short fruiting season, and it’s inability to ripen off the tree if it’s harvested too soon. Will pawpaws be available at your local grocer someday? Maybe. But for now, the pawpaw belongs to those who forage it in the wild, the small farmer, and those that plant them in their yards. It ripens very quickly and does not tolerate too much handling, making it difficult for stores to source and stock. While our small pawpaw harvest is coming to an end, you can still come see the trees when you visit our farm shop! We hope to have more to sell next year. Meanwhile, we encourage you to plant them in your yard and go on a pawpaw hunt next time you go on a hike! Pawpaws remind us that the
Look at these gals out happy! Digging in the bamboo 🎋🐓 #chicken #egglayers #bamboo #huntsvilleal
2021 is a wrap! 💫 We look forward to serving you in 2022!
Loofas are growing! 🌱🧽 🚿
Come visit us at our store today or tomorrow from 10am-2pm! Feel free to take a self guided tour around our gardens! Our 500ft wild flower garden has started to bloom 🌸🌼🌻
Don’t be sheepish! 🐑 We've moved the sheep next to the shop for those of you who swing by this weekend. We're open 10AM-2PM Saturday and Sunday! Come check out some of our new products and enjoy this nice weather! 🏡🚜🌾
Duncan Farms is a small 60 acre, permaculture-based, family farm just outside Huntsville Alabama. We believe in and actively practice using no synthetic fertilizers, chemicals, pesticides, herbicides or anything that could be deemed harmful in the production of the food on our farm.
Everything on the farm is part of a system, animals graze openly and mimic the wild as much as possible, cover crops are used to protect vital soil nutrition, and we nourish the ground in every way we can.
The intent and purpose of the farm is to create a learning environment for those who visit, and create a quality product to supply our customers.
We would love to have you as a customer!
