Spring is upon us. While my gardener friends are doing their planting and maybe enjoying some stalks of asparagus, I’ve begun thinking about grilling meat. This has me considering joining a meat CSA, which I have begun to see more of over the last few years. It’s a great option if you are feeding more than just yourself and if you end up with too much you can always trade it! The local options are:

Chestnut Farms-located in Hardwick. Memberships are offered in 6 month cycles and the cost ends up being about $7-$8 per pound. Pick up locations in Newton, Arlington and Waltham, as well as a number of other locations. Optional heritage turkeys for sale in September!

Austin Brothers Valley Farm-located in Belchertown. Memberships are offered in 3 or 6 month increments and ranges between $7.75 and $9 per pound. Pick up in Central Square, Amherst or Belchertown. Optional delivery to your door by Metro Pedal Power.

You can also buy their products direct from farmer’s markets and retail stores, where you will also find the below local options:

Stillman’s Farm-family operation with two farms located in Braintree and Lunenburg. You can buy their meat products at a large number of farmers markets and they have a vegetable CSA.

Pete & Jen’s Backyard Birds-Order online for pickup at the farm in Concord or just head over to the mini-store at the farm. In addition to chicken and eggs they also have rabbit and pork.

Plus there’s the Cape Ann Fresh Catch fish share that I blogged about last year. Speaking of fish, Jake and I took a stab at smoking some trout. We experimented with locally caught rainbow trout, donated to the cause by a fisherman friend. My plan is to turn them into pate. Who wants to trade some summer asparagus or lettuce for a bit of smoked trout pate? I’ll post the trade offer as soon as I’ve perfected my recipe.

MAfoodtrader.org is entering its first full food trading season! We launched last July and had a good early response–it seems like food trading in greater Boston is ready to take off and we want to keep it going. Help get the word out by forwarding this on to friends you think might be interested in signing up to swap/trade locally made and locally grown foods. It’s free!

For those of you who have been with us since July, I wanted to highlight some improvements and changes:

1. No more spam! We had an issue after launch with WordPress spam because we were letting ads go up without review. We now have a post review policy to eliminate unwanted posts. The only drawback is that you will have to wait a bit (never more than 24 hours) until your post is approved and shows up on the site. I think it’s worth the minor hassle.
2. Easier ad management. It should now be a little easier to relist or delete your trade offer ad using the procedure outlined in How to Use this Site. You should always let us know if this is not working for you. If you had a one time trade offer that was accepted, you can remove your ad.
3. New CSA Share Sharing category! This category should have been up from the start, since it was the original inspiration behind MAfoodtrader (too much food in the CSA share), but it was reinforced recently by a comment from a member of the Urban Homesteaders’ League. Thanks! We’re in the heart of CSA sign up season, so get to it! If you have suggestions for other categories, please send them along.

Remember, every time you post an ad, not only does it show up on the website, but it also gets sent to Twitter, Facebook and appears in our weekly newsletter. If you don’t follow us, like us or get the newsletter, please do so! Many people receive these alternate forms of communication from us who are not signed up as members and they can still respond to your ad!

Lastly, running this site is a great privilege and Jody and I enjoy it immensely, but we have other jobs too and we’d be happy to have your help. If you’re interested in writing about trading, using or growing local food (for the blog) or even just being available to approve ad posts, please let us know.

Happy Trading!

As you may have noticed by the lack of traffic on the site, there really aren’t many fresh foods to swap in the winter. As a result we spent the last few months hunkered down in our homes like good New Englanders, polishing off all of our pickled vegetables and beer. Winter is obviously not over yet, but I’ve been told that now is the time to start ordering seeds and thinking about planting. That is unless you’re me, in which case now would be the time to start thinking about medieval cooking classes, like this one held at MIT during the Independent Activities Period. Cold weather makes me crave meat pies and bread, which this year resulted in my friends and I delving into historic recipes and trying to cook “the old way”. The fruits of our labor have included some hilarious mash-ups, like the Ramen Jello Mold pictured below.

My new-found interest in oldey timey food has also reawakened in me a desire to make my own bread. You’ll be delighted to know that a popular medieval grain is rye, the grain which Jake has just posted for trade. I highly suggest making him a trade offer and then using the spoils to make this recipe for a delicious rye bread, modified from this Breadtopia recipe:

2 cups all purpose flour
1 cup rye flour
1/4 tsp. instant or rapid-rise yeast
1 1/2 tsp. salt
2 Tbs. honey
3/4 cup plus 2 Tbs. water at room temp
1/4 cup plus 2 Tbs. beer (I like czech beer for this)
1 Tbs. white vinegar

Combine all-purpose four, rye flour, salt and yeast in a large mixing bowl. Add honey,water, beer and vinegar. Mix all ingredients together. Set aside at room temperature for 8 hours or more. Knead lightly, roll into a ball and bake covered at 425 degrees for 30 minutes, then uncovered for another 15 minutes. The Breadtopia site includes a helpful video.